There are Ulysses and Penelope and Romeo and Juliet and Albert Camus and Maria Casares. Tristan and Iseult are among the indestructible couple category. They will soon be married for a thousand years, despite all odds. You can’t get better than that! It’s hard to believe that this brave knight and his golden-haired bride, King Mark of Cornwall, could have “remained a model for love since the Middle Ages.” Michel Zink, a renowned medievalist, said: “They didn’t stay that way. They are what they have become. They are an invention of the 19th century. It is Wagner and Romanticism’s fault for imagining a passion that forced two lovers into a life full of “suffering, cunning.”
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In their wisdom, the Middle Ages were more lucid about love and more ambivalent. “The only disease you don’t want to be cured from is love,” they said. Zink examines the various versions of the story that have been passed down to us. Zink discusses how the adulterous love between Tristan and Iseult could be both “insane, flawed”, immoral and disturbing.
He recalls how we are dealing with two drug addicts who have been intoxicated by a magical potion. He observes the jealousy in Tristan’s eyes as Iseult cannot help but to cum when she is sleeping with her husband.
He emphasized that the essence of the myth is the transformation from “narcissism” (love of oneself) into true love, which is “capable to abnegation, and reciprocal sacrifice”. “. This old idea may still be relevant in today’s world of revenge porn and all-ego, but it could also remain subversive.
