Matts writes:

>But everything isn't humour either I can say like a little antidote to
>this.  Robert Gutman finds homosexuality in "Tristan" in his book "Richard
>Wagner - The man, his mind and his music", and he speculates that it is
>a bad joke by some publisher (what is unlikely as it appears in Wagners
>revided original).  But Gutman was a child of his time (the book is written
>in the mid 1960ies), and he could not see homosexuality as somthing else
>than a bad thing.

Possibly not a bad joke from the publisher, and maybe no need to let the
question of homoeroticism in Tristan rest on an inaccurate translation.

Who was Tristan? A stone column some seven feet high stands in Cornwall,
bearing the faint inscription in 6th-century Roman letters, "Here lies
Tristram, son of Quonimorius," The neighboring farm suggests that here
stood ancient Lancien--the Palace of King Mark, called Quonimorius'.
There is little reason to doubt that the tombstone belongs to the historic
Tristan.  Centuries later, the tragic Celtic love story involving Tristan
was versified in courtly romance throughout Europe.  The fullest German
version, by Strassburg, (c.1200), provided the main source for the libretto
of Wagner's opera.  (Davies, "Europe, A History,")

What were the Celts like? The Celts stormed Rome in 390 BC and Greece
in 279 BC, terrifying their victims by their huge stature, red hair and
ferocious temperament, (including fighting greased and naked), and by
their sickening habit of head hunting.  They had founded some of the most
advanced archaeological cultures, and their possession of iron weapons may
well explain their dramatic expansion.  (Cahill, "How the Irish Saved
Civilization")

What of the sexuality of the Celts? Here is an excerpt from "The Love of
Warriors" included in David Greenberg's sober and well-researched book,
"The Construction of Homosexuality" regarding the sexuality of warrior
societies:

   "The [archaic] aristocratic warrior societies do seem to have had
   extensive male homosexuality, which was completely accepted.  Their
   political organization took the form of centralized chiefdoms, with
   patron-client relationships linking aristocrats and commoners (heroes
   and their followers).  According to Aristotle, (Politics:  2.9.7.),
   the Celts esteemed homosexuality.  Writing the the first century BC,
   Diodorus Siculus found Celtic women charming, and every indicator of
   their social status suggests that it was quite high, but added that
   the men were much keener on their own sex.  Strabo and Athenius
   present a similar picture.  "

First of all Matts, whoever Tristan was, he would laugh at our concept of
homosexuality as an exclusive lifestyle.  Greenberg on archaic civilizations
in summary:

   "Involvement in homosexuality was ordinarily considered to be
   non-exclusive.  With only a few exceptions, male homosexuality was
   not stigmatized or repressed so long as it conformed to norms regarding
   gender and the relative ages and statuses of the partners."

Whether Tristan was a real warrior or a character based on a real warrior,
it is entirely possible that he could have been ambisexual--enjoying a
relationship w/a male as intense as the one he had w/Isolde.  It must also
be remembered that Wagner's source of the legend, (Strassburg [c.  1200]),
could have been 'cleaned up,' thus only alluding to what once was.

Christopher Webber, a loooong time ago:

>The homo-erotic strand in "Tristan and Isolde" is neither sublime nor
>ridiculous; but it is certainly intense enough, particularly on the
>Tristan-Mark-Melot axis.  Without this, I doubt whether the opera would be
>quite as richly suggestive as it is about the complexities of human love
>and desire.

In light of the above information, this is entirely possible, at least
between (king) Marke and (prince) Tristan.  King Marke is the older, and
Tristan, the younger, is his most faithful follower--the relationship was
not egalitarian, and therefore an intimate relationship between them would
conform to norms regarding age and status of the participants.  Greenberg
further points out that many archaic warrior-societies indoctrinated youth
with ritual that involved homosexuality, and this could lead to extended
male/male relationships that may or may not have ended with marriage to a
woman.  Using the narrative of Tristan as an example, Greenberg goes on:
"When Tristan went into exile with Isolde, he remembered with regret the
young men he had trained and feared that he might never be able to rejoin
them." King Marke may have similarly strong feelings for Tristan.

Perhaps the original extended narrative that Wagner trimmed down to
'essentials' would shed some more light on these issues.  I was surprised
to see the legend come up in my personal studies, and this, combined with
eyewitness accounts of the Celts, might be helpful to the discussion.

John Smyth
Sacramento, CA
http://facelink.com/j66560