![]() ![]() I always had an intense interest in mythology - especially anything to do with the King Arthur Legends. I used to walk to our public library once a week with my sister(s), and I spent much of my summers reading. I first read this book when I was ten or eleven. Without the potion, they are human: loving and flawed, seeking happiness in one another, seeking honour in the world, wanting not to hurt anyone, stumbling and falling - falling together, falling apart - and losing it all.more The love potion makes Tristan and Iseult characters pawns to the narrative, helpless to their fates. ![]() I can only tell the story in the way which feels right to me in my own heart of hearts. And for me, this turns something that was real and living and part of themselves into something artificial, the result of drinking a sort of magic drug.īecause everyone else who has retold the tale in the past eight hundred years has kept it in, it is only fair to tell you this. I am sure in my own mind that the medieval storytellers added it to make an excuse for Tristan and Iseult for being in love with each other when Iseult was married to somebody else. Now the story of Tristan and Iseult is Diarmid and Grania, and Deirdre and the Sons of Usna, and in neither of them is there any suggestion of a love potion. In all the versions that we know, Tristan and Iseult fall in love because they accidentally drink together a love potion which was meant for Iseult and her husband, King Marc, on their wedding night. In her introduction, Sutcliff writes that she attempted to strip the story back to some of its original Celtic fierceness and darkness, and in doing so, made one very significant change: He had never told her of the other Iseult, but she had always guess the meaning of the woman’s ring that hung round his neck, and because she loved him she knew the rest without being told, and knew when he turned from the owner of the ring, and did all she could to heal the hurt, and yet could not help being glad that the hurt was there for her healing. He had thrust Iseult of Cornwall from his life and he had found a kind of peace that was sometimes almost happiness with Iseult White-hands. There is also an emotional nuance that surprises me - a wisdom about the complicated ways we love:įor Tristan also, the months and the years went by. It has served to guide you to me, and the moon is better for keeping secrets.” And laid aside her silver comb and held out her arms to him. Sutcliff's retelling is romantic, stately, heartbreaking, classical, shot through with the occasional dart of humour, and often startlingly sexy for a book aimed at children.Īnd beyond, Iseult sat among the piled cushions, combing her hair that was red as hot copper in the smoky torchlight. The story of King Marc, Tristan and Iseult underpins that of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot. If you need the bare outlines of the story, here it is. And then it turned into something that I didn't feel quite up to sharing with the world. And then the review turned into my own retelling. Sutcliff's retelling is romantic, stately, heartbreaking, classical, shot through with the occasional dart o I started writing a review of this retelling of the sad, beautiful story of Tristan and Iseult. ![]() ![]() I started writing a review of this retelling of the sad, beautiful story of Tristan and Iseult. ![]()
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