Tristan

Started by Mystery, May 24, 2007, 11:03:50 AM

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Mystery

Could (or is) Tristan be classified as expressionist or was it written too early to be considered as part of this 'twentieth century' bracket?

head-case

Quote from: Mystery on May 24, 2007, 11:03:50 AM
Could (or is) Tristan be classified as expressionist or was it written too early to be considered as part of this 'twentieth century' bracket?

I'm not enthusiastic about classifying things, but I would regard Tristan as an epitome of Romanticism.  I don't know if you can draw a line and say here romanticism ends and expressionism begins.

mjwal

I would say that Tristan was made by Wagner in partial imitation of Greek tragedy - there is considerable continuity by virtue of the narrative flashbacks, for example, and in general there is a certain affinity between W and Ibsen, say - whereas Expressionist works are characterised by discontinuity, even disjunction, with narrative gaps that resist closure, as in e.g. Erwartung. The difference is even more striking in pictorial art, and I would argue that the term Expressionism is more appropriate to that & to German literature during the first 2 decades of the 20th century.
The Violin's Obstinacy

It needs to return to this one note,
not a tune and not a key
but the sound of self it must depart from,
a journey lengthily to go
in a vein it knows will cripple it.
...
Peter Porter