How much have you heard about “Tristan & Iseult”? To be honest, I wouldn’t say more than “a medieval novel about love” until this year. After reading this book, I keep on wondering, why it not heads every listof a greatest love stories, like “Romeo and Juliet” does, because this novel impressed me even more than a well-known Shakespeare's tragedy. Why? This is exactly what I’m going to tell you. 

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Love is a complex concept, because we use this word everyday, speaking about rather our favorite food or about person, we can’t imagine our life without.  Ancient Greeks were more precise in this matter, because they had six words for this feeling. And the most impressive thing about “Tristan & Iseult” is that it is about love in every meaning of this word.  It’s all started with philia, or deep friendship between Tristan and king Mark. Indeed, it was something more powerful than just friendship, something that made Tristan turn down the throne, that made Mark vowed not to marry.

 

There is no power in the whole word that can destroy these relationships, isn’t it? But, unfortunately, there actually is. Tristan and Iseult met for the first time as the enemies, as a Morold’s murderer and his beloved niece. But Iseult didn’t kill Tristan, moreover, she protected him from death in her father’s palace. According to the text, they fell in love after had drunk a poison on a ship to Cornwall, but I’m sure, that it was a love from the first sight. Deep, longstanding love that developed between long-married couples or pragma, ignited in one second between sworn enemies.

 

A new feeling that burned like a fire, that normally should fade away, that time raised to a destructive wildfire. In the end, this fire would be the death of them, but its glorious way was worth all the pain. And totally it is forth being read.