Title: The True Realm of Love: An Interpretation of Three Symbolic Groups in Tristan und Isolde

Abstract: As one of the greatest works in the history of opera, Tristan und Isolde is an obscure philosophical drama. Wagner fused Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Buddhist thought, Feuerbach’s ideas, and the Young Germany’s view on love into his own unique philosophy of love, and then expressed it in a dramatic poem through a series of recurring symbols. This paper categorizes the central symbols in the work into three thematic groups and interprets the meaning of these groups to explore the central philosophical themes of Tristan und Isolde. The three symbolic groups are: (1) the love potion; (2) night, death, and the extinguishing of the torch; (3) the wound and the cure. Together, the meanings of these symbols reveal Wagner’s philosophy of love: erotic love possesses metaphysical significance—it serves as a gateway through which the individual abandons appearances and returns to the thing-in-itself.

Keywords: Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner, symbols, Schopenhauer

Author: Wang Zhang, Associate Professor, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2025.03.009