Tristan and Isolde as the Fountain of the Eternal Quest for Love

Selma Raljević

The tragic love story of the medieval European myth Tristan and Isolde has served as a fountain of inspiration for different writers, composers and artists to form their view and inspire the creation of masterpieces of literature, music and art synthesizing their craft and elements of real life. This article focuses on the novel

Brazil by John Updike (1932-2009), the three-novella book Legends of the Fall by James "Jim" Harrison (1937- ), the myth of Tristan (whose name means "sad" in French) and Isolde (also known as Iseult, lsold, lsolt or Ysolde) as well as films based on both the myth and Harrison's book. Specifically, this article will explore parallels between mythical aspects of Tristan and Isolde as well as interaction of fictional and factional representation of everlasting love stories in life and actual

existence in Brazil and Legends of the Fall. Although the intertextual references and the connection between Updike's Brazil, Harrison's Legends of the Fall and the myth of Tristan and Isolde, a myth central to Western civilization, are not complete, Updike's and Harrison's works contain ties to the myth's themes in the sphere of love, marriage and adultery, thereby linking American prose to medieval European myth and moreover, medieval and contemporary life. Tracing the European myth of forbidden and eternal love between Tristan and Isolde, the lovers whose unity can be accomplished only in death, to Updike's and Harrison's expansion of this notion from the point of view of cultural history and contrariness of love and marriage, as

also Denis de Rougemont elaborates in his study entitled Love in the Western World (L'Amour et I 'Occident), we can see stylistic diversity of literary and artistic works synthesizing literature, art, contemporary love and actual existence. Such connections underscore Oscar Wilde's ( 1854-1900) statement that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.