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        Tristan i Isol'da. A Collective Study by the Section for Semantics, Myth and Folklore of the Academy of Science, Leningrad, under the Editorship of N. Y. Marr, Leningrad, 1932.
        This recent publication by the Leningrad Academy of Sciences is a series of twelve essays by different specialists, together with an introduction describing the nature of the work, and a conclusion stating its results. The volume represents a "collective task” carried out collectively. Each essay is highly specialized, but has a definite place in the unified scheme of the entire project. The methods and premises and point of view of the whole work are rather different from those commonly represented in Western scholarship. Some of the fundamental concepts of the new method in comparative linguistics, mythology and folklore had already been elaborated in publications of the Japhetic Institute, Leningrad; they are applied here to the study of the Tristan story (and other related or analogous tales) on the assumption that they are already known to the reader. It is possible to adduce them from the present studies, however; and the brilliant concluding essay by I. G. Frank-Kamenetskii clarifies the purpose and results of these new methods. It is my purpose here to summarize the book in some detail for the benefit of those who cannot read the original Russian. I shall attempt to state the theses and arguments as justly as I can, emphasizing what is new and original in the contributions, but I shall refrain from comment, since I am not sufficiently skilled in Japhetic studies to embark upon criticism.
        The Tristan story, as here represented, is understood to include all sorts of myths or legends involving combat with a dragon to save a princess, frustrated love ending in tragic death, quest for a distant bride, and the like, even when these stories are not genetically related. The Russian scholars are more interested in studying what similar social conditions give rise to similar tales, and what causes the ideological changes in them during different periods, than in establishing a limited set of source relationships. Isolda is for them a symbol of woman-worship, not only in medieval times but in remote antiquity; and they assume a connection between the glorification of a medieval heroine and the worship of the goddess Ishtar, on the basis of a certain unity and repetition of the forms of human thought and social expression, and the close connection of "Afreurasian” cultures in ancient times. But they do not argue that all of the multifarious legends quoted in the twelve essays are direct sources of the feudal poem.
        In the first essay, O. M. Freidenberg states "The Purpose of the Collective Study on Tristan and Isolda.” It was preceded some years ago by investigations of Marr (Yafeticheskii Sbornik, III, 1923; ibid., V; Ishtar, pp. 113 ff.),
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who emphasized the importance of investigating the culture of primitive Afreurasian society for light on the stories of western Europe. The "stadial” development of a myth is due to changes in social and economic usage. This fact is neglected in purely formalist literary criticism, which explains variations in the handling of traditional material merely by the individual psychology of successive authors. The question is not to be completely solved either by theories of direct borrowing or of individual originality, but by a due regard for the stadial transformations of society. Therefore significant variants of a story include, not only those which could have served as direct source, but also others from unrelated literatures produced by a similar form or "stadion” of society. Seemingly unsimilar material is often most pertinent. Although much importance is attached to the study of myth, particularly solar myths, the methods of Max Muller are expressly disclaimed, since the chief concern here is the history of early society, not myth for its own sake. The essay concludes with a summary of what is commonly known as the Urtristan or estoire, and points out similarities between various episodes of the plot and other significant legends in the world’s literature: the journey of the wounded Tristan to Ireland and his return after the cure, as a periphrasis for death and revival; the combat with a monster (Morholt) or dragon as a reflection of sun-gods’ fights with darkness and death; the important part given to the woman, the initial hostility of the heroine towards the hero whom she later loves, the appearance of a false seneschal, the duplication of the heroine by a namesake, — all these as repetitions of ancient, well-known themes, which are discussed in detail in the subsequent essays.
        In "The Romance of Tristan and Isolda and its Celtic Source”, A. A. Smirnov points out that a certain amount of pre-Celtic material has been preserved in the extant story. (He explains the intent of King Mark to have Tristan succeed him, by means of the matriarchal customs of the Piets.) After a survey of earlier theories, of Brier’s contributions and G. Schoepperle’s additions to them, he proceeds to review the known Irish analogues and to augment them by a few new ones. As a parallel to the magic dog Petit-Cru, which causes forgetfulness of sorrow, he cites a Silver Branch from the Other World with the same pleasant characteristic (see Voyage of Bran and Adventures of Cormac in the Promised Land, Windisch, Irische Texte, III, 1, 1891). The swallows that carry Isolda’s golden hair to King Mark are compared with bird messengers from the Other World (frequently with golden chains about their necks) in the Birth of Cuchulain and the Sick-Bed of Cuchulain (Windisch, Irische Texte, I). Another parallel, the story of Markan, his young wife Cred, and her lover Cano, which was discovered by Thurneysen (Zeitschrift für rom. Phil., 1923, XLIII), is proved to be even more significant than Thurneysen had supposed: here again, neither of the two lovers could survive the other, and the death of both is due to a false and malicious report about the supposed decease of one of them. Finally, a new analogue is quoted for the lai of Marie de France (Chievrefeuil) dealing with Tristan. In the story of Baile and Ailen (Revue Celtique, XIII, 1892), we have another pair of lovers unable to survive each other. Baile is falsely informed that Ailen is dead, whereupon he dies, and Ailen dies also when she learns of his end. From the lovers’ graves
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grow two trees with summits resembling the faces of the dead. Seven years later druids made tablets from the wood of these trees, and poets wrote on them tales of love. When King Cormac superimposed one of these on the other, “they were united even as the honeysuckle entwines itself about a branch, and it was impossible to separate them.” For various reasons Smirnov supposes that Chievrefeuil is a derivative of Baile and Ailen_y and he points out that Marie adapted the plot to the ideals of feudalism. He also summarizes other adaptations in the Old French Tristan et Iseult, as preserved by Beroul and Thomas (the substitution of a love-drink for a geis, etc.), and he argues that other episodes, supposed by Western scholars to be non-Celtic (such as the fight with the dragon, and the tragic conclusion through White Iseult’s lie) may be sufficiently international to have been represented in Irish also. Among other things, he suggests that even the original Irish story may have existed in two variants: one, in which the death of the lovers followed immediately on their life in the forest, and another, in which Isolda was returned to Mark, and Tristan married. A further investigation of Celtic folklore is urged, in order to increase the evidence by analogy for the types of episodes taken from early Celtic narrative. Particular weight is attached to the survival of early concepts in the story of Baile and Ailen: the actual physical equation of the two lovers with the trees growing from their graves, and with the tablets made of the trees.
        ’’Ishtar-Isolda in Germanic Material,” by V. A. Brim, is a collection of place-names, personal names, and passages in Latin authors, which would serve to indicate that the early Teutons venerated a goddess-mother and at one time practiced matriarchy. The author quotes the famous sentence of Tacitus in ch. 45 of the Germania: Matrem deum venerantur, and refers to the mention of Isis among the Swedes; and he points to the existence of names like the Matrone River as evidence. That these obscure references concern a female divinity actually connected with an oriental goddess like Ishtar should not be a surprise even in Indo-European circles, he adds; other scholars have argued that certain members of the Germanic pantheon were also borrowed from the East. Since a dominant female goddess is frequently associated with the idea of water, he finds that the names of the rivers Isar, Isere, Oise, and Isonzo contain the root represented by the name Ishtar.[1]
        ’’Ishtar-Isolda in the Mythology of the Ancient East”, by V. V. Struve, is a survey of the sources from which we gain our knowledge of the cult of Ishtar and similar goddesses. Here we find frequently repeated the episode of the carrying off of the goddess by a ravisher (such as the god of the sea), the consequent loss of fertility by the earth, and, finally, the restoration of the goddess. In the Babylonian myth, both Ishtar and Tammuz are revived by the Water of Life. Frequently the dominating role is assigned to the goddess; the lover is passive or unwilling. Hence the curious parallel to situations found in other literatures which reflect matriarchy or a society in which women are powerful. (Although Struve does not say so, the most pertinent application
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of this is found in the Old Irish legends like Deirdre or Diarmuid or Cred and Cano, in which the lover elopes with the heroine unwillingly, because she compels him to.) Woman-worship in the Ancient East is shown to have certain important resemblances to literary woman-worship in the feudal West.
       In "Ishtar-Isolda in Biblical Poetry”, I. G. Frank-Kamenetskii searches the Bible for parallels to the medieval tragedy of love. Although there is no direct analogue, he cites the story of Amnon and Tamar as one based on a similar situation since it deals with unlawful love violating tabus. This story, according to Winkler (Die Geschichte Israels, II, 227 ff.), is borrowed from the legend of Stratonike as told by Lucian. (The relation of Stratonike to Astarte is discussed in the preceding essay.) The apocryphal story of Tobit is also cited because it contains the wooing of a bride in a distant country and the slaying of a monster on the way; but the social "stadion” here represented is later than that of the Pentateuch; it is characterized by urban life and an emphasis on money values. Biblical metaphor and the Tristan story alike exemplify the use of certain psychological associations wherever love and woman- worship are given literary importance: the ideas of love, fertility, and woman are associated with water (cf. the Biblical “well of living water” and, in the Tristan story, the bold drops of spring-water); illicit love is compared to a spoiled garment (the spotted shift of Isolda and the rent robe of Tamar); love itself is an illness that must be healed by the loved one. These semantic groups are independently recurrent; though they are significant, they do not necessarily imply borrowing.
        “The Plot of Tristan and Isolda in the Myths of the Aegean Section of the Mediterranean”, by O. M. Freidenberg, surveys particularly the Cretan stories (which have come down to us in Greek) for "semantic equivalents” of the medieval tale. Most of these are to be found connected with the hero Theseus. In this myth there are traces of an earlier, theriomorphic stage. "Celtic Ireland is the same as our Crete; the King of Ireland is Minos; golden-haired Isolda the leach is the same as the leach Pasiphae-Ariadne; the monster Morholt is the monster Talos-Taur-Minotaur, a close relative of Ariadne. Even the story of the colored sails occurs in both, and Theseus, like Tristan, is associated with two homonymic heroines… The myth tells us that there were two Ariadnes, both of whom received divine honors, except that with one of them were associated holidays of a sad character, and with the other, joyous ones. Theseus betrayed one of these; the other was married first to him and then to Dionysus.” Such duplications are caused by separating two aspects of the same goddess; the existence of two Isoldas recalls this ancient tendency. On the basis of certain myths, Freidenberg states that "to conquer a dragon” or "to conquer a water monster” meant "to possess a woman”. A number of other myths offer instructive parallels implying the same social development and mode of thought: for instance, Penelope fails to recognize Odysseus on his return, but his dog does, just as Tristan’s dog recognizes him in La Folie Tristan. Again, many of the myths associate the ideas water-woman-Hades on the one hand and man-sun on the other. The concept of romantic love, however, is quite alien to them.
       The next article, by B. V. Kazanskii, continues the study of Greek myths. Speaking of the legends of Paris and Oenone and Theseus and Medea, which are
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supposed to have influenced the Tristan story directly, Kazanskii says: “these parallels are not limited to the plot of Tristan and Isolda on the one hand, and ancient literature on the other; they are to be encountered in other… folkloristic complexes of different nations, so that even the most orthodox representative of the ‘historical’ school cannot bring himself to affirm that they all go back to classical literature as their ‘source’.” The dispute over "borrowed” and “migratory” themes is fruitless; in a search for absolute sources and historical kernels one is apt to misunderstand the whole literary situation. For instance, the historical fall of the Burgundians is not really a terminus post quem for the Nibelungen legend, since it may have existed before historical names were attached to it. Similarly, the Pictish name Drostan-Tristan does not give any conclusive evidence as to the origin of the Tristan story. The weakness of the historical school springs from its blind worship of doctrinal evidence, and its over-emphasis of individual authorship. But the persistence of a literary tradition has a reason which is to be sought in the social phenomena which condition the choice of materials. This is why folklore is so important. Classical myths also furnish semantic equivalents for the Tristan story when compared with the Celtic ones. Now the frequency of erotic motifs in old Celtic lore was due to the power and independence of women in sexual matters, a condition probably inherited and imitated from the prehistoric non-Indo-European inhabitants of Britain. Bede and other historians testify to the existence of matriarchy among the Picts, and it is apparent that the Tristan story took shape under some such form of society. The classical parallels are to be explained by survivals of matriarchy there too. To illustrate the importance of society in conditioning plots, a Melanesian analogue is quoted: a girl unwittingly quaffs a love-drink prepared by her brother for another; the two become lovers and live together in the wilderness away from human society; finally however, overcome by shame, they starve themselves to death, and from their bodies there grows an herb often used in love-drinks. Similarly the parallelisms between Celtic and classic lore — strong-minded heroines like Medea and Medb, triangles like Oenone-Paris-Helen and Tristan with his two Isoldas, classic tabu and Celtic geis (both the youthful Cuchulain and Acteon found it disastrous to look on a naked woman), lovers’ leaps and love in exile — are to be explained by social backgrounds. In reference to Celtic and classical stories about a hero who wins a heroine by killing a monster that has exacted tribute of youths and maidens, it is particularly instructive to notice that certain primitive rites connected with puberty take the form of an encounter with a “monster”, while mothers lament the "loss” of their sons by weeping. This “lamentation” is turned to joy when the youths return; and their performance of the sexual act marks their maturity and their escape from death. The parallel is obvious.
        "The Heroine Mzethunaqav in Georgian Fairy-Tales”, by M. G. Tikhaya- Tsereteli, surveys a group of märchen concerning the quest for a remote super- ' natural heroine of sun-like beauty. Most of them are analogues of the Perseus märchen which appears in Tristan’s quest for Isolda of the golden hair. The author, after suggesting etymologies for the names given to these Georgian heroines, and discovering the suffix sthen, shter (Ishtar) in them, proceeds to summarize the stories. In the first group, the hero, whose family background
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is not mentioned, is serving a king (not his uncle) for whom he goes to seek some magic apples guarded by a serpent, and the princess who owns the waters of life. But the king perishes in a test imposed by her, and the hero keeps her for himself. In one variant the quests are instigated by jealous courtiers who wish to destroy the hero, just as in the Tristan story. In others, the hero is slain during his fights to gain the princess, but she revives him with her Waters of Life (which, according to one variant, drip from her fingers). The ideas of water, woman, and snake are found closely associated once more; and the death and revival of the hero recall primitive rites. — The second group of tales implies an agrarian patriarchal society. In one, the quests are imposed by the hero’s own father. In the course of his adventures in behalf of the chief heroine, the hero wins a second princess in marriage by killing a water-dragon, and accepts her, but like Tristan in a similar situation, he leaves the marriage unconsummated. When her father discovers this he inquires the reason, and then helps the hero on his way to find the real heroine. Other stories stress the supernatural powers of the heroine, particularly her control over the elements. In one she is herself a serpent who imposes on the hero a quest in the nether world. — The third group emphasizes two new elements: fire and stone. The hero sets out to win fire from some devs, gains a wife at the same time, loses her, and rescues her from the nether world (Hell). In one variant he is betrayed by an Iron Man after rescuing the princess. The importance of the blacksmith’s trade is brought out several times. — The fourth group reflects a mercantile society. The hero of one story, a merchant’s son, is aided by a Grateful Corpse whom he rescues from mistreatment by debtors. In another, the hero is sent to win the princess for the king whom he serves. To do this he disguises himself as a merchant (like Tristan), lures the princess aboard his ship, and sails away with her. She suggests that he marry her himself and destroy the king; he agrees, and they are forthwith united in love on the high seas. Here the heroine is associated with the ideas of trade and commercial success, and there are clear traces of class divisions in society. — The basic formula for all these stories is: an obscure hero with supernatural gifts wins a heroine after great struggles, such as a fight with a serpent or with the ruler of Hell; the two are separated, but after a second search the hero finds her and they are finally reunited. The heroine is a source of healing, a sky-goddess and also a goddess of fertility; she has power over harvests and rain; in short, she is an equivalent to Ishtar.
       K. D. Dondua briefly summarizes the Georgian Abesalom and Eter, which contains a heroine separated from her bridegroom by a villain: as result there follows love-sickness of the hero, who is partly to blame for the separation; refusal of the heroine to cure him; and his death followed by her repentance and her arrival at his bedside too late.
        In “Erotic Motives in the Nartovian Epos of the North Caucasian Mountaineers”, N. M. Dryagin offers some further parallels. The hero of one group of stories wins the heroine for his uncle but later takes her for himself; in the second group, the parallelisms are found in details only. An interesting "stadial equivalent” is contained in “Nasran-Aldar”, where an elderly and childless chieftain is, like King Mark, urged to marry, and the heroine carried off for him has the power of healing by touch. Elsewhere we have a heroine "White-
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Hand” who destroys her lovers; and another, Satana, who changes drinks with the bride at a wedding and thus wins her own brother as husband. The feudalism of the Caucasus creates literary situations reminiscent of European feudalism.
        T. C. Passek surveys the Russian skazki for parallel motives, and finds them (as did Tikhaya-Tsereteli) in some variants of the Perseus-märchen. The hero’s quests are once more associated with healing waters of life, combat with a serpent, and a beautiful princess whom he keeps for himself although he sought her for the king. Some variants contain the wounding of the hero and his cure by the heroine through the Water of Life which she owns or which flows from her; others have a separation of the two lovers and a later reunion. The stories express "on the basis of the patriarchal family relationship, the combat of the divine champion with the Serpent for the divinity of the reproductive powers of nature, namely Water-Woman, who is hidden in the Nether World, and whose appearance on earth brings life and renewal.” Again we find the series water-woman-snake and water-woman-hand in close connection. Naturally there is no great tragedy of love expressed in the skazki, for that was conditioned by the restrictions of feudal society.
        Two articles, by B. A. Latynin and A. G. Endyukovskii, deal with Moravian folk-lore. The former summarizes myths concerning the goddess of fertility, Azyr-avy, associated with seeds and rain; her son, a god of sky, sun, and love, is also her husband. This son of hers, Nishke-pas, ruled the earth during the Golden Age, but he was done to death by mortals on the promptings of the evil spirit Shaitan. The two characters representing water and sun, who are lovers, are also mother and child. This is a very early stage indeed. In the myths presented by Endyukovskii, we have a thunder god Purgine-Pasa who carries off a mortal maiden to heaven as his bride, and she in her turn assumes mythological attributes. Among other things, she controls the waters of heaven; her tears become rain which floods the earth. The combat of her husband with a monstrous serpent is one of the elements common to this and the Tristan story. The weapon used by the god was lightning. Since even the humblest dragon-killer may be regarded as a remote relative of sun-gods like Apollo, the theme resolves itself once more into the marriage of sun and water. In the songs about a heroine named Litovo, the union of another girl with a sun-god is described; she too becomes a goddess of the weather. In later stadial variants both bride and groom are mortals, but traces of the supernatural cling to them still. An unnamed heroine, being carried off to the sky by a god, looks into the barns of heaven and there beholds the four seasons of the year and various kinds of weather. Despite the enormous distance between these stories and Tristan and Isolda, some very important underlying motives of folk-lore are common to both.
        The final essay of the volume summarizes the collective work, which is primarily concerned with thought-processes of men in early society. The absence of a history of pre-class society on the basis of dialectal materialism is a serious impediment; nevertheless folkloristic survivals give us important clues. The medieval romance is adapted to feudal society. The central theme is a conflict
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of passion and duty as expressed ideologically in social relationships. The love- drink symbolizes transgression of this code. “The fatal concatenation of circumstances arouses pity for the tragic fate of the hero and heroine who are doomed to poverty, exile, and death.” But this feudal plot shows kinship with more primitive stories in certain motives, which should be regarded as survivals, not as intrusive overgrowth by folk-lore. Certain phenomena of nature, such as water, are frequently emphasized: for instance, in one famous episode the reproductive act is compared to the splashing of water from a spring. Earlier stadia, reaching back to myth, are adduced by “linguistic semantics”. Certain Greek myths resemble Tristan and Isolda; on the other hand the Book of Tobit and the Georgian tale about a merchant's son presuppose urban life and a moneyed society. Pre-class matriarchal society (with polyandry) is exemplified in the Babylonian myth of Ishtar, who revives Tammuz with living water and heals herself with it after her visit to Hell. Healing and resurrection are semantic equivalents; here they are sought by the heroine, a goddess, rather than by the hero (Tristan). When such myths as these are transferred to tribal chieftains we have the formation of epos. The concept of a dying and riviving god of fertility, and of his exploits, survives in many forms. Often a goddess has two aspects, a good and evil one, which give rise to two homonymic female figures in a legend. In some instances, the dragon conquered by the hero is a disguise of the heroine, i. e. her evil aspect; elsewhere the dragon is a completely separate being, but the slaying of it is immediately followed by union with the heroine. In märchen, the chief purpose of this is to gain the living water owned by her, which is later used to revive him. Thus the ideas “healing” and "combat” are found to be semantic equivalents of “love”; only later are “love” and “marriage” closely related. Just as social development can be traced in these stories, so can a changing view of the human world be detected in them. Primitive thought fails to distinguish human and non-human, living and dead. Animals frequently play an almost human part, and dead people go on living in a changed form. Among the first differentiations are the useful as opposed to the nonuseful phenomena; the semantic group darkness-winter-death as against sunlight and life. Concomitantly, early thinkers learn to distinguish the thinker from the external world. The establishment of three grammatical persons is in a sense a philosophical achievement. The differentiation of characters in our story runs parallel to it: the dying and reviving divinity is given an antagonist to fight; this antagonist is divided into the Snake and the Woman. Every story of a god or hero who slays a monster is thus drawn into a circle of tremendously significant mythological concepts. “Insofar as every process, in the final reckoning, is conditioned by the development of the means of production and the productive relationship, so the paleontology of a plot — both semantic and morphological — reveals its sociological genesis as one of the basic elements of poetic creation…”

* * *
        Long as this summary is, it is brief in comparison with the number of suggestive ideas thrown out in this provocative book. I trust that I have re-
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produced enough of them to indicate the approach being made by Russian scholars to subjects which interest many folklorists, medievalists, and students of literature here.