A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter T

Tristan

Literary Character
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A knight whose passionate love for Iseult conflicts with loyalty, marriage, and social order.

Detailed Definition
Tristan is the tragic hero of medieval romance, especially the versions associated with Béroul, Thomas of Britain, and Gottfried von Strassburg. After drinking a love potion with Iseult, he becomes caught between irresistible desire and obligations to King Mark, her husband and his uncle. Their love creates moments of ecstasy, concealment, exile, and betrayal, but cannot survive within the structures it violates. Tristan represents courtly love pushed beyond decorum into fatal passion.
Example
Example in poetry:
In medieval romance and later poetry, Tristan is the knight whose love for Iseult conflicts with loyalty, marriage, and social duty; A poem may portray Tristan’s journey as an image of desire that turns travel into exile; His love potion can symbolize passion that feels both chosen and magically unavoidable; Tristan can represent the tragic lover whose courage in battle cannot resolve his divided loyalties.
Additional Notes
Tristan is a legendary knight whose love for Iseult conflicts with his duty to King Mark, Iseult’s husband. Their romance, often intensified by a love potion, explores passion, loyalty, adultery, honor, and the destructive power of social rules. Tristan belongs to the tradition of courtly love and tragic romance, in which private desire cannot be reconciled with public obligation.
Other Meanings of “Tristan”
Also Known As
Tristram
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