This edition includes Wilder’s first and third novels, those that bookend ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rey’, the classic which launched him to fame. Like that novel, the settings are somewhat artificial; in ‘The Cabala’ it’s the old guard aristocratic society in Rome, which Wilder visited as a young man but largely invents here, and in ‘The Woman of Andros’, it’s a made up Greek island at the time of Christ. They are simply backdrops for Wilder’s character sketches, and for his exploration into the deep questions of life and the angst of the human condition, which he does in a quiet, economical way.

These books are somewhat intellectual, and will not be for everyone, but I found the writing to be beautiful, and admire Wilder’s craft as an author. As an example, the last clause of this passage really struck me: “They longed to see one another again, but it would have been impossible. They dreamed of one of those long conversations that one never has on earth, but which one projects so easily at midnight, alone and wise; words are not rich enough nor kisses sufficiently compelling to repair all our havoc.”

Here are some other quotes:
On Dante, from ‘The Cabala’; I couldn’t agree more:
“Where, where is he, that soul of vinegar, that chose to assign the souls of the dead more harshly than God? Tell him that though a pagan I too shall see bliss. It is nothing that I must first pay the penalty of ten thousand years. Behold the moment I exhibit the sin of anger; where is he in pain for the sin of pride?”

On knowledge, from ‘The Cabala’:
“Who can understand religion unless he has sinned? who can understand literature unless he has suffered? who can understand love unless he has loved without response?”

On life and love, from ‘The Woman of Andros’:
“Suddenly the hero saw that the living too are dead and that we can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasure; for our hearts are not strong enough to love every moment.”

On love, from ‘The Cabala’, I loved the compression of the parenthetical summary:
“Nature had decided to torment this woman by causing her to fall in love (that succession of febrile interviews, searches, feints at indifference, nightlong solitary monologues, ridiculous vision of remote happiness) with the very type of youth that could not be attracted by her…”

And this one from ‘The Woman of Andros’:
“The caress of hands in first love, and never so simply again, seems to be a sharing of courage, an alliance of two courages against a confusing world.”

On men and women, from ‘The Cabala’:
“Suddenly his eyes had been opened to a world he had not dreamed of. So it was true that men and women were never really engaged in what they appeared to be doing, but lived in a world of secret invitations, signals, and escapes! Now he understood the raised eyebrows of waitresses and the brush of the usher’s hand as she unlocks the loge. It is not an accident that the wind draws the great lady’s scarf across your face as you emerge from the door of the hotel. Your mother’s friends happen to be passing in the corridor outside the drawing-room, but not by chance. Now he discovered that all women are devils, but foolish ones, and that he had entered into the true and only satisfactory activity in living – the pursuit of them.”

On solitude, from ‘The Woman of Andros’:
“Indeed the profession she followed was one of those that emphasize the dim notion that lies at the back of many minds: the notion that we are not necessary to anyone, that attachments weave and unweave at the mercy of separation, satiety and experience. The loneliest associations are those that pretend to intimacy.”

On stoicism and expressing oneself, from ‘The Woman of Andros’, on her deathbed:
“’No, no. I am very happy that you have come.’ To herself she thought: ‘Time is passing, and what are we saying! Is there not something heartfelt that I can find to say to him, something to remember, for him and for me?’ But she distrusted the emotion that filled her heart. It was perhaps mere excitement and pain; or a vague and false sentiment. Probably the best thing to do was to be stoic; to be brave and inarticulate; to talk of trivial things. Or was it a greater bravery to surmount this shame and to say whatever obvious words the heart dictated? Which was right?”

Lastly, the connection discovered to the book I read previously, which was Washington Irving’s ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’: two things, Miss Grier’s fear of ghosts, and the allusion to Dutch in New England: “We have his picture at this stage: the daguerreotype of the Dutch yokel with the protruding lower lip and grinning pugnacious eyes is reproduced in any history of the great American fortunes.” As a bonus, Wilder also refers to Giorgio Vasari as having affirmed that a painting by Mantegna had been retouched by Bellini. ( )