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Chekhov once expressed a guiding principle of his pl...moreEven to one who in the past made a broad study of Henry James and his influences, the wonders we view through the lens of his late style may take time to come into focus. But the wonders are here.
Chekhov once expressed a guiding principle of his plays this way: “Let the things that happen on the stage be as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal at the table, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up.” In this novel, the narration and the characters are talking about what matters, only we have to work out--especially if one is out of practice or new to the style--how to read all of it, because we have to judge everything much as we do in seeing a play: we hear what the characters say and see what they do, are even given something of an inner view of what they think, some of them, but we may be challenged to grasp what it really means to them and about them, and hence its meaning for us. What’s more, the meanings are often multiple, contradictory, or ambiguous. Everything, it seems, is refracted through something else. In the end, though, we do see that lives are smashed.
The novel’s lengthy opening line places us in a scene, establishes the style, and even suggests James’s late habit of dictating rather than writing his text—it begins “She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in…”—but it’s far from being quotable. (Readers not fond of the style might complain, “Already, a tangled sentence in which nothing happens!”) The last line is much more concise, but the observation itself is common enough to anyone with some life experience that it wouldn’t be quotable either, if it didn’t pronounce a crushing verdict: “We shall never be again as we were!”
It isn’t the progress of time that has done this to Kate Croy and Merton Densher, the novel’s more or less secret lovers. By the way, just as much is refracted in this story, much that you can say about it has to be qualified: their affair is “more or less secret” because it emerges, late in the story, that a secondary figure has figured it out. In fact, he conveys it to Milly Theale, the American heiress who’s at the center of the story, and this in turn is figured out by Densher--an example of how things work here--and the knowledge has a fatal consequence for Milly, which then plays into the conclusion. But essentially Kate and Densher have themselves wrought the change that wrecks them. That they should be active agents is no more than one would expect from any novelist with a decent sense of drama. But James possessed, as he wrote of himself, the imagination of disaster, and such is the height to which he raises this tale that what Kate and Densher do, what they know themselves to have done--though they try for a while “to bury in the dark blindness of each other’s arms the knowledge of each other that they couldn’t undo”--becomes simply and utterly tragic.
Milly’s fate is comparable, but in a much different way. Edmund Wilson, in The Triple Thinkers, sees Milly as “longing…for affection but too inhibited or passive to obtain it for [herself],” which, if true at all, doesn’t mean she’s passive in all things. Wilson at least admits her to be “pathetic,” by which he surely means arousing pity. But a better view of Milly can be found in Rebecca West’s study Henry James.
Giving us an invaluable reminder (or instruction, for those unacquainted with James’s life history), West calls Milly Theale “the ghost” of Minny Temple (born Mary), James’s vivacious cousin, who had died of tuberculosis at the age of 24. To describe her, West quotes James’s preface to the novel, written for the New York edition of his work. Though he ascribes the novel to a very old motive, he doesn’t connect it with his long-lost and much-missed cousin or with a real person at all, but it perfectly fits Minny as well as the character of Milly. The idea is that of a young person “conscious of a great capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed, condemned to die under short respite while also enamoured of the world; aware moreover of the condemnation and passionately desiring to 'put in' before extinction as many of the finer vibrations as possible, and so achieve, however briefly and brokenly, the sense of having lived.” If it can be termed tragic to die young and knowingly in this way, having done nothing to bring it about but everything to resist and redeem it--which West believes it can--then James’s treatment of Milly constitutes tragedy, and a greater one than that which consumes the two characters whom James follows more closely.
That’s no mean accomplishment, and it might be enough if I ended by saying I agree entirely with West on that point. The concluding sentences of her brief appraisal of the novel mention that “about this masterpiece…there can be nothing said” and go on to declare something so fine that I’d be embarrassed to quote it amid my own poor observations. Despite her comment on the needlessness of commentary, though, I’ll risk some small points about the characters, their names, and the linguistic art of the novel.
The main characters, some of whom I’ve already mentioned:
Mrs. Lowder: Kate’s aunt, whose wishes figuratively speak louder than anyone else’s. Because she has the money and the social position that Kate lacks, which Densher also lacks, they both have to reckon with her.
Kate Croy: The sound of it suggests qualities that Edmund Wilson found in her character--“hard and crass.” She’s the author of what Wilson calls an “unquestionably ignoble plot,” the deception of Milly, in which all the others participate, to varying degrees and with differing views of its aim; many of them don’t know Kate’s ultimate purpose and persuade themselves that a love affair will do Milly good. Yet we grasp that going for the brass ring is simply in her nature, as Wilson goes on to say more delicately and at greater length.
Merton Densher: Whatever else it may suggest, the name sounds less assertive and sharp than Kate’s, which is true of their characters. A friend writing about the novel here described him as something of a boy toy.
Milly Theale: Milly is a diminutive, a diminished form, as she is herself diminished by an illness; it suggests that others may regard her with affection but some condescension too, as in fact they do. It should be obvious after the discussion of her antecedent that the name closely resembles that of Minny Temple. Everyone in the novel accepts her illness as fatal, but it’s clearly remarked--by Milly’s companion (see below) to Densher, then by Densher to Kate--that what pushes Milly to her end is the revelation of the deception practiced on her. What she does in the face of it is one of the wonders of the tale.
Mrs. Stringham: Milly’s American companion in Europe, she’s more often referred to as Susan Shepherd, which suits her role as tending and guiding Milly. It’s she who leads Milly to London, where they enter Mrs. Lowder’s circle (Kate, Densher, and the rest), so Susan unwittingly proves a poor guide.
What remains is only to say something about the title and other aspects of the language. Though Milly is sometimes described by the others as like a princess, she’s more frequently spoken of as a dove, and those wings in the title are hers. The imagery, figurative language, and other tropes in James’s late fiction must always be attended to. They may be obvious through repetition, as this is, or more subtle and varied, such as the many figures that evoke financial transactions and the less common ones having to do with sacred places and rites. Regarding Milly, for instance, at least once Densher “had talked with Kate of this young woman’s being ‘sacrificed.’” Later, her rented palazzo is where “the rich Venetian past…[is] the presence revered and served,” and Milly moves about in it one morning “as the priestess of the worship.” It’s for effects such as these that James’s late style has sometimes been called poetic.
The image of the dove needs no explication. That James was employing it in other ways must have prompted his barely noticeable reference to “the wisdom of the serpent,” which an end note explains as alluding to Matthew 10: “Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Milly is the one who had used the wisdom of the serpent, to find out on her own, in the midst of London, the best doctor to consult, and she proves to have gotten it right, choosing perhaps the greatest (in the world of the novel) of Harley Street physicians. She gets some other things right too, but in all the big, important ways she remains as harmless and unsuspecting as a dove, which leaves to Kate, Densher, and the rest the other role.(less)
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"Really fascinating! Thanks for sharing it."
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Read in the 70s in a graduate-level seminar I took as an undergraduate English major. In a study written for that class, I labeled this 1896 tale a "sensationalistic novel of thwarted love and murder" (which I see now should've read "murder and thwar...moreRead in the 70s in a graduate-level seminar I took as an undergraduate English major. In a study written for that class, I labeled this 1896 tale a "sensationalistic novel of thwarted love and murder" (which I see now should've read "murder and thwarted love") and went on to explore in detail how Ibsen's Rosmersholm, Hedda Gabler, and Little Eyolf had contributed to characters, relationships, plot elements, and one important setting. I'll recap a bit of that here.
Rose, this novel's central character, is fairly complex, in revolt against her circumstances, often struggling to maintain self-control and an appearance of calm, and capable of enthralling nearly any man she chooses--in all of which she resembles Hedda. And Rose's main destructive action, like Hedda's, involves the murder of a child, but in Ibsen's play that term is symbolic--Lovborg's manuscript is repeatedly referred to as a child--whereas in James's story the child is literal, as is the murder.
Further parallels need not be noted. The important point is that James had transposed the psychological realism of his sources into melodrama, creating a potted version of Ibsen that was relatively trashy. It illustrated what we undergraduates down South were just learning to call the anxiety of influence; Harold Bloom's field-advancing book of that name had come out four years before, but I at least hadn't yet studied it. Essentially, James had met the power of Ibsen and had come to grips with it first, in The Other House, through a kind of misreading, what Bloom called (among other things) a "self-saving caricature."
That fans of Henry James can be perplexed by this work is understandable. It has its value, though. Along with The Spoils of Poynton, which came next, it served as the bridge taking James from his commercially unsuccessful years in the theater back to fiction and began his development of the dramatic method: more shown and less told, at first frequently relying on dialogue (almost exclusively in The Awkward Age), etc. Guilt as a determining factor, which shows up here as in Rosmersholm, returns later, in The Wings of the Dove and possibly elsewhere. And Ibsen himself, in case you wondered, is detectable as a more refined influence in James's later work.
Incidentally, I read in the 70s a different edition from what's shown here, one obtained by my university's library through the Interlibrary Loan system. (Part of what one learns in a university is simply how to get hold of one's learning materials.) Nowadays, at least one scan of the novel is online, at Google Books, and used or even new copies of paperback editions of The Other House can easily be found as well. One can be glad for its accessibility while wondering whether the "classics" being republished by New York Review Books include anything else that's quite such a potboiler.(less)
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John E. Branch Jr.
added a status update: Feb. 17, 2012: More author announcements for Arc magazine (@arcfinity on Twitter) issue 1.1--which will be available beginning Monday--are at http://arcfinity.tumblr.com/. Eager to see it at last.
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" I've seen the new Tinker, Tailor... (and liked its atmosphere a lot) but not the old one. It's my understanding that Alec Guinness came to be regarded...moreI've seen the new Tinker, Tailor... (and liked its atmosphere a lot) but not the old one. It's my understanding that Alec Guinness came to be regarded as the definitive Smiley by many. No doubt Gary Oldman's tack is different, but I can't say how.
Part of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold lurks in my memory, but I don't believe I saw the whole thing. Your blog post may persuade me to rent it.
Thanks for whatever you commented! I'll check it later...(less)"
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"Much appreciated!"
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"The inimitable Max": isn't that what they called him? It's been so long since I thought about Max Beerbohm I had forgotten I read this book until it popped up here as a book connected in some inscrutable way with The Wings of the Dove. Among Edwardi...more"The inimitable Max": isn't that what they called him? It's been so long since I thought about Max Beerbohm I had forgotten I read this book until it popped up here as a book connected in some inscrutable way with The Wings of the Dove. Among Edwardian humorists he was divine and peerless. There's a moment in one of his works, perhaps this one, in which a succession of passing events includes this simple report: "Pippa passes." It's funny only in context, of course, and you have to know a bit of English lit to get it, but it's very funny. And he won me over so completely that when I found a volume of his theater reviews I read it cover to cover and later dipped into it often for inspiration.
I can offer no evocation of Zuleika Dobson now to surpass the official description given by Goodreads for the book. But I wish I could immediately sit down and reread it.(less)
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" Dee, it sounds like Fido reveals the secret of your mother's zombies. She could've kept a few in a dungeon (also secret) and used them to clean house ...moreDee, it sounds like Fido reveals the secret of your mother's zombies. She could've kept a few in a dungeon (also secret) and used them to clean house or mow the yard when the kids weren't around.
Maybe I should repeat myself in case Enzo missed it and say all I predicted about Whitehead's novel is that it'd be well written. The zombie idea per se has always seemed to me pretty limited, although over time it has gradually spun off variants and new uses both within and beyond narrative film and literature, as I suggested, in a limited space, in a blog post last fall (http://apollosgirl.wordpress.com/2011/10...). BTW, if anyone here reads that post and finds anything to say, I wouldn't mind a comment posted there. So far I can't tell whether anyone read it at all.
Finally, I might add that a good acquaintance of mine, Lynn Messina, has written a book called The Girl's Guide to Dating Zombies, of which I've read excerpts. My take on it is that it's really about dating the average guy, who is apt to be unkempt and somehow always hungry. There may be something new in that.(less)"
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In looking back more than 15 years to when I read this book, I find, as is usually the case, that what persists are general impressions more than specific recollections. Instead of attempting to construct some sort of short essay, I'll present a few ...moreIn looking back more than 15 years to when I read this book, I find, as is usually the case, that what persists are general impressions more than specific recollections. Instead of attempting to construct some sort of short essay, I'll present a few comments.
The word "cybernetics" was coined by Norbert Wiener, in 1947 (to use the year specified by the usually reliable Science Fiction Encyclopedia), as an English adaptation of a Greek word, kubernētēs, meaning pilot, steersman, navigator, controller (depending on your source). The history of that Greek word tells us something about Wiener's purposes, though I don't recall whether he puts it this way. From the Greek, the Latin language derived gubernator,</> which led to the English word "governor," and that word was applied in the 19th century to a component devised to regulate the speed of a steam engine by means of a feedback loop. The feedback loop is a concept central to Wiener's analysis of automatic communication and control processes in biological and mechanical systems (which may have been the limit of his discussion in his original, 1948 book Cybernetics) and in social systems as well. And there you have something that's central to Wiener's broader view: cybernetics is not applicable solely to technology. His work has influenced many fields, including biology and anthropology (the latter through Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead), and it's one of the regrettable, unintended consequences of his coinage that the popular view of cybernetics is limited almost entirely to compounds beginning in "cyber-" and denotes nothing beyond vaguely imagined "computer stuff"…
The coinage "governator," applied to Arnold Schwarzenegger in his role as governor of California, is ironic here. It happens to be an almost-exact lift from the Latin gubernator but was conceived only as a combination of "governor" and "terminator." In the latter role in James Cameron films, I seem to recall that Arnold had defined his character as a cybernetic organism, and in any case that's what a Terminator is. Thus Wiener's influence is detectable even in "governator"…
Wiener's discussion is very wide-ranging and far-seeing. He discusses entropy, aspects of information theory, the potential for machine learning, the inevitability of increasing man-machine interaction, the likelihood of increasing machine autonomy, and the need for human management of machines toward proper, human ends--lest we end up with machine management of humans…
One instance of a detail I do recall: Wiener makes an important point about the development of atomic weapons, which is, I remember thinking, the only important point not explicitly discussed by Richard Rhodes in his magisterial account The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It's this: the entire Manhattan Project was conducted in great secrecy, but as soon as the first two bombs were used and reported on, it was apparent to knowledgeable scientists everywhere that they must have employed atomic energy, and the greatest secret, that it was possible to do such a thing, was thereby revealed, for it had not been known ahead of time by anyone whether it was possible or not. Thus any other nation, or non-state agent for that matter, hoping to possess such a weapon no longer needs to determine whether, but only how, it can be done. This has been taken for granted for a long time now, but Wiener was the first author I know to have publicly made the point, and he made it in 1949…(less)
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