The Cabala and the Woman of Andros, page 25
“In what ways have you changed the facts?” he was asked.
“Well,” replied Mr. Wilder with a laugh, “I have actually changed the lives, marriages and deaths of certain of the characters to suit my purposes. But there is more than this. There is a discrepancy in mood between Terence’s play—which is really a farce—and my novel.
“My book is really a study of a pagan soul. The background is Greece after the great age—Greece in 200 bc—a Greece in which some vestiges of past glories remain. And against this background I have shown a human soul in circumstances which are really more than the human soul can bear. Christianity has not yet come into the world, and the pagan, under the stress of fate, has nothing outside the world to cling to.
“My principal character is a hetaira who has lived in Corinth and other centres of civilization. And although it is as yet two centuries before Christianity, there is in her a strange, groping humanitarianism which leads her to fill her house with helpless folk, with the lame and the one-eyed, so to speak.
“Has the story a happy ending? Well, yes, in the sense that the ‘Bridge’ has a happy ending. And there is a plot which—just as in Terence—hangs on the efforts of a young man to get married.”
In conclusion, Mr. Wilder remarked that he had still two chapters to write—and that he had never been to Greece, the scene of his tale.
AFTER . . .
The Woman of Andros was the bestseller in the Book Department at the Marshall Field & Company store in Chicago when Wilder, now a part-time teacher at the University of Chicago, made an obligatory author’s visit in early spring 1930. As department store sales in this era accounted for twenty-nine percent of all book sales, we can assume that the author autographed many copies of his new novel after his talk and a reported “volley of questions.” This piece was published in the spring issue of the store’s house organ, Fashions of the Hour, with this accompanying note: “Some of the comments which Mr. Wilder made . . . are published here with his special permission.”
“Thornton Wilder Discusses His Latest Novel”
The scene of The Woman of Andros is laid on an imaginary island, Brynos, in the Aegean Sea, at about 200 bc—that is, in the decline of the Great Age of Greece. I did not write this book nor my others continuously day by day. I carry books about with me or keep them near at hand while I go about my ostensible profession, which is teaching. This one was begun at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Some of it was written at the MacDowell Colony at Peterborough, New Hampshire. Pages have been composed in hotel rooms in Munich and London.
It is even shorter than The Bridge. The habit of compression seems to be growing on me, and I begin to wonder whether I shall ever be able to write a long novel. As to the theme of the book, there are a number of themes on all levels. Some of the lesser themes are, I suppose: the difference between the matter-of-factness and almost the triviality of daily life as we live it and the emotion and beauty of the same life when we remember it, looking backward from years later.
Another theme is the wistfulness and bewilderment of the pagan soul and the elements of sincerity and faith even in superstition.
Perhaps the principal theme is the theme of all my books: namely, when a situation is more than a human soul can be expected to bear, what then? The Cabala was a series of three such extremities, three such “nervous breakdowns.” The Bridge said that there lay an intuition at the heart of the major attachments of life that offered a last sufficient strength for such crises.
Someday soon I hope to do a book for children with overtones for adults. For the present I shall try to write some plays.
If I work while teaching at the University, it will only be at great intervals. Time is always a notebook lying around with fragments of future pieces. One takes a long walk and without intending it one returns with new paragraphs to add to some project.
READING 4: A LETTER
New Orleans, La.
April 1. 1947
Dear Lillian:
It’s a joy to get a letter from you and to think about you.
Now as to this proposal, I don’t say yes or no, but I call your attention to the following points:
The plot-lines have no real tension. The novel combines famous well-tried plot motives: the Magdalene-Thaïs story (or Fallen woman with heart of gold) and Camille (Fallen woman barred by social opinion from achieving a happy union). But my novel has robbed both of these stories of their popular pull. Chrysis is helplessly silent and dies having won a success only in her mind. And Glycerium-Pamphilus story is a matter of waiting helplessly and then coming to very little. All the characters are externally passive and engaged in waiting.
Have you ever noticed that the one costume that always looks phoney and corny on the screen is the Graeco-Roman? Modern man cannot wear that dress and appear real. Think of the “Passion Plays” and the De Mille Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, and The Sign of the Cross. The only way to get away with it is by extreme “character” types, like Charles Laughton as Nero or Claude Rains as Caesar. Otherwise, everybody looks like dead chromo illustrations of ancient history.
Readers of Andros write me all the time. The things they like about the book are the descriptions of nature, and the “thoughts” of the characters. Now there’s certainly room for thoughts on the screen, sure, but they only live on the screen when they are carried by strong situations and strong emotions. Now The Woman of Andros from the point of view of action is pale, muted, and passive. In a novel characters can suffer and meditate, but on the screen wouldn’t it all look dreary and spineless?
Suppose you hopped up the plot for the screen. Contrived real clashes between the characters. Then I think you’d run into another danger, in those unconvincing costumes, no one would believe it. Lots of action and crisis but all looking like wax-works charades or a Sunday School pageant. To bring any vitality to Ben Hur they have to work up a vast spectacle and was there any real vitality? And to make Quo Vadis come alive don’t they crown the picture with a mighty orgy? (In Hollywood I used to have lunch with the script writer who was trying to think up a sensational item to “top” the orgy. I think he ended up with naked women bound to the backs of bulls. All concerned knew that the “story” wasn’t holding the audience, so that they had to inject sensation and spectacle).
But dear Lillian, I don’t say yes or no. I’ve always believed that you have a magnificent sense of all aspects of movie and theatre. At various times Pauline Lord and Blanche Yurka approached me about a play from it; an opera for Helen Traubel was written from it (she sang from it at concerts, but the opera was never put on).1 I feel that it was just about material for a short novel, some word-landscapes, and some semi-philosophic reflections: to expand it would break its back; to transfer it to the stage would reveal the fact that none of the characters really pull themselves together to do anything until it’s too late; and to picturize it would reveal that it falls into a series of melancholy tableaux.
All this is merely subject to your judgment and intuition. And it comes with
devotedly
Thornton
READING 5: IN HIS HAND
This holograph, of which the typed version appears below, depicts the next-to-final draft of one of the most admired paragraphs in twentieth-century American literature. Reading it has been said to turn people into writers on the spot. Readers here are invited to compare this version with the final text. The arrow points to the penultimate version, not shown here. in which only one minor change was made before it was set in type.
Transcription:
I Chrysis
The earth sighed as it turned in its course and Asia was left in darkness. Black night crept gradually along the Mediterranean. Triumph had passed from Greece and wisdom from Egypt, but with the fall of night they seemed to have regained their lost honors, and the land that was soon to be called holy prepared more richly its wonderful burden. A fair tripping breeze ruffled the Aegean and all the islands of Greece felt the new freshness at the close of day. The caves that surround the Neapolitan gulf fell into a profound shadow, but each continued to give forth its chiming or its booming sound, or its sound of applause. A storm played about Sicily and its smoking mountains, but at the mouth of the Nile the sea lay like a wet pavement. The great cliff that was one day to be called Gibraltar held for a long time a brilliant gleam of red and orange while across from it the mountains of Atlas began to show deep blue pockets in their shining sides.
READING 6: A NOTE ON WILDER’S USE OF THE CLASSICAL TRADITION IN THE WOMAN OF ANDROS
The classical tradition permeates The Woman of Andros, not only in the novel’s descent from Greek and Latin comedies, but also as the inspiration for the many changes Wilder incorporated. The author’s note immediately calls attention to the classics: “The first part of this novel is based upon the Andria, a comedy by Terence who in turn based his work upon two Greek plays, now lost to us, by Menander.” Writing in Latin, Publius Terentius Afer (circa 195–159 bce), known as Terence, was a Roman slave of North African background who produced Andria in 166 bce. Terence’s own prologue indicates the play’s origin in the Greek comedy writer Menander (circa 342–290 bce). The fourth century ce commentator Aelius Donatus tells us that Terence made changes to his Greek antecedents by combining two separate plays of Menander, rewriting the first scene, introducing new characters, and adding a subplot.
Wilder’s revisions echo those of Terence in that he too included new plot elements and new characters while eliminating other dramatis personae, but his numerous transfigurations result in a reinterpretation of the Andria, and a guidepost for much of Wilder’s future work. Wilder made changes in the setting (the fictitious island of Brynos, a Greek community, but not Athens), the time of the action (although the novel does not specify the time, in later discussions Wilder usually referred to it as occurring circa 200 bce), and the genre (from dramatic comedy to narrative tragedy). Moreover, Wilder provides us with the full development of his characters, allusions to a wide range of classical tragedies and philosophy, and the inclusion of contemporary social issues. For example, the novel explores the themes of women’s education, women’s rights, immigration, and citizenship, motifs that were implicit in Terence but not fully explored in the Latin comedy, leading to a true conversation between texts.
The most striking modifications that Wilder has introduced into Terence’s comedy are the expansion of Chrysis’s character and her impact on others. Not simply a courtesan without intellectual attainments, she is now an educator and a sage, using elegant dinner parties to awaken the love of beauty, literature, and humanity in young men through her recitations of literature and Platonic dialogues. She instills in the protagonist Pamphilus an awareness and acceptance of earthly joys and sorrows, “the bright and the dark.” In developing the character of Chrysis, Wilder relies on the poet Sappho and two characters from Platonic dialogues—Aspasia, who teaches rhetoric to Socrates and composes speeches, and Diotima, who instructs Socrates in the progression of love from physical attraction to the love of the beautiful soul. The full appreciation of everyday life, its joys and its sorrows, is the message not only of Chrysis but also of many of Wilder’s later characters, including Dolly Levi and Julius Caesar. Chrysis’s fable about a dead hero granted his wish to return to earth for one day, but who soon asks to return to the grave because the world “is too dear to be realized,” will find its immortal expression in Emily Webb’s graveyard experience in Our Town. The Woman of Andros represents Wilder’s lifetime oeuvre in miniature: learned, poignant, beautifully written, and relevant to contemporary life. Rooted in the classics, with its changes inspired by other Greek and Roman examples, it transforms our understanding of the original works.
—Dr. Stephen J. Rojcewicz Jr.
SOURCES
Unless otherwise indicated in the narrative and readings or noted below, the back matter of this volume is constructed largely from Thornton Wilder’s words in unpublished manuscripts and letters in the Wilder Family Archives held in Yale’s Collection of American Literature (YCAL) in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Silent corrections in spelling and punctuation have been made when deemed appropriate. Use has also been made of the Yale Library’s holdings of undergraduate, alumni, and Yale Alumni Weekly records. I hope that readers find that this approach brings these two novels, and the artist who wrote them, into view in an intimate fashion. Any errors in the afterword are my responsibility and I welcome corrections.
My definition of a short novel as falling between 20,000 and 60,000 words is adopted from the schema Edward Weeks set forth in his selection of Great Short Novels, published in 1941 by the Literary Guild of America. I have also drawn for background on O. H. Cheney’s classic study of publishing, Economic Survey of the Book Industry, published originally in 1931 by R.R. Bowker Company, as reprinted in 1960. The Thornton Wilder Library afterwords in Wilder’s second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2021) and his fourth, Heaven’s My Destination (2020), contain, respectively, additional material about the relationship between The Cabala and The Bridge, and Mike Gold’s attack on Wilder in 1930.
QUOTATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS
The Cabala: Herbert Gorman’s lively Introduction to The Cabala is found in Modern Library Vol. 155 (May 1928), pp. v–xiii. His quotation appears on p. v.
The Woman of Andros: Dr. Edyta Oczkowicz’ description of the playlets is taken from her critical essay: “‘Carving Some Cherry Stones’: Disparities in The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays,” Thornton Wilder/New Perspectives, Jackson R. Bryer and Lincoln Konkle, eds. (Northwestern University Press, 2013), pp. 360–377, with quoted language on p. 361. Jennifer Haytock’s view of Wilder and gender appears in her essay “Woman, Philosophy, and Culture: Wilder’s Andrian Legacy,” Thornton Wilder New Essays, Martin Blank, Dalma Brunauer, David Garrett Izzo, editors (Locust Hill Press, 1999), pp. 207–216, quoted on p. 115. Thornton Wilder’s April 1, 1947, letter to Lillian Gish collected in The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder, edited by Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer (HarperCollins, 2008), is quoted on pp. 454–456. The original document is held in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library, and used with permission.
IMAGES
Unless credited herein, the images in this volume are in The Wilder Family Archives in YCAL and appear with the permission of the Wilder Family LLC. The Eva Herrmann caricature was published in On Parade: Caricatures by Eva Herrmann edited by Erich Posselt (Coward-McCann, 1929), p. 168, and appears here with permission of the Artists Rights Society. The three photographs from the Lawrenceville School appear with permission of that institution and the helpful assistance of Jacqueline Haun, school archivist.
GENERAL BACKGROUND
Important new works for a general audience interested in learning more about Thornton Wilder’s life and works have become available since the first edition of this book was published. Key titles include the definitive biography Thornton Wilder: A Life by Penelope Niven (HarperCollins, 2012) and The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder, edited by Robin G. Wilder and Jackson R. Bryer (HarperCollins, 2008). Wilder’s playlets in The Angel That Troubled the Waters and Other Plays (1928) are conveniently found today in The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder Vol. II (Theater Communications Group Press, 1998); Collected Plays & Writings on Theater (Library of America, 2007); Thornton Wilder’s Playlets: Short, Short Plays for 3–5 Actors (Concord Theatricals, 2022).
SPECIALIZED STUDIES
Readers interested in greater depth about Wilder’s use of classical and religious themes are referred to Thornton Wilder, Classical Reception, and American Literature by Stephen J. Rojcewicz, Jr. (Abingdon, UK: Routledge Press, 2022), Thornton Wilder & Amos Wilder: Writing Religion in Twentieth-Century America by Christopher J. Wheatley’s (University of Notre Dame Press, 2011).
Two websites feature extensive information about all of Wilder’s major works: www.thorntonwilder.com and www.thorntonwildersociety.com
Tappan Wilder
February 2022
Acknowledgments
The back matter of this volume is constructed in large part from Thornton Wilder’s words in unpublished letters, manuscripts, and journals, and publications not easy to come by, among them the undergraduate and alumni records of the Yale College Classes of 1919–1921, and issues of the Yale Alumni Weekly from 1920–1931. I hope readers will find that this approach brings these two novels, and the artist who wrote them, into view in a personal way. Those interested in further information about Thornton Wilder are referred to standard sources and to the bibliography available at www.thorntonwildersociety.org. Widely available sources on certain topics addressed in this volume deserve special mention. The collection of Wilder’s playlets, The Angel That Troubled the Waters, first published in 1928, is found in The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume II (1998), a volume also graced by a deeply informed introduction by the playwright A. R. Gurney. The afterword to Wilder’s fourth novel, Heaven’s My Destination (1935), contains in this HarperCollins series additional information about the Michael Gold attack and Wilder’s response to it. My definition of a short novel as falling between 60,000 and 20,000 words is adopted from the schema Edward Weeks set forth in his selection of Great Short Novels, published in 1941 by The Literary Guild of America. I have cited information found in O. H. Cheney’s classic study of book publishing, Economic Survey of the Book Industry, published originally in 1931 by R. R. Bowker Company, as reprinted in 1960.
