THE BRIDGE THAT WILDER BUILT

PROF. K. VISWANATHAM

With the publication of The Bridge of San Luis Rey in 1927 Wilder became widely known as Byron, it is said, awoke one morning and found himself famous. The book is now in the front of classics in American literature and has acquired a reputation for profundity and unostentatious grace. A best seller, it was converted into a popular movie. It was followed by a crop of novels is which imitated Wilder’s device. It won the Pulitzer Prize. It was highly praised and elaborately condemned. Arnold Bennet said: “Its writing has not been surpassed in this epoch; it dazzled me by its accomplishment.” It is described as ‘sensitive and pitiful,’ little masterpiece, a novel instinct with pure grace. There is deceptive clarity of style concealing pellucid depths; the number of copies sold runs into lakhs. This popularity is amazing but illogical, like the beauty of a child of ugly parents. Three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, recipient of the first National Medal for Literature, Wilder bagged the country’s highest civilian award, the presidential Medal of Freedom, and was awarded the Military order of the British Empire and French Legion of Honour. Still Wilder is un-American and school-masterish (not in his plays and fiction beginning with Heaven is my Destination). No student of Wilder can forget the blasting indictment of Wilder by M. Gold: “This fellow is fiddling, while America is burning, about Rome, Peru, Greece. Let him write about America.” And when Heaven is my Destination was published, it is not the incompetence of Wilder that was proved but the stupidity of M. Gold. Though The Bridge differs from naturalistic novels, there is no soft attitude. Wilder has the cunning wisdom that knows the past and the present.

By ‘school-masterish’ we mean that his inspiration is derived from books. Cabala is the product of his stay in Italy; he studies the Romance languages and produces The Bridge; there are snatches of Spanish verse in the book. The Bridge is a historical novel in the sense that Marquesa de Montemayer is based on Madame de Sevigne and Camila Perichole on Prosper Merimee. Wilder does not believe in the more elaboration of the externalities of life. That is why he is called the novelist of morals, not the novelist of manners. There is a moral dimension in his works which should not be narrowed to any–doxy. Beauty is the only persuasion. None is a finer moralist and none is less didactic; he is metaphysical. Because he has a European and Cosmopolitan and Cosmic outlook, he is also referred to as the artist of anachronism, as a writer who tries to abolish time. Primarily he is a deft entertainer, writes Paul Morehoad, avoiding intellectual engagement though pretending to do the opposite. There is nothing very profound here. It is ironical that one who regards style as the slightly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world is praised for his style. According to him literature is not style but notation of the heart. Some think that the unostentatious grace is a weary elegance of style. Is a sentence like “Her eyes were resting on the star that seemed to lead the whole sky in its wonder” is it grace or elegance?

And Wilder describes a place which he never saw–Peru of the 18th century. This is a point for discussion. Can a creative artist try to describe in a novel a place he has not seen? Myers did it in his novel dealing with Moghul India. Wilder himself gave the following explanation: “The journey of the imagination to remote place is child’s play compared to a journey into another time. I have often been in New York but it is preposterous to write about the New York of 1812 as to write about the Incas.”

What is the book about?

(a) Is it the Bridge of Love? The Bridge of San Luis Rey may break. But there is another bridge which never breaks and is unbreakable–the bridge of love between the living and the dead. Each one of the five is a bridge. Love wasted is not a wasted product.

(b) Is it the artful exposure of Providence? Poor brother Juniper wanted to make Theology an exact science; he wanted to justify the ways of God to man. Here is the laboratory–the breaking of the bridge and here is the substance for chemical analysis–the lives of the five hurled to death. But his intentions were ignored and he was burnt to death as a herotic. Calling upon St. Francis he leaned upon a flame, smiled and died–an innocent brother crucified at the altar of prejudice. If you want to judge anything from a corkscrew to a cathedral, C. S. Lewis writes, “the first thing to know is what it is, what it is meant to do, what it does. If a person thinks that a cathedral is meant to certain tourists, we can turn away from his opinion. Very often our statements are torn out of the context, the intentions ignored; the reference is thrust aside and we are misunderstood.”

(c) Is the book about the mystery of life? There are more things in Heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. There is a note of despair and bewilderment in sentences like the Abbess’

We have all failed

We shall never know

The titles of the first and the last chapters:

Perhaps an Accident

Perhaps an Intension

are the Alpha and Omega of the book. ‘Perhaps’ indicates Wilder’s honesty, humility and bewilderment like Eliot’s ‘Perhaps’ about time past and present. One cannot just say why these five alone should be hurled to death. Don Jaime was almost pulled away from the reluctant hands of his mother towards death and Captain Alvarado who ought to have been on the bridge along with Esteban goes down to look his merchandise.

Is it accident or the hand of God or their own character that hurled them to death? Does poetic justice govern the world–the wicked thrown into the gutter and the just enthroned?

(d) Towers tumble on the wicked and the just alike. Pestilence in Puerto carries away the most valuable lives. Prayers for rain do not form clouds in the sky. Huxley points out in an article that if only Wordsworth lived in the tropics and claw ravening nature, nature red in tooth and claw, his facile philosophy of nature would have been rudely disturbed. The wife of the master of San Martin runs away with a soldier leaving to the care of her husband two babies. Maria dies just when she wants to turn over a new leaf. The Abbess is deprived of a successor; ‘No matter’, she says. Esteban attempts suicide. Is it true that

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods

They kill us for their sport?

Shall we say that the sparrow does not lose its wing unless brushed by the finger of God? Camila’s small-pox, Don Jaime’s sickness and death are an over-powering evidence of the finger of God in Camila’s affairs. Hamlet defies augury because there is Providence in the fall of sparrow:

If it be now, it is not to come;

If it be not come, it will be now;

If it be not now, yet it will come.

We can give a diabolic twist even to the thought of God as Hardy did to Pippa’s song in Tess:

God is in his Heaven

And all is wrong with the world.

Happy are the drowned, thinks Captain Alvarado. Sophocles’ reflection that there are two happy persons in the world –one who dies as soon as he is born, the other who is not born at all–is emphasized by the book. The names of the five dead may be remembered for a time by a few and then a blank.

Strength stoops unto the grave,

Worms feed on Hector brave.

The frustrated love has a pattern:

an old woman hated by her daughter

an old man scorned by a woman

a young girl pining for the affection of an older woman

a young boy not fed with affection

a young man deprived of the source of his joy

an old man deprived of the source of his joy.

Esteban realizes that even in the most perfect love there is one who loves and one who is loved.

The frustrated love is full of anguish as it is based on ‘patient misunderstanding’. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is The Cocktail Party in novel form. How much do we know any one? That is the substance of The Doll’s House. Persons of the closest association are the least helpful. We are apter to blame others than blame ourselves. The thief resents being called a thief by the cop; call me, he says, the custodian of others’ property. In this unfortunate world we misunderstand one another. Mother and daughter energetically misunderstand each other; Camila and Pio earnestly fall out Manuel misunderstands Esteban; Pepita and Jaime are neglected.

Consider the story of Marquesa. The cook thinks that her vegetarian food may have some spiritual significance. Don Rubio thinks she is a spoon-stealer. The midwife orders her out of her house. The book-seller thinks that she is a cultured lady and the farmer’s wife that she is absent-minded but good. She is thrice reported to the inquisition; she is drunk for three weeks in the month and is sober for a week when she writes her burning letters; they are a classic in Spanish literature. What is the truth about her? Is the saying ‘Ekam Satyam’ misleading? Is homo sapiens an ill-defined or undefinable complexity, as Maugham often asserts? Brother Juniper knew nothing of the heart of these five. Wilder points out in Cabala how the Cardinal compiled a thesis of unparalleled brilliance and futility; James Blair studied all the saints but never understood saintliness; studied all the works of Michael Angelo but never felt anything deeply. Prof. Raleigh wrote that a linguist knows everything about the Word except the use to which it is put.

II

One part is devoted to the story of Marquesa and Pepita, another to Esteban and a third to the story of Pio and Jaime. The Marquesa’s love is an enchafed flood. She loves her daughter not so much for her daughter’s sake as for her own. The neurotic affection of the brothers is an extension of psychology. The part dealing with the Viceroy, the Cardinal, Uncle Pio and Camila is the most various. It is not fair to remark that the breath of his characters won’t stir a feather and are clothed in chlorine. The Viceroy holds a dialogue with the ceiling; the Cardinal has read and forgotten the literature of Greece and Rome, the Fathers of the Church but reads and re-reads the libertine masterpieces of Italy and France and does not find a drop of ink in the domain of his administration. Uncle Pio has three great ambitions: (i) to be omniscient, (ii) to be near beautiful women, (iii) to be in touch with the masterpieces of Spanish literature. Camila Perichole, familiar with passion not with love, with all her sordid little affairs is a great actress; she sets up as a lady and is noisily virtuous.

Don Jaime does not fit into the story, according to a critic–necessary decoration. Juniper is said to be an excuse for the ungainly expository contrivance. The Bridge is not damaged by these bird-bolts as Hamlet is not damaged by the censure that it is an artistic failure. The Bridge may be imperfect and the faults are not ruinous. Wilder’s versatility is obvious in setting, characters, stories and tone. He achieves unity appropriate to the novel by the skilful interlacing of the personalities of one story in the destinies of another. The setting is as cunning in its own way as is the setting of the Canterbury Tales and of the Decameron; it is natural and intriguing; Don Jaime’s fate is part of the puzzle. To a Hindu believing in Karma the story has an abiding and boundless interest; he may try to ferret out secrets from even the past lives of the unfortunate five. Why should the poor Russian boy be torn to pieces by the unleashed hounds of the master? What sin has he committed, as the novelist pertinently reflects?

Wilder never surpassed in quality The Bridge though he is a tireless experimenter and all the characters are touched with tilt wisdom that comes out of suffering: the cocoon of selfishness drops away. It is true mistakes are committed. But self-flagellation is not needed –the advice of Dr. Riley in The Cocktail Party to the others. Love rectifies the waste. And even love may slip into the wallet of time wherein he puts alms for oblivion. Love is time’s fool in The Bridge; it does not bear it out to the edge of doom as in the sonnets of Shakespeare.

The Bridge has twined itself in the lives of the people of Lima. Its breaking is as incredible as the vanishing of the Statue Liberty. It is an act of God as the Bihar earthquake was an act of God to Gandhiji. Other calamities are not comparable to this. There was a searching of hearts. The re-building of the bridge was immaterial to the superstitious imagination of the Limeans and the Peruvians just as poets hugged to the Ptolmaic in spite of the Copernican. The Bridge has passed into the speech of the Peruvians. It is legend and song and research. ‘Unless the bridge falls’, ‘By the Bridge of San Luis Rey’–are part of the conversation like the weather when two Englishmen meet.

The Bridge is a diplomatic, non-committal formulation of the honest bewilderment of the man in the street, just as the Rubaiyat is a plangent affirmation of ‘Gather ye rose buds while ye may’, just as Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living is an honest documentation of the average man. The Bridge is unbreakable because the doubt of man is undying; it deepens the question mark about the great imponderables of life.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey might break but The Bridge of Wilder will never break. It is as permanent as the Grand Canyon and as mystifying too. Here is God’s plenty of man’s bewilderment and uncertainty.

The Bridge illustrates aesthetically two important attitudes of Wilder:

(1) He told Harry Salpeter: Literature, now that America has discovered itself, could spring from solitude and reflection, with less emphasis on observation and more on intuition.

(2) He told Walther Tritsch: It is the magic unity of purpose and chance, of destiny and accident that I have tried to describe in my books.

Wilder’s irony turns stale theology into exciting morality and obvious mystery of life becomes mystical faith in love. The writing of this ‘novel of aloof and untruckling beauty’ in a nation of Michael Golds and Sinclair Lewises was an act of courage and a gesture of the spirit. As Adcock pointed out, The Bridge restores the mystery of life in an age when realists were trying

to unweave the rainbow

Into the dull catalogue of common things

a mystery that goes beyond the Christian interpretation and the scientific interpretation, The living are re-baptized into the living faith by the dead. How can the scientific and the Christian interpretations explain the death of Pepita and the doom of Esteban–Pepita whose decision in not sending the letter is the ‘bravest’ act in the novel, Esteban who loves Camila with a consuming purity but gives up even this for his brother? The episodic structure and the

omniscient author do not break The Bridge. The Abbess’ wisdom in:

But the love will have been enough; all the impulses of love return to the love that made them

consumes all the flaws and all the critics. As Rex Burbank says (or any sensitive reader can say) The Bridge is bound to hold a place among the august company of novels during the twenties. ‘During the twenties’ is an unnecessary and cautious restriction.

The pathos, the irony, the affirmation, the unsentimentality, the ‘whistling’ (like Pio’s)–are all implied in the awareness of the Abbess:

But soon we shall all die and all memory of those will have left the earth and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

I would not stake the fineness of the book even on this great affirmation–as glowing as is the affirmation of Shakespeare about love:

it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken.

The single word ‘Perhaps’ is the summary of The Bridge and epitome of Wilder’s genius. ‘Perhaps’ is the finest appreciation of The Bridge and the justest explanation of Wilder’s mind as it is of Eliot:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

as it is of modern or ancient poetry which is judged by critics on the basis of being irony-proof.

‘Perhaps’ is the wisest word in the language except for fanatics and dogmatists and closed minds. ‘Perhaps’ indicates humility, curiosity and charity. Wilder, The Bridge, Perhaps – are synonyms. ‘Perhaps’ is a better charactenzation of Homo Sapiens. As long as we lean on ‘Perhaps’ we lean on the Bridge of San Luis Rey and The Bridge of Wilder.

There is the story of a king who resolved to die in Banaras and had his kneecaps removed so that he might not move out of the holy city. But on a certain day the temptation to show his equestrian art made him sit on a horse which carried him far away from Banaras and dashed him against a tree and killed him. On the other hand a lady who wanted to put an end to her life by falling from the London Bridge landed safely on the bed of the river as her own skirt acted as a parachute and softened her fall. We can only wonder as we wonder at the fate of the five in Wilder’s story. This is the unwearied and unwearying appeal of this romance.

Wilder is not the Shelley of American Fiction–a writer for young men and women. He is the Caesar of the Ides who asks: Man–What is that? The Bridge shows that Love that does go out of itself, that knows no moderation brings misery to Marquesa or Esteban, Pio or Camila.

Wilder is a Personalist, not so much an Existentialist, not even a Humanist–free from individual ego and collectivist statism, harking back to the Greek arete against the unintelligent social Reformists and the amoral Technocrats.

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