 First edition cover | |
| Author | Thornton Wilder |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Amy Drevenstedt |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Albert & Charles Boni |
Publication date | 1927 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 235 |
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is American author Thornton Wilder's second novel. It was first published in 1927 to worldwide acclaim. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, and was the best-selling work of fiction that year. [1]
The Bridge of San Luis Rey tells the story of several interrelated people who die in the collapse of an Inca rope bridge in Peru, and the events that lead up to their being on the bridge. A friar who witnesses the accident then goes about inquiring into the lives of the victims, seeking some sort of cosmic answer to the question of why each had to die.
The first few pages of the first chapter explain the book's basic premise: the story centers on a fictional event that happened in Peru on the road between Lima and Cuzco, at noon on Friday, July 20, 1714. [2] A rope bridge woven by the Inca a century earlier collapsed at that particular moment, while five people were crossing it, sending them falling from a great height to their deaths in the river below. [3] The collapse was witnessed by Brother Juniper, a Franciscan friar who was on his way to cross the bridge himself. A deeply pious man who seeks to provide some sort of empirical evidence that might prove to the world God's Divine Providence, he sets out to interview everyone he can find who knew the five victims. Over the course of six years, he compiles a huge book of all of the evidence he gathers to show that the beginning and end of a person is all part of God's plan for that person. Part One foretells the burning of the book that occurs at the end of the novel, but it also says that one copy of Brother Juniper's book survives and is at the library of the University of San Marcos, where it now sits neglected.
Part Two focuses on one of the victims of the collapse: Doña María, the Marquesa de Montemayor. The daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant, the Marquesa was an ugly child who eventually entered into an arranged marriage and bore a daughter, Clara, whom she loved dearly. Clara was indifferent to her mother, though, and became engaged to a Spanish man and moved across the ocean to Spain where she married. Doña María visits her daughter in Spain, but when they cannot get along, she returns to Lima. The only way that they can communicate comfortably is by letter, and Doña María pours her heart into her writing, which becomes so polished that her letters will be read in schools in the centuries after her lifetime.
Doña María takes as her companion Pepita, a girl raised at the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas. When she learns that her daughter is pregnant in Spain, Doña María decides to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa María de Cluxambuqua to pray that the baby will be healthy and loved. Pepita goes along as company and to supervise the staff. When Doña María is out at the shrine, Pepita stays at the inn and writes a letter to her patron, the Abbess María del Pilar, complaining about her misery and loneliness. Doña María sees the letter on the table when she gets back and reads it. Later, she asks Pepita about the letter, and Pepita says she tore it up because the letter was not brave. Doña María has new insight into the ways in which her own life and love for her daughter have lacked bravery. She writes her "first letter" (actually Letter LVI) of courageous love to her daughter, but two days later, returning to Lima, she and Pepita are on the bridge of San Luis Rey when it collapses.
Esteban and Manuel are twins who were left at the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas as infants. The Abbess of the convent, Madre María del Pilar, developed a fondness for them as they grew up. When they became older, they decided to be scribes. They are so close that they have developed a secret language that only they understand. Their closeness becomes strained when Manuel falls in love with Camila Perichole, a famous actress.
Perichole flirts with Manuel and swears him to secrecy when she retains him to write letters to her lover, the Viceroy. Esteban has no idea of their relationship until she turns up at the twins' room one night in a hurry and has Manuel write to a matador with whom she is having an affair. Esteban encourages his brother to follow her, but instead Manuel swears that he will never see her again. Later, Manuel cuts his knee on a piece of metal and it becomes infected. The surgeon instructs Esteban to put cold compresses on the injury: the compresses are so painful that Manuel curses Esteban, though he later remembers nothing of his curses. Esteban offers to send for the Perichole, but Manuel refuses. Soon after, Manuel dies.
When the Abbess comes to prepare the body, she asks Esteban his name, and he says he is Manuel. Gossip about his ensuing strange behavior spreads all over town. He goes to the theater but runs away before the Perichole can talk to him; the Abbess also tries to talk to him, but he runs away, so she sends for Captain Alvarado.
Captain Alvarado, a well-known sailor and explorer, goes to see Esteban in Cuzco and hires him to sail the world with him, far from Peru. Esteban agrees, then refuses, then acquiesces if he can get all his pay in advance to buy a present for the Abbess before he departs. That night Esteban attempts suicide but is saved by Captain Alvarado. The Captain offers to take him back to Lima to buy the present, and at the ravine spanned by the bridge of San Luis Rey, the Captain goes down to a boat that is ferrying some materials across the water. Esteban goes to the bridge and is on it when it collapses.
Uncle Pio acts as Camila Perichole's valet, and, in addition, "her singing-master, her coiffeur, her masseur, her reader, her errand-boy, her banker; rumor added: her father." He was born the bastard son of a Madrid aristocrat and later traveled the world engaged in a wide variety of dubious, though legal, businesses, most related to being a go-between or agent of the powerful, including (briefly) conducting interrogations for the Inquisition. His life "became too complicated" and he fled to Peru. He came to realize that he had just three interests in the world: independence; the constant presence of beautiful women; and the masterpieces of Spanish literature, particularly those of the theater.
He finds work as the confidential agent of the Viceroy of Peru. One day, he discovers a twelve-year-old café singer, Micaela Villegas, and takes her under his protection. Over the course of years, as they travel from tavern to tavern throughout Latin America, she grows into a beautiful and talented young woman. Uncle Pio instructs her in the etiquette of high society and goads her to greatness by expressing perpetual disappointment with her performances. She develops into Camila Perichole, the most honored actress in Lima.
After many years of success, the Perichole becomes bored with the stage. The elderly Viceroy, Don Andrés, takes her as his mistress; she and Uncle Pio and the Archbishop of Peru and, eventually, Captain Alvarado meet frequently at midnight for dinner at the Viceroy's mansion. Through it all, Uncle Pio remains faithfully devoted to her, but as Camila ages and bears three children by the Viceroy she focuses on becoming a lady rather than an actress. She avoids Uncle Pio, and when he talks to her she tells him to not use her stage name.
When a smallpox epidemic sweeps through Lima, Camila is disfigured by it. She takes her young son Don Jaime, who suffers from convulsions, to the country. Uncle Pio sees her one night trying hopelessly to cover her pockmarked face with powder; ashamed, she refuses to ever see him again. He begs her to allow him to take her son to Lima and teach the boy as he taught her. Despairing at the turn her life has taken, she reluctantly agrees. Uncle Pio and Jaime leave the next morning, and are the fourth and fifth people on the bridge of San Luis Rey when it collapses.
Brother Juniper labors for six years on his book about the bridge collapse, talking to everyone he can find who knew the victims, trying various mathematical formulas to measure spiritual traits, with no results beyond conventionally pious generalizations. He compiles his huge book of interviews with complete faith in God's goodness and justice, but a council pronounces his work heretical, and the book and Brother Juniper are publicly burned for their heresy.
The story then shifts back in time to the day of a funeral service for those who died in the bridge collapse. The Archbishop, the Viceroy, and Captain Alvarado are at the ceremony. At the Convent of Santa María Rosa de las Rosas, the Abbess feels, having lost Pepita and the twin brothers, that her work to help the poor and infirm will die with her. A year after the accident, Camila Perichole seeks out the Abbess to ask how she can go on, having lost her son and Uncle Pio. Camila gains comfort and insight from the Abbess and, it is later revealed, becomes a helper at the Convent. Later, Doña Clara arrives from Spain, also seeking out the Abbess to speak with her about her mother, the Marquesa de Montemayor. She is greatly moved by the work of the Abbess in caring for the deaf, the insane, and the dying. The novel ends with the Abbess' observation: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
Thornton Wilder said that the book poses the question: "Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual's own will?" [4] Describing the sources of his novel, Wilder explained that the plot was inspired
in its external action by a one-act play [Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement] by [the French playwright] Prosper Mérimée, which takes place in Latin America and one of whose characters is a courtesan. However, the central idea of the work, the justification for a number of human lives that comes up as a result of the sudden collapse of a bridge, stems from friendly arguments with my father, a strict Calvinist. Strict Puritans imagine God all too easily as a petty schoolmaster who minutely weights guilt against merit, and they overlook God's 'Caritas' which is more all-encompassing and powerful. God's love has to transcend his just retribution. But in my novel I have left this question unanswered. As I said earlier, we can only pose the question correctly and clearly, and have faith one will ask the question in the right way. [4]
When asked if his characters were historical or imagined, Wilder replied, "The Perichole and the Viceroy are real people, under the names they had in history [a street singer named Micaela Villegas and her lover Manuel de Amat y Junyent, who was Viceroy of Peru at the time]. Most of the events were invented by me, including the fall of the bridge." [4] He based the Marquesa's habit of writing letters to her daughter on his knowledge of the great French letter-writer Madame de Sévigné. [4]
The bridge itself (in both Wilder's story and Mérimée's play) is based on the great Inca road suspension bridge across the Apurímac River, erected around 1350, still in use in 1864, and dilapidated but still hanging in 1890. [5] When asked by the explorer Victor Wolfgang von Hagen whether he had ever seen a reproduction of E. G. Squier's woodcut illustration of the bridge as it was in 1864, Wilder replied: "It is best, von Hagen, that I make no comment or point of it." [6] In fact, in a letter to Yale professor Chauncey Tinker, Wilder wrote that he had invented the bridge altogether. [7] The name of the bridge is drawn from the Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in San Diego County, California. [8]
The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, [9] [10] and remains widely acclaimed as Wilder's most famous novel. [11] In 1998, the book was rated number 37 by the editorial board of the American Modern Library on the list of the 100 best 20th-century novels. [12] Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. [13]
Three U.S. theatrical films and a television adaptation (1958) have been based on the novel:
A play for puppets and actors was based on the novel, adapted by Greg Carter and directed by Sheila Daniels:
A play adapted by Cynthia Meier has been performed in Arizona and Connecticut. [17]
An opera by German composer Hermann Reutter was based on the novel:
An illustrated and abridged homage to this timeless classic, making it appealing to a new generation of readers, adapted by Orchestrate Books:
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
Noli Me Tángere is a novel by Filipino writer and activist José Rizal and was published during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. It explores perceived inequities in law and practice in terms of the treatment by the ruling government and the Spanish Catholic friars of the resident peoples in the late-19th century.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) is a sound part-talkie film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film was directed by Charles Brabin and starred Lili Damita and Don Alvarado. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The sound was recorded via the Western Electric sound-on-film process.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a 1944 drama film made by Benedict Bogeaus Productions and released by United Artists. It was produced and directed by Rowland V. Lee with Benedict Bogeaus as co-producer. The screenplay by Howard Estabrook and Herman Weissman was adapted from the 1927 novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. The music score was by Dimitri Tiomkin and the cinematography by John W. Boyle and an uncredited John J. Mescall. The film stars Lynn Bari, Francis Lederer, Akim Tamiroff, Nazimova and Louis Calhern.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a 2004 French-Spanish-British drama film directed by Mary McGuckian and featuring an ensemble cast, including Robert De Niro, Pilar López de Ayala, F. Murray Abraham, Kathy Bates, Gabriel Byrne, Émilie Dequenne, and Harvey Keitel. It is based on Thornton Wilder's 1927 novel of the same name. The film was released in 2004 in Spain and 2005 in the U.S. and abroad. Despite praise for its costume design, the film was poorly received by critics.
La Périchole is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French libretto based on the 1829 one act play Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français. Offenbach was probably aware of this production, as he conducted the orchestra of the Comédie-Française from around this time. Another theatrical creation that pre-dates Offenbach's opéra bouffe and may have influenced the piece is a farce by Desforges and Théaulon given on 21 October 1835 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.
Maria Micaela Villegas Hurtado, known as La Perricholi, was a Peruvian entertainer and mistress of Manuel de Amat y Junyent, Viceroy of Peru from 1761 to 1776. Their son, Manuel de Amat y Villegas, was one of the signers of Peru’s declaration of independence from Spain on 28 July 1821.
Blanche Yurka was an American stage and film actress and director. She was an opera singer with minor roles at the Metropolitan Opera and later became a stage actress, making her Broadway debut in 1906 and established herself as a character actor of the classical stage, also appearing in several films of the 1930s and 1940s.
Manuel de Amat y Junyent, OSJ, OM was a Spanish military officer and colonial administrator. He was the Royal Governor of the Captaincy General of Chile from December 28, 1755, to September 9, 1761, and Viceroy of Peru from October 12, 1761, to July 17, 1776.
The Ides of March is an epistolary novel by Thornton Wilder that was published in 1948. It is, in the author's words, 'a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic. Historical reconstruction is not among the primary aims of this work'. The novel deals with the characters and events leading to, and culminating in, the assassination of Julius Caesar.
María Mercedes is a Mexican telenovela produced by Valentín Pimstein for Televisa in 1992. It was the first of the "Marías" telenovela trilogy, being followed by Marimar and María la del Barrio. María Mercedes is a remake of the telenovela Rina, which in turn is based on the radionovela Enamorada by Inés Rodena.
Camila is a 1984 Argentine drama film directed by María Luisa Bemberg, based on the story of the 19th-century Argentine socialite Camila O'Gorman. The story had previously been adapted in 1910 by Mario Gallo, in the now considered lost film Camila O'Gorman. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, marking the second time an Argentine film was nominated for this award.
Marquis of Castelo Rodrigo was a title of Portuguese nobility created by Philip II of Portugal on 29 January 1600 for Dom Cristóvão de Moura, 1st Count of Castelo Rodrigo. The Moura family claimed its origin from the re-conquest of Moura from the Moors, during the Reconquista in 1165.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a 1927 novel by Thornton Wilder. The Bridge of San Luis Rey may also refer to:
Josefa de Tudó y Catalán, 1st Countess of Castillo Fiel, also known as Pepita Tudó was the mistress of Spanish Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy.
Francisco "Paco" Madrid was a Spanish (Catalan) journalist, writer and screenwriter.
Carmen Sánchez was a Spanish producer, dancer, and actress. She started her career as dancer and singer of zarzuela at very young age. At age 20, she finished working on copla or chotis and was featured in films between 1927 and 1928. She was a pioneer of silent films. She became a famous Spanish actress after the Spanish Civil War.
La antorcha encendida is a Mexican telenovela produced by Ernesto Alonso and Carlos Sotomayor for Televisa in 1996. It was the last historical telenovela produced by Televisa. The plot tells the Independence of Mexico, with an emphasis on historical accuracy. It was written by Fausto Zeron Medina in collaboration with Liliana Abud. It premiered on Canal de las Estrellas on May 6, 1996, and ended on November 15, 1996.
Manuel de Godoy y Álvarez de Faria Rios, 1st Prince of the Peace, 1st Duke of Alcudia, 1st Duke of Sueca, 1st Baron of Mascalbó, was the First Secretary of State of the Kingdom of Spain from 1792 to 1797 and then from 1801 to 1808, and as such, one of the central Spanish political figures during the rise of Napoleon and his invasion of Spain. Godoy came to power at a young age as the favourite of King Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa. He has been partly blamed for the Anglo-Spanish War of 1796–1808 that brought an end to the Spanish Empire. Godoy's unmatched power ended in 1808 with the Tumult of Aranjuez, which forced him into a long exile, dying in Paris in 1851.
"The Bridge of San Luis Rey" was an American television play broadcast by CBS on January 21, 1958, as part of the television series, DuPont Show of the Month. It was written by Ludi Claire as an adaptation of the Thornton Wilder novel of the same name. Robert Mulligan was the director and David Susskind the producer.
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The full text of The Bridge of San Luis Rey at Wikisource
The Bridge of San Luis Rey public domain audiobook at LibriVox