The Wings of the Dove
by Henry James
Of the three late masterpieces that crowned Henry James' extraordinary literary achievement, "Wings of a Dove" is simultaneously the most personal and the most spontaneous. In memory of his beloved cousin, who died at a young age, James turned to create one of the three main characters, Millie Tayle, an heir with a short time for life and a passion to experience life to the fullest. Before the creation of the other two, Merton Denscher and the gorgeous, predatory Cate Kroy, who conspired in an act of deception and betrayal, brought distilled wisdom about the weakness of the human psyche for the rest of her life, trapped in the depths of need and desire. And the drama that united these three characters, in the drawing halls of London and the storm-lit squares of Venice, brought almost unprecedented seriousness and classic purity in his work. Beneath its shimmering, barking surfaces, beyond the tangle of remarkable rhetoric and psychological techniques, "Wings of a Dove" offers an irrepressible vision of our civilization and its discontent. It represents the culmination of James' art, and therefore the art of the novel itself.
