And I said to myself the old lesson for messiahs, that I now say to you. What is humane? The small distance. What is wild? The mortal weight. Wherever there is difference, there—is morality. Where there is brute death, there love flits, the shy observer. I had my feelings now, those mysterious pains which held them to living. And I said a blessing for all those who live in mystery. The wilderness was all before me—and I was glad that I had come.
About the Author
Hortense Calisher (1911–2009) was born in New York City. The daughter of a young German-Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from Virginia, she graduated from Barnard College in 1932 and worked as a sales clerk before marrying and moving to Nyack, New York, to raise her family. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled In the Absence of Angels, appeared in 1951. She went on to publish two dozen more works of fiction and memoir, writing into her nineties. A past president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of PEN, the worldwide association of writers, she was a National Book Award finalist three times, won an O. Henry Award for “The Night Club in the Woods” and the 1986 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for The Bobby Soxer, and was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1952 and 1955.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1965 by Hortense Calisher
Cover design by Kelly Parr
978-1-4804-3740-1
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Journal From Ellipsia: A Novel Page 36
