Copyright © 1988 by the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation ISSN 0197-663X Fall, 1988 Special Literary

Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Issue Newsletter VOLUME XXXlI, No. 3 Guest Editor, Jean Tsien, Beijing, China RED CLOUD, NEBRASKA

Willa Cather’s Reputation in China was very popular as was George By JEAN TSIEN Bernard Shaw. Little American literature had yet been trans- Cather was first read in China acquainted with her name and lated for American literature had much earlier than most of us was later led to read her works. not yet entered the curriculum would think. Though there were Most likely he was her first anywhere I not even in the virtually no translations of her translator in China, having trans- United States. It was not until work into Chinese during her lated "Paul’s Case" for the liter- after the twenties of this century lifetime, we have reason to be- ary journal Time and Tide in that critics in Britain and Amer- lieve they were being read in the 1943. ica began to acknowledge that original in the 1920s and 1930s It was also around this time the U.S. was producing a distinc- by a small number of Chinese tive literature worthy of a posi- readers, mainly college students that Chang Lochi, then a Shang- hai college student, discovered tion in world literature. In China, and intellectuals. Here are a few the first American writers to examples to show this. Cather’s works in the original in the library. After reading them, have an important influence on On February 18, 1927, Yu she became so enthusiastic Chinese writers were Walt Whit- Dafu, a well-known Chinese about Cather that she wrote her man and Eugene O’Neill. Two writer and one of the founders of B.A. paper on her.2 famous Chinese writers Guo modern Chinese literature, Moruo, a poet and dramatist, wrote the following entry in his However, Cather did not really and Cao Yu, a dramatist, were in- diary after reading O Pioneers!: gain a foothold in China till the fluenced by their style. 1980s. The most important Read about sixty to seventy reason for this was that hardly In general, however, the pres- pages of Cather’s novel O any of her works had been trans- ence of American culture did not Pioneers!. Miss Cather lated into Chinese and for this make itself really felt in China writes about the life of the reason, she could not reach a until the forties, when the U.S. immigrants on the prairies wider audience. The twenties and China became allies against of America. Her writing is and thirties were a flourishing fascism. No doubt the showing very sure, her style rather period for the translation of of films based on works by Hem- similar to that of the Rus- Western literature. Chinese stu- ingway and Steinbeck helped to sian writer, Turgenev. dents had only gone abroad to enhance the popularity of these While we read her novel, study in Britain and the United writers in China. The works of a scenes of the life of Swed- States on a large scale after the number of earlier writers whose ish immigrants unfold viv- 1910s and had just discovered canon had risen such as Irving, idly before our eyes. The the treasure-trove of literature Hawthorne and Poe were also character of the woman there. As the period after World translated and a number of their protagonist, Alexandra, as War I was one of social turmoil stories were used in the original well as those of several and political awareness, Chi- as high school English texts. other characters, is well nese intellectuals, who com- Hardly anything of Cather’s was portrayed though not as prised a very small group, translated, though. She was still well as those of the Rus- tended in their translations to living but neither popular enough sian writer. Her description focus on writers who were to be read widely nor to be re- is natural and excellent, socially conscious. The most garded as a serious writer whose comparing favorably with works would be enduring. that in the early works of popular at the time were Rus- Turgenev. ’ sian (Tolstoy, Turgenev, Do- After 1949 and in particular stoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, during the Cultural Revolution In 1935, as Sun Jiaxin notes in Gorkey and Pushkin were great- most works of Western litera- his essay, Cather was men. ly admired) and French (Zola, ture, particularly American liter- tioned in a review by Zhao Jiabi. Balzac and Maupassant were ature, were regarded with suspi- That was how Sun became among the favorites). Ibsen, too, cion and dismissed as "bour-

Page 11 geois" or "apolitical" because the other three in collections of into the cities to find jobs in in- of the policy that literature short stories. This story alone dustry. Mass production had should serve the workers, peas- would reach hundreds of thou- brought material abundance ants and soldiers. A rigid inter- sands of Chinese readers scat- along with greater comforts and pretation and adherence to this tered over the country. conveniences, which Cather to- meant that only works calling on What is the reason for Ca- gether with others had come to revolution or exposing the cor- ther’s appeal to Chinese audi- appreciate. But at the same ruption of bourgeois society or ences in recent years? The time, it promoted commercial- the poverty of the poor could be essays in this issue, all written ization and standardization and translated into Chinese or by her translators in China, give thus the decline of individuality. taught in the classroom. Ob- some idea of why Chinese Still worse, it had a corrupting viously Cather’s work did not readers love her works and effect on people in the form of a belong to these categories. So choose to translate them. As Li growing desire for more material what little there was of her Wenjun, deputy editor-in-chief possessions. Because of this, works in China lay neglected on of World Literature, a prestig- money came to be valued more the library shelves until new ious literary magazine, says in and more for its own sake, to the policies were introduced in the his article: "Chinese readers get point of tainting human relation- late seventies. an instinctive feeling of close- ships. Since then, Cather has be- ness and warmth, a shock of The change disturbed Cather come widely read in China. Be- recognition, as if they were re- greatly. Like many other Ameri- ginning from 1980, her works reading the works of a familiar cans of her own day, she was have been taught to English ma- writer," when they read Cather. coming to feel that "commer- jors and graduate students in In the remainder of this essay, I cialization and the mad desire to English at Beijing Foreign Stud- shall attempt to analyse why make money [had] blotted out ies University, Peking Univer- this is so and to pinpoint where I everything else, and as a result sity, and Beijing Languages in- think Cather’s appeal lies to we are not living, but merely stituts, in Beijing alone. In re- present-day Chinese readers. existing.’’4 It made her nostalgic cent years all her major works One very important reason for the simple and harmonious have been or are being trans- why Chinese readers find it easy relationships of an earlier agrar- lated into Chinese. More of her to identify with the protagonists, Jan order before the corrosive in- works have been translated into situations and even moods in road of pecuniary interests. She Chinese than those of Fauikner, Cather’s works, particularly in felt that life had been more Hemingway or Fitzgerald or any those dealing with the pioneer- meaningful in the past, people other of her American contem- ing era or the passing of that era, better able to appreciate beauty poraries.= Critical articles have is that China was, and still basi- and culture, values more certain. also been written about her and cally is, a predominantly agrar- And as her disgust with the pres- last year a national symposium ian society which at the present ent grew, so did her respect for was held to commemorate the time is undergoing the same the values and qualities of a by- fortieth anniversary of Cather’s transition from an agrarian gone era, embodied in the noble death, at which some sixty society to a highly industrialized figure of the pioneer;, while her scholars, translators and re- one that Cather’s American life among them as a child porters from various parts of the society underwent during her underwent a kind of transfigura- country were present. Reports own lifetime. tion and took on a special mean- of the conference were carried Cather had grown up in Ne- ing. This is most apparent in in a number of newspapers and braska at a time when the coun- such works as O Pioneers!, literary journals, including China try was predominantly agrarian, My ,~ntonia, A Lost Lady and Daily, the prestigious English when such virtues as courage, "Neighbour Rosicky" which language newspaper in circula- perseverance, thrift, industry, deal with the early struggles of tion in China. warm human relations, love of the pioneers and their noble It is no exaggeration to say labour and of land were upheld qualities with the poignancy of a that Cather’s reputation is very and admired and were in tune writer celebrating a saga that is high in China, or that her works with the times. She had seen the already over, extolling people are becoming increasingly popu- nation transformed into an and values that have ceased to lar. Between 1981-86, for in- industrial giant with a modern exist. stance, "Neighbour Rosicky" society based on modern meth- (Continued on Page 14) was translated five times by five ods of production. The pioneer- different translators in North, ing age had come to an end. East., South-East and South Machinery had replaced man- China. Two of these translations power on the farms. Laborers AT RIGHT (on page 13), is an original appeared in literary periodicals, were drifting from the country painting by Gao Mang, China.

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China is, and has been, an the nation, more and more peo- false values together with a agrarian society for thousands ple are turning away from the lucidity and naturalness of style, of years. Many of our intellec- land and drifting into the cities. seemingly effortless prose and a tuals come from the country- More and more are giving up richly evocative, often poetic side; nearly all of us except the farm work for building construc- presentation of certain moods very young have been there, a tion, transportation or business. or emotions. number for fairly Ipng periods. Mass production is providing This is present sometimes in We, too, have our Antonias and people all over the country with the simplest passages. Take, for Alexandras, our Rosickys. We, new comforts never known be- instance, the description of the too, admire them for their love of fore. Color TV sets, stereo radio difficulties Nat Wheeler in One land and of labour, for their fru- recorders, washing-machines, gality, industry, perseverance, refrigerators, sets of matching of Ours confronted when he first and warm personality. When we furniture, are now available to all settled in Nebraska. He arrived, read about Alexandra Bergson’s "when the Indians and the buf- who have the money. Naturally falo were still about, remem- perseverance during several there are people who are inter- bered the grasshopper year and years of drought and her love of ested only in the acquisition of the big cyclone, had watched the stark land which "seemed such goods. This is not new. beautiful to her, rich and strong the farms emerge one by one What is new is that while ten from the great rolling page and glorious," we believe it, for years ago such commodities we have met people like her; in where once only the wind wrote had not been available or were its story." We are struck not just fact, we ourselves have experi- scarce, today they are flooding by the terseness of her prose enced similar feelings. And the markets, providing those strong women like Antonia, toil- who formerly had the desire but but also by her striking use of ing in the fields from dawn to metaphor. The rolling prairies not the means with the opportu. have become a page on which dusk with a big brood of children nity to realize their desires. In man records his history of re- are also to be found in the Chi- the midst of an increasingly ma- peated struggles against nature. nese countryside. Looking at terialistic culture, it is refresh- The whole history of the taming them at work, we too "feel the ing for us to find a defender of goodness of planting and tend- the spiritual graces and a timely of the barren land is suggested ing and harvesting .... " in that metaphor. We hear the warning to us Chinese not to wind howling over the desolate As in America during that relinquish the fine traditions of prairies; we see the pioneers period, we Chinese also experi- the past together with useless, wrestle with the land and finally ence warm human relations. In outmoded values, which have tame it. the family, relations are close become an obstacle to progress. Improved living standards Another example I would like between grandparents, parents to give of her evocative prose is and children. Grandparents are should make it easier for us to realize our spiritual goals, not to be fo,und in the last paragraph often as self-sacrificing as Old of My Antonia. Jim Burden, the lylrs. Harris, parents as loving as lose sight of them. Cather’s satiric portrayal of Rosamond rich but city-weary narrator, has Antonia. Elder children take care returned after many years to the of younger ,ones much as Alex- Marcellus’s acquisitive nature and of the vain and petty at- prairie where he grew up with andra and Antonia take care of his childhood playmate, An- their younger siblings. Neigh- tempts of the government era- bors have a smile and kind ployees in Washington, D.C., to tonia. He stumbles over what is "keep up with the Joneses" left of the old dirt ,track which words for each other and behave had taken him and Antonia over much as Rosicky or Old Mrs. shows us the emptiness of such Harris do towards their neigh- a life and brings her closer to us the prairie on his first night in bours or acquaintances. In in time. Nebraska and meditates thus: short, our society is still one Of course, Cather’s defense This ,was the road over based on agrarian values, in of frontier values and indictment which Antonia and I came which human warmth, decency, of commercialized values are on that night when we got concern for others, frugality, in- not the only reasons for her pop- off the train at Black Hawk dustry and other moral qualities ularity in China. We do not read and were bedded down in are judged by the society to be the straw, wondering chil- works of art for ideas alone. dren, being taken we knew more important than wealth. Were it not for artistic merit, This is one important reason for not whither. I had only to none of her works would have close my eyes to hear the our quick and instinctive re. been translated into Chinese. sponse to Cather’s works. rumbling of the wagons in What her translators admire her the dark, and to be again All this, however, is fast for most is her rare combination overcome by that obliterat- changing with the times. With of a sensitive mind attracted by ing strangeness. The feel- the speedy industrialization of spiritual beauty but critical of ings of that night were so

Page 14 near that I could reach out the title of Journal of a New Life. major works were translated in and touch them with my The entry for February 19th is the forties, but his stories are hand. I had the sense of also on O Pioneers! but is mere- still being translated and re- coming home to myself, ly a synopsis of the novel. translated. In Our Time was re- and of having found out ~Chang Lochi, late of Shang- cently translated into Chinese. what a little circle, man’s hai Teachers’ College, wrote ~ln a letter from Joe Knowles experience is. For Antonia "Willa Cather and China" in who lived in complete isolation and for me, this had been 1982. It was carried in the 1984 in the Maine woods for sixty the road of Destiny; had Literary Issue of the Newsletter. days in 1913. This is quoted from taken us to those early 3 Faulkner’s works are difficult Roderick Nash, ed. The Call of accidents of fortune which to translate into Chinese and the Wild, (New York: George Bra- predetermined for us all ziller, 1970), p. 4. that we can ever be. Now I difficult to understand even understood that the same when translated. Hemingway’s road was to bring us to- gether again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the Art Lies in Appropriateness incommunicable past. Willa Cather’s Mode of Expression in A Lost Lady How vividly Jim’s mood is By DONG HENGXUM recaptured for us! We almost In the past ten years or so, the pioneering spirit exemplified by hear with him the rumbling of works of the American woman Tom Outland and his professor the wagons and sense the dark- writer, Willa Cather, have been is already regarded as out- ness and strangeness of the introduced into China and have moded. The professor struggles place. And how well Cather cap- attracted many Chinese readers. on alone against the new mate- tures Jim’s sense of coming Cather, a writer with her own dis- rialists of this age, represented home both physically and spirit- tinctive qualities, is sensible, by his own daughter, son-in-law, ually! Chinese readers are parti- tolerant, and admires the spirit and wife, whose acquisitiveness cularly fond of simple, direct of hard work of the pioneers and has already encroached upon writing that comes from the their warmth of humanity. These his academic work. A Lost Lady, heart as much of our own litera- qualities suit the taste of Chi- written between these works is ture is written this way. nese readers. an elegy to the declining years Cather firmly believed that in The novella A Lost Lady was of the pioneers, their glory the final analysis, technique was published in 1923, during a peri- fading like that of the setting closely related to the author’s od of transition in Cather’s liter- sun. feelings. The poignant quality of ary career in between two) of her How does Cather portray the good prose came only when the famous works, My Antonia decline of these pioneers? How writer felt strongly about what (1918) and The Professor’s does she make the various char- he was writing -- when he House (1925). Cather looked acters come to life for us? The poured the whole of himself and back to the past with nostalgia details that she selects with his feelings into his book. As for the time when Americans care play a crucial role here. Ca- she put it, "the emotion is big- were moving swiftly westward to ther disliked Balzac’s method of ger than the style" because it settle on hitherto virgin land and heaping detail onto detail to creates it. This is certainly true claim it for the plow. She ad- create a realistic setting. In- of her own work. Without her mired the spirit of self-sacrifice stead, she called for the "novel deep love of the land and people of these pioneers and the demeuble" (unfurnished novel). of her childhood, no amount of warmth of human relationships skill could have produced the in those days. But with the in- This is not to say that all the fur- sincerity and depth of feeling crease of mass production, niture -- or details in a novel -- that characterize her major standardization of life and com- should be thrown out, but that works. Nor would her writing mercialization of values after the room should only be sparse- have the power to evoke such World War I, she became more ly furnished so as not to create poignant feelings in her readers. and more disenchanted with her an oppressive or stifling atmo- Perhaps this is the chief reason times and sought to offset this sphere. The amount should be why her works have endured. by portraying the values of the appropriate, neither too much I~ioneers of an earlier time. In My nor too little. That is to say the NOTES, Antonia, the farmer-pioneers details Cather selects to portray work outdoors under the sun character should serve to ’The diaries of Yu Dafu (1896- with an energy that is infectious. heighten or accentuate the per- 1945) were later published under In The Professor’s House, the son’s characteristics.

Page 15 The methods Cather adopted next afternoon: "When the Forrester after the Captain in A Lost Lady are fairly straight- strokes of the hatchet [Ellinger leaves the room. He tells her forward: accentuation, repeti- was wielding] rang out from the that the Captain was the only tion and an alternation of the ravine . . . soft shivers went one of the bank officers who two. For minor characters, through her body." To a Chi- was determined not to let the Cather liked to stress the most nese, Ellinger with his thick depositors suffer for the bank obvious characteristics. One muscular lips and strong irreg- loss. As president, he stripped sees this most clearly in ular teeth conveys the sense of himself of all his money so that characters the author herself cruelty and sexuality, and the his depositors (who were all la- dislikes. When Ivy Peters, energy of a predatory beast. If borers) would get every cent of representing new materialistic Ivy Peters represents the lust for their money back. That is to say, values, appears in the book for money, then Frank Ellinger is Cather avoids direct scenes the first time, our attention is driven by bestial desire for sex, which would have been senti- drawn to his face "flecked with though this does not prevent mental or melodramatic and pre- tiny freckles like rust spots." him from seeking wealth as well. fers a quieter, more objective His eyes are even more unplea- The images of those two men and indirect method to portray sant. They are "very small, and seem wrought of iron in their the nobility and dignity of the an absence of eyelashes gave vividness, accentuating their old pioneer. What other method his pupils the fixed, unblinking characteristics and leaving a of portraying a conservative yet hardness of a snake’s or a deep impression on the reader’s at the same time entirely honor- lizard’s.’, This description of him mind. able man of an earlier genera- somehow makes obvious his tion would have done so well? greed for money and his cruelty. It is difficult enough to select The latter is emphasized on this the most distinctive details to It is, of course, too superficial occasion by his slitting the eyes reveal the personality of a char- to attribute Cather’s success in of a woodpecker. He holds the acter but even more difficult to portrayal of character to accen- employ repetition as a method tuation and repetition alone. The woodpecker’s head in "a vice yet avoid monotony. However, vividness of her portrayal is first made of his thumb and fore- Cather has successfully em- and foremost due to the fact that finger .... Quick as a flash, as if ployed this method with the these characters actually live in it were a practiced trick, with character of Captain Forrester. the author’s mind. Without the one of those tiny [knife] blades He represents the pioneering author’s love or dislike for her he slit both the eyes in the bird’s era and reveals all the fine qual- characters, without the nostal- head." ities of that period. His polite gia and regret, her characters Cather’s description of Frank words and behavior remain the could not have come to life. The Ellinger, another representative same and never change. When success of any literary tech- of this new generation, shows he wishes to smoke a cigar after nique has as its basis the emo- less exaggeration. She makes a meal, he always asks his tions of the author. What we Niel, the narrator, explain again women visitors politely, "Is mean by the Chinese expres- and again that "he didn’t know -smoking offensive to you?" No sion, "deep thoughts shaped whether he liked him or not," matter how many women visi- into simple language," is that though if one reads between the tors there are, he always repeats the thoughts are shaped in the lines, one knows Cather’s atti- the question as many times and mind before being written and tude. "His chin was deeply cleft, always in the same words. To they go on existing in the his thick curly lips seemed very him, "if an expression answered reader’s mind even after the muscular, very much under his his purpose, he saw no reason story has ended. Whatever her control, and with his strong for varying." methods in A Lost Lady, whether white teeth, irregular and When his bank failed, Captain it be accentuation and repeti- curved, gave him the look of a Forrester’s bankruptcy brought tion, what lies behind them is man who could bite an iron rod about a crisis in his old age the regret and nostalgia for "the in two with a snap of his jaws." which Cather handles very skill- end of an era, the sunset of the And this strong masculinity of pioneer." All those who had fully. Instead of tackling the helped to build up this glorious Ellinger’s, hardly more than scene of the bank failure direct- wolfish desire, is emphasized cause are dead, and now Ivy Pe- ly, she only describes his weari- ters and his ilk m the new rich again and again in this encoun- ness after his return from Den- ter with "the lost lady," Mrs. For- materialistic values -- have ver to "square up" with his de- seized greedily the fortunes rester, later that evening: "The positors. He is sweating, his built up by the pioneers. "The white fingers clung to the black eyes are tired and swollen, and people, the very country itself, cloth [of Ellinger’s coat] as bits all he wants is to lie down and were changing so fast that there of paper cling to magnetized rest. It is Judge Pommeroy who would be nothing to come back iron." And in Sweet Water the explains the situation to Mrs. to."

Page 16 John Steinbeck, who came tist and deeply moral. Because terical defiance. "1 know; they from the west, was also deeply of this, her criticism of moral call me the Merry Widow. I rather aware of the generation gap be- values has stretched into the like it!’’I° tween Captain Forrester and Ivy realm of aesthetics, just as her There are descriptions of din- Peters. In East of Eden, he says: sense of beauty is the quintes- ners on two occasions in A Lost A new country seems to sence of her moral judgment. In Lady. The first time, Captain For- follow a pattern. First come her, beauty of imagination is in rester is still alive. Through the openers, strong and complete accord with modes of Niel’s eyes, we see the dignified brave and rather childlike. imagination. She never tries to manner with which the awkward They can take care of them- give her characters a heart of but awe-inspiring Captain For- selves in a wilderness, but pure gold to purify her readers rester presides at the dinner. they are naive and helpless as Bret Hart does; or plays with And when the Captain proposes against men, and perhaps .writing techniques for momen- a toast, it "seemed a solemn mo- that is why they went out in tary artistic effect like O. Henry. ment" to Niel. "Niel drank his the first place. When the Mrs. Forrester is the heroine wine with a pleasant shiver, rough edges are worn off of the novel, the lost lady. Ca- thinking that nothing else made the new land, businessmen ther repeatedly uses accentua- life seem so precarious, the fu- and lawyers come in to tion and repetition to describe ture so cryptic and unfathom- help with the development her. What leaves the deepest im- able, as that brief toast uttered -- to solve problems of pression on the readers is her by the massive man, ’Happy ownership usually by re- laugh. Her laugh is repeatedly days!’ moving the temptations to described, but the repetition themselves. ~ In this scene, Willa Cather did accentuates the multiple facets not lay much emphasis on the He spoke truly, saying the of her character. It is sometimes description of Mrs. Forrester. same things as Cather but "a soft, musical laugh which She only smiles and nods, en- somehow lacking her pain and rose and descended like a suave courages Captain Forrester to regret. Cather writes of the same scale," at other times, her soft tell the pioneering story which feelings this way: laughter can be "impatient, in- she has heard many times. And The Old West had been dulgent, teasing, eager." No then she laughs teasingly and settled by dreamers, great- wonder Cather describes it as asks him to "tell us your philos- hearted adventurers who "many colored." The first ophy of life, -- this is where it were unpractical to the description of her laugh is a live. comes in."~2 Not too much point of magnificence; a ly one, showing her affection for depiction does not mean that courteous brotherhood, people. The second description she is a minor character. There strong in attack but weak in of her laugh, when she is sleep- are no minor characters in art. In defense, who could con- ing with Ellinger, reveals her in- the appropriate place, minor quer but could not hold. nate desire for a life of self- characters become major char- Now all the vast territory indulgence. acters. From Cather’s concise they had won was to be at Like the descriptions of Cap- description, one sees how much the mercy of men like Ivy tain Forrester and lawyer Ivy she knows the importance of Peters, who had never Peters, the author infuses her appropriateness in artistic dared anything, never depictions of Mrs. Forrester description. She well remem- risked anything. They with love or contempt. When bers the experience passed on would drink up the mirage, basking in the setting sun of the to her by Stephen Crane, author dispel the morning fresh- pioneering era she is at one with of The Red Badge of Courage: ness, reot out the great her pioneer husband and is "The detail of a thing has to land-holders. The space, memorable. See how Niel de- filter through my blood, and then the colour, the princely scribes her laugh: she laughed it comes out like a native prod- carelessness of the pio- at him "with that gleam of some- uct, but it takes forever.’’I~ She neer they would destroy thing elegantly wild, something later sums up her experience and cut up into profitable fantastic and tantalizing.’’8 But thus: "The higher processes of bits, as the match factory when she refuses to pass away art are all processes of simplifi- splinters the primeval for- with that era, and prefers "life cation," which is to cut out all est.8 on any terms," the readers feel it the cliches and minor details The reader may ask: Why re- a great pity. See how, after Cap- without affecting the essence of turn to the author’s times and tain Forrester’s death, she re- the writing.~4 Good works of art society when you are discussing acts to Niel’s advice. "1 know!" are like this. When you want to such techniques as accentua- She tossed her head. Her eyes add something to them, you find tion and repetition? However, glittered, but there was no mirth that you are adding too much; Cather was both a dedicated ar- in them, m it was more like hys- and when you want to delete

Page 17 something, you find you are re- ing a tan silk sock," and dis- this reason she adds the details moving too much. In classics, cussed the latest fashions in of the encounter between Niel the author has intuitively judged clothes. They eat very fast; they and Ed Elliott, the latter telling the appropriate amount. "wanted more duck," and "the the former about Mrs. Forres- The second dinner at the For- salad and frozen pudding were ter’s death in South America. resters is held after the death of dispatched as promptly as the Willa Cather has added an extra the Captain. The "Merry Widow" roast had been.’’1~ The author piece of "furniture" to the novel! wanted to give advice to the new uses these scenes to reveal the Saturation is not art. It would be generation of youth who have degradation of Mrs. Forrester. nice to imagine that the novel not seen the world. Again The "Merry Widow’s" moral de- could have ended when the through Niel’s eyes, we see that cline becomes real for us be- heroine was lost like a drifting her former composed, harmoni- cause of the careful selection of canoe in turbid waters. ous and gracious manners are details instead of the piling up gone, and in their place we find of them. NOTES cheapness, vulgarity, and ignor- If A Lost Lady nears perfec- ance. tion because of the appropriate- 1 See A Lost Lady. New York: Mrs. Forrester has changed. ness of its artistic description, Knopf, 1923, pp. 21-22. Such were the intentions of the then one unbalanced point pulls 21bid., p. 46. author. In Cather’s eyes, the so- the work away from it. Willa Ca- ~lbid., p. 46. cial changes caused by World ther has not dealt successfully War I, including the progress in with the problem of the theme of 41bid., p. 67. science and technology and the the book and the work as a piece ~lbid., p. 56. changes in value judgments, of reminiscence. As reminis- ~lbid., p. 56. divided the world and lowered cence, the story has to be com- ~ East of Eden, Part 2, chapter morals. She detested the reality plete, and endings for the char- 19. acters have to be provided. This of the commercialized present ~A Lost Lady, p. 106. and longed more than ever for is different from the theme of the past. Mrs. Forrester was the the book -- the end of the pio- ~lbid., p. 110. product of such thinking. Was neering era. The theme of the ’Olbid., p. 156. Willa Cather conservative? It de- idea of being lost is completed 11 Ibid., p. 51. pends on the angle from which when the heroine was "like a one is to analyze her. Social ship without ballast, driven 121bid., p. 54. changes benefited some but vic- hither and thither by every 1~See Willa Cather, The World timized others. Cather belonged wind.’’I~. This echoes the sym- and the Parish. Vol. 2. Lincoln: to the victims, a victim in the bolic description of details at University of Nebraska Press, spiritual sense of the word. The the beginning of the novel, the 1970, pp. 776-777. progress in science and technol- bird, after its eyes are slit, whirl- ’4"The Novel Demeuble," in ogy could improve people’s ma- ing in the sunlight but never see- Willa Cather on Writing, New terial life, but it by no means ing it.IT But the author aban-York: Knopf, 1949. could elevate the mind, though dons the symbolic meaning of ’~A Lost Lady, pp. 159-162. the latter was what Cather was being lost, and follows the mainly concerned about. At the threads of reminiscence for the l~lbid., p. 152. present time, the Chinese peo- last traces of Mrs. Forrester. For IZlbid., p. 25. ple, who are also living in an era of economic reform, are facing the same problems. Thus the second dinner is not Willa Cather, Tao Yuanming and Hiawatha a simple repetition of the first By LI WENJUN one. They form a sharp contrast. The selection of a number of Chinese readers studying Ca- town, are all traditional themes vital details accentuate Mrs. For- ther’s works for the first time get in Chinese literature. Reading rester’s decline from gracious- an instinctive feeling of close- Cather’s works, differences of ness to vulgarity. Just as selec- ness and warmth, a shock of land and race are obliterated; we tivity is employed with the hero- recognition, as if they were re- recognize and identify with her ine, it is used to heighten the reading the works of a familiar characters as we would with characteristics of the younger writer. The fresh country air, the those of an outstanding Chinese generation. At the second party, scenes of simple folk toiling in writer. each of the youths "sat with his the fields, the pure and harmo- This is particularly the case legs crossed, one tan shoe nious relations between people, with "Tom Outland’s Story" in swinging in the air and display- and their love for their home- The Professor’s House. I still

Page 18 recall the first time I read the corruption deeply upset him and There is evidence on every hand story of Tom Outland’s seareh he admired the courage of those that they lived for something for the lost cattle, which led him who refused official posts and more than food and shelter. to the discovery of the Indian became recluses rather than They had an appreciation of cave-dwellings in the Blue Mesa. compromise their own princi- comfort and went even further This was during the latter yeare ples. His nostalgia for a happy than that .... "~ of the "Cultural Revolution" time in the past when life had As for artistic skill, there are when China was still in a state of been much simpler and his dis- also amazing similarities. Chi- ignorance. The atmosphere was gust for a society in which peo- nese literary critics agree that stifling; one longed for a breath ple were motivated by the lust to Tao Yuanming’s works were of fresh air. I remember coming become rich and powerful and written simply and naturally; he to the part where Tom turns into to hurt and kill each other is very did not like to use many allu- a canyon and looks up: "Far up similar to Cather’s nostalgia for sions, nor did he care for flower- above me, a thousand feet or so, a simpler age when people ly language. His work seemed set in a great cavern in the face found pleasure and fulfillment in effortless while actuall~j involv- of the cliff, I saw a little city of ’’1 their labour and in their warm ing a great deal of care. Zhu Xi stone, asleep. It was as if a relations with others rather than (1130-1200), the major philoso- breath of fresh air had blown in the desire to ’keep up with the pher of the Song Dynasty (960- into the window of my dark, Joneses’ or in other petty mate- 1279) commented, "The plain stuffy room. I too longed to see rialistic ambitions. Cather de- style comes from naturalness." the cavern Tom found and to re- scribes in much detail the sordid The Song poet Huang Tingjian gain innocence and simplicity. life of the civil servants in Wash- (1045-1105) said of Tao’s style, The cavern in the story reminded ington, D.C. in "Tom Outland’s "Naturalness and harmony with- me of another cavern, the story Story." Critics are agreed that out effort." Su Dongpo (1037- of which is one that almost Tao’s poems reveal his dissatis- 1101), a famous Song poet said, every Chinese child knows. This faction and distrust with the "At first glance Yuanming’s is the cavern in the "Peach Blos- bureaucracy and corruption of som Source," written by the poetry seems loose and the 2 his own day and that "Peach pace is slow, but when one is great Jin poet, Tao Yuanming. Blossom Source" is a Utopian familiar with it, one finds a pecu- In the famous preface to that world to which he longed to es- liarly lasting appeal. It is like a poem, Tao describes how a fish- cape. It is not just the beauty of highly skilled artisan wielding erman made his way through a the natural surroundings that his hammer and chisel: there are cavern and discovered another allures him though that is great. no marks of the tools on his world, an idyllic world of peace Still more alluring is the way products, whereas artists less and harmony and innocence, far the people there live in har- skilled than he wear themselves different from the world of cor- mony with nature and with one out, yet do not know where their ruption and turmoil in which he another. Their desires have not weaknesses lie." was living2 yet been corrupted by the desire How similar the two stories for money or for power. They are Critics feel that in Tao’s are! Although the people the content with their lot, their work works, there is talent in plain- fisherman discovered in the is self-sufficient and brings ful- ness, and richness in simplicity. village beyond the cave were liv- fillment, they live in peace and In such famous phrases as "On ing, whereas the inhabitants of harmony "far from the madding meeting, no talk of trouble, only the village that Tom Outland dis- crowd." As Tao mentions in his parley of how the mulberries and covered had died several hun- poem, "Spring silkworms pro- flax are growing," and in "Leav- dred years before, they had both vided long silk threads, No taxes ing at dawn to reclaim the waste- discovered a people with a dif- were paid to the ruler on the land/Returning with hoe in the ferent culture and different autumn harvest." In short, this is moonlight," the words have values from their own. The a society without a tyrant, with- been carefully selected to con- authors of both works had ex- out exploitation, where all work tain the minimum nouns and pressed their dissatisfaction and gain the fruits for their in- verbs. Not a single adjective can with their own current cultures dustry and where all are equal. be found. in their works and their strong In the same way, Cather’s All that has been said of Tao’s desire for a simpler culture and Pueblo Indians also lived in har- work could equally be used to warmer human relations. Tao mony, peace and security, and describe Cather’s work, espe- Yuanming had lived during a took pleasure in their simple cially the last point dealing with dynasty marked by palace revol- labour. As Father Duchene re- selection and conciseness. This utions, peasant revolts, ban- marked, "... in an orderly and coincides with Cather’s views of ditry, civil war, assassination secure life they developed con- the novel demeuble which are and regicide. The turmoil and siderably the arts of peace. based on the belief in simplifica-

Page 19 tion: that is "finding what con- my surprise when I discovered and the crowing of cocks and ventions of form and what detail in the work an account of a char- barking of dogs could be heard. one can do without and yet pre- ity performance held in Red People were moving about, busy serve the spirit of the whole.’’~ Cloud when Cather was fourteen doing farm work. Men and My amazement at Cather’s to collect money for victims of a women were dressed in the consummate skill and my terrible blizzard that winter. same way as those in the out- pleasure at discovering the Cather is described as having side world. Old and young were similarities between her and Tao recited "Hiawatha," dressed in both contented and happy. They Yuanming made me decide to Indian garb. Maybe this was the were astonished to see the fish- translate "Tom Outland’s Stow" source of her interest in the In- erman and asked where he came into English. This translation dians, a lifelong interest which from. After he told his stow, has been twice selected in col- took hold of her imagination and they invited him home for wine lections of short stories since which was strengthened by her and killed a chicken for a feast. 1980 and has become well visits to cave dwellings in When the villagers learnt of his known to Chinese readers. In Arizona and New Mexico in- arrival, they all gathered there 1987, to commemorate the 40th habited by tribes of American In- and told him their ancestors had anniversary of Cather’s death, I dians long before any white peo- fled to this beautiful place with wrote a paper entitled "Willa pie had made their appearance their families and neighbors dur- in America. ing the turmoil and unrest of the Cather’s Love Affair with Indian 4 Culture," in an attempt to trace a Qin Dynasty. Once there they lifelong interest of Cather’s that NOTES had never ventured forth again appeared in her works at various so that they got cut off from the ’See The Professor’s House, outside world. They asked him stages of her literary career and New York: Knopf, 1925, p. 201. that first revealed itself in the which dynasty it was but had short story "The Enchanted ~Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian, never heard of the Han, Wei or Bluff," published in Harpers in A.D. 365-427). One of China’s Jin Dynasties. They sighed with April, 1909. greatest poets. He lived in the sympathy when the fisherman Jin Dynasty, a period of turmoil recounted the troubled events This paper was presented at and instability between the Han one by one. Then the others also the Cather Conference in Bei- and Tang Dynasties. invited him to feasts in their jing, April 1987 and later pub- homes. The fisherman left lished in Reading in September ~See "Account of the Peach Blossom Source" in this issue. several days later after being of the same year. Two months 4The Professor’s House, p. warned not to tell outsiders later, I happened to be attending about the place. On this return a conference in Nanjing to 219. voyage the fisherman took care- which I had taken a copy of ~ From "On the Art of Fiction," ful note of the route. On Philip Gerber’s Willa Cather to in Willa Cather on Writing (New reaching the prefecture, he told read in my spare time. What was York: Knopf, 1949), p. 102. the prefect what he had seen. The latter immediately sent men to follow him back and look for the landmarks but they lost their way and were unable to find the Account of the Peach Blossom Source route. Hearing of this place, Liu By TAO YUANMING’ Zhiji, a noble-minded gentleman of Nanyang, was eager to go Once during the rule of Tai found the source of the stream there but he died before his wish Yuan in the Jin Dynasty,2 a fish- issuing from a mountain. In the could be fulfilled. Hereafter, no erman of Wuling3 was traveling latter was a small opening, one made further inquiries. along a stream, heedless of the through which a gleam of light distance he had covered, when seemed to emerge. Abandoning When the Ying family5 vio- all at once his boat entered a his boat, the fisherman entered lated the decrees of Heaven~ dense grove of peach trees in the cavern which was at first so Virtuous people withdrew from bloom, which extended for sev- narrow that he could barely the world. eral hundred paces on either pass. After a few dozen paces, Huang and Qi5 left for Mount bank, no other trees being in however, it suddenly came to an Shang, sight. Fallen petals were scat- end and spread before his eyes And the people now living here tered profusely on the fragrant, was a broad plain dotted with also fled. luscious grass. Marveling at the neat houses, fertile fields, lovely The traces of their flight grad- sight, the fisherman continued ponds, mulberry trees, bamboos ually vanished, his journey to see how far the and other kinds of vegetation. The paths became disused and grove reached. At its end, he Footpaths intersected the fields were choked with weeds.

Page 20 Relying on each other, they period of great turmoil and in- Pirst I=mperor or ~ne ~mnese engaged in farming, stability in between the Han and empire (Qin Shi Huang). He was Returning home at sunset to Tang Dynasties. Tao’s "Peach cruel and had many people rest from their toil. Blossom Source" is in two killed, including scholars. Mulberries and bamboos pro- parts: one prose, the other 5Ying is the clan name for the vided shade, poetry. The poem is based on first emperor (Qin Shi Huang, Beans and millet were tended in the prose account. B.C. 220-210) whose excesses their season. 2Jin Dynasty: A.D. 265-420, horrified many. He drove schol- Spring silkworms provided long the dynasty following the Wei ars into hiding because he had silk threads, Dynasty (A.D. 220-265). The Tai buried so many of them alive. No taxes were paid to the ruler on the autumn harvest. Yuan period is A.D. 376-396, cor- ~Huang and Qi were among responding to Tao Yuanming’s those scholars who withdrew Undergrowth obscured the own youth. paths, from the world to become her- The crowing of cocks and bark- ~Wuling is present-day Chang- mits during the rule of the first ing of dogs intermingled. de county, Hunan province. emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Ritual vessels followedthe same molds, "The Qin Dynasty (B.C. 221- Styles of clothing did not under- 206) was the period of rule of the go any change. Children sang joyfully as they ran about, Old people cheerfully paid each other calls. Random Thoughts on Willa Cather When plants blossomed, they By SUN JIAXIN knew the season was mild, Willa Cather’s name was, as ther’s book, Youth and the When leaves fell, they knew cold far as I know, mentioned in Bright Medusa, asking me to blasts would come. China as early as the mid-thirties translate a stow from it. I read Though they had no calendar to of this century, when I was a the book and was surprised to aid them, high school student. Reviewing find a Willa Cather quite differ- From the seasons they could tell contemporary American litera- ent from the idealistic woman the time of year. ture, a Chinese writer made the novelist I had read of previously. Happy and contented in their following remark on her: "At Certainly she is somewhat ideal- lives, present Cather occupies an istic, as shown in her abhor- What need had they to strive apartment in New York City. rence for the monotony and ugli- for wisdom and knowledge. Looking westward through the ness of bourgeois society, and Five hundred years did the open window, she thinks of her her yearning for artistic beauty. miracle remain unknown, home pasture which has been But she does not shut her win- Before one morning this beauti- totally industrialized. She shuts dow nor her eye against the real- ful land was .brought to light. the window and meditates on istic world around her; she As the pure and the superficial her Virgilian and Catholic para- keeps a sharp eye on it. The belong to different worlds, dise. Mass production, eco- disastrous effects of machinery, So the land was soon shut out nomic depression, unemploy- of mass production and crises, from sight again. ment, war preparation, revolu- the misery of the common peo- Pray tell me, worthy tion.., all these social events ple, especially the sufferings of travelers, are going on about her, but Willa the sensitive soul -- all these What make you of those beyond Cather sees none of them."1 As are carefully observed and de- the madding crowd? a teenager with a romantic tem- picted. Would that I could ride on the perament, I was curious to know I translated her short stow, gentle breeze, more about this dreamy woman Rise high in search of my own "Paul’s Case," with pleasure. It novelist. But there was no Chi- appeared in the No. 2, Vol. 2 kind. nese translation of Cather’s m Translated by issue of Time and Tide (October, works at the time and my curios- 1943). It turned out to be the first Qian Qing ity was not satisfied for several piece of Chinese translation of years. Cather’s works. I was very glad NOTES In 1943, when I served as an to know that my choice proved ITao Yuanming (A.D. 365-427). editor of the magazine Time and to be well founded when I Famous Chinese poet of the Jin Tide: Literature and Art, Profes- learned in the February-March Dynasty, one of the six dynas- sor Sun Jinsan the editor-in- issue of The English Journal, ties between A.D. 222-589, a chief, showed me a copy of Ca- 1979, that "Paul’s Case" was

Page 21 still among the English Teach- world, Paul shares the fate of are the formative period in a ers’ Literary Favorites. Harvey Merrick in "The Sculp- writer’s life, when he uncon- I admire Cather’s skill in char- tor’s Funeral," of Katherine Gay- sciously gathers basic materi- acter portrayal. Through the eye lord in "A Death in the Desert," al." Following the advice of her of Paul’s drawing master, the or of Aunt Georgiana in "A Wag- friend, Sarah Orne Jewett, she author presents us with a por- ner Matinee." Each story shows got the thing "that teases the trait of the sensitive boy: a "tragedy of effort and failure.’’~ mind over and over for years... Therefore I hope I may be justi- ’’5 One warm afternoon the put down rightly on paper. The boy had gone to sleep at fied to have rendered the title of river country south of Red his drawing board, and his the story as "Paul’s Tragedy," Cloud, Nebraska, and the high master had noted with when I translated "Paul’s Case." plain region called "The Divide" amazement what a white Whether conscious of it or furnished the legendary setting blue-veined face it was, not, the author implies social of a number of her novels. Those drawn and wrinkled like an criticism in these tragedies. Had old neighbors of her childhood, old man’s about the eyes, the society been more reason. "once very dear," came again to the lips twitching even in able, the sensitive soul would be her i/nagination. O Pioneers! and his sleep, and stiff with a well developed, the efforts My Antonia have made her home- nervous tension that drew would be fruitful. But when Ca- town as famous as Haworth, them back from his teeth. ther wrote "Behind the Singer Yorkshire of the Bronte sis- Tower," she might be counted as ters. Such a boy was brought up in a conscious social critic, as Cur- I wonder if Cather really acted a flavorless, colorless environ- tis Bradford pointed out.3 The ment: upon her own theory of "the story "seems to indicate that novel demeuble," or "unfur- Cordelia Street was a high- Willa Cather had taken in more nished novel," which lays stress ly respectable street, where of the muckraking attitude that on people rather than external all the homes were exactly she maintained at McClure’s details. I think she showed ex- alike, and where business than is generally supposed .... cellent descriptive sensibility as men of moderate means If we can judge from a single well as psychological depth. To begot and reared large fam- story, ’Behind the Singer Tower’ my mind, the term, "the novel ilies of children, all of indicates that she would have demeuble," may be better ap- whom.., were interested succeeded as a social critic had plied to the robust, masculine in arithmetic, all of whom she wished too." After the sky- works of Ernest Hemingway, were exactly alike as their scraper hotel caught fire, Graz- perhaps. Here, I don’t mean that homes, and of a piece with iani, the tenor, plunged from its Cather’s works are entirely the monotony in which thirty-second floor to his death. feminine. The trademark of her they lived. Half a dozen people were talking novels is the spirit of pioneer- Unable to tolerate the suffoca- about this "Behind the Singer ing, which means struggle and tion in his home and the mal- Tower." The central figure of the creative labor. She declares in O treatment from his school and story, engineer Fred Hallet Pioneers! that a pioneer must filled with the desire for artistic related how the skyscraper was have imagination; he enjoys beauty, the sensitive boy, Paul, built at the cost of the lives of more from the idea of creating was misled to embezzle a large workers of Italian origin. In New things than from using the sum of money and go to New York, he said, "the average for things themselves. In the pref- York for pleasure. The structure window cleaners, who, for one ace to the 1932 edition of The of the story attains a remarkable reason or another, dropped to Song of the Lark, Cather affirms architectural achievement. The the pavement was something "success is never so interesting scene of New York provides a over one a day." Cather rejects as struggle -- not even to the sharp contrast to that of Pitts- the machines and materialism, successful." There is such burgh as seen through Paul’s as symbolized by the sky- strength and sublimity in her ac- eyes. But when Paul discovered scraper. counts of heroic immigrants that his misdeed was publicized, Cather did not carry on her that these works may be ranked he willfully "snapped the direct social criticism any among the old sagas. But her thread" in the same way as poor longer, however. Beginning with extraordinary ability to capture Anna Karenina did thirty years the novelette, "The Bohemian the local color and her exquisite before. The great lesson he Girl," she turned to her home description of environment, cus- learned was "that money was pasture in Nebraska, with "an toms and figures suggest to us everything, the wall that stood enthusiasm for a kind of country something from the eye and the between all he loathed and all he and a kind of people.’’~ She had hand of a female. "A thing of wanted." By no means the only once told an interviewer that beauty is a joy forever." I like tragic figure in the Catherian "the years from eight to fifteen Cather no less than Hemingway.

Page 22 Shoulder to shoulder with these serence radiance we associate 2Willa Cather, "A Death in the two I would place my favorite with the poets of classic anti- Desert," in Willa Cather: Col- author Liu Qing, whose titanic quity."’ Thus her idylls of lected Short Fiction, 1892-1912, work, The Builders, ennobles pioneering and her anthems to p. 213. west China just as Cather’s does artists and working people, ~See Curtis Bradford, Willa west America. women in particular, endear Cather’s Uncollected Short Fic- Cather’s later novels, when themselves to the reader’s heart. tion, pp. 546-547. The refreshing flavor, the allur- they cover a broader range in- 4See Latrobe Carroll, "Willa cluding Virginia in the east and ing music and the bewitching beauty in her books have Sibert Cather," in The Bookman, Quebec in Canada, go farther May, 1921, LIII. into the past. heightened her reputation dur- ing the forty years since her ~Quoted from Cather’s pref- Perhaps we see some truth in death and this reputation will en- ace to The Best Stories of Sarah the remark made by the Chinese dure. I am sure. Orne Jewett (Boston: Houghton writer in the thirties so far as Mifflin, 1925). Death Comes for the Archbish- NOTES ~Quoted from the Publisher’s op and Shadows on the Rock are Preface to Collected Short Fic- concerned. But even in these tion, 1892-1912, p. vii. later works, especially in her IZhao Jiabi, New Tradition. novelette, "Neighbour Rosicky," Liangyou Publishing Co., 1935. ~lbid., p. ix. her tribute to the spirit of pio- neering, her eulogy of creative labor and devoted enthusiasm, her admiration of the kindness and honesty of common people, are so inspiring that the reader I Love My ntonia can feel the throbbing of her By ZHOU WEILIN heart, in my opinion she should not be considered cut off from Willa Cather is one of my fa- Cather is decidedly not a real society. She may be ranked vorite American authors. Six writer who likes to employ many among the writers from the peo- years ago when I ,first read her artifices in her writing, at least ple and for the people at all famous work, My Antonia, I was not in her mature writings. She times. deeply attracted by it. Its lyrical explains in her essay "My First One cannot talk of Cather qualities and rich flavor of life Novels, .... Here there was no ar- without mentioning her literary transported me to the prairies of ranging or ’inventing’; every- craftsmanship, which she her- the American Mid-West in the thing was spontaneous and took self laid so much stress upon. pioneering era. I could visualize its own place, right or wrong," She compared her attitude to the small towns on the prairie without premeditation. As a that of an apple-grower careful while the immigrants from var- result, the images of her memo- of his reputation: the "fruit that ious parts of the Old World rable characters are stamped in- was below standard should be struggling for survival there delibly on our minds through left forgotten on the ground, seemed like old friends whose vivid details and come to life for only the sound apples should be joys and sorrows I shared. The US. collected.’’6 She wrote a grace- year 1918 in which My Antonia Cather was able to accom- ful, measured prose, always was published, happens to be plish this difficult task because made sure to put the right word the year in which I was born. Yet she had spent her youth in a in the right place, and cut out in the seventy years since then small town on the prairies and whatever epithet or sentence my experiences have been com- was familiar with life there. She was unnecessary. For example, pletely different from those of had come to love deeply the peo- the subtitle of "Paul’s Case," is the author. Why then should the ple there and their surroundings. "A Study in Temperament." This novel have such a great impact I believe that this love of the appeared in The Troll Garden on me? I think it is due -- at author for his or her subject is (1905) but was deleted from least in part -- to its great artis- the most important element in Youth and the Bright Medusa tic merit. Art, through its various. true art. (1920). She pruned and polished modes, expresses the universal The picture of the Nebraskan her stories again and again and feelings of mankind, so that prairies that Cather creates is ruthlessly prevented the republi- readers from different lands may truly impressive: the endlessly cation of those she considered experience the same emotional rolling red grass which at times below standard: What she re- reactions. In this sense, great seems so bleak and lonely; the garded as her "sound apples" works of art always belong to cold wind howling over the are indeed "touched with the the whole of mankind. prairies; the angry red glow in

Page 23 the heavens at sunset; the dazzl- favorite and who, like him, was newly-struck goldfields. Yet ing blue skies after the first fall deeply emotional. She alone had their legendary feats capnot of winter snow; the cracks and understood him. Notwithstand- move us in the way that Anto- crevices in the snow that earlier ing the blow, she took the bur- nia’s does. Her life is an ordinary had been meandering brooks; in den of supporting the family one but she has made it extraor- springtime, the clear blue of the upon herself, working without dinary for us because of her firm water and the acrid smell of complaint like an ox and doing convictions and her loving na- burning grass and shooting hard work no other girl would ture. When still a girl she had flames; and in summer, the rio- have dreamed of doing. She later gone out one autumn day with lent storms shedding big, hot became a hired hand in the near- Jim Burden, the narrator of the drops of rain onto upturned by town of Black Hawk and won story, and they had discovered a faces. the love of her mistress through half-frozen cricket near Squaw But without the people popu- her diligence and intelligence. Creek. After being warmed in lating the prairie, the beauty of ~.ntonia naturally had her her hands, the little insect the land would be static, only a weaknesses, the greatest of began to chirp feebly. It re- backdrop for life, and would not which was also her strength. minded her of an old .beggar have such great artistic appeal. She was too emotional. When woman she had known back in Cather is greatest at creating she liked doing a thing, she had the Old World. If anyone let her character. Even minor charac- no control over herself. She in to warm herself by the fire she ters who only make a brief loved to go to the dances and would sing songs from the old appearance leave a deep im. since they interfered with her days for the children in her pression. The Bohemian immi. work and her mistress could not cracked voice~ To keep the grants, the Norwegians, the persuade her to give them up, cricket warm, Antonia carefully Swedes, the Russians -- each she was dismissed and went to lifted the little creature into her ethnic group has its own na- work for a debauched money- hair and then draped a big hand- tional traits, and Cather portrays lender. Later, because of her kerchief loosely over it. Through them all superbly. Even the blind warm emotions, she was de- these details, Cather not oply black pianist who makes a brief ceived the first time she fell in shows us in a vivid manner An- appearance at the local opera love and was abandoned before tonia’s forceful character but house leaves a deep impression her marriage. After this, she also her loving pature. Over on the reader. Needless to say, went back to the prairie to work twenty years later Antonia’s son this is much mole the case for on her brother’s farm, where she mourns over the loss of his dog. the protagonist, Antonia. gave birth to an illegitimate This reminds us of the warm lov- ing nature of his mother. I think Antonia, the pretty, large-eyed daughter. Any other girl under similar circumstances would that is one of the reasons why Bohemian girl, is a very lovable Cather wrote the novel. She felt character. Her fate is like that of have hidden the child. ~.ntonia, a very deep affection for that so many other girls from Old however, loved the child too lovable character. World immigrant families. To much for that. She had its pic- support the family and pay debts ture enlarged and hung on the In her depiction of ~,ntonia, for land and tools, she has to photographer’s wall in a gilt Cather seldom makes any direct give up schooling and toil in the frame. This littlp detail tells us comments. She brings read~prs fields like a man. But she is something of Antonia’s loving round to her own view of An- hardworking and strongwilled nature. She later married a Bohe- tonia by describing vivid little in- with a zest for life that nothing mian and they had a farm and cidents in the latter’s life. One of can destroy. She seems to have many children. Although hard- these is the scene in which the endless vitality. When she first ships aged her quickly, she re- Shimerdas arrive at the railway came to America with her par- tained her youthful vigor, her station in Black Hawk. The ents she was only about twelve love of life, of land and of chil- strong national characteristics or thirteen. Her father had pre- dren. Antonia is an outstanding of each member of the family are viously been a skilled violinist representative of American pio- shown in their customs and who loved music and treasured neer women. In those early days, habits, their conversation and friendship but in the American the hardships they had to en- gestures. As a result the reader Mid-West he was extremely dure caused many of these is fully convinced that the Shi- homesick because he spoke no women to form strong charac- merdas are Bohemians. It shows English and was unaccustomed ters. Cather creates a number of the author is very observant and to living in a strange land and to such women in this novel in sensitive to life. working in the fields. Unable to addition to ~.ntonia; there is The rich flavor of life por- adjust, he eventually took his Lena, the first-rate dress de- trayed in the work is such that owp life. This was a terrible blow signer, and Tiny, who makes a the reader feels he has been to Antonia, who was her father’s fortune from running hotels near transported to the scenes and

Page 24 witnesses them together with shining through the stained- good homes and a good life, and Jim Burden. Many of them are glass windows of the church, they also realize self-fulfillment very moving and the prose is the passers-by lingering out- in their struggle to survive. almost lyrical. In the scene side, shivering with cold, their One can read O Pioneers! in immediately following tl’)e inci- feet frozen. It is such scenes different ways. For instance, dent with the cricket, Antonia that the reader savours with one can read it for an under- meets her father who has just pleasure. standing of the opening-up of returned from hunting. She Cather is a talented writer of the American frontiers, of the shows him the cricket, which re- extraordin~.ry artistic merit. I disintegration of the pastoral hu- vived a little by the warmth gives loved My Antonia deeply and so man relationship, the changes in a few thin chirps. Mr. Shimerda I decided to translate it. During the relationship between neigh- smiles as he listens with a look the translation of the work I not bors, within families and be- full of sympathy for the little only derived great artistic enjoy- tween the sexes, in the develop- cricket. Because of this scene ment from the work but also ment of capitalism in America at he appears real to us and ’we feel deepened my understanding of the beginning of the century. sorrowful later when we hear of America’s heritage and of the One can also read it for the posi- his death. American people. Coqsequent- tion and effect religion have on Another scene which has left ly, after finishing My Antonia, I the life of that generation. But, a deep impression on me is of a embarked on the translation of as a lasting piece of literature, sleighride in the snow in ea, rly The Professor’s House and this little book possesses a winter for which Jim takes An- Death Comes for the Archbish- unique charm in that everywhere tonia and her sister. The cold is op so that I could share my love in the book one finds a simple, penetrating; we can feel it in the of the work of this outstanding intrinsic but heartrending way Cather describes the street writer with the masses of read- beauty. This beauty comes from glittering with ice, the lights ers in China. a deep love for the land. One can say that from the words on the flyleaf to the last sentence of the book there burns a passion, a persistent pursuit, a burning Enduring Perfection: Reflections on the Beauty attachment, hope and disap- of Willa Cather’s Representative Work, pointment, pain and happiness, yearnings, selfless devotion, 0 Pioneers! which the author holds for the By ZI ZHONGYUN land deep in her heart. They Many years ago, I accidentally cation would be just as appro- compose a symphonic poem. In- got hold of a slim book -- O Pio- priate if Jewett’s name were re- deed, this is a novel that one can neers!, by the American woman placed by Cather’s own .name, or read as poetry. writer, Willa Cather. I was at by that of the heroine in the The special sentiments to- once attracted by its special book, Alexandra Bergson. ward the land come from the hard charm, and finished reading it at This is a story forever repeat- struggle to subdue it. Initially, one go, experiencing a special ing itself in the history of man’s the land "wanted to be left sense of beauty. Later, by acci- development, ancient but often alone, to preserve its own fierce dent, the Foreign Literatures renewed, common but soul stir- strength, its peculiar, savage Press asked me to translate this ring. A group of people, old and kind of beauty, its uninterrupted book for Chinese readers. Now, young, men and women, leave mournfulness.’’I this book will be reprinted in a their homes for a primitive and The hard work in the first few series for young readers. I think desolate tract of land, and start years was almost all wasted. it is very much worth it. cultivating it with their bare "The record of the plow was in- On the flyleaf of this book is hands. It is hard work. Some fall significant, like the feeble written: before they can realize their scratches on stone left by pre- goals, and some retreat in the historic races, so indeterminate "To the memory of Sarah Orne face of difficulties. Victory that they may, after all, be only Jewett in whose beautiful and belongs to those who persist the markings of glaciers, and not delicate work there is the perfec- and command confidence, will a record of human strivings.’’~ tion that endures." power, and wisdom. Nature, The land organized resistance This crystalizes the kind of with its wild resistance to man, for the last time against the in- goals Cather herself pursued in is subdued by such people. The vading plows. A drought befell this book, and the perfect spirit- desolate plains and hills be- the land which lasted for three ual state this exquisite work has come fertile land. The pioneers years and left nothing in the reached. The words of the dedi- finally create for themselves fields, forcing many to move

Page 25 again. But, to people like Alexan- came over the close- ders above others. For this rea- dra Bergson who remained and cropped grass, her skirts son, she lacks friends who really who knew how to deal with the pinned up, her head bare, a understand her. Although she land, it finally "woke up out of bright tin pail in either wins respect and esteem from its sleep and stretched itself, hand, and the milky light of her neighbors by her successful and it was so big, so rich .... ,,3 the morning all about her. enterprises and generosity, she Look at the intoxicating scene Even as a boy he used to is lonely at heart. People are of spring plowing. "... [T]he feel, when he saw her com- used to getting help and care brown earth, with such a strong, ing with her free step, her from her, but nobody thinks that clean smell, and such a power of upright head and calm she, too, needs understanding growth and fertility in it, yields shoulders, that she looked and care. The only person who itself eagerly to the plow; rolls as if she had walked appreciates her beauty and away from the shear, not even straight out of the morning understands her is Carl Lin- dimming the brightness of the itself.6 strum. metal, with a soft, deep sigh of In the year of great drought Alexandra’s friendship, love happiness."’ The land "gives it- which forced others to sell their and final union with Carl are also self ungrudgingly to the moods land and leave, Alexandra went in tune with her character and of the season, holding nothing to examine the situation in their with the keynote of the book. back,’’~ so much so that Alexan-neighboring village and came The two of them spent a dismal dra, who has devoted all her back with much more confi- childhood and youth together, youth to it, feels she is getting dence. On her way back, she caring for and supporting each rich "just from sitting still." And was radiant, which surprised other in their hardships. They Carl, who loved painting from even her younger brother, who matured early in the difficult his childhood and who has been was closest to her. years, but love came late. They away for over ten years, sees the never had a chance to be roman- most beautiful picture on his re- For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged tic and to demonstrate their love turn. It is a picture that he can to each other in words. What never paint for the canvas is the from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set they had was a deep understand- endless land, and the painter, ing and trust in each other. Only Alexandra. toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beauti- they two know each other’s in- Alexandra, the heroine of the ful to her, rich and strong herent qualities, qualities which book, is the embodiment of in- and glorious. Her eyes others do not see. Carl alone trinsic beauty and solid wisdom, drank in the breadth of it, understands what land means to which are closely associated until her tears blinded her.’ Alexandra and fully appreciates with the land. She hardly had a her outstanding ability in man- carefree childhood, nor did she That night, she looked up at spend her youth enjoying her- the starry sky, thought about the aging her farm. Only he notices self or having love affairs. She laws governing the movement of she is very beautiful, just as does not have time to pay spe- the universe, and felt a new at- beautiful when she is a success- cial attention to her clothes. tachment to the land. ful middle-aged farmer as when she was a little girl holding a tin Those who meet her daily hardly Alexandra’s intelligence is notice whether she is beautiful pail. On the other hand, only not the quick, showy type. She is Alexandra retains full trust in or not. But everywhere in the a typical country girl: steady, book, one feels that she is. As Carl amid the contempt, preju- honest, and sometimes even a dice, doubts and reproaches for her outward appearance, not bit slow. But she has more much is said in the book. We brains, more pursuits, than her that surround him. Whether he only know that she has a healthy neighbors and two brothers. She made a name for himself or not, and strong body, skin as fresh as can absorb new ideas, and run she would always give him her snow, deep blue eyes, and thick, risks. This quality distinguishes support. This kind of acquain- flame-like hair which she braids her from her neighbors who tance is truly rare. Balzac once and winds round her head. The cling to tradition, and enables said: "Love without friendship is several passages which de- her to be always a step ahead of philandering." But Carl and scribe her best combine land, others. This is the quality of Alexandra’s belated love is built farm work, scenery and her good pioneers and entrepreneurs. The upon a pure friendship which feelings in a remarkable manner. first generation of entrepreneurs withstood all the hardships of Here is the Swedish girl who in the world who started from several decades. The courtship left an enduring, impression on scratch all possess this quality. is a little too long, characteristic Carl: Just because she has innate wis- of that time and of an agricul- He could remember exactly dom, although it does not show, tural society. But this kind of how she looked when she she stands head and shoul- love is really different from fall-

Page 26 ing in love at first sight. It shines substantial, noble, and lasting. It NOTES like gold and is as solid as dia- is related to truth and kindness. mond. The feeling one has after read- ’0 Pioneers!, p. 15. 21bid., pp. 19.20. Today, when one thinks of ing the book is comparable to the feeling one gets when, after 31bid., p. 116. America, one thinks of "Silicon seeing a lot of colorful cheap ’Ibid., p. 76. Valley," "moon man," a society ~lbid., p. 76. with a high consumption rate fake diamonds, one sees a piece of spotless white jade. ~lbid., p. 126. and bustling cities and a dis- Tlbid., p. 65 torted and exaggerated sense of freedom. It is difficult to remem- bet that less than a hundred years ago, on this wide and desolate land over which cold winds swept, the pioneers who A Checklist of Publications on Willa Cather started cultivating the virgin soil toiled and sweated in their fight in China (1949-1986) against nature. Perhaps not Compiled by QIAN QING even many Americans think Translations of Cather’s works Translations of books published about it any more. The heroine in book form: in Taiwan and Hong Kong: of the book is a Swedish immi- grant, but this story, except for My ~ntonia and 0 Pioneers! Death Comes for the Arch- some minor details, can also be Trans. Zhou Welling and Zi bishop. Trans. Wang Ching-hsi. applied to immigrants from Zhongyun. Beijing: Foreign Lit- Hong Kong: World Today Press, other countries. America is a erature Press, 1983. 1965. New ed., 1972. country of immigrants. The "na- A Lost Lady and Other Works. 0 Pioneers!, Trans. Tong tionality" of America is com- Ed. Dong Hengxun. Guilin: Li- Hsin-mei. Taipei: Cheng Wen posed of the common character- jiang Press, 1986. Includes the Press, 1967; Hong Kong: World istics of immigrants from all three stories in Obscure Destin- Today Press, 1975. over the world, only they come ies, "Tom Outland’s Story," My ~ntonia. Trans. Su Hsueh- at different times, some early, "The Best Years," and A Lost and some late. These immi- Lady. yin. Taiching: Tong Hal Press, grants’ success at opening up 1968. and building the new world will Selected Short Stories by My Antonia. Trans. Tong Hsin- be remembered by later genera- Willa Cather. Ed. Tang Jen. Nan- mei. Taipei: Cheng Wen Press, tions. Today Americans, irre- chang: Jiangxi Press, 1986. Bas- ically the stories in Youth and 19??. spective of their original nation- A Lost Lady. Trans. Ch’en alities, seem to have far differ- the Bright Medusa. ent characteristics and morals. The Bohemian Girl and Other Ch’ang-tuo. Taipei: Cheng Wen But if one takes a closer look at Early Stories. Ed. Zhu Junqiang. Press, 1969. their society, that pioneering Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literary spirit is still the crystalizing Press, 1986. Over thirty short Translations of Cather’s stories, quality of Americans as a whole. stories, mainly the very early novellas and Cather criticism in The fact that some nations flour- works from "Peter, .... The Prin- anthologies of literature or in ish while others decline, apart cess Baladina," etc., to "The literary periodicals: (Transla- from other reasons, indicates in- Bohemian Girl," with "Neigh- tions of stories collections in ternal qualities which character- bour Rosicky," and "The Old Section One not included.) ize these nations as different Beauty" added. from others. The steady, hard- "Tom Outland’s Stow." Trans. Li Wenjun in Selected American working, innovative, competent, In preparation: skillful, self-confident, forward- Short Stories, ed. Wang Zuoli- going qualities of Alexandra, are Death Comes for the Arch- ang (Beijing: China Youth Press, perhaps the contributions bishop. Trans. Zhou Weilin. 1980). brought to America by the immi- The Professor’s House. Trans. "Critical Reflections on Willa grants Of the various national- Zhou Weilin. Both books are to Cather," by Katherine Anne Por- ities that make up America. The be published by the Beijing For- ter. Trans. Zhang Yosong in reason why America prospers eign Literature Press. American Literature Series, 2, can be related to this. The Professor’s House. Trans. 1981. The beauty of this slim vol- Zhang Zhengjen. To be pub- "Neighbour Rosicky." Trans. ume is devoid of any superfluity lished by the Shanghai Foreign Fu Taotao in American Litera- and artificiality. It is healthy, Languages Publishing House. ture Series, 2, 1981.

Page 27 "Neighbour Rosicky." Trans. in American Literature Series, 2, "Willa Cather and My Mortal Nieh Hualing in The Unlighted 1983. Enemy," by Qian Qing in For- Lamp and Other Stories, ed. "Willa Cather," by Dong eign Literatures, 1, 1986. Nieh Hualing (Beijing: Beijing Hengxun in Foreign Literatures Press, 1981). Quarterly, 1984. "Neighbour Rosicky." Trans. Gong Yi in Foreign Literatures, 11, 1983. "Nanette." Trans. Qian Bing- Chinese Contributors su. In Recent American Short Dong Hangxun is a well-known Jiaxin’s, from Chinese into Eng- Stories, ed. Song Zhaolin. Hang- Chinese critic and translator. A lish. She has also written on and zhou: Zhejiang People’s Press, research fellow at the Foreign translated American literature. 1982. Literatures Research Institute, Sun J|axin is associate pro- "A Death in the Desert." Chinese Academy of Social fessor of English at Beijing Trans. Ding Jiu in Guangzhou Sciences (CASS), he is the Teachers’ College and has the Translated Literature, 4, 1982. author of many articles on Amer- honor of being the first transla- "Paul’s Case." Trans. Lu Jin in ican literature and a co-author of tor of Cather’s works in China. Hundred Flower Islet, 6, 1982. the first history of American Zhou We,in is a translator in "A Gold Slipper." Trans. Yang literature written in Chinese. He Hunan province and a member Yi in Hundred Flower Islet, 6, has translated A Lost Lady and of the Hunan Literary Associa- written a critical essay on Ca- 1982. tion. She is the translator of My "A Sculptor’s Funeral." Trans. ther. Antonia and is currently trans- Zhang Yujiu in World Literature Li Wenjun is deputy editor-in- lating The Professor’s House and Art, 3, 1983. chief of a prestigious literary and Death Comes for the Arch- A Lost Lady. Trans. Dong journal, World Literature. He, bishop. Hengxun in Foreign Literatures too, has written a number of Zi Zhongyun is a research Quarterly, 4, 1983. essays on American literature, is fellow and director of the Ameri- co-author of the first history of can Studies Research Institute "The Garden Lodge." Trans. American literature written in Xue Hongshi in Selected Short at CASS. She is the translator of Stories by American Women Chinese, and is the translator of 0 Pioneers! and has just pub- many works, including Faulk- lished a book dealing with the Writers, ed. Zhu Hong. Beijing: ner’s The Sound and the Fury. Chinese Academy of Social Cold War in the 1940’s and He is a research fellow at CASS. 1950’s. Her article in this issue Sciences (CASS) Press, 1983. is taken from the preface to the "A Wagner Matinee." Trans. Qian Qing (Jean Tsien) is pro- Huang Mei in Selected Short fessor of English and Director of second edition to O Pioneers!. Stories by American Women Graduate Studies in English and Gao Mang is editor-in-chief of Writers, ed. Zhu Hong. Beijing: American Literature at Beijing World Literature. In his spare CASS Press, 1983. Foreign Studies University. In time he does Chinese paintings. addition to her own essay, she He painted the portrait of Cather "A Wagner Matinee." Trans. translated the essays of all the from a postcard for the Cather Tang Tianyi in Guangzhou Trans- other contributors, except Sun Symposium in 1987. lated Literature, 10, 1983. "The Best Years." Trans. Mao Huafen and Sun Xinzhao in Con- temporary Foreign Literatures, 1, 1986. Kronborg as Orpheus: My Mortal Enemy. Trans. Qian A Tragic Dimension of The Song of the Lark Qing in Foreign Literatures, 1, By ROBERT HENIGAN 1986. On the eve of twenty-year-old inscription written in purple ink "The Strategy of the Were- Thea Kronborg’s departure for on the title page: Wolf Dog." Trans. Xiao Liming in Germany to study voice with Lilli Einst, 0 Wunder!- Appreciating Foreign Litera- Lehmann, Fred Ottenburg picks A. Wunsch. tures, 2, 1986. up from her open trunk the score Moonstone, Colo. of Gluck’s Orpheus’ that Herr September 30, 18-- (120) Critical essays on Cather (in Chi- Wunsch gave to Thea during her After a flash of jealousy, per- nese): thirteenth summer, not long haps realizing he has not shared "Willa Cather’s Pursuit of before his ignominious flight all of Thea’s life, Fred sings to Spiritual Values," by Xie Lihong from Moonstone. Fred reads the himself:

Page 28 Einst, 0 Wunder! entblOht auf the invention of opera in the late such emotional intensity that he meinen Grabe, sixteenth century, composers can, for a time, overcome death; Eine Blume der Asche meines have been drawn to the story of but he lacks control over his Herzens. (463)~ this archetypal artist -- poet, human feelings necessary to (Someday, O wonder, on my composer, lyrist, singer- who keep Eurydice. As Kerman says grave will blossom/A flower lost Eurydice but won her from wryly, "Life and art are not from the embers of my heart. death by his art, on condition necessarily one" (28). [my translation]). At the time, that he not look upon her until Giannone seems to say that Wunsch told Thea that "in ten they reach the world of light. But Thea as Kronborg, having made years she would either know he could not control his love and her life and art almost identical, what the inscription meant, or fear, and looked and lost her for- has "solve[d] the crisis of life" she would not have the least ever. In some versions of the (90). I suggest that Thea has not idea, in which case it didn’t mat- myth, Orpheus is torn to bits by solved the conflict of passion ter." (120) Thracian women. and control and that, therefore, At the end of the first piano The first great opera, Claudio it is mistaken to speak unre- lesson in The Song of the Lark, Monteverdi’s La Favola d’Orfeo servedly of "the full tide of her Wunsch asks his twelve-year-old (1607), softens the tragedy when success" (Daiches 34), a suc- pupil to sing a hymn he has Apollo takes pity on his son and cess "even a small-town intelli- heard her sing in church. As she raises him to eternal bliss in gence would recognize" (Ser- ends with the words "Earth has heaven2 The first modern opera, geant 136), "her operatic tri- no sorrow that Heaven cannot Christoph Willibald Gluck’s umph in New York" (Woodress heal," he remarks that that is Orfeo ed Euridice, produced in 166), her name’s being "synony. good to remember, though he Vienna on October 5, 1762, was mous with musical greatness" himself cannot believe it (36). written for a male contralto (a (Gerber 86), or "The culmination After she is gone, he remembers castrato). The opera ends happi- of Thea’s artistic career" (Mose- the dashed hopes of his life, for ly when the god of love prevents ley 29). himself and for his students. But Orpheus from stabbing himself and restores Eurydice to him. In 1913 Willa Cather wrote an now he begins to feel his "old article about three American enemy" hope returning. Wunsch Gluck rewrote the opera for prima donnas, Louise Homer, Paris, 2 August 1774, adding (whose name means wish or Geraldine Farrar, and Olive desire) is "tempted to hope" for ballets and transposing the lead Fremstad. She said that Homer, Thea, a dangerous wish for him role for tenor because no in the 1909-1910 revival of whose life is disappointment castrato was available. The most G luck’s Orpheus, "achieved the (37). But she is different from important nineteenth-century highest success in her career" other American girls he has tried revival of Gluck’s opera was also singing "perhaps the most beau- to teach because she will not in Paris, 19 November 1859 tiful music ever written for con- dodge her "enemy" difficulty (Loewenberg 311-39). Hector tralto voice" (36)’. (Her language and because she has th at secret Berlioz drew upon both the Vien- is echoed by Wunsch: "There is something inside. On her thir- na and Paris versions and again no such beautiful melody in the teenth birthday, following the transposed the part of Orpheus, world" [90].) Cather congratu- piano lesson, he teaches her the this time for the female con- lated Homer’s children for hav- Liszt-Heine lied "lm leuch- tralto Pauline Viardot-Garcia, ing a mother who so well man- tenden Sornmermorgen" and the "very great" but "ugly" aged house and nursery in addi- tells her that if she wishes to Spanisch alto for whom, Wunsch tells Thea, the opera was writ- tion to her career (34). But obvi- become a singer, she must learn ously Mme. Homer did not give German, and if she learns many ten, the singer of those he has heard who is the most "kgnst- herself undividedly to art. The lieder, she will know German beautiful and popular Geraldine (93-96). And if she knows many ler-isch," the most artistic or Farrar is quoted as saying, "1 lieder, she will surely recognize artist-like (89-93). ’’ have learned that talents have "Einst, 0 Wundert. Richard Giannone has stated limitations .... I do not long to, The previous Christmas, Thea that the music and myth of nor do I believe I can, climb learned from Wunsch of Gluck’s Gluck’s opera "contain ... the frozen heights like the great opera Orpheus, whose stow she symbolic locus" of The Song of [Lilli] Lehmann" (42). That dis- knows. He taught her the hero’s the Lark (88). This locus was tinction is given to Olive Frem- famous lament for his lost bride, earlier defined by Joseph Ker- stad, who said, "My work is only "Ach, ich habe sie verloren . . . man: "the fundamental conflict" for serious people. If you ever Euridice, Euridice" [more famil- in the Orpheus myth "is the really find anything in art, it is so iar in the Italian "’Che faro senza, problem of emotion [passion] subtle and so beautiful that -- Euridice"J (89-90) -- "Alas, I and its control." Orpheus, by well, you need never be afraid have lost my Eurydice." From mastery of his art, expresses any one will take it away from

Page 29 you, for chances are nobody will ural enemies. And she knows, To become a great artist in the ever know you’ve got it" (42). first hand, illnesss, loneliness, Orphic tradition, Thea must This description of serious art despair, envy, hypocrisy, vio- combine artistic control with her is paraphrased by Thea when lence, and death. When Fred natural passion. But to do this, she tells Dr. Archie, "that one asks her if she got some of her to pay the debt her talent, her op- strives for in art is so far away, ideas from Panther Canyon, she portunities, and the Ancient so beautiful . . . that there’s replies in an Orphic note, "Oh, People impose upon her, she nothing one can say about it" yes! Out of the rocks, out of the must accept the loss of her own (551). dead people .... They taught me Eurydice. Throughout her life in the the inevitable hardness of life. In Chicago, having lost her novel, Thea is influenced and No artist gets far who doesn’t childhood, her home town, her assisted by people who, like know that" (554). family, Wunsch, and Ray, she John Berryman’s Henry, have Another aspect of Thea’s Or- wonders what is to become of "suffered an irreversible loss" phic nature is suggested by the her. Considering the horror of ([vi]), which art cannot undo but myth of Orpheus and the career "wasting away" like the girl on may make, if only for a moment, of Gluck’s hero as castrato, the train, she thinks, "Suppose bearable. I have mentioned tenor, and contralto, sexual am- there were such a dark hole Wunsch’s losses and frustra- bivalence, or perhaps androg- open for her, between tonight tions that lead him to drunken- ony. As Susan Rosowski has and that place she was to meet ness and violence. The last Thea pointed out, there is in Thea’s herself?" (273). And as she pre- hears of him, he is in Concord, life a reversal of sex roles, espe- pares to leave for Germany, she Kansas, described by Ray Ken- cially between her and Ray and believes that "if she failed now, nedy as "a jumping-off place, no Fred. We meet Thea as a beauti- she would lose her soul." After town at all," but the white dove ful, pre-pubescent girl-child in failure, there were only the and the blue forget-me-nots on Dr. Archie’s arms. We watch her "abysses of wretchedness" she Thea’s birthday card suggest he enter her teen years "shaken by had seen in Wunsch, "for she has found some peace at last in a passionate excitement" at hav- could still hear the old man play- Concord (135). The chivalrous, ing discovered she is "different" ing in the snowstorm, ’Ach, ich hard-working Ray Kennedy who (99), yet simultaneously wishing habe sie verloren!’" (466). believes railroad men are herself a sandhill, to change Ten years later, a successful "watched over" (153), detests only as wind and light dictate. singer in Europe and a year-old resignation, pins his future on a We later observe her passage by veteran of the Metropolitan lucky strike of gold or oil, but water into full womanhood, Opera, Thea has become Kron- cannot beat the odds against erotic and aesthetic, in Pan- borg, a diva, a public goddess. railroad men. Romantic Dr. Conventional wisdom says all is Archie wonders why he is in ther Canyon, from which she emerges newly born, as she was well. In fact, in 1932 Cather had Moonstone, trapped in a hope- once resurrected from Ray Ken- come to see Thea as a "success- less marriage and having only a nedy’s Avernus-like "hole in the ful artist in the full tide of teen-aged girl to talk to. Spanish achievement" (Preface, The Johnny, the wandering minstrel, earth" (272). We learn -- dis- creetly -- of her sexual initiation Song of the Lark). In 1896 she suffers inexplicable bouts of had protested against the sys- madness, during which he dis- in Mexico, and we hear her refuse to become a "kept" tern that created operatic super- appears for months. Andor Har- stars: "In Europe these prima sanyi, whom Susan Rosowski woman. We hear the singer who may be metamorphosed on the donnas are singers living that well describes as "the weary ar- they may achieve; in America tist" (63), though about to debut stage of the opera house -- tempting Venus, saintly Eliza- they are adventuresses singing at Carnegie Hall, is happy only to make a fortune" (Slote 13). when he hears Thea sing. Fred beth, innocent .Elsa, wise Fricka, But that same year she realized Ottenbrug, the informed ama- and heroic Sieglinde. We ob- that "There are a thousand peo- teur musician, is successful in serve the almost sexless incipi- pie who see in Carmen all that business but has, in a hasty mar- ent prima donna, without per- Calv~ does. There are a thou- riage, ruined his young life. sonal life, but not with person- sand who have dreamed Alas- If these men smooth Thea’s ality (441), that individuation tots and Endymions, but, ah, to progress, make possible her we associate with Nietzsche’s sing it, to say it! It is an awful career, she is not without pain- Apollonian attitude towards life and fearsome thing, that short ful knowledge of life. She early and art. But in her hard-won ar- voyage from the brain to the experiences the drudgery of tistry, she has not lost her Dion- hand, and many a gleaming ar- domesticity and observes that ysian element, her artist’s secret gosy of thought has gone down not all marriages are made in that Harsanyi calls "passion" in it forever" (Slote 416-17). The heaven. She discovers her nat- (570).~ price of artistic eminence, Thea

Page 30 admits to Dr. Archie, is the for- When Dr. Archie first hears the importance of the artistic im- feiting of personal life; art Kronborg in Lohengrin, she is "a pulse, the drive toward the beau- "takes you up, and uses you, woman he had never known" tiful. She is now pleased that Dr. and spins you out; and that is (500), and when he sees her after Archie is in New York and that your life" (546). The frozen the performance, she looks to Fred is mature and successful: heights are lonely and fraught him forty years old (503). We "Any success was good. She with danger. But like old Fritz learn from Fred that Thea sang herself had made a good start" Kohler who "had learned to lose Elsa that day, a part not suited to (564), but as she told Dr. Archie without struggle" (123), Thea her voice, because the sched- earlier, art is striving for the im- tells Fred, "I’ve only a few uled singer had a bad throat possible, the beautiful, the in- friends, but I can lose every one (507). Awaking the day after expressible: "1 haven’t reached of them, if it has to be. I learned Lohengrin, Thea dreads the it yet, by a long way" (552). to lose when my mother died" "sense of futility" she experi- (559).~ Besides preserving her health ences after a great effort (513), and energy, caring for her voice, Although Kronborg has a cul- because audiences do not want and continuing to "care" in the tivated voice, not merely Thea’s everything, only "just about face of many obstacles, Thea "nature-voice," it is a delicate, a eighty degrees." Then she re- faces other abysses, not least fragile instrument, inextricable members that Dr. Archie is com- the audience. Before telling from the singer herself. Fred has ing and is "reminded... of dis- Fred and Dr. Archie that she at told Thea, "A voice is not an in- appointments and losses" (514). last will get to sing Sieglinde, strument that’s found ready- She knows he will see what she she half bitterly, half playfully made. A voice is a personality. It has lost, but be oblivious to remarks, "1 don’t see why people can be as big as a circus and as what she has gained (514). To go to the opera, anyway .... I common as dirt" (441). "Voices prepare herself, she partakes of suppose they get something, or are accidental things," Thea a ritual bath, reminiscent of the think they do" (542). Thea’s first tells Dr, Archie. The gift, the ta- one in Panther Canyon, where, experience with an audience lent, the training are nothing if one day, the stream and the came when she was twelve, not informed by intelligence. broken pottery came together playing the piano to a packed Twice Thea speaks bitterly of and revealed to her that art is not Moonstone opera house. Many the woman who sang Ortrud in an object or a performance but in that audience were friendly to Lohengrin: big-voiced, vulgar, "an effort to make a sheath, a her, including Spanish Johnny stupid, coarse, but popular as mould in which to imprison for a and his wife, but the Christmas Mme. Necker, "who’s a great ar- moment the shining, elusive ele- program created "a not very tist," though losing her voice ment which is life itself -- life Christmas rivalry" between two (523, 550). Depending on train- hurrying past us and running churches (75).. The experience ing, technique, care, and sheer away .... "This Keatsian view of was so painful, Thea almost luck, the voice may last for many art is then related to Parsifal’s stopped taking piano lessons quest for the Grail: "In singing, from Herr Wunsch. By the time years, as in the case of Ernes- one made a vessel of one’s tine Schumann-Heinke who she gets to New York, she can throat and nostrils and held it on ignore opera-goers like Fred’s sang at the Metropolitan from one’s breath, caught the stream 1899 to 1932, or it may be gone wife, who "ridiculed . the in a scale of natural intervals" singers they had heard the night tomorrow. Thea wishes Fred (378). could hear her "sing well, just before" (415). Some like Dr. once" (544), but the quality of The night before her first Archie believe that, as they lack American Walkgre, her first knowledge of music, Thea’s her singing is adversely affected scheduled Sieglinde, Thea is un- singing will be lost on them. by a management that contracts Fred assures him that "She gets too many singers and forces happy. Her respected colleague, Mme. Necker, has become hos- across to people who aren’t them to sing roles out of their tile; Thea has had a bad supper; judges .... If you were stone range; by conductors who she has lost her temper about deaf, it wouldn’t all be wasted" schedule exhausting rehearsals trivial things; she has a sore (482). Thea, like Orpheus, can before performances; and by .throat, and she is terrified she move stones, too. When she ex- jealous, uncooperative col- won’t be able to sleep if she presses a wish to be back in leagues, whom Thea holds in goes to bed. Once again she Dresden, she explains, "In New contempt. She is able to retain turns to her bath, which "in- York everything is impersonal. her standards of performance duced pleasant reflections and a Your audience never knows its. because she "cares" (555), but feeling of well-being," uncon- own mind, and its mind is never as Fred reminds her, "It’s how sciously associated with her dis- twice the same" (522). We may long you’re able to keep it up covery of the connection be- infer an audience without cul- that tells the story" (556). tween broken pottery and life, tural roots, subject to whims of

Page 31 critics and the cult of personal- al, and physical struggle. We do vannes (Kolodin 213-14). She did ities, an audience lacking the not count the cost because we not attend the Sunday evening conviction of European provin- do not know the cost. We ap- concert performance of Monte- cials, an audience often more plaud and shout brava as if the verdi’s Orfeo in April 1912 concerned with being seen than great performance were as because she had gone to Ari- seeing. natural as a flower bursting into zona. The tone of the novel be- bloom on the springtime prairie. ’Ann Moseley, taking her comes almost cynical when Nor do we remember how fragile terms from Suzanne Langer, Thea is announced to replace the blossom, how brief its beau- classifies each major character the "indisposed Madame ty -- beauty, as Keats said, "that as either "Apollonian" or "Dion- Gloeckler." The announcement must die." ysian." is met with great applause from 6This view of learning to lose the upper balconies where the NOTES is beautifully captured by Eliza- poor and the young opera lovers ’This is the piano-vocal score beth Bishop in her villanelle are seated or standing. Fred ex- plains to Dr. Archie that those of Orpheus: Oper in drei Akten, "One Art" (40-41). "down here" have "dined too with text translated into German by Alfred D0rffel, published in WORKS CITED well." By "down here," he does Leipzig in 1866. not mean only the orchestra seats, but more particularly the 2This lied, composed by Bee- Berryman, John. The Dream thirty-five boxes of the Diamond thoven (opus 46, 1795-96), en- Songs. New York: Farrar, 1969. Horseshoe held by stockholders titled "Adelaide" (/a-d~l-a-iy-da/), Bishop, Elizabeth. Geography and arbiters of society; the is a setting of a poem by Fried- Three. New York: Farrar, 1976. rich von Matthisson. The text Grand Tier; the Dress Circle andl Cather, Willa. The Song of the perhaps, even the Balcony. Far with translation is printed in The Lark. 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton, above is the Family Circle, from Fischer-Diskau Book of Lieder 1937. which only one-quarter of the (37). The poem, in theme and seats have a view of the stage imagery, resembles Virgil’s ac- ---. "Three American Singers." (Kolodin 49-79). It is from this count of Orpheus after his sec- McClure’s December 1913: 33- "top gallery" that Spanish John- ond loss of Eurydice, Georgics 48. ny joins with others of Thea’s IV. 506-20. In the poem, the lone- Daiches, David. Willa Cather: supporters for her Sieglinde. ly speaker wanders through a A Critical Introduction. 1951. Thus, "Thea Kronborg’s friends, spring garden, seeing images of New York: Collier, 1962. old and new, seated about the his beloved in flowers, trees, the house on different floors and sea, mountain snow, clouds, The Fischer-Diskau Book of levels, enjoyed her triumph ac- and stars; the breeze, waving Lieder. Trans. George Bird and cording to their natures" (572), grass, splashing water, and Richard Stokes. Introduction by During the performance of Die nightingale sing her name. In Dietrich Fischer-Diskau. New Walk,ire and between acts, we the final stanza he foresees a York: Limelight, 1984. observe and overhear reactions miraculous phoenix-like meta- Gerber, Philip L. Willa Cather. to Kronborg’s performance, re- morphosis: every purple leaf of Twayne’s U.S. Authors Series sponses shallow and profound, the flower will show her name. 258. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Hall, but none is more important than 3The earliest extant operas 1975. that of the "grey-haired little are two settings of L’Euridice by Giannone, Richard. Music in Mexican." Although the ex- the Florentine poet Ottavio Ri- Willa Cather’s Fiction. Lincoln: hausted singer is blind to all nuccini, by Jacopo Peri in 1600 University of Nebraska Press, who crowd around the stage and by Giulio Caccini in 1602. Ri- 1966. door, if she "was wondering nuccini avoided the tragic end- Kerman, Joseph. Opera as what was the good of it all," the ing by omitting any condition for Drama. New York: Knopf, 1956. smile on his face, "would have Eurydice’s release from the answered her. It is the only com- underworld. Kolodin, Irving. The Metropol- mensurate answer" (573). itan Opera 1883-1966: A Candid ’Willa Cather may have at- History. New York: Knopf, 1966. In the Epilogue, we view tended the first performance on Thea’s continuing career as 23 December 1909, with Homer Loewenberg, Alfred. "Gluck’s Kronborg through Aunt Tillie’s as Orpheus, Johanna Gadski as Orfeo on the Stage." Musical eyes. We may be reminded that, Eurydice, and young Alma Gluck Quarterly 26 (1940): 311-39. like Tillie, we view the success- as the Happy Shade. The con- Moseley, Ann. "The Dual Na- ful artist as having "just hap- ductor was Arturo Toscanini, ture of Art in The Song of the pened," not as the product of a and the set and costumes were Lark." Western American Litera- long, arduous mental, emotion- designed by Purls de Cha- ture 14 (1979): 19-32.

Page 32 Rosowski, Susan. The Voyage ca/ Statements 1893-1896. Lin- My ~ntonia (1918) had sold more Perilous: Willa Cather’s Roman- coln: University of Nebraska than 660,000 copies by 1981, ticism, Lincoln: University of Ne- Press, 1966. nearly half a million of these be- braska Press, 1986. Woodress, James. Wi//a Ca- tween 1937 and 1981, and nearly Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. ther: Her Life and Art. 1970. Lin- 50,000 between 1926 and 1937, Willa Cather: A Memoir. 1953. coin: Bison-University of Ne- when she was at the height of Lincoln: Bison-University of Ne- braska Press, 1975. her powers and her fame. braska Press, 1963. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Heni- Such statistical information Slote, Bernice, ed. and intro. gan is Professor of English at Southwest illuminates both the achieve- The Kingdom of Art: Willa Ca- Missouri State University, Springfield, ment and the popularity of a ther’s First Principles and Criti- Missouri. writer who did not even turn to longer narrative until she had reached her late thirties. But in the same way that a dictionary, if one allows oneself to get lost The Literary Endeavor of Willa Cather in it, can lead a reader in circles (As Inspired by Joan Crane’s Bibliography) around huge curiosities and gaps where language does not By JACK COLLINS fit life exactly, this bibliography Joan Crane’s valuable and gan at the University of Nebras- emphasizes by omission certain long awaited bibliography of the ka and which resulted in the curious features of Willa Ca- published writings of Willa Ca- publication of two collections, ther’s personal and literary lives. ther sets the scholarly imprima- The Troll Garden (1905) and the For example, the list of "Per- tur on the large corpus of critical breathtaking Youth and the sonal Letters, Statements, and articles, short stories, poetry, Bright Medusa (1920) by the time Quotations, Printed or Repro- and longer fiction produced by she had fully embarked on writ- duced" is extremely short (15 the distinguished American lit- ing longer fiction; and a career items). Only five adaptations of erary figure between her college as a novelist, during which time her fiction exist on film (two years in the early 1890s and her she abandoned salaried work at movie versions of her novel A death in 1947 in her 74th year. McClure’s in order to devote all Lost Lady [1923], a PBS version Her output staggers us. Joan her energy to writing fiction of the story "Paul’s Case" Crane lists 595 articles, reviews, (1912-1947). Aside from her re- [1905], one of "Jack-a-Boy," and and essays alone, all but thirty search and editorial work for S. excerpts read from three novels of them published before 1903, S. McClure, she had, by 1912, in the educational film Willa Ca- in newspapers and magazines written for newspapers in Lin- ther’s America). A musical (college, literary, and illustrated coln, Nebraska, and Pittsburgh, drama adapted from the story monthly). Between 1892 and the Pennsylvania, and had taught "Eric Hermannson’s Soul" year or two preceding her death, high school for five years in the (1900), which premiered at the she wrote 62 short stories, more latter city. University of Nebraska in 1979 than forty of which appeared Given the varied directions represents the single theatrical before she published her first her professional life had taken version of her fiction. Finally, novel in 1912. The 23 separate before she even turned forty, there is no mention of the last, publications that comprise her Willa Cather must have felt parti- unfinished novel that the writer major work include two volumes cularly gratified that her novels was working on during the of poetry, four collections of were well received once she 1940s. stories, the ghost written Auto- took the plunge. One of Ours The reasons for these omis- biography of S. S. McClure (1922) won her the Pulitzer Prize. sions are not themselves diffi- (1914), a book of essays on From the publication data that cult to ascertain, but once we writers and writing, and twelve Crane’s bibliography makes account for the gaps, further, novels. available, we can ascertain that more provocative questions Correlated with continuities from Death Comes for the Arch- arise. Few letters have appeared over periods of time within the bishop (1927) onward, her novels in print because Willa Cather re- author’s life, these figures indi- enjoyed enormous popular suc- trieved and burned a great many cate: a career as a cultural critic, cess. That novel had sold about in the years before she died, and particularly as a theater, music, 266,000 copies by 1978, for forbade in her will publication of and opera reviewer, from her col- example. Shadows on the Rock or quotation from any letters lege years through the year she (1931) had sold about 300,000 by after her death. Few films have went to work at McClure’s maga- 1977, and Sapphira and the Slave been made because following zine in New York (1906); a career Girl (1940) almost 285,000 by an authorized version of A Lost as a short story writer which be- 1976. Her all-time best seller Lady by Warner Brothers in 1924

Page 33 which did not satisfy her, and an York writers, celebrities honored western Nebraska. The painter’s unauthorized version by the with doctorates by Princeton), or early life reverses this move- same company of the same whether her face alone gazes ment, in that, born in Sun Prairie, novel in 1934 which infuriated out at the camera, one senses Wisconsin, she moved with her her, she directed in her will "that an absolute clarity of expression family at the age of fifteen to none of her books may ever be masking an enigma within. Williamsburg, Virginia. Although dramatized, broadcast or tele- In this respect, photographic Cather was born fourteen years vised or used in any other medi- images of her communicate a before O’Keeffe, each woman um in existence or discoverable haunting quality similar to pic- made a journey to the American in the future." As for the unfin- tures of Georgia O’Keeffe, Southwest that transformed her ished novel, which was to have whose husband Alfred Stieglitz vision and her art at about the been called Hard Punishments photographed her in a now fa- same time of life. At 39, Willa and set in medieval Avignon, mous series, and whom Van traveled to Arizona to visit her Edith Lewis destroyed the Vechten photographed the same brother and saw Walnut Canyon manuscript after Cather’s death, year he did Willa Cather, in 1936. near Flagstaff and the Grand leaving nothing to be published The clear eyes and facial expres- Canyon; three years later she that Crane could list. Without sions of each artist are heart- visited Mesa Verde and Taos delving into the motivations be- stopping: but what is the clarity with Edith Lewis, her companion hind the writer’s adamant of, exactly? Despite the popular- for the last four decades of her wishes and extreme actions ity of each woman’s work, de- life. At 42, Georgia went to Taos with respect to controlling ac- spite biographies and memoirs and stayed with Mabel Dodge cess to her private life and ver. of each woman’s life, both retain Luhan, subsequently returning sions of her fictions in other their privacy and remain solitary, to New Mexico every summer to media, we sense certain myster- an ideal state in the twentieth paint until Stieglitz died, when ies here that establish a large century but relatively unusual in she moved permanently to Abi- distance between the writer her- the age of information. quiu. self and the critical and popular readership which has so ad- These two women have more This fascination with the mired her work. in common than the qualities Southwest developed from vari- they project in photographs, al- ous sources in the life of each Truman Capote’s "Conversa- though it remains unclear artist, and produced varying im- tional Portrait" of Willa Cather in whether they knew each other. pacts on and within their work, Music for Chameleons reveals Both produced art of great orig- but the coincidence is striking, some unusual things about her inality and extraordinary quality as is the connection with Mabel -- her friendship with Yukio at a time when American high Luhan, whose cottage Willa Ca- Mishima, for example. At the culture remained virtually ther rented in 1925 and whose same time, unusual for the later closed to women. Born near Native American husband Tony Capote, he intrudes very little on Winchester, Virginia, the writer appears in Death Comes for the the private self behind the eyes moved with her family at the age Archbishop both as the Navaho ("blue, the pale brilliant cloud- of nine to the prairie of south- Eusabio and the rancher Manuel less blue of prairie skies") which Lujon. Unlike so many writers, "rather mesmerized" him when Cather got on cordially with Mrs. he met her in 1942. These eyes Luhan’s other great friend D. H. and the writer’s face still mes- Answers to Cather Lawrence. She spent two de- merize, in the Pictorial Memoir Puzzle, #2 lightful afternoons with the published by University of Ne- Lawrences in 1924 at her Bank braska Press in 1974, in the arti- by ROBERT H, KURTH Street apartment in New York, cle on Willa Cather that appeared and then visited the British last summer in National Geo- writer on his ranch outside Taos graphic, in the portrait by Leon during the 1925 sojourn in New Bakst (1923) that hangs in the Mexico. Cather also admired Omaha Public Library, and in the one of the fictions Lawrence famous photographs by Edward wrote in response to that area of Steichen (1927) and by Carl Van the world, The Woman Who Vechten (1936). Whether she ap- Rode Away (1928). pears dressed as a boy, hair All three of these artists found closely cropped, in pictures in the Southwest both a physical taken during her teens, or and an imaginative refuge from whether she shows up in later life in metropolitan centers of photographs as the only woman culture like New York, London, among a group of men (New or Paris. The stunning geogra-

Page 34 phy of the region accounts for The Professor’s House (1925), direction culture seems to be much of the inspiration and and Death Comes for the Arch- taking and the taste with which stimulation, particularly with bishop. These cities and cul- culture is to be appreciated. respect to the work of O’Keeffe. tures mean different things to O’Keeffe by and large rejected For Cather and for Lawrence, the characters they affect. But both the style and the subject the pre-American, even pre- underlying each impact one matter of the Precisionist artists Western civilization of the senses the absolute appeal of of the 1920s who transformed region, present in the form of the ancient and the alien under- American art. Fortunately, Stie- prehistoric Anasazi cliff cities lying contemporary existence. glitz understood her work and and contemporary Hopi and Cather subsequently shifted her promoted it. Lawrence wan- Navaho art and ritual, provided a attention from pre-Christian dered the world after the war certain relief from the modern cities to the story of the Church, without ever finding or founding urban and industrial develop- in Shadows on the Rock, set in a circle or a permanent resting ment that each writer rejected. Quebec in the eighteenth cen- place. Although Cather enjoyed The search for mythic intensity tury, and in the unfinished last significant popular success led both writers toward "primi- novel, set in Papal Avignon in from the late 1920s onward, crit- tive" life in the sense that non- the fourteenth. However, al- ics of the time, while admiring Western cultural forms and pre- though she concerns herself her work, found it difficult to twentieth century patterns of with Catholic mythology and categorize. One reviewer of My life offered something pristine, ritual in these later works, her Mortal Enemy (1926), one of unspoiled, and harmonious to primary interest remains fo- Capote’s favorites, comments: the modern artist and, by exten- cused on the way human struc- "In the first place, this is not a sion, to those who understood tures, whether cliff dwellings or novel. In the second place, it is and appreciated his or her work. cathedrals, survive through one of the most superb pieces This longing for a better time time. Viewed from this perspec- of literary endeavor this reviewer than the present underlies Ca- tive, Death Comes for the Arch- has ever read, regardless of lan- ther’s famous assertion, in the bishop, which brings together guage or nation." the Christian and the non-Chris- Prefatory Note to her collection In her well known letter to The of essays Not Under Forty (1936) tian, becomes an important tran- sitional work. Commonweal in 1927 concern- that "the world broke in two in ing the writing of Death Comes 1922 or thereabout." Her disgust As for Joyce’s great literary for the Archbishop, Cather her- with American values during the experiment, Ulysses divided the self alludes to the many re- war and the years afterward pre- world in two in much the same viewers who "assert vehemently meates One of Ours, published way that Willa Cather perceived that it is not a novel," preferring in 1922, whose misunderstood it as having broken in two. He herself to call it "a narrative." and thwarted young hero is pre- and other artists who exiled Unlike Katherine Mansfield and sented as better off killed in bat- themselves in Paris experi- Virginia Woolf, who both mar- tie than spared to return home to mented so radically with tradi- ried critics and who, in Woolf’s further disillusionment. Her late tional artforms that many fig- case, belonged to a brilliant and story "The Old Beauty," written ures, both established and in the articulate circle of artists who the same year Not Under Forty process of establishing them- could both appreciate and pro- appeared in print, and set in selves, became somehow in- mote her experimental fiction, 1922, evokes a genteel and gra- stantly old fashioned. Gertrude Willa Cather had to go it alone to cious standard of perspective Stein, for example, will always a much greater extent. and behavior shattered forever represent the modern age to the by the war. Two other events few who actually read her thor- Her work is very experimental. that took place in 1922 have a oughly and to the many who The novels celebrated as pic- certain retrospective value with celebrate her eccentricities and tures of America in an historical respect to Cather’s imagination innovations. By contrast Willa §ense -- O Pioneers! (1913), My and achievement, however she Cather, like Somerset Maugham, Antonia, One of Ours, Death herself registered their impact: still suggests Victorian times, Comes for the Archbishop, and the uncovering of Tutankha- though like him she wrote her Sapphira and the Slave Girl -- men’s tomb and the publication best novels in the 1920s and are each breakthroughs or expe- of James Joyce’s Ulysses. riments from a literary perspec- 1930s. tive. The more personal and idio- Three of Cather’s novels Like Georgia O’Keeffe and D. syncratic lesser known works -- assert the primary importance of H. Lawrence, Willa Cather re- Alexander’s Bridge (1912), The the hidden tombs, hidden cities, mained relatively isolated Song of the Lark, A Lost Lady, and ancient culture of the mesas throughout her mature years The Professor’s House, My Mor- and canyons of the Southwest: from the movements and circles tal Enemy, and Lucy Gayheart The Song of the Lark (1915), that tend to define both the (1935) -- represent a core

Page 35 achievement of a quality com- as "a rare object in the middle of ment in the central section of parable to Woolf’s astonishing a table, which one may examine The Professor’s House just fiction from Jacob’s Room from all sides." In 1921 she de- alluded to. The voice that tells (1922) to The Waves (1931). Ca- scribes A Lost Lady, her novel- "Tom Outland’s Story" is that of ther herself, commenting on her in-progress, in terms of still life: a young man long dead who first two novels, points out that "... Just as if I put here on the never appears in the main narra- she moved American fiction out table a green vase, and beside it tive of the novel. In the short of the "drawing room" where her a yellow orange. Now these two novel immediately following this immediate predecessors Henry things affect each other. Side by work, My Mortal Enemy, the cen- James and Edit’h Wharton had side, they produce a reaction tral character Myra Henshawe written so comfortably. More im- which neither of them produce gives utterance to her anger and portant even than effecting this alone." The two narratives of anguish with the intensity of a shift in appropriate setting and The Professor’s House she com- voice from Poe’s repertoire. subject matter for the American pares to interior foreground and Finally, in its authorial or narra- novel, Cather thought and heard exterior background planes in torial dimension, we must con- literature much the same way Dutch painting. The nine books sider the rich, sad, soothing, im- Woolf did. We perceive her orig- of Death Comes for the Arch- personal voice of the writer her- inality in this regard if we con- bishop she models on the series self, which deepens as her tic- sider the importance of visual of frescoes in the Pantheon by tion progresses through five thinking and of voice in her fic- Puvis de Chavannes depicting decades, a voice compassion- tion writing. the life of Saint Genevieve. In ate, comfortless, surprised at no Cather’s preoccupation with Shadows on the Rock she tries enormity, thrilled at the possi- actual pictures suggested the to render in prose "a series of bility of beauty, inured to the titles of both Death Comes for pictures remembered rather persistence of dread. This dis- the Archbishop (taken from a than experienced." tinctive voice encompasses the woodcut in Holbein’S Dance of What is most original about all religious and the elegiac tones. Death) and The Song of the Lark this is that her visual way of Though we seldom hear it these (taken from a painting by Jules thinking enables her to perceive days, it is one of the oldest Breton which she saw at the Chi- fictional structures spatially. voices in literature. In the cago Art Institute). In tl~e fa- The planes in her pictures, as it Aeneid, for instance, it renders mous story "Paul’s Case" the were, can be blocks of narrative. lachrymae rerum, the tears of moment of death for the protag. Woolf’s To the Lighthouse things. onist occurs when and "be- (1927) makes virtuoso use of Among her predecessors, cause the picture making mech- such a conception of narrative. Willa Cather admired Poe anism was crushed.,’ Comment- Yet the central panel of narrative enough to choose his work as ing to a reporter of the time on "Tom Outland’s Story" in The the subject of her commence- the writing of One of Ours, Ca- Professor’s House, a work vir- ment address to the university ther refers to the way her mind tually obscure in comparison to literary society. She called him works in describing her main Woolf’s novel, achieves the the author of "the first perfect character’s thought processes: same effect as the famous short stories in the English lan- "1 have cut out all picture- "Time Passes" two years before guage." Of Flaubert’s works, making because that boy does Woolf presents her own experi- she found Salammbo her favor- not see pictures. It was hard to ment to the public. ite; her later work in fact re- cease to do the thing that I do The aspect of fiction known minds one of the Flaubert of best, but.., because I was will- as voice, which Woolf manipu- Trois Contes. Among her con- ing to pay so much to write lates so brilliantly in The Waves, temporaries, she singled out about this boy I felt that I had a has an unusual quality in Ca- Katherine Mansfield for her vir- right to do so." ther’s work from the beginning, tuosity in rendering "the secret "Picture-making" is, of exposed constantly as she was accords and antipathies which course, the very foundation of to the human voice in the lie hidden under our everyday metaphor and of figurative writ- oratory, theater, and opera she behaviour." ing, so characteristic of Cather’s reviewed. Her fictional autobiog- Willa Cather’s less popular style. In addition, she conceived raphy and portrait of the devel- novels are all about such se- the subjects and the structures opment of an artist, The Song of crets and antipathies, though of her novels in pictorial terms. the Lark, traces the steps by this undercurrent of dread, even For example, she refers to her which Thea Kronborg finds and paranoia, is seldom commented first novel Alexander’s Bridge as develops her voice in the course upon, obscured by her choice of a "studio picture." For Elizabeth of becoming a famous opera popular subjects like pioneers Shepley Sergeant, she ,visual- singer. By the mid-1920s, Cather and heroic Catholic priests or by izes the heroine of My Antonia pulls off a breathtaking experi- her particularly exquisite depic-

Page 36 tions of various American land- scapes. Yet many of the stories .&.ntonia Farm Home Restoration which form narrative blocks in We wish to report on the Antonette, daughter of Anna her longer fiction are ferocious planned restoration of the Pavel- Pavelka. Little Mildred asked in the suffering they describe ka (My Antonia) house. The Oc- Miss Latta (Roxine Latta who and express. Her projected last tober 1 fund raising dinner has later married Emil Pavelka) to fix novel Hard Punishments seems brought in many contributions her hair and wash her face and to have been conceived in this from people unable to attend. see that she looked all right be~ darker tone. She imagined it as In consultation with Wendell cause Willa Cather was coming the story of a friendship be- Frantz of the Nebraska State to Grandma’s house. tween two young men who have Historical Society, we decided suffered grotesquely, set In 1931 Cather made her last to secure the house for winter visit to old friends in Webster against the background of the by puttying the windows and County. Avignon Papacy in 1340. The painting the exterior. In the Hard Punishments of the title spring architects from Kansas The money raised this fall will evoke the cruelty of Pasolini’s University at Lawrence will suffice to secure the exterior. adaptations for cinema of make a detailed drawing of the More funds will be needed to Chaucer, Boccaccio The Ara- house as it was in 1916 -- at restore the rooms to their orig- bian Nights, and de Sade, in that about the time Willa Cather inal contour and location. Many one character would have had visited Annie Pavelka while she visitors say they do not mind the his tongue torn out with red hot was writing My Antonia. fact that the house is unfur- pincers for "blasphemy" and the These plans will be amplified nished. A real Cather fan can other his hands permanently and corrected by talks with Leo people the house with furniture broken for stealing by being Pavelka, Antonette Kort and and children. In time, however, strung up by his thumbs. Elizabeth Boyd, all of whom Dr. Frantz feels we could have a grew up in that house, and Rox- floor plan of each room posted Georgia O’Keeffe expressed to help visitors reconstruct the such darker aspects of mortality ine Pavelka, widow of Emil 1916 furnishings. In our present in her skulls and crosses, word- Pavelka. Roxine, who lived with society, isolated farms fall vic- lessly, while Edward Hopper the family before electricity and plumbing, taught the Prairie tim to antique hunters who van- captured a peculiarly American dalize deserted homes. dread in his lonely houses next Gem School where the Pavelka to the railroad tracks and sunlit children attended. In 1931 she We want to thank all of you empty buildings in the early had as a pupil six-year-old who have sent money for this morning. Willa Cather thought in Mildred Dvoracek, daughter of Pavelka house restoration. pictures, but wrote in words, so that her images speak as well as appear to imagination’s eye. Whether her distinctive voice sings of the freshly revealed Visiting Fellowships landscape of the present or of the hidden riches of the past, of for the Academic Year 1989-1990 her characters’ small heroisms The Beinecke Rare Book & cipients are expected to be in or of their bitter reverses and Manuscript Library, Yale Univer- residence during the period of agonizing degradations, this sity, offers short-term fellow- their award and are encouraged voice in her fiction is perhaps ships to support visiting schol- to participate in the activities of our best clue to the enigma ars pursuing post-doctoral or Yale University. behind those clear, sky-blue equivalent research in its collec- There is no special applica- eyes that mesmerized Truman tions. The fellowships, which tion form. Applicants are asked Capote: eyes that have seen support travel to and from New to submit a resume and a brief everything and still see beauty, Haven and pay a living allowing research proposal (not to ex- eyes that have seen beauty and of $1,000 per month, are de- ceed three pages) to the Direc- still see everything. signed primarily to provide ac- tor, Beinecke Rare Book & ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jack Collins, cess to the Library for scholars Manuscript Library, Box 1603A San Francisco, is a lawyer for the Sierra who reside outside the greater Yale Station, New Haven, Club and an author. New Haven area. The length of a Connecticut 06520-1603. The grant, normally one month, will proposal should emphasize the depend on the applicant’s re- relationship of the Beinecke col- search proposal; fellowships lections to the project and state must be taken up between Sep- the preferred dates of residence. tember 1989 and May 1990. Re- The applicant should also ar-

Page 37 range to have two confidential Awards will be announced in letters of recommendation sent March 1989 for the period Sep- to the Director. tember 1989 through May 1990. Plan to Attend the One of those selected to re- The Beinecke Library is open FOURTH ceive an award will be named for research Monday through NATIONAL the Donald C. Gallup Fellow in Friday, 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., American Literature. There is no throughout the year except SEMINAR special application procedures Labor Day, Thanksgiving and the in for this named fellowship. following Friday, December 24- This announcement contains January 1, Memorial Day, and Santa Fe, New Mexico all of the information necessary July 4. to complete the application For more information, write to process. the director or to the curator All application materials must most closely associated with June 16-23, 1990 be received by January 15, 1989. your field of study. "" IIil _1 - II

YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN THE LIFE AND GROWTH AIMS OF THE WCPM OF THE ORGANIZATION ¯ To promote and assist in the development and preservation ¯ By being a Cather Memorial Member and financial contri- of the art, literary, and historical collection relating to the butor: life, time, and work of Willa Cather, in association with the BENEFACTOR ...... $1,000.00 and over Nebraska State Historical Society. ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS = To cooperate with the Nebraska State Historical Society in Patron ...... $100.00 continuing to identify, restore to their original condition, and Su staining ...... 25.00 preserve places made famous by the writing of Wllla Cather. Family ...... 15.00 Individual ...... 10.00 ¯ To provide for Willa Cather a living memorial, through the WCPM members receive: Foundation, by encouraging and assisting scholarship in the Newsletter subscription field of the humanities. Free guided tour to restored buildings To perpetuate an interest throughout the world in the work ¯ By contributing your Willa Cather artifacts, letters, papers, of Willa Cather. and publications to the Museum. ¯ By contributing your ideas and suggestions to the Board of BOARD OF GOVERNORS Governors. Keith Albers Robert E. Knoll Susan J. Rosowski William Thomas AutO, M.D. Ella Cather Lewis David E. Scherman ALL MEMBERSHIPS, CONTRIBUTIONS AND Bruce P. Baker, II Lucia Woods Lindley C. Bertrand Schultz BEQUESTS ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE Mildred R. Bennett Catherine Cather Lowell Marian Schultz Under Section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1965 W. K. Bennett, M.D. John March Margaret Cather Shannon Don E. Connors Dale McDole Betty Sherwood Josephine Frisbie Miriam Mountford Helen Cather Southwick Special group memberships (such as clubs or businesses) are David Garwood John J. Murphy Mareella Van Meter available. Write to the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial for details. non Hull Harry Obitz

Page 38 Nonprofit Organ. U.S. POSTAGE PAID Red Cloud, NE 68970 Permit No. 10 Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial 326 North Webster Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970