Cather Studies, Volume 11: Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux

Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux

CATHER STUDIES

Series Editor 1988– 2004 Susan J. Rosowski, University of Nebraska– Lincoln

2005– Guy Reynolds, University of Nebraska– Lincoln

Board Members Marilyn Arnold, Brigham Young University Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Le Moyne College Kari A. Ronning, University of Nebraska–Lincoln David Stouck, Simon Fraser University Robert Thacker, St. Lawrence University

CATHER STUDIES 11

Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux

Edited by Ann Moseley, John J. Murphy, and Robert Thacker

An earlier version of the prologue was originally published as Modes and Facets of the American Scene: Studies in Honor of Cristina Giorcelli, by John J. Murphy (Paler- mo, Italy: ila Palma, 2014).

Excerpt from “Of Modern Poetry” from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House llc. All rights reserved. Used also by permission of Faber & Faber for the United King- dom and British Commonwealth excluding Canada.

The series Cather Studies is sponsored by the Cather Project at the University of Nebraska– Lincoln in cooperation with the Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, Nebraska.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Moseley, Ann, 1947– editor. | Murphy, John J. (John Joseph), 1933– editor. | Thacker, Robert, 1951– editor. Title: Willa Cather at the modernist crux / edited by Ann Moseley, John J. Murphy, and Robert Thacker. Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. | Series: Cather studies; 11 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identiﬁers: lccn 2016032546 isbn 9780803296992 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn 9781496200648 (epub) isbn 9781496200655 (mobi) isbn 9781496200662 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: Cather, Willa, 1873– 1947— Criticism and interpretation. | Modern- ism (Literature)— United States. | Cather, Willa, 1873– 1947. Song of the lark. Classiﬁcation: lcc ps3505.a87 z947 2017 | ddc 813/.52— dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032546

Frontispiece: Warren Prosperi, American, born in 1949. By collaborator: Lucia Prosperi, American, born in 1951. Museum Epiphany III. Oil on canvas. 52 x 35 inches (132.1 v 88.9 cm). Gift of David and Victoria Croll, 2012.131. Photo- graph © 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. To the Memory of David Porter (1935– 2016) Cather scholar, musician, teacher, and wise friend

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix Introduction: Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux xi ANN MOSELEY, JOHN J. MURPHY, AND ROBERT THACKER

Prologue: Gifts from the Museum: Catherian Epiphanies in Context 1 JOHN J. MURPHY

Part 1. Beginnings 1. The Compatibility of Art and Religion for Willa Cather: From the Beginning 19 STEVEN B. SHIVELY

2. Thea in Wonderland: Willa Cather’s Revision of the Alice Novels and the Gender Codes of the Western Frontier 43 MICHELLE E. MOORE

3. Ántonia and Hiawatha: Spectacles of the Nation 64 JOSEPH C. MURPHY

Part 2. Presences 4. Willa Cather, Howard Pyle, and “The Precious Message of Romance” 93 RICHARD C. HARRIS

5. “Then a Great Man in American Art”: Willa Cather’s Frederic Remington 113 ROBERT THACKER 6. Willa Cather, Ernest L. Blumenschein, and “The Painting of Tomorrow” 132 JAMES A. JAAP

7. From The Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart, and Die Walküre to Die Winterreise 149 DAVID PORTER

8. The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester: Prostitution and Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady 170 CHARMION GUSTKE

9. The Outlandish Hands of Fred Demmler: Pittsburgh Prototypes in The Professor’s House 188 TIMOTHY W. BINTRIM

10. Translating the Southwest: The 1940 French Edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop 214 MARK J. MADIGAN

Part 3. Articulation: The Song of the Lark 11. Elements of Modernism in The Song of the Lark 229 ANN MOSELEY

12. “The Earliest Sources of Gladness”: Reading the Deep Map of Cather’s Southwest 253 DIANE PRENATT

13. Re(con)ceiving Experience: Cognitive Science and Creativity in The Song of the Lark 271 JOSHUA DOLEŽAL

14. Women and Vessels in The Song of the Lark and Shadows on the Rock 289 ANGELA CONRAD

Epilogue: The Difference That Letters Make: A Meditation on The Selected Letters of Willa Cather 303 ANDREW JEWELL AND JANIS STOUT

Contributors 327 Index 333 ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece. Warren Prosperi, Museum Epiphany III ii 3.1. Willa Cather as a child, 1882 65 3.2. Augustus Saint- Gaudens, Hiawatha, 1871– 72 71 3.3. Currier & Ives, Hiawatha’s Departure, ca. 1868 76 4.1. Cather’s inscription to Howard Pyle (1906) in a copy of The Troll Garden 94 4.2. Howard Pyle, illustration from Otto of the Silver Hand 100 4.3. Howard Pyle, “The buccaneer was a picturesque fellow” 104 5.1. Frederic Remington, Moonlight, Wolf, ca. 1909 122 6.1. Ernest Blumenschein, The Lake, ca. 1927 137 6.2. Ernest Blumenschein, Mountains Near Taos, ca. 1926 138 6.3. Ernest Blumenschein, Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 1925 141 8.1. Jeannie Rogers, prototype for Nell Emerald in A Lost Lady 179 9.1. Haniel Long 191 9.2. Alice Long 192 9.3. Self- portrait by Fred Demmler for Lucien Price 195 9.4. Fred Demmler in his Wood Street studio in Pittsburgh 198 9.5. Lucien Price as a young man, 1901 199 9.6. Jack Cather and Irma Wells Cather at the time of their marriage 202

Introduction Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux

ANN MOSELEY, JOHN J. MURPHY, AND ROBERT THACKER

The poem of the mind in the act of finding What will suffice. It has not always had To find: the scene was set; it repeated what Was in the script. Then the theatre was changed To something else. Its past was a souvenir. It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place. It has to face the men of the time and to meet The women of the time. It has to think about war And it has to find what will suffice. It has To construct a new stage.

— Wallace Stevens, from“Of Modern Poetry” (1942)

When in My Ántonia Willa Cather concludes the story of Mr. Shimerda’s burial, his grave having been placed by Mrs.

xi xii ann moseley, john j. murphy, and robert thacker

Shimerda and Ambrosch at “the southwest corner of their own land,” perhaps to satisfy an old Bohemian custom that a suicide be buried at a crossroads, she explains through Jim Burden how the roads that came later, as his grandfather had foreseen, deviat- ed slightly so as to avoid passing over the suicide’s grave. Stepping back, Jim also writes that “I never came upon that place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the proprietary intent, that had put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence— the error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along which the homecoming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper” (109, 114–15). Both as an image and within the book’s plot, this is a romantic and retro- spective moment. But this is also a moment when Cather—through her autobiographical narrating persona, Jim Burden—may be seen standing at a crossroads, looking both ways, and recalling. Unlike Jim, and unlike the tired drivers he invokes, Cather was not at a literal crossroads; rather, in depicting them, she creates the figure of this crux within the modernist narrative she was making then: an aesthetic crux, a philosophical crux, a formal crux. As such, it is a moment that might well be seen as signifying Cather’s own situation. Born a Victorian in 1873, Cather made herself a modernist as she wrote her poems and fictions into the twentieth century. In the essay that serves as our prologue here, John J. Murphy points to Wallace Stevens’s “Of Modern Poetry” and uses it to excellent effect to define what he argues are a series of well-known and acknowledged epiphanies in Cather. That Murphy, like Tom Quirk in his Henri Bergson study (155, 187– 88), sees this poem as indicative of Cather’s particular modernism is apt, since in many ways Cather’s own engagement with the poetry of her time, and her own early attempts to write and publish poems herself before abandoning the genre in the 1920s, mark her development as a modernist. We will develop this idea as a way of introducing xiii Introduction the essays we offer here. Later in this volume, Joseph C. Murphy probes Cather’s relation to Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha (1855), and Richard C. Harris begins and ends his discussion of Cather’s connections to Howard Pyle by invoking “Dedicatory” (1903). That poem was her first poem in her first book, one nostalgically and romantically celebrating the time she spent in childhood along the Republican River with her favorite brothers, Roscoe and Douglass. (Its image— young characters together dreaming, wondering what was to come to them— was one Cather reiterated in “The Enchant- ed Bluff, ” in Alexander’s Bridge, in My Ántonia.) Even though W. H. Auden would later assert in his 1939 elegy to Yeats, written just as the world lunged toward another cataclysmic war, that “poetry makes nothing happen,” there is little doubt that poetry and the poetic embody an age’s time, its artists’ most critical concerns. As Auden continued, poetry is a “way of happening, a mouth” (246). So Cather’s poems at the beginning of her career reveal her at an aesthetic crossroads as she set out from Nebraska and asserted herself. In some ways, Cather’s beginnings in poetry define her own biographical and aesthetic situation facing what we call here the “modernist crux.” That fact is revelatory through the poems she produced and published in April Twilights, her first book and one she later transformed in response to changing poetics. Few would dispute that the late-nineteenth- century lyric poetry she first wrote— with its conventions, its regularities, its certainties, and its precise formal demands—displays a writer’s assumptions about the poetic. Cather’s poems— written mostly in the 1890s and early 1900s— reveal a perfectly credible late-Victorian poet, trying her hand at most of the conventional modes, yet at the same time clearly indicating the emergence of something else: a modernist sensibility. When in 1923 Alfred A. Knopf published April Twilights and Oth- er Poems, and offered it in a fine book edition designed by Elmer Adler and others as their first such project at the Pynson Press, Cather presented herself as a very different sort of poet than she had in 1903. In the two decades between the two versions of her book, poetry itself had been transformed. The second collection xiv ann moseley, john j. murphy, and robert thacker was published just when she was being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours and about to burst, between 1923 and 1927, into four quite modernist novels. In the new collection of poems, thirteen of the more conventional ones from the original April Twi- lights were gone and another twelve, more modern, had taken their place. Among those dropped was “Dedicatory,” with its ring dove’s call and moonlight rendezvous; one of those added was “Street in Packingtown (Chicago),” a naturalistic, imagistic poem of power, quite different from anything Cather had produced before, featuring the image of “a Polack’s brat” who “Joylessly torments a cat.” It seems to be from another hand; yet she has this figure “beneath his willow tree, his tribal, tutelary tree, / The tortured cat across his knee, / With hate, perhaps, a threat, maybe, / Lithuania looks at me” (April Twilights 136, 137). To one familiar with the late-Victorian lyrics Cather offered in her original version of April Twilights, this poem brings some dismay, certainly, but it also shows Cather in 1915 at a crux: the poetry she tried to produce in the 1890s and 1900s was being supplanted by another type of verse altogether. Into the 1910s Cather tried her hand at it, and not without some success if one looks at such poems as “Prairie Spring,” one of the epigraphs to O Pioneers! She continued to write and publish poems during that decade and be recognized as a poet and included in the anthologies of the day; but after she published April Twilights and Other Poems in 1923, she would publish just one more poem, “Poor Marty” (1930). So her self-deprecation was real in 1925 when, having been asked about her poetry, Cather wrote Alice Hunt Bart- lett that “I do not take myself seriously as a poet” (Bartlett 179). That Cather was then drawn more to prose fiction than to poetry was clear, but her verse is nonetheless a critical barometer of her aesthetic. Though long disregarded in Cather criticism, often just ignored, by its very presence in her oeuvre Cather’s poetry helps define her particular modernism. She was, after all, the first novelist to teach us how to read the prairie as an achieved and realistic as well as an imaginary and fanciful setting— first in O Pioneers! and, once she had perfected her narrative telling in writing S. S. xv Introduction

McClure’s My Autobiography and The Song of the Lark, more endur- ingly in My Ántonia. The essays that follow are by readers of Cather who are also critics and scholars. Because Cather studies seems ever and always to be deﬁning just how this author connected with the world in which she lived from 1873 to 1947, their engagement here with her antecedents, her reading, and her inﬂuences re-creates transformations in a long career of writing that shaped the understandings, the epiphanies, the wisdom embodied in her work. As Richard H. Millington has written in among the best single articulations of Cather’s modernism, her “novels invite us toward new forms of thought and feeling, toward a new sense of the sources of meaning and value, toward a new repertoire of response,” concluding that “Cather’s modernism is most powerful and most original when it has all but disappeared from sight” (56). Millington’s phrasing “all but disappeared” is the key point, as it has not disappeared, and as readers we follow her lead. April Twilights and Other Poems was published in the year following both The Waste Land and Ulysses, and even though as a novelist she would publish just one more poem, Cather watched what was happening—with some dismay—during her time and continued to write poems and pay attention to poetry and poetics. That much is clear in My Mortal Enemy (1926), where Cather has the dying Myra reciting Heine to Nellie Birdseye and through their exchange offers her own critique of certain modernist poetics:

“Come, dear,” she said presently, when I put down the book, “you don’t really like this new verse that’s going round, ugly lines about ugly people and common feelings—you don’t really?” When I reminded her that she liked Walt Whitman, she chuckled slyly. “Does that save me? Can I get into your new Parnassus on that dirty old man? I suppose I ought to be glad of any sort of ticket at my age! I like naughty rhymes, when they don’t try to be too pompous.” (66) xvi ann moseley, john j. murphy, and robert thacker

Cather also liked Whitman, also with qualiﬁcations. As Nellie is about to depart after their readings from Heine and their discussion of contemporary poetics, she offers this: “When I rose and turned on one of the shrouded lights, Mrs. Henshawe looked up at me and smiled drolly. ‘We’ve had a ﬁne afternoon, and Biddy forgetting her ails. How the great poets do shine on, Nellie! Into the dark corners of the world. They have no night.’” Nellie’s next line applies equally well to her author: “They shone for her, certainly” (68). Cather closes this chapter of her chilling but inescapably truthful story with an account of Myra’s reading of “new books.” These books are delivered by, in Myra’s words, “a nice young person from the library”; Myra would try to read them, but “she used to shut a new book and lie back and repeat the old ones she knew by heart, the long declamations from Richard II or King John. As I passed her door I would hear her murmuring at the very bottom of her rich Irish voice: Old John of Gaunt, time- honoured Lan-cas- ter . . .” (68).

Cather knew whereof she spoke. A poet herself and a novelist and editor of poetry and ﬁction at McClure’s, she followed modern poetry as perhaps the best literary measure of her time; she revered Robert Frost and hated Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon Riv- er Anthology (1915). Probably in 1939 she wrote a fan letter to Edna St. Vincent Millay, saying at one point that “Nobody ever sings anymore” and thanking Millay “for the glow of pleasure” the poet’s latest book—Huntsman, What Quarry?—had given her (Letters 572). While this elaboration of Cather’s views on poetry might seem a bit off focus here—since none of the essays that follow take up her verse except incidentally— that relation speaks directly to Cather as artist at the modernist crux. So formally changed, so discursive, so lacking in the melodic that she so valued, modern poetry made vivid the challenges Cather faced as a ﬁction writer as she both made herself born and, without emulating Ezra Pound (for she did not think him a poet), made her work new and modern in her own way. The essays collected here certainly demonstrate that Mil- xvii Introduction lington’s assertion is apt: “Cather’s modernism is most powerful and most original when it has all but disappeared from sight.”

As with other volumes of Cather Studies, most of these essays were first presented at an International Willa Cather Semi- nar, in this case the fourteenth, “Willa Cather: Canyon, Rock, and Mesa Country,” held 16– 22 June 2013 at Northern Arizona Univer- sity in Flagstaff. It was sponsored by the Willa Cather Foundation, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and Northern Arizona Uni- versity. With well over a hundred participants, the gathering included twenty- two plenary talks and sixty papers in concurrent sessions arranged throughout the week, a keynote presentation by Professor Christian E. Downum (Anthropology, Northern Arizo- na University), and two excursions: to Walnut Canyon and to the Winslow area. Later summarizing the essence of his presentation that day, Downum wrote that “the pueblo people of Walnut Can- yon had their feet rooted firmly in the earth that they farmed, yet their social connections reached far across the real world, and their ideas soared well into the cosmos. Walnut Canyon was, and is, a place of harsh realities but also a place of great beauty and meaning” (Downum). Northern Arizona, especially Walnut Canyon and the Winslow area, is critically strategic to Willa Cather’s particular modernism. Her introduction there to ancestral Pueblo locales and ruins was the source of a profound artistic awakening for her, the selfsame awakening she gives Thea in The Song of the Lark. More than that, as we have long known, Cather’s first visit to the Southwest, in 1912, was a catalytic moment in her developing aesthetic: there she found on her own continent a landscape possessed of a deep past, equivalent to the south of France she had seen, felt, and understood around Avignon in 1902. Seeing the Southwest for the first time ten years later, Cather envisioned the new ways of writing the West she knew and began discovering how she would ultimately develop them. That experience led to O Pioneers! (aesthetically her “first novel”), to The Song of the Lark (where Thea discovers the “great fact” of the ancient people of the xviii ann moseley, john j. murphy, and robert thacker

Southwest who would prove so important to Cather’s art), and to Jim Burden contemplating Mr. Shimerda’s crossroads in My Ánto- nia. Traveling to the Southwest in 1912 and then back to Nebraska, where she again visited the Bohemian country and wrote Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant in July of anticipating the wheat harvest there, led Cather directly to her modernist awakening. Her immediate response to what she saw in the Bohemian country was the poem “Prairie Spring,” which she enclosed in typescript in that letter (Let- ters 164– 65) and which would become an epigraph in O Pioneers!

In arranging the essays here, we have decided to take a bio-thematic approach, offering them in sections. As the subject our frontispiece makes visual and John J. Murphy suggests in the prologue, cultural inheritances and responses to art define most of these essays and predicate Cather’s response to the arts she lived through, was influenced by, saw, read, and heard. Thus Warren Pros- peri’s image of a twenty-first- century girl responding to nineteenth- century sculpture and painting is comparable, even as a tantalizing reversal, to Cather’s modernism from the perspective of nineteenth- century aesthetics. The process of discovering what to set out in a changed theater and on an empty stage was the crux Cather shared with her modernist contemporaries. Our first section, “Beginnings,” focuses on early Cather; the second, “Presences,” extends early influences to deal with specific instances of relation: with Howard Pyle, with Frederic Remington, with Ernest L. Blumenschein, with Franz Schubert, and with others. The third section, “Articulation,” focuses mainly on The Song of the Lark, that novel most especially critical to Cather’s emergence as a writer of the Southwest, as a modernist, and as the major novelist she would become. Just as Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux begins with a prologue, it ends as so many of Cather’s own books do, with an epilogue. This epilogue, a meditation on The Selected Letters of Willa Cath- er by its editors, Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout, is a recognition that in 2013—just before the Flagstaff seminar— Cather studies xix Introduction was transformed by the publication of their book. So Jewell and Stout spoke at the seminar in the full glow of another crux, at the shining moment when Cather’s letters could be read in books and on websites. Gone are the anguished paraphrases, gone is the sense of unease in the very act of quoting from Cather’s wonderful letters at all. Their Selected Letters, now widely used in Cather scholarship in ways that, given all those years in which we scholars had been precluded from using them, make us all positively gid- dy. More than that, the Selected Letters presages the Complete Let- ters of Willa Cather, which will eventually be available on the Willa Cather Archive website. As Grace Slick had it as she began a set at Woodstock in August 1969, “It’s a new dawn!” Thus the Jewell- Stout meditation recaptures and preserves a watershed moment in Cather studies. As we consider Cather’s own transformations as she stood at the modernist crux, as she stood at an imaginative crossroads, knowing what had been and anticipating what was to come, we readers of Cather, we critics of Cather, and we scholars of Cather discover more of what she saw and how she wanted us to read.

WORKS CITED

Auden, W. H. “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” Collected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelson. New York: Modern Library, 2007. 245– 47. Print. Bartlett, Alice Hunt. “The Dynamics of American Poetry— XI.” Poetry Review 16 (1925). In Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters. Ed. Brent L. Bohlke. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986. 179. Print. Cather, Willa. April Twilights and Other Poems. Ed. Robert Thacker. Letters selected by Andrew Jewell and Janis P. Stout. New York: Everyman’s/ Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Print. —. My Ántonia. 1918. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Charles Mignon, and Kari Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994. Print. —. My Mortal Enemy. 1926. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. xx ann moseley, john j. murphy, and robert thacker

Downum, Christian E. Message to Ann Moseley. 29 July 2015. E- mail. Millington, Richard H. “Willa Cather’s Two Modernisms.” Letterature D’America 144 (2013): 41– 56. Print. Quirk, Tom. Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990. Print. Stevens, Wallace. “Of Modern Poetry.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym et al. 7th ed. 5 vols. New York: Norton, 2007. D (1914– 45): 1453– 54. Print. Willa Cather at the Modernist Crux

Prologue Gifts from the Museum: Catherian Epiphanies in Context

JOHN J. MURPHY

“OF MODERN POETRY” About a year ago, while helping one of my grandsons with a college English assignment, I rediscovered Wallace Stevens’s 1942 poem “Of Modern Poetry” and was surprised how applicable it is to the Cather canon, a body of work distinguished by the task of constructing a new stage during an age when the set script used by many generations of poets had become what Stevens refers to as “a souvenir” (line 6). “[T]he problem of modern life and art was for Cather, as it was for Wallace Stevens,” observes Tom Quirk, “ﬁnding ‘what will suffice’” (155). Her project is a response of sorts to this task; it is an agenda of renewal, but one not quite so stark about the break with tradition. To her, such renewal projects had always been the task of the artist, not something peculiar to modernism, and she refers to Leonardo, Velásquez, and Shakespeare to defend her own modernism. In conﬂating the roles of poet, playwright, actor, and musician, Stevens too relies upon the art of the past to “face” a modern audience and speak words deeply subjective, deep-

1 2 john j. murphy ly individual; his poem, then, becomes an “act of ﬁnding / What will suffice” (1– 2), which might merely be that “of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman / Combing” (27– 28). This process becomes what Cather refers to as “a game . . . of re-production, very exciting and delightful to people who have an ear . . . or eye for it” (On Writing 125). In his recent review of Turkish novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar’s The Time Regulation Institute, Martin Riker explains that some books are “in a category all their own, in one sense new, and in another sense old, as if to remind us that this thing called literature is much larger than our own little moment” (11). Willa Cather clearly understood this.

PROSPERI’S MUSEUM EPIPHANY III A few months after rediscovering the Stevens, I made a ﬁrst- time discovery of a 2010 painting by Warren Prosperi in Bos- ton’s Museum of Fine Arts, quietly tucked away in a gallery of nineteenth- century romantic American landscape paintings and imitations of classical statues by Hiram Powers, William Wetmore Story, and others, the kind of work Cather has Lyon Hartwell describe in “The Namesake” as “those ingenuous marble things at the Metropolitan” by the “ﬁrst fellows who . . . went to Italy for ‘Art,’ . . . to lift from its native bough the willing iridescent bird” (140). Prosperi depicts a young girl being coached by her mother and gazing up at Randolph Rogers’s statue Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii (1856), who is bent forward in the act of listening. Prosperi includes in the background several 2010 museum visitors variously absorbed in other works in the gallery collection: among the sculptures, Story’s Sappho (1863) and Powers’s Faith (ca. 1871), and, among the paintings, Thomas Cole’s An Italian Autumn (1844), Washington Allston’s Elijah in the Desert (1818), and, in an adjacent gallery, a glimpse of a 1904 John Singer Sargent portrait and his sketches for a mural of Adam and an angel. What the young girl would be able to see surrounding Nydia are Story’s Bacchus (1863) and Venus Anadyomene (1864), William Morris Hunt’s large paint- 3 Prologue ing Niagara (1879), other Niagara scenes by Jasper Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, and John Kensett, as well as the latter’s Trenton Falls, N.Y. (1853) and Bash- Bish Falls, Massachusetts (1855)— it’s as if the Blind Girl of Pompeii is listening to the sounds of falling water. Within view on the left are scenes of Italy by George Inness, Henry New- man, and Sanford Gifford. I should also note what surrounds Pros- peri’s 2010 painting: a New Jersey landscape by Inness, a French one by Joseph Cole, a French harbor scene by Frank Boggs, a Bar- bizon one by William Morris Hunt, and Massachusetts sand dunes by William Picknell. American connections between the Old World and the New World seem to have inspired the entire gallery arrangement.

EPIPHANIES AND SOUVENIRS My present task in connecting Stevens’s poem and Pros- peri’s painting to each other and to Cather is similar to the chal- lenge we face in connecting apparently disparate modernist seg- ments of Cather texts: the Russian wolf story in My Ántonia (1918), “The Legend of Fray Baltazar” in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), “Tom Outland’s Story” to the other books of The Professor’s House (1925). Prosperi has titled his painting Museum Epiphany III; his young girl is experiencing a ﬂash of recognition, an intuitive insight via art objects, something analogous to what Haruki Muraka- mi has one of his characters describe as “an experience—like a chemical reaction— that transforms something inside us. When . . . the world’s opened up in unexpected ways” (Kafka on the Shore 379). Such experiences are common in ﬁction, and usually associated with James Joyce. However, every Cather novel is constructed around epiphanic moments typically occurring within natural settings of prairie, canyon, rock, or mesa, and having about them something analogous to what Gretel Ehrlich describes as the Jap- anese aesthetic of wa and shunyata, of unity framed by impermanence (12). Every few years scholars gather at various “sites” that inspired Cather, many presuming locale as the major inspiration of 4 john j. murphy

her ﬁction, whereas the museum must claim an equal share. Cather prairies, canyons, rocks, and mesas are not creations inspired by nature alone but by works of art in stone, paint, words, music, and by cultural history. If, according to Stevens, the script had to be reset “to face the men of the time and to meet / The women of the time” (8–9), according to Cather it would include selections informed by tradition, from a “past [that] was a souvenir” (6) and refashioned for a contemporary audience, “ﬁnding . . . satisfaction” (26) in a woman bathing, teens picnicking, a cowboy in a canyon, a girl cooking. I have selected a single epiphany, an art- generated and timeless “moment” rescued from impermanence within natural surroundings, from each of four Cather novels: The Song of the Lark (1915), My Ántonia, The Professor’s House, and Shadows on the Rock (1931).

A WOMAN BATHING The passage in The Song of the Lark where Cather’s young operatic soprano, Thea Kronborg, realizes the essence of her art has become iconic in Cather criticism, but as important is what prepares Thea for this moment and what follows it to make it timeless amid the chaos of getting on in the world. Thea’s struggles to overcome the provincialism of her small Colorado town and discover herself in Chicago make up the bulk of the novel. But, while she escapes both environments to experience her epiphany in an Arizona canyon, what she has learned in them are essential to the eternal moment that impels her success. Certainly the experience of family living and friendship are important, but my concern here is Thea’s art life: the defeat she detects in Fritz Kohler’s piece- picture of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow; her escape to the night of the ball in Anna Karenina; singing with Spanish John- ny in Mexican Town, where “[s]he felt as if all these warm-blooded people debouched into her” (258), and most of all her piano lessons with Professor Wunsch, who introduces her to the lament from Gluck’s Orfeo and Euridice. In Chicago, after her piano teach- 5 Prologue er Andor Harsanyi discovers her voice and she sings Orpheus’s lament for him, her career changes course. Almost simultaneously she attends a Chicago Symphony concert and hears Dvořák’s Sym- phony in E Minor, From the New World, which she associates with the mountains, plains, and sand hills of the West, and music from Wagner’s Ring, “which was to flow through so many years of her life” (222). Thea also begins visiting Chicago’s Art Institute, where she puzzles over the statuary and discovers Jules Breton’s The Song of the Lark, which, like the Dvořàk, evokes the American landscape. Thea’s vacation in Arizona with her benefactor boyfriend Fred Ottenburg is a deliverance from exhaustion and discouragement. The episode represents a pause in an undefined career, a “getting back to the earliest sources of gladness” (326). Panther Canyon combines spectacular landscape with yet another cultural initia- tion, that of the Anasazi, the ancient people who built their dwellings within the folds of the canyon walls. Thea identifies particularly with the women who left traces of their lives in the worn water trail and of their artistic endeavor in fragments of pottery used for carrying water. As she sponges water over her body while bathing in a pool on the canyon floor, she experiences a flash of insight about such endeavor that synthesizes singing and pottery- making as “an effort to make a sheath . . . to imprison for a moment the . . . elusive element which is life. . . . The Indian women had held it in their jars. In the sculpture she had seen in the Art Insti- tute, it had been caught in a flash of arrested motion. In singing, one made a vessel of one’s throat and nostrils and held it on one’s breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals” (334– 35). It is strategic that Cather returns us at this moment to the museum and, by implication, to the concert hall and Thea’s art life, which even at this stage has been enriched by the past that for Ste- vens had become “a souvenir.” The eternal moment of unity on the canyon floor is soon interrupted by impermanence, by the revelation that Ottenburg is married and by the return of Thea’s career difficulties. 6 john j. murphy

TEENS PICNICKING

Souvenirs of the past not only prepare but serve as models for the Cather canon’s most popular epiphany: Jim Burden and the hired girls springing to their feet before the vision of the plow against the setting sun in My Ántonia. Framed by Jim’s anger at social prejudice against these immigrant girls in the small town he is anxious to escape, and by his disappointment in Ántonia for accepting employment from the local rake, who subsequently attempts to rape her, the plow scene is the most painterly of Cather epiphanies and, unlike Thea’s, beyond verbal meaning, somewhat like Emily Dickinson’s “certain Slant of light” (Johnson #258). Set on the bluffs above the Republican River south of the prairie town of Red Cloud, where Cather lived from age nine until she left for the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, this scene and its central object, if new theater, are constructed from old script, from Virgil’s Georgics and the Bible, and mannered after the kind of landscape art copied in and surrounding Prosperi’s painting. As a revelatory moment, the scene is complex not only in being informed by previous experiences of the narrator persona but also as an event recalled and recorded almost thirty years after its occur- rence. Unlike Thea’s epiphany, created by Cather as an immediate happening, Jim’s is constructed as the stylized product of someone intimately acquainted with the arts, whose memoir is indebted to a variety of aesthetic influences subsequent to the day he and the hired girls watched the sun setting from their position on the bluff. Jim’s references to Virgil clarify this. Chagrined at his grand- parents’ disapproval of the hired girl dances, he has been sitting at home with the old people at night reading Latin “and began Vir- gil alone” (220, 224). Some months later, he is reading The Georgics at college, citing the lines “Optima dies . . . prima fugit” from the poem’s third book (Cather 256): “Life’s earliest years for wretched mortal creatures / Are best, and fly most quickly” (Virgil lines 67– 68), his memoir’s epigraph. In this third book, as in the rest of the poem, Virgil celebrates the Italian landscape as a subject for poetry, 7 Prologue and such sentiments are woven through Jim’s celebration of the local Nebraska countryside with its meandering river. If we pursue Cather’s hints, we discover that the plow component of the central image owes to very ancient scripts, indeed, to Virgil and to Isaiah. Jim’s description specifies the parts of the magnified plow: “the disc, the handles, the tongue, the share” (237). In the opening book of The Georgics, Virgil catalogs the “weapons the hardy farmer needs” to sow and raise his crops, mentioning the “share . . . and curved plough’s heavy stock,” the “curving plough- beam,” the “bi- furcated sharebeam,” and “the rearward handle” (lines 160– 75). Vir- gil concludes this first book with a reflection on times of peace and war, that the farmer’s plow and hoe will someday turn up rusty spears and helmets and upturn graves, but that at present, because Caesar prefers the sword to the plow, the fields remain unkempt, and the farmer’s peacetime weapons are being forged into swords for war (493– 97, 507–10). This lament echoes and reverses Isaiah’s prophecy of the prosperity of Yahweh’s new covenant:

And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (2:4)

The version of the Coronado story that Jim tells the hired girls plays off both ancient scripts. According to Jim, the search for the Golden Cities took the conquistador into Nebraska. A farmer to the north had turned up a Spanish sword forged in Cordo- va, thus adding a layer of history to the vista spread out below the picnickers. At this point landscape painting impacts the climactic moment. Jean- François Millet and the Barbizon school, whose work Cather praised in her 1902 European travel sketches, are an obvious inﬂu- ence: the hired girls and Jim become visual counterparts of the harvesters she saw working in the Barbizon ﬁelds at sunset (Wil- la Cather in Europe 22–23, 127). More startling, perhaps, are borrowings from the Hudson River school and American luminists, 8 john j. murphy

landscapes by Thomas Cole, Jasper Francis Cropsey, John Frederick Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Frederick Edwin Church, in Jim’s description of “the curly grass . . . on fire now. The bark of the oaks . . . red as copper,” the “shimmer of gold on the brown river,” the “sand- bars glitter[ing] like glass, . . . the light trembl[ing] in the willow thickets,” and, most emphatically, in the “long fingers of the sun touch[ing the] foreheads” of the girls (My Ántonia 236–37). Cath- er’s approximation of luminism suggests stasis— “The breeze sank to stillness” (237)—and produces super-real overtones in the magnified plow, the iconic image in this memoir of the country and conditions Jim associates with Ántonia, who shares with him the awe of this vision. Nebraska, “a kind of country [Cather] loved,” once considered “distinctly déclassé as a literary background” (On Writing 93– 94), represents a new stage for fiction, yet Cather’s rendition of it is considerably fabricated from museum materials.

A COWBOY IN A CANYON Like Thea’s and Jim’s epiphanies, Tom Outland’s “first night [he] was ever really on the mesa” (Professor’s House 249) is firmly anchored in locale, Cather’s 1915 visit to Mesa Verde, Col- orado, where from a flat rock on the canyon floor she, like Tom, “watched the long summer twilight come on, and the moon rise up over the rim of the canyon” (Lewis 97). Yet, Tom’s transforming night, which instigates an ability “to co- ordinate and simplify,” which “brought with it great happiness” and “lasted all summer” (250), also owes to his and Cather’s obsession with the past, with literature, and the fine arts. An interlude framed by Tom’s falling out with Roddy Blake and subsequent guilt, it is indebted to landscape painting tradition, to Virgil and the Bible, and to an ideal- ization of primitive culture going back to the eighteenth century and embraced by modernists of Cather’s generation in literature, painting, and music. Father Duchene is Cather’s spokesperson for this tradition, theorizing that these Anasazi were “a superior” and “thoughtful people” who “rose . . . from the condition of savage- 9 Prologue ry” to develop “the arts of peace,” to decorate pottery rivaling that of Crete, and to “purify . . . life by religious ceremonies . . . , caring respectfully for their dead, [and] protecting children” (217– 19). If such notions are compromised by recent anthropological studies like Christy and Jacqueline Turner’s Man Corn (1999), which reveals a history of violence, homicide, and cannibalism, they nevertheless underlie, with the help of Virgil’s Aeneid, orphaned Tom’s epiphany. Tom’s initial vision of Cliff City through a veil of falling snow a year and a half earlier also contributes to his transforming night on the mesa. Cather has him first view the city from the canyon floor, although explorer Dick Wetherell (her prototype for Tom) and Cather herself would have initially viewed Mesa Verde’s Cliff Palace ruin from the mesa top. Tom’s vantage point emphasizes otherworldly aspects of the city: “its immortal repose,” its “calm- ness of eternity” and “solemnity” (200). His description is faithful to Cliff Palace ruin yet echoes biblical holy cities: it has the lofty situation of the Lord’s city in Psalm 48 (1–2), is looked upon as a city of “solemnities” and “quiet habitation,” as in Isaiah (33:20); it is “compact together” like the Jerusalem of Psalm 122 (3), held together by a tower, a common metaphor in Psalms for the Divinity (18:2, 61:3, 144:2). Such echoes prepare for Tom’s avowal that on his epiphanic night “the mesa was no was no longer an adventure [for him], but a religious emotion” (250). The visual component of this epiphany begins early in Tom’s story and, like the plow episode in My Ántonia, is informed by landscape painting. As in the earlier novel, the influence of the Hudson River luminists is evident in Tom’s description of day breaking over the mesa, when the “top would be red with sun- rise and . . . the slim cedars . . . would be gold-metallic, like tar- nished gold- foil” (190), and when “the rays of sunlight fell slanting- ly through the little twisted piñons—the light was all in between them, . . . they fairly swam in it” (239). Of course, impressionism is detectable in Tom’s first view of Cliff City “through a veil of light- ly falling snow” (199). Yet there are starker, more solid descriptions 10 john j. murphy than these, bordering on the abstract and cubistic: “It [the mesa] looked . . . like a naked blue rock set down in the plain, almost square” (185). “[T]he mesa was like one great ink- black rock against a sky on fire” (191). The eclectic nature of these descriptions, which trace the progressive effect of the mesa on Tom, have the earmarks of paintings by Marsden Hartley (1877–1943), whose journey from and to realism through expressionism and abstraction produced dramatic landscapes of New Mexico (which Cather perhaps saw) and later of Maine, particularly of Mount Katahdin under different weather conditions. Barbara Haskell’s comments on these mountain “portraits” are easily applicable to Tom’s. The “Katahdin scenes were given strong . . . colors and clean outlines. . . . Hartley simplified form into large shapes delineated by discreet areas of col- or. . . . [H]e was more intent on imbuing [them] with a sense of the solemn, religious grandeur he felt the mountains embodied, than with faithfully describing their external appearance” (118). I am not arguing that Hartley influenced Cather but that common aesthetic movements influenced both contemporaries. Haskell’s commentary provides a context for the chemical reaction within Tom that “made it possible for [him] to co-ordinate and simplify, . . . brought with it great happiness[,] . . . was possession, . . . [and] a religious emotion” (250). The “filial piety” (250) Tom feels for the mesa is identified through his readings in the Latin poets, particularly Virgil’s Aeneid, the text now interwoven with Tom’s memories of the place: “When I look into the Aeneid now, I can always see two pictures: the one on the page, and another behind that: blue and purple rocks and yellow- green piñons with flat tops, little clustered houses clinging together for protection, a rude tower rising in their midst” (252). Because of the tower reference, James Woodress and Kari Ron- ning suggest in the Scholarly Edition of the novel (380) that Tom might have in mind a passage from book 6 of Virgil’s poem, and a closer look indicates that perhaps Tom’s guilt at failing to follow his instinct “to reach out and detain” Roddy Blake (247) is implied in this passage. Aeneas is at a crossroads: to his right is the 11 Prologue way to Elysium; to his left, a city under a cliff with an iron tower rising from its midst, a place of punishment for souls who “put off atonements in the world / . . . / Until too late, until the hour of death” (765– 67). Tom Outland’s epiphany, which like Jim’s is recalled years later, has become inseparable from guilt. Forgetful of Blake, yet “frightened by [his] own heartlessness” (251) during the summer that was his “high tide” (250), he concludes his story with this prophecy: “Anyone who requites faith and friendship as I did, will have to pay for it. I’m not very sanguine about good fortune for myself. I’ll be called to account when I least expect it” (252– 53). Tom’s complex epiphany, which Cather made the expansive central movement of the “academic sonata” she claimed her novel was “akin to” (On Writing 31), is inextricable from its natural setting and so much more: a collection of history, classical texts, cultural theory, fine arts.

A GIRL COOKING In Shadows on the Rock, Cather mined the past directly, using Francis Parkman’s histories of New France, The Jesuit Relations, the Mémoires of Louis de Rouvroy (duc de Saint- Simon), and many other sources to set a story in 1690s Quebec. Geographical locale is as important in this novel as in “Tom Outland’s Story,” for Cather’s Quebec maintains the features that Parkman has Jacques Car tier behold in the mid-sixteenth century: “A mighty promontory . . . thrust[ing] its scarped front into the surging current” of the St. Lawrence. On this rock apothecary Auclair’s daughter, Cécile, experiences an epiphany intricately connected to what Parkman describes as the “stern poetry of the wilderness” (1: 157). This French outpost’s vulnerability to wilderness chaos and boreal cold, En- glish and Native enemies, and political cross- purposes intensiﬁes the indispensability of the religious and domestic rituals at the heart of Cécile’s revelation. Working on this book during the moral and social upheavals of the late 1920s, Cather would have been particularly sympathetic to the uneasiness of her Quebecers and 12 john j. murphy

assembled a rich collection of decorative arts and useful objects to sustain the security of the daily routines and values of living. The complementary nature of religious and domestic activities in a text celebrating “shelter[ing] . . . and tend[ing]” “a kind of French culture” rather than “Indian raids or the wild life in the forests” (On Writing 16) is proposed in two passages that invite juxtaposition. One concerns the religious sisters, who maintain cheer- fulness in exile from France because they occupy “their accustomed place in the world of the mind,” a “well- ordered universe” of earth and heavens held together by God “for a great purpose” (Shadows 115). The other passage concerns the physical effort un- derlying this “world of the mind.” During the last months of her life, dying Madame Auclair instructs her daughter in the difficult work of maintaining a household and preparing healthy meals for her father. She warns her daughter of the fatigue of these tasks but stresses their importance and quintessence, that they define “our way”: “your father’s whole happiness,” she says, “depends on order and regularity. . . . Without order our lives would be disgusting. . . . At home, in France, we have learned to do all these things in the best way, . . . and that is why we are called the most civilized people in Europe” (31– 32). The two kinds of order, religious and domestic, are bridged in a later passage, where Cécile lies in bed on a winter morning, hears the cathedral bell, and pictures old Bishop Laval pulling at the end of the bell-rope and then carrying holy water from his kitchen stove to the faithful coming to early mass. She felt “a peculiar sense of security” from this image: “The punctual bell and the stem old Bishop who rang it began an orderly procession of activities and held life together on the rock, though the winds lashed it and the billows of snow drove over it” (124– 25). Laval’s bowl of holy water is one of many objects giving palpa- bility to this novel’s concepts of cultural order. The apothecary’s round walnut table set with its white cloth, silver candlesticks, decanters, and soup tureen are the first such objects mentioned, for they maintain the dining routine that “Auclair regarded as the thing that kept him a civilized man and a Frenchman” (23). The 13 Prologue salon behind the cabinets of the apothecary shop contains the treasured furnishings that duplicate life in Paris: a carpet from Lyon, a red upholstered sofa, cotton- velvet curtains, a china shepherd boy, and colored prints of pastoral scenes. These domestic items judiciously reflect the efforts of Louis XIV to develop fabrics like those of India, Asian- like porcelain, and fine walnut furniture to be touchstones for the rest of Europe. However, they are much more than the sum of their parts: “though it appeared to be made up of wood and cloth and glass and a little silver,” Auclair’s house “was really made of very fine qualities in two women: the mother’s un- swerving fidelity to certain traditions, and the daughter’s loyalty to her mother’s wish,” which is why “the townspeople were glad of any excuse to stop at the apothecary shop” (33). The process of the mother’s wish becoming her daughter’s wish is concluded in Cécile’s epiphany and expands the definition of vocation into the domestic realm. When Cécile accompanies her father to the Hôtel Dieu to attend to Mother Juschereau and asks to be told the story of the mystical Catherine de Saint- Augustin, who preceded Juschereau as superior of the hospital, but begs off its moral, Mother concludes that Cécile “has certainly no vocation” (49), a term used exclusively in this context as a call to convent life or the seminary. Cather presents almost grotesque examples of this narrow view of vocation in Jesuit martyr Noël Chabanel, who violated his natural talents to live among the Natives, and recluse Jeanne Le Ber, who entombed herself in a chapel to become like a sanctuary lamp. Cécile’s epiphany is placed subsequent to these portraits, and its catalyst, her excursion to the Isle of Orleans, immediately follows our final glimpse of the recluse. During her visit to the island, Cécile samples the collapse of domestic order in the Harnois household: the food is cooked in grease, the rooms hot and close, the linens soiled; the family’s little girls go to bed with mud-splashed legs. She sits up through the night listening to the snores of the family and thinking about her mother, how she “had always made everything at home beautiful just as here everything about cooking, eating, sleeping, living, 14 john j. murphy

seemed repulsive” (221). To highlight this human disorder, Cather frames this night scene in impressionistic daylight idylls of island flora: “The daisies were drifted like snow in the tall meadow grass, and all the marshy hollows were thatched over with buttercups . . . that . . . seemed as if they must all have been born that morning” (218). Cécile falls asleep under a harp-shaped elm amid tall sweet- smelling grass, through which the daisies “looked like white flowers seen through driving grey- green rain” (222). The description corresponds to an earlier “museum” one during Cécile’s visit to Count Frontenac’s chateau, where she studies the millefleurs tapestries from France, trying to distinguish the flowers and figures. During her voyage back home, Quebec’s rock with its spires and steep- roofed buildings sparkles in the sunlight as an oasis of orderly life. Cécile wants to kiss the ground on her arrival as had Sister Catherine de Saint- Augustin. Here Cather conflates the two voca- tions and then reprises the practical and decorative objects that fill her text, sustain order, and beautify life. Cécile thinks that although the poor Harnois “had kind ways, . . . that was not enough; one had to have kind things about one too” (227). This is a remind- er of the Auclair living room, of Frontenac’s tapestries, of the glass fruit that reminded him of the South and threw colored reflections on the walls. Back in her kitchen Cécile realizes that she carefully performs her tasks not so much to please her father or carry out her mother’s wishes, but for herself. Her coppers and brushes and brooms were tools, like the cobbler’s tools that had fascinated her, and with them “[o]ne made . . . a climate within a climate; one made the days,—the complexion, the special flavour, the special happiness of each day as it passed; one made life” (227). There’s an obvious echo here of the first epiphany I considered. Thea Kronborg realized that her voice, like the Indian women’s pottery, held life, if only momentarily. It is interesting to juxtapose the two passages; it reveals much about Cather’s progress and the relationship of life, art, and religion. In a recent essay, Richard Millington makes a case for what he calls Cather’s “‘other’ modernism.” “The key moments in a Cather 15 Prologue text,” he writes, “are more likely to be acts of heightened or illuminated witnessing— a scene that etches itself into the mind, the observation of a particular quality of light, the accruing apprehension of a meaning as it is gathered up by an object or a ritual—rather than climactic life events like the marriage or romance plots dear to traditional fiction” (54). Cather’s epiphanies are such “key moments” and distinguish her fiction. Many, if not all of them, owe significantly to the museum.

WORKS CITED

Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. 1918. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Charles Mignon, and Kari Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994. Print. —. “The Namesake.” Collected Short Fiction, 1892– 1912. Ed. Virginia Faulkner. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. 137– 46. Print. —. On Writing. New York: Knopf, 1949. Print. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Kari Ronning, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. Shadows on the Rock. 1931. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy, David Stouck, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2005. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. Willa Cather in Europe. Ed. George N. Kates. New York: Knopf, 1956. Print. Dickinson, Emily. “There’s a certain Slant of light.” The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. 118– 19. Print. Ehrlich, Gretel. Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami. New York: Pantheon, 2013. Print. Haskell, Barbara. Marsden Hartley. New York: Whitney Museum and New York UP, 1980. Print. Holy Bible . . . in the King James Version. Nashville: Nelson, 1984. Print. Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print. Millington, Richard. “Willa Cather’s Two Modernisms.” Letterature d’America 144 (2013): 41– 56. Print. 16 john j. murphy

Murakami, Haruki. Kafka on the Shore. Trans. Philip Gabriel. New York: Vintage, 2006. Print. Parkman, Francis. France and England in North America. 2 vols. New York: Library of America, 1983. Print. Quirk, Tom. Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990. Print. Riker, Martin. “A Ramshackle Modernity.” New York Times Book Review 5 Jan. 2014: 11. Print. Stevens, Wallace. “Of Modern Poetry.” Norton Anthology of American Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Nina Baym et al. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1998. 2: 1178– 80. Print. Turner, Christy G., and Jacqueline A. Turner. Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 1999. Print. Virgil. The Aeneid. Trans. Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Vintage, 1984. Print. —. The Georgics. Trans. L. P. Wilkinson. New York: Penguin, 1994. Print. Woodress, James, and Kari Ronning. Explanatory Notes. Cather, The Professor’s House 337– 84. Print. PART 1

Beginnings

1 The Compatibility of Art and Religion for Willa Cather From the Beginning

STEVEN B. SHIVELY

The touchstone for this essay is Godfrey St. Peter’s statement to his students in The Professor’s House (1925) that “Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had” (69). The Professor asserts that art and religion are compatible, that they are—or at least have the potential to be— equal and complementary forces for finding meaning in life. Many readers and critics believe this linking of religion and art expresses not only Godfrey St. Peter’s thinking but also that of Willa Cather, who said almost the same thing without the filter of fiction in a 1936 letter published in Commonweal: “Re- ligion and art spring from the same root and are close kin” (“Es- capism” 27). Moreover, this position is commonly assumed to represent a shift in Cather’s thinking and writing away from a view of religion as mostly antagonistic to art, a view represented in her pre- 1925 fictional portrayals of the crazed Free Gospel preacher Asa Skinner in “Eric Hermannson’s Soul,” the insipidly pious Broth- er Weldon in One of Ours, the petty rivalry between Methodists and Baptists in The Song of the Lark, the art-killing Baptists of My Ántonia, the boring and conformist Cumberland Presbyterians so loathed by Paul in “Paul’s Case”; a full list would be long indeed. Cather’s “new” view, many believe, came to its fullest expression with the publication of her most overtly religious books, Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock. This critical po-

19 20 steven b. shively sition also draws support from the 1922 confirmation service in which she joined the Episcopal Church, often seen as a reaction to modernism and its accompanying societal and cultural shifts and to various physical and family challenges; presumably she turned to religion for comfort and meaning as part of a broad retreat into the past and its traditions.1 I do not seek to debunk completely such a view of Cather— of course she changed and responded to life, and these responses are reflected in her fiction. I will argue here, however, that Cather worked out much of the tension between religion and art long before the 1920s. Her early writing, primarily journalism, reveals that during the 1890s she had already discovered the power of both religion and art, and concluded that they could, in fact, be compatible. Cather never banished aesthetically rich religion from the kingdom of art; rather, it held a privileged seat from the start. Some religion was simply ugly, and indeed Cather had no patience for it and did not hesitate to expose it. But for the discriminating Willa Cather this distinction was true of all forms of expression by which humans sought entry into the kingdom of art: good poetry, music, paintings, architecture, and books were welcomed, while those that were base and distasteful were turned away. I preface my analysis of religion in Cather’s early journalism with the comment that I am not particularly concerned with matters of belief in traditional doctrinal or theological ways. Belief is a prickly thing (that is true of political beliefs as well as religious beliefs) for which public practices and statements offer only limited evidence. We know very little of Cather’s private conver- sations about religion, and our knowledge of her practices is incomplete. We know that she was born into a practicing Baptist family, had a deep familiarity with the Bible, later joined the Epis- copal Church, and attended—at least occasionally—religious services of various denominations. For many years she gave money to Grace Episcopal Church in Red Cloud, and at times she gave (and received) books and other items with religious meaning to family and friends. She read books that would commonly be labeled 21 Compatibility of Art and Religion religious, and she counted ordained ministers among her friends. Such matters are important, but they tell us little about her specific beliefs. We know, for example, that she requested an Episcopal burial rite, but we do not know what she believed about life after death. I find no evidence that Cather experienced religious angst, that she had—or ever sought—a conversion experience, that she struggled significantly with religious principles. She does not seem to have cared much about notions of a Trinitarian God or apostol- ic succession or transubstantiation. When she writes of the Nicene Creed, as she did to her niece Helen on Easter Sunday 1940, it is to express admiration for its “beautiful prose” and “majesty,” not for its statements of belief (Letters 582). Despite the title of her short story “Eric Hermannson’s Soul,” she seems more interested in saving Eric’s art than in saving his soul. Certainly there is much evidence that she believed in transcendence, forgiveness, selfless servanthood, the beauty of creation, miracles, redemption, and the warmth of a faith community. Such ideas are often religious, but they can also be broadly spiritual, even broadly human. To Cather, Orpheus, Nature, Truth— and more— could be divine. From the cradle, the Judeo- Christian heritage— and its presence in daily life— was part of Willa Cather’s experience. In the 1930s, Cather recalled the religious legacy of her youth in a commentary on Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers, and she noted the expression of that inheritance through language:

The Bible countries along the Mediterranean shore were very familiar to most of us in our childhood. Whether we were born in New Hampshire or Virginia or California, Palestine lay behind us. We took it in unconsciously and unthinkingly perhaps, but we could not escape it. It was all about us, in the pictures on the walls, in the songs we sang in Sunday school, in the “opening exercises” at day school, in the talk of the old people, wherever we lived. And it was in our language— ﬁxedly, indelibly. The effect of the King James translation of the Bible upon English prose has been repeated down 22 steven b. shively

through the generations, leaving its mark on the minds of all children who had any but the most sluggish emotional nature. (Not Under Forty 101– 2)

Cather’s allusion to her childhood confirms that traditional religion was always a prominent part of her life and writing, beginning with her earliest public and professional pieces, which reveal how she used and understood the language of religion. Per- haps this religious heritage is why she spent little time in faith- searching. Bernice Slote notes that religious books, specifically the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress, are a “constant, insistent, perva- sive” presence in Cather’s writing, but that in her early journalism “[s]he did not need to contrive the [religious] metaphor and its extension, nor (at this time, at least) did she think to examine it logically, to correct roughnesses and omissions and even contradictions. This was simply the way one talked” (35). What Cather did with this heritage is remarkable. As this paper will demonstrate, in a few short years in the 1890s she rapidly moved from a crude and exaggerated use of religious phrases that amounted to little more than mimicking cultural traditions to a sophisticated application of religious vocabulary, metaphor, and symbol. In integrating religion into her aesthetic credo, she made the inherited tradition new and claimed it for herself—and for art. She at times questioned, abandoned, and rejected religious dogma and zealotry, but she never let go of a commitment that religion could serve art and art could serve religion. In an 1890 column on high school happenings for the Red Cloud Republican (she was sixteen years old), Cather reported on the vivisection of a dog by the zoology class, raising the dog’s status from stray to soldier in “the immortal army of the martyrs” (“High School” 2).2 This claim of martyrdom for the dog suggests a puck- ish awareness of the rhetorical possibilities of religious words, but there is no suggestion in the article that the idea of martyrdom and the communion of saints had any significant meaning for her. Cather’s religious rhetoric also appears in a gossipy letter written 23 Compatibility of Art and Religion in 1889 to Mrs. Louise Stowell, a family friend who had recently moved away from Red Cloud. Cather refers to the students of a local piano instructor as “disciples” who “burn strange fire apon the alter of the Gods in these dgenerite days” (Letters 9– 10, original spelling retained). Commenting on the possibility of a trip to Omaha to hear pianist Anton Rubinstein, she casts herself as “a pilgrim [going] to worship in a far country.” In these juvenile writings Cather demonstrates a playful acceptance of her religious inheritance and that the Bible left its mark, fixed indelibly in her language. Neither her language nor her ideas, however, are yet linked to art. Cather is practicing, observing, and imitating, but there are few signs that she is discriminating between the artistic and the profane. One of the earliest signs of a more mature approach to religious language— and, eventually, religion more broadly—is the high school commencement speech she gave in June 1890, which was also printed in the Red Cloud Chief under the title “Superstition vs. Investigation.” True to her habit, Cather uses religiously tinged words: “exodus,” “pilgrimage,” “worship,” “reverence,” and more. Here, however, she complicates the matter by going beyond word choices to using religious references for clarification and meaning; for example, she follows the word “superstition” with the appositive “the stern Pharoah [sic] of his former bondage,” thus emphasizing the cruelty of superstition and adroitly capturing its prison- like effect on people while also establishing it as the thing that held back the heroic Moses (“Superstition” 141). In an allusion to the Garden of Eden, she demonstrates a broad, symbolic interpretation of the fruit of the tree of knowledge rather than the narrow, literal understanding we might expect from a nineteenth-century Baptist: “It is the most sacred right of man to investigate; we paid dearly for it in Eden; we have been shedding our heart’s blood for it ever since. It is ours; we have bought it with a price” (142). In her speech Cather collapses distinctions between science and religion by blending powerful allusions to the Bible with equally strong references to atoms, the discovery of the circulation of 24 steven b. shively blood, and Newtonian theories about matter. While the speech has science as its foundation, signs of artistic understanding and ad- vocacy come through in Cather’s acknowledgment of the entice- ment of “prob[ing] into the mysteries of the unknowable” and in her presentation of “fact and fancy” as equals (143). In addition, she recognizes that the imagination is even more powerful than science: “Microscopic eyes have followed matter to the molecule and fallen blinded. Imagination has gone a step farther and grasped the atom” (143). The commencement speech reveals a young woman strengthening her understanding of the capacity of religion to be an evocative force in people’s minds, stronger even than the scientific method she celebrates. She also shows an ability to stretch religion without losing it: “There is another book of God than that of the scriptural revelation, a book written in chapters of creation upon the pages of the universe bound by mystery” (142). At the same time, she holds no tolerance for religion that blindly relies on superstition, seeks to limit imagination, or takes a dull, limiting view of creation. Now, Cather is ready to strengthen further her artistic credo at the University of Nebraska. During her college years in Lincoln— 1890 to 1895—Cather became increasingly aware of the power of religious expression as she began to work with her religious inheritance, gradually personal- izing the ideas and traditions behind the rhetoric. After getting beyond the wordplay, she found in religious tradition something deeply sympathetic with her attitudes about art, and she set about the task of articulating that sympathy. Undoubtedly, the intellectual excitement of the university, the availability of diverse religious experiences, an increasing affinity for romanticism, and the usual process of maturation all combined to stimulate her to an examination of religion and how it fit her emerging creed of art. At least two of Cather’s early college essays survive; both were written for class in 1891 and then published in the Nebraska State Journal.3 They reveal that already she was finding her vocation. In the first of them, an essay on Thomas Carlyle, Cather still sometimes wrote in an overblown style— years later, in 1927, she wrote 25 Compatibility of Art and Religion to Will Owen Jones, her old managing editor at the Journal, remembering this essay with its “very florid” style, “full of high-flown figures of speech” (Letters 391). The essay is memorable, however, not for its style but because it reveals that Cather had found in Carlyle her own sort of hero, someone whose life and ideas were compatible with her emerging beliefs, someone who had wrestled, as she was wrestling, with the tensions between art and religion. She praised “the strength of his great heart,” his “love and sympathy for humanity,” and his “soul sincere as truth itself.” This essay, about a man she saw as a kindred spirit, gave her a forum for working through some of those tensions, for exploring how religion gets translated into the life of an artist. Cather learned from Carlyle that it is possible to hold a passionate reverence for creation yet remain free of the narrowness that she often saw accompany religion. Noting a difference between reverence and creeds, she celebrates Carlyle as a model for free- ing the divinity of creation from the strictures of religious creeds: “Carlyle’s was one of the most intensely reverent natures of which there is any knowledge. He saw the divine in everything. His every act was a form of worship, yet . . . [h]e was too passionately, too intensely religious to confine himself to any one creed” (King- dom 423). In this essay Cather acknowledges Christianity while inserting it into a larger tradition of sacredness, including references to Valhalla, Buddha, the trees worshipped by Druids, and the pious Anchorites of ancient Thebes. Religion does not have to be a tool of public opinion misused by journalists and politicians. Cather praises Carlyle because “[h]e never strove to please a pam- pered public” while she condemns “the desperate efforts of modern writers” to respond to the “variation[s] of public taste” (424). Struggling to reconcile the conflict between the fundamentalism she observed in daily life and the sacredness she found in literary and artistic traditions, Cather perceived in Carlyle an indication that religion can be integrated with art. Sacrifices (the word “sacrifice” shares linguistic origins with “sacred”) also come with the artistic life, and in the Carlyle essay 26 steven b. shively

Cather uses the context of religion to discuss them: “Art of every kind is an exacting master, more so even than Jehovah. He says only, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ Art, science and letters cry, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods at all.’ They accept only human sacrifices” (423). Cather articulates the cost to Carlyle of serving his art: an unhappy marriage, poor health, lonely solitude, and battles with his publishers. This essay shows that she was increasingly turning to religion, not as an expression of her Baptist traditions, not because of any sympathy with the culture of evan- gelism, and certainly not as some sure path to happiness, but as a way of working out her ideas about art. When Cather writes that “[Carlyle] saw the divine in everything,” the phrase is more than a sweeping generality, because she has communicated her emerging belief that divinity is manifested in the artistic life and her awareness of the accompanying joys and sorrows. In her second 1891 essay, “Shakespeare and Hamlet,” Cath- er demonstrates her continued interest in the power of religious metaphors, writing about heaven, blood, the virgin’s face, and altar lights, along with quoting from the Bible several times. More significantly, however, she furthers her exploration of the connection between art and religion, here moving beyond Jehovah/God to find similarities between artists and Moses (prophet) and Jesus (teacher). She uses the example of Moses to assign a religious mo- tive to a call for artists to separate themselves from worldly concerns: “It was only after Moses had left all the luxury, the learning, and the culture of the Egyptian court, and had fled into [the] Mid- ian desert and dreamed for years in the sand hills, that the bush burned before him and was not consumed” (Kingdom 435). Cath- er finds a similar exemplar in Jesus, whom she evokes as a teacher when she directs “literary men” to do as Shakespeare did and follow Jesus’s command to “take all [that you have] and sell it and give unto the poor. Give all, and follow me out into the desert and the waste places, and over the rugged mountain sides, and among the publicans and sinners, and over to Calvary” (435). In this essay Cather assigns to the artist the role of the disciple who sacrific- 27 Compatibility of Art and Religion es everything to follow his god; indeed, she has Shakespeare join the disciples: “‘Will of Avon’ . . . went out into the wilderness with the fishermen” (435). She changes the metaphor, however, when she identifies Shakespeare as much with Jesus as with the disciples: he “anxiously calls upon his God, but it responds no more,” thus suggesting the dying Christ crying out, “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me” (Matt. 27:46). Cather has engaged a variety of traditions—the artist as ascetic, teacher, leader, prophet, servant— comparing them, working with them, trying them out as she struggles to establish her own artistic principles. Such an engagement foreshadows the variety of religious forms of expression that will occur in her fiction; in particular, this Shakespeare essay offers an early look at Cather’s use of the Christ metaphor for the artist (among several examples from her fiction are Jack- a- Boy and An- ton Rosicky). To Cather the comparison is complex; she does not mention Christ in the powerful role of savior, specifying instead his servanthood, his destiny to be ignored and misunderstood, his suffering. Still, she celebrates the sacredness of his mission and his supreme capacity to love, thus making the comparison between Christ and artist a useful anchor for the religious aspects of the kingdom of art. Starting in November 1893 Cather’s reviews and columns regularly appeared in the Nebraska State Journal; they reveal that this was a period of continued experimentation and struggle to clarify her artistic vision and to find the most effective voice for that vision. Cather had plenty of journalistic models for appropriating the words of religion for mundane situations. Red Cloud newspapers were emblematic of the routine, if often crude, application of religious vocabulary that Cather imitated. The Republican, a paper Cather wrote for and which her father helped found, commented about a rival editor that he “had the misfortune, however, in his journey on the Jericho road to fall among thieves and no good Sa- maritan has as yet appeared to rescue him” (“Report” 1). (While the paper uses “Jericho” for its religiously allusive quality, south-central Nebraska really does have a Hebron and a Gilead, both within six- 28 steven b. shively

ty miles of Cather’s hometown of Red Cloud.) Large-city newspapers, readily available in Red Cloud, were no different in their use of explicit and pretentious religious language: after the Dem- ocratic Party nominated William Jennings Bryan for Congress in 1890, a Lincoln paper editorialized that Bryan “had been offered as a sacrifice upon the party altar” (qtd. in Werner 25). The influence of such reporting, regular syndicated features like the Republican’s two-column Sunday school lesson, and extensive local coverage of church ice cream socials, visiting preachers, and church enter- tainments permeates Cather’s own early journalism. Imitating the popular press, her choices of topics and her language are heavily tinged with religious overtones. Cather also had to work through the journalism profession’s an- tipathy to women journalists and its stereotyped views of women readers. Few women were in the profession, and these few typically wrote about religion, children, and “society news” rather than topics like railroad regulation, labor laws, or politics, which were the province of male reporters. Furthermore, as journalism historian Eileen M. Wirth notes, male reporters “used flowery language to pay deference to respected women but [denied] their individuali- ty and full humanity” (24). Wirth provides an example from 1888 of a story—respectful on the surface—of an Omaha pioneer: “For thirty years she has been a guardian angel in Omaha gliding here and there” (25). Even a popular (and prolific) woman journalist like Elia Peattie of the Omaha Evening World- Herald got headlines like “Salvation Lasses at Home: Mrs. Peattie Writes of the Blue- Frocked Sisterhood of the Lord” (Wirth 22). It is not surprising that Cather, like other aspiring female journalists, at first followed the unwritten rules but struggled to take religious ideas and language seriously and to follow prescribed gender roles; what is startling is that such a young, inexperienced writer settled so quickly on a philosophy of art and religion that would characterize her writing. Jour- nalism became her laboratory, the site where she applied to art the principles of experimentation she had advocated so fiercely in her commencement address for science. Wirth observes, “Cather came 29 Compatibility of Art and Religion of age when the literary world was torn between realism and sentimentalism, and she experimented with both styles as a student at the University of Nebraska” (34). Typically, Cather rejected both styles, breaking down the binary distinction between them for a unique, sophisticated appreciation of ambiguity. For her earliest columns Cather wrote vignettes or sketches, mostly of religious scenes and personages: an earnest minister preaching in a fully appointed church on the brotherhood of man is juxtaposed against the quiet sincerity of a prison chaplain; other sketches present a Salvation Army tent, Christmas at a Ne- gro church, and a magnificent crucifix. Cather had learned that religious subjects are appropriate for public writing, especially by women. She demonstrates her familiarity with the most popular and common phrases of the church when she writes of “the heirs of the promise” (World and Parish 1: 6), “the light of the heavenly messenger” (8), “the brotherhood of man” (5), and “the faith of childhood” (8). Cather, however, inflects the language with judgment: sometimes she casts religion as meaningful, powerful, and beautiful, but at other times she unleashes her arrows of satire and exposes ugliness. In her very first column, which appeared in a Sunday edition, she sets side by side a description of a grand church service, complete with hundreds of “well-dressed, well-educated” worshippers, an eloquent preacher, a magnificent pipe organ, white flowers, and brass chandeliers, and an account of a much simpler service conducted by a quiet old chaplain in a “bare, barn- like” prison chapel (World and Parish 1: 5– 6). She had not yet embraced the terms “kingdom of art” and “Philistia,” but she clearly places one church service in the realm of art and banishes the other. Both ministers speak of the “brotherhood of man,” but there is no doubt that Cather finds nothing artistic beneath the trappings of the fancy church service and finds the simple service aesthetically rich. The first minister, flushed by “the pleasant knowledge that he was being appreciated,” is enthusiastic, but his hypocritical enthusiasm is for “the beauty of the women in the audience” and “his own eloquence”; he is ridic- 30 steven b. shively

ulously melodramatic as he “took a white hothouse rose from the cut glass rose bowl beside him and shook the water gently from its leaves. He laid the fleshy white petals against his nostrils with evident satisfaction, then dropped it again into the water,” all while quoting Browning. He sits down and takes a drink from a silver water pitcher, and there is no response at all from the people in front of him. In the prison chapel, on the other hand, despite the “low ceiling and grated windows,” the chaplain “is very artful in his discourse”; “artful” is a word Cather did not use to describe the other minister. Feelings and responses are more natural and honest, less staged: the man speaks “in a trembling voice” and the men “smile indulgently” and laugh, the “dreary, lifeless laughter” of prisoners. But when he is finished, “Even the darkest faces look lovingly at him and some of the younger men wipe their eyes with their hands.” In an adjacent sketch, Cather celebrates the enthusiasm of “a heavy- featured coarse- looking man” in a Salvation Army uniform while attacking “a professor of language,” who, despite his “intellect” and the “exquisite delicacy” of his features is dead to the world and lost (World and Parish 1: 7). People, she continues, are “‘Saved’ not by knowledge, or capacity or righteousness, but by enthusiasm.” She shows no mercy for educated but lifeless people: “The finely trained minds who lose themselves in the world, the men who know all about poetry but never write a line, the men who know every date in history but never are heard of by the publishers of histories, these are all lost men, lost eternally because of their frozen souls.” Such commentary—satiric barbs for pretentious churches and dry professors, but praise for prison chapels and Sal- vation Army enthusiasts— takes conviction and courage in a community that is full of learned professors, takes pride in its grand churches, and wishes the needy would go quietly away. Cather’s early journalistic pieces are, as one would expect, a mixed bag. Her writing sometimes falls into melodrama, likely indicating that she was testing the boundaries of her art. She relies on stock characters like the undertaker, the town drunk, and the 31 Compatibility of Art and Religion

Salvation Army woman singing on the street corner; such characters often seem little more than stereotypes. She can be repetitive and trite with descriptions: these sketches abound with flushed faces, trembling lips, quivering voices, and misty eyes. Emotion sometimes gets maudlin: “I am lonely . . . and I wish in some way to get near again to the only love I have ever known which was never darkened by pain or misunderstanding” (World and Parish 1: 9). At the same time, she demonstrates acute powers of observation and an amazing variety of perspectives, moving easily between being a first-person participant and a third-person observer. The range of subjects, emotions, and voices in these pieces, all written before she was twenty years old, suggests that Cather was learning to bring to the literary task the qualities of vision, flexibility, originality, and courage. She was learning—and deciding— what was art and what was not, and how to communicate the distinction. Christmas, for example, belonged to art, for both secular and sacred reasons. Cather writes of the Christmas story as “a beautiful story, this of the holiest and purest childhood on earth, beautiful even to those who cannot understand it” (World and Parish 1: 8). She puts herself in the midst of the pleasant and bustling anticipation of Christmas: “It is not a very great while till Christmas now. One begins to feel the restlessness and secrecy in the air, and to smell the cedar and see the holly gleaming in the windows. Almost everyone I meet has a bundle and is hurrying home to hide it. The toy shops are filled with people buying things for the children they love” (9). After hearing the Christmas story in a Negro church, she writes, “After all, if we cannot hear the carol and see the heavenly messenger, it is because our ears are deaf and our eyes are blind, not that we turn willfully away from love or beauty” (8). These ideas, images, and words— worked out early—anticipate Cather’s fiction. We know the fictional echoes of several powerful Christ- mas passages: My Ántonia, Shadows on the Rock, Death Comes for the Archbishop, “Neighbour Rosicky,” My Mortal Enemy, the surviving fragments of her unfinished Avignon book. We hear the foreshadowing of Bishop Latour’s comment on miracles: “The Miracles of 32 steven b. shively the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always” (54). As Cather invested herself ever more fully in her vocation as an artist, and as she grew in her powers of expression, her confidence in using religious language to talk about art became more and more specific and rich with meaning, culminating in the central metaphor of her commentaries about art and culture: “the kingdom of art.” The phrase captures, in the manner of allegory, the religious power of the words used repeatedly by Jesus when he labeled the more- perfect world he championed “the kingdom of God” and “the kingdom of heaven.” Cather’s most profound and strongest use of the phrase “kingdom of art” comes in a 1 March 1896 review essay on novels about Christ and the Christ period: “In the kingdom of art there is no God but one God, and his service is so exacting that there are few men born of women who are strong enough to take the vows” (Kingdom 417). The kingdom of heaven promises a new order: a world built on compassion, love, forgiveness, peace; a world turned upside down with the poor gaining the most and the rich losing the most. Those early newspaper sketches, with their preference for the Salvation Army tent and prison chapel over the palatial church sanctuary, had anticipated the promise of art and the expression of that promise in a kind of allegorical inversion. Cather would repeat and refine the concept in her fiction through humble, religiously infused characters like Ántonia, Rosicky, Ivar, Jacinto, Sada, Mahailey, Ray Kennedy, Spanish John- ny, Augusta, Till, but their first expression came in her journalism of the 1890s. The kingdom of art, like the kingdom of heaven, both requires much and gives much, and Cather made it clear that she knew both halves of the equation. She linked the demands of service in the kingdom of art with those of religious orders when she wrote that the life of Eleonora Duse spoke “of the loveliness and love- lessness and desolation of art. . . . Of the loneliness which besets 33 Compatibility of Art and Religion all mortals who are shut up alone with God, of the gloom which is the shadow of God’s hand consecrating His elect. Truly, it is fortunate that genius is not often laid upon men, for how many are strong enough to endure its anguish? Solitude . . . is the veil and cloister which keep the priesthood of art untainted from the world” (Kingdom 153). Against the solitude and sacrifices demanded by art, Cather set art’s promise of restoration and transcendence. She thanked Joseph Jefferson for “hav[ing] given us of the living waters which brings contentment and peace” (World and Parish 2: 687). She acknowledged that the artist, in the person of the actress Clara Morris, could transcend “an awful play” with “the genius which forever evades analysis that can breathe into it a living soul and make it great” (World and Parish 1: 44). To Cather, Nellie Melba had a “voice like the archangels of heaven,” and the actress Minnie Maddern Fiske had the power to confirm that “there is a resurrec- tion and a life” (World and Parish 1: 183, 2: 663). Cather synthesized the sacrifice and the promise of the kingdom of art, as well as its steadfastness with religious feeling, when she wrote that art was “Duse’s consecration, her religion, her martyrdom” (World and Par- ish 1: 207). Art and religion are becoming “the same thing.” Religion was powerful when linked to quality art and artists, but it could be unartful as well. In October 1894, Cather commented on the church choirs of Lincoln, “The Episcopal and Congrega- tional churches at least, perhaps others, dignify and sanctify their services with music. But there are still too many churches who profane the sanctuary with music that would not be endured from a musée band” (Kingdom 177). She broadened this local commentary to criticize the common human tendency to separate art from religion: “It is peculiar, this idea people have of everything color- less and spiritless being sacred. It is strange how we object to giving beautiful things to God” (178). She emphasizes God as creator, “this Painter, this Poet, this Musician, this gigantic Artist of all art.” Cather claims that God “never made an unlovely thing,” specifically mentioning “the nightingale’s song” and “[t]he Mediterranean at noonday” before asserting, “The world was made by an Artist, 34 steven b. shively

by the divinity and godhead of art” (178). Not all art was divine, however, as art made by humans could be sacred or profane. In this column Cather anticipates that when “the Master Workman selects from this world the things that are worthy to endure in the next, it is not likely that He will take Baxter’s Saints’ Rest or the Gospel Hymns, or bound volumes of the sermons of great divines”; rather, “He will probably take simply the great classics and the things which should be classics, and the paintings that will make even heaven fairer, and the great tone melodies that must make even His angels glad, and the many lives that in themselves are art” (178). Cather is anything but antagonistic to melding religion and art. Churches, and religion more broadly, should be home to art, and they should be wary of what is not art. Cather used the common nineteenth- century term Philistia, popularized by Matthew Ar- nold, George Santayana, and others, as the antithesis of the kingdom of art.4 Bernice Slote notes that for Cather, “Philistia is primarily a state of mind, a human failure to choose the real thing” (171). Cather expressed her revulsion toward Philistinism in characteristically definite, uncluttered language that made the contrast to the kingdom of art clear: “In Philistia there are no standards and no gods” (Kingdom 172). For Cather, religion— its language, characters, locations, stories, events, symbols, and history—was one of the great battlefields for art. When she uses “Philistines” as a contrast to “artists,” she identifies artists with the biblical David: young, beautiful, singer of psalms, clever, chosen by God, and victorious over Goliath (literally and metaphorically). When she mocks ladies’ literary clubs, Cather alludes to Jeremiah 23:28, stating the club ladies “endure a great deal of chaff to get a very little wheat” Kingdom( 180), thus suggesting the proverbs and parables that use grain imagery to communicate the promise of a rich harvest available to those who seek it. This is similar to how the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur claims Jesus worked: Jesus’s proverbial sayings relied on “intensification, based on hyperbole and paradox” (32). Fur- thermore, according to Ricoeur, “In saying ‘the kingdom of God is among you,’ Jesus sets his hearers before . . . a truly tensive symbol 35 Compatibility of Art and Religion with its power to evoke a whole set of significations” (111). Religion for Cather was one of the sites where artists and Philistines battled, but religion could also be a tool, even a weapon, to use during the battle. She wanted religion— the art-filled kind, not the artless— to win. She was an enthusiastic warrior for joining religion and art. By the mid- 1890s, early in her development as an artist, Cath- er had staked out her positions on religion and art. In ways that matter most, religion and art already were “the same thing”; good religion and good art worked together to stimulate enthusiasm, enrich life, and give people happiness, but bad religion and bad art were ugly, deadening, and mean-spirited. Religion that was marked by beauty, sincere emotion, and honest enthusiasm was elevated to the kingdom of art, but religion that shunned beauty for dull literalness or hypocrisy was condemned to Philistia. In a discussion that includes mention of Cather, James Wood, the Princeton professor and regular commentator on books for the New York- er, celebrates writers who tend away from knowledge, from clever- ness, from the merely known, to feeling and emotion. Wood points out that “there have always been writers great enough to move between the religious impulse and the novelistic impulse, to distinguish between them and yet, miraculously, to draw on both” (xvi). To accept that Cather was such a writer long before The Profes- sor’s House means backing away from common critical views. One of these is that Cather’s assertion of the compatibility of art and religion in the novel reflects some sort of resolution of her angst about life, what James Woodress calls “a period of midlife crisis” (Historical Essay 291). This novel is seen as a fictional analogue to Cather’s 1936 statement in her prefatory note to Not Under Forty: “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts”(v). I do not deny Cather’s troubles during the 1920s (they are well documented), nor do I deny the possibility that she became increasingly religious in response (though I find little evidence of that), but there are important contrasts in what Cather and Godfrey St. Peter thought about art and religion. Cather has already established St. Peter’s lassitude and cynicism, and his words seem dismissive, even mean- 36 steven b. shively

spirited, as a response to a student’s comment. Given St. Peter’s claims of ignorance about Catholicism to Augusta (claims that seem disingenuous coming from the eminent author of Spanish Adventurers in North America, for any self- respecting scholar on the Spanish adventurers surely would have known the role of the church in their lives), his “gesture of negation” toward his church- bound rival Professor Langtry (55), and his own lapsed faith, St. Peter’s statements pressing the cause of religion are highly ironic. Professor St. Peter can in this lecture recall multiple references to the Bible and religious liturgy (seven such references from this passage are explicated in the Explanatory Notes to the Schol- arly Edition), including something as obscure as a Mosaic decree about cutting ﬁngernails, yet only a few days earlier he had denied to Augusta his ability to remember All Souls’ Day and Maundy Thursday, and a few days later he expressed his ignorance of the Magniﬁcat. Other than this lecture— which borders on pomposity, pettiness, and irony— there is little evidence that St. Peter ever had a meaningful religious experience or that religious music, art, or literature had been important to him (an exception is his recall of Brahms’s Requiem [258]). Coming from St. Peter, words proclaim- ing the harmony of art and religion lack the depth of lived experience, but that is not the case when Cather makes the same procla- mation, repeatedly and indirectly in her writing and explicitly in 1936. The Professor’s House is rich with what Woodress labels “autobiographical similarities” and “obvious correspondences” between Cather and her professor (Willa Cather 369), but too easily accepting the similarities diminishes Cather’s artistry and masks some of the novel’s cynicism and ambiguity.5 Several critics have seen The Professor’s House as a lead- up to Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock, novels frequently (and appropriately) held up as paragons of religious artistry. John J. Murphy comments that “Godfrey St. Peter’s classroom response to a student . . . anticipates the worldview Cather adopted for the Archbishop” (Historical Essay 348). Mildred Bennett articulates Cather’s presumed worldview in her novels prior to the mid- 37 Compatibility of Art and Religion

1920s with labels like “bull- headed,” “mean- tempered,” “gossipy,” and “nosey” to describe religious people in Cather’s earlier fiction (7) but also labels Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock as “definitely Catholic” (9). Bruce P. Baker contrasts Cath- er’s satirical barbs directed toward the “sterile, narrow, provincial world . . . of evangelical Protestantism” (21) in “Eric Hermannson’s Soul,” The Song of the Lark, and One of Ours with the “true faith, real compassion, and honest devotion” of Jean Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop (25). Certainly such commentaries offer useful insights, but they reinforce the misconceived idea that Cather had been indifferent or negative most of her life before turning positively to religion and expressing her new faith in religiously powerful novels. Janis Stout disparagingly sums up the common view: “. . . as if somewhere between the writing of a book published in 1926 and one published in 1927 she had turned a corner and seen brighter skies” (Willa Cather 221). The reality, I believe, is much more complicated in both her life and her fiction. It is a mistake to peg our reading of The Professor’s House too strongly to our awareness of what came afterward. For Cather religion and art were complex subjects, not easily placed on one side of a dividing line or the other. We limit our ability to receive the power of Cather’s writing when we say “This book is religious, but this one is not” or “Here she is irreverent, but here she is pious.” Cather did not shy away from expressing strong opinions, but as a modernist she also knew (and celebrated) ambiguity, uncertainty, and mystery. In this essay I have concentrated on Cather’s early journalism and correspondence, but I have argued elsewhere for meaningful and positive religious aspects to her early novels, which are often viewed as critical of religion.6 Undergirding the midlife crisis/turn to religion critical position is Cather’s December 1922 confirmation into the Episcopal Church, a rite held at Red Cloud’s Grace Church. Several critics have emphasized the significance of this event. E. K. Brown considers it part of a major self-assessment Cather underwent at the time: “The seriousness with which she was examining the world 38 steven b. shively and herself in 1922 appears more sharply in an act than in anything she said. On December 27, in the company of her parents, she was confirmed in the Episcopal Church” (227). James Woodress labels the confirmation service “an important event” (Willa Cather 331), and Ann Fisher- Wirth considers the confirmation “a reflection both of Cather’s increasing conservatism— her increasing desire to fill her life with tradition and ritual—and of her intensifying spiritual longing for a haven, a sanctuary, something to set against what she was coming to see as the tragedy of human experience: the cruelty, anguish, and bleakness of life and love in the world” (37). John J. Murphy has labeled the confirmation a “conversion” (“Cather’s New World” 22), and Sharon O’Brien writes that by joining the Episcopal Church Cather “redefined her Baptist heritage” (226). Cather herself threw fuel on the fire in that prefatory note to Not Under Forty (1936) that “the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts” (v). All of this gives too much importance to the event. The confirmation service formalized a long- standing relationship; from at least 1906, when Elsie Cather was baptized, all significant Cather family religious occasions were in Grace Episcopal Church (Bohl- ke 292–93). Cather’s reviews and correspondence show that she attended Episcopal services (though not exclusively) in the 1890s in at least Red Cloud, Lincoln, Beatrice, and Pittsburgh; her college friends Katherine Weston, the Gere family, and the Canfield family were all Episcopalian (Bohlke 41). She was a godparent for her niece Helen’s Episcopal baptism several years before 1922. The Rev. John Mallory Bates, rector of Grace Church from 1902 to 1930, had long been a Cather family friend; in particular, Willa Cather appreciated him for his expertise in botany. The December 1922 timing was as much a convenience as anything; Cather was in Red Cloud for an extended visit to celebrate her parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, an occasion noted by her nephew William Thomas Auld, who recounts details of the anniversary celebration (including the presence of the Episcopal bishop) but makes no mention of the subsequent confirmation service (78). Furthermore, Cather’s let- 39 Compatibility of Art and Religion ters during the several months preceding the confirmation service are mostly upbeat, filled with pleasure about One of Ours, activity in writing A Lost Lady, and gratitude for friendships and gifts. I find little, if any, evidence that Cather was seeking a spiritual sanctuary or that she was yet retreating from the world. Nor, as Janis Stout points out, do her letters after the confirmation service say anything about it, certainly nothing suggesting that a major spiritual occasion had just occurred (“Faith” 19). After 1922 Cather’s letters increasingly show signs of distress for herself, her family, and the larger world, but it would take a tenuous twist of logic to say that she anticipated those troubles and sought a deeper spiritual source of comfort to prepare for them. The service seems to have been a warm and pleasant family occasion with good friends which strengthened Cather’s bond to the Episcopal Church, both in Red Cloud and beyond. It was meaningful enough that she recalled it fondly more than twenty years later in a letter to the Rt. Rev. George Beecher, the bishop who had presided: “I am glad you remembered the little church in Red Cloud where you confirmed me with my father and my mother. I think of that service and that church very often” Letters( 634). The confirmation service solidified what was already real for her: religion should be celebratory, and it could be a site for aesthetically meaningful experiences. The idea, the feeling, that art and religion belong together, that they can enrich and support each other, found its first expression in Cather’s earliest writing. She had to move beyond a borrowed language and inherited traditions of art and religion, taking with her what was useful, discarding what she did not need, and mold- ing what was left into a personal and artistic credo. In the context of what would become her career, it had not taken so long to find her way, to establish her code, her aesthetic principles. Typi- cally, she was never satisfied and never fully resolved the tension between religion and art. But I find little waffling by the time she was writing mostly fiction: it is usually quite clear when religion is incompatible with art and when it is compatible, and there are many examples of both. Her most explicit linkage of art and reli- 40 steven b. shively gion may have come in The Professor’s House, but the idea was not new to that novel. In her earliest writing Cather grappled with the relationship between art and religion, staked out a common territory for both, and ultimately claimed a meaningful partnership as one of the strongest of her artistic principles.

NOTES

1. A good summary of the critical position that Cather significantly changed in the 1920s to a more favorable view of religion in both her writing and her life is from E. K. Brown: “On December 27, in the company of her parents, she was confirmed in the Episcopal Church by the Bish- op of Western Nebraska, her old friend Dr. Beecher. She had set her foot on the way that led to Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock; and in the books that intervened she touched more and more closely on religious issues” (227–28). The implication is that Cather’s Episcopal confirmation marked a new path which led to a more positive expression of religion than that of her earlier writing. Woodress posits a similar ar- gument, concluding that “by 1922 [Cather] was ready to believe” (Willa Cather 338). I will examine such positions in more depth later in this essay. 2. The column is signed simply “a Pupil,” but there is little doubt that Cather wrote it. The paper was started by Cather’s father and his friends, and the language of this column suggests others signed by Cather. In an August 1889 letter to Mrs. Helen Stowell, Cather proclaimed herself “on[e] of the staff reporters” Selected( Letters 11). 3. Cather’s essay on Carlyle was simultaneously published with slight differences in theHesperian , a campus newspaper for which Cather later served as literary editor. 4. Cather preferred the label “Philistine” to “Bohemian,” another common nineteenth- century term for that which was not art: “The colossal egotism of the world is in Philistia, not Bohemia. The Bohemians make large pretentions, it’s a part of their business. But they have great standards, that saves them” (Kingdom 172). 5. Janis Stout makes a similar point when she demonstrates that “God- frey St. Peter is, after all, notentirely modeled after herself” (Willa Cather 209). 41 Compatibility of Art and Religion

6. See my essays “‘A Full, Perfect, and Sufficient Sacriﬁce’: Eucharistic Imagery in Cather’s The Song of the Lark” in Literature and Belief 14 (1994); “My Ántonia and the Parables of Sacriﬁce” in Willa Cather and the Culture of Belief (2002), edited by John J. Murphy and reprinted in Bloom’s Modern Critical Editions: Willa Cather’s “My Ántonia” (2008); and “Beulah Land: Reconsidering the Ending of O Pioneers!” in The Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 55.3 (Summer 2012).

WORKS CITED

Auld, William Thomas. “My Aunt Willie!” Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter 40.3 (1997): 78– 79. Print. Baker, Bruce P. “Before the Cruciform Tree: The Failure of Evangelical Protestantism.” Literature and Belief 8 (1988): 14– 26. Print. Bennett, Mildred. “Cather and Religion.” Literature and Belief 8 (1988): 5– 13. Print. Bohlke, Landall Brent. “Seeking Is Finding: Willa Cather and Religion.” Diss. U of Nebraska, 1982. Print. Brown, E. K. Willa Cather: A Critical Biography. Completed by Leon Edel. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print. Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. 1927. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy, Charles W. Mignon, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. “Escapism.” Willa Cather on Writing. 1949. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. 18– 29. Print. —. “High School Notes.” Red Cloud Republican 22 Feb. 1890. Print. —. The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893–1896 . Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Print. —. Not Under Forty. New York: Knopf, 1936. Print. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Kari A. Ronning, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. “Superstition vs. Investigation.” Red Cloud Chief 13 June 1890. Rpt. in Willa Cather in Person. Ed. L. Brent Bohlke. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986. 140– 43. Print. 42 steven b. shively

—. The World and the Parish: Willa Cather’s Articles and Review, 1893– 1902. Ed. William M. Curtin. 2 vols. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. Print. Fisher- Wirth, Ann. “Dispossession and Redemption in the Novels of Willa Cather.” Cather Studies 1. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. 36– 54. Print. Murphy, John J. “Cather’s New World Divine Comedy: The Dante Connection.” Cather Studies 1. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999. 21– 35. Print. —. Historical Essay. Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop 325– 71. Print. O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. “Report on Argus Editor.” Red Cloud Republican 22 Feb. 1890. Print. Ricoeur, Paul. “Biblical Hermeneutics.” Semeia 4 (1975): 29– 47. Print. Slote, Bernice, ed. The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893– 1896. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Print. Stout, Janis P. “Faith Statements and Nonstatements in Willa Cather’s Personal Letters.” Willa Cather and the Culture of Belief. Ed. John J. Murphy. Provo: Brigham Young UP, 2002. 7– 27. Print. —. Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2000. Print. Werner, M[orris]. R. Bryan. New York: Harcourt, 1929. Print. Wirth, Eileen M. From Society Page to Front Page: Nebraska Women in Journalism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2013. Print. Wood, James. The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief. New York: Random House, 1999. Print. Woodress, James. Historical Essay. Cather, The Professor’s House 291– 325. Print. —. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. 2 Thea in Wonderland Willa Cather’s Revision of the Alice Novels and the Gender Codes of the Western Frontier

MICHELLE E. MOORE

William M. Curtin claims that Lewis Carroll “was one of Cather’s great enthusiasms” as indicated by her membership in the Lewis Carroll club at the University of Nebraska. In a letter to Mariel Gere dated 12 March 1896, Willa Cather explains how she relieved her boredom in Red Cloud by reading Alice in Wonder- land to her ten- year- old brother, James. Curtin notes the letter in The World and the Parish (1: 357– 58), and James Woodress has added about the visit that Cather “was sick of Alice in Wonderland after reading it to Jim sixteen times” (Woodress 105; Letter 22). In the 26 November 1896 issue of The National Stockman and Farmer, she announces that she has made a copy of Alice in Wonderland as the prize “for the little ones” “for the best letter to the editor from a boy or girl” (Bintrim 125). However sick of it she was, Cather quickly incorporated Alice into her own writing. In October 1897 her review of Alice appeared in the “Old Books and New” section of the Home Monthly, and she refers to the novel in “The Prodigies” (1897), and later in “The Treasure of Far Island” (1902), and “Flavia and Her Artists” (1905). Ann Moseley has brieﬂy explored the connection between the Alice novels and “Flavia and the Artists,” but Cather’s use of the novels in her work after 1905 has gone unremarked. This essay ﬁrst shows how The Song of the Lark employs motifs from the Alice novels—queens, rabbit holes and their rabbits, March Hares, and tea parties—as signposts that reveal those peo-

43 44 michelle e. moore

ple and places who try to force Thea to remain in childish Moon- stone/Wonderland. The essay’s second part reveals the ways in which the word Wonderland shifts in meaning in late- nineteenth- century American travel narratives and advertisements to now refer to the American West and Southwest. I argue that once Thea leaves Moonstone, the novel relies on a reader’s knowledge of the then ubiquitous Northern Pacific Railroad’s Alice in Wonderland advertising campaign to structure Thea’s return as a tourist to the Wonderlands of Moonstone and Panther Canyon. The final part of the essay demonstrates how the allusion to Wonderland allows for a complex reading to emerge of the interrelationships between Thea’s childhood, her possibilities for self- discovery, and the gender codes usually attributed to the western frontier. I show how Cather reverses the gender codes of the western frontier, creating a subtle and yet biting critique of the new tourist trade that the expanding railroad industry pitched toward young, adventurous women. Cather’s 1897 review of Alice reveals her dismay at having grown out of Wonderland: “Indeed, I sometimes open the red covers of the book and go back there now, but I travel through it by a tie- pass now in the most humiliating manner, whereas once I went in a private coach and considered my chances of becoming a queen exceedingly good” (World and Parish 1: 360).1 The plot of the Alice novels details Alice’s desire to become queen, and Cather associates this desire nostalgically with childhood dreams. The one direct clue that Song of the Lark is rewriting the Alice novels appears when Thea speaks a version of Alice’s line to the White Queen: “There’s no use trying, one can’t believe impossible things” (251). Thea tells Dr. Archie: “I only want impossible things. The others don’t interest me” (269). Significantly, both Alice’s and Thea’s lines reverse their respective novel’s earlier observations about “impossible things.” In an earlier passage, Carroll’s narrator of Through the Looking Glass observes: “So many out-of- the way things had happened that Alice had begun to think that very few things were indeed impossible” (30) The narrator of The Song of the Lark observes 45 Thea in Wonderland about Thea, “Now, everything that she really wanted was impossible; a cantabile like Harsanyi’s, for instance, instead of her own cloudy tone” (197). Whereas Alice’s words reveal her shift from a belief in the impossible to a renunciation of “impossible things,” Thea’s words reveal an opposite shift: from seeing that things are impossible to a deep belief in and desire to obtain those things deemed impossible. Alice’s abrupt reversal demonstrates that her experiences in Wonderland have caused her beliefs about impossible things to sidetrack her, shutting off future possibilities for the little girl. The White Queen chides Alice in response to her new disbelief in the impossible: “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. . . . When I was your age, I always did it for half-an- hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before break- fast” (251). The queen’s words indicate that one can believe in impossible things as a child. But Alice, as a result of her Wonderland experiences, is growing up. Her change of heart about impossible things reveals that staying too long in Wonderland will cause the adventurer to lose her beliefs and dreams. Song of the Lark borrows directly from Alice because it suggests that Thea must still believe in “impossible things” to fuel her talent and propel her forward. Unlike Alice, Thea can’t stay in her childhood home too long, because then she will lose her beliefs. The imagery of Wonderland in Song of the Lark, then, serves as signposts that reveal ominous fates for Thea, places and people who will force her to stay in Wonder- land, a queen, and who would cause her to lose her belief in her impossible dreams. The White Queen is dowdy, childish, and ill kept. Likewise, Thea’s and many “Friends of Childhood” try to keep her as a childish, potentially dowdy queen. Ray Kennedy sees her while a potential child bride, as an eventual queen:

He always told himself, when he accepted the cigar from a newly married railroad man, that he knew enough not to marry until he had found his ideal, and could keep her like a 46 michelle e. moore

queen. He believed that in the yellow head over there in the sand, he had found his ideal, and that by the time she was old enough to marry, he would be able to keep her like a queen. (59)

Ray’s dying words to Dr. Archie indicate that Thea had, at the moment of his death, become a queen in his eyes, and that had he not died, the money he willed to her would have kept her in this role: “Always look after that girl, doc. She’s a queen!” (166). When Thea’s mother dies, Dr. Archie makes an eerie observation: “When he last looked at her, she was so serene and queenly that he went back to Denver feeling almost as if he had helped to bury Thea Kronborg herself” (448). Had Thea reigned in Moonstone kept by Ray, she would have reached Alice’s goal of becoming a queen and remaining in the metaphorical state of Wonderland. She would die a queen just as her mother had— a coded message that becoming a kept queen is a deadly state for a woman. In other words, the queen imagery that Cather borrows from Carroll allows Cather to write against the Victorian standard for ideal femininity. The White Queen lives backwards in a curious reversal of a Victorian women’s novel heroine who also lives backwards as she travels the plot arc projecting forward to her wedding day. Cather creates Thea as the opposite of these heroines who seek a life of queen- like domesticity. Ann Romines observes, “Thea is also separated from housekeeping, by the fact of her musical gifts, which differentiates her from her siblings” (145). Romines notes further that, once grown, “Thea’s own private life of hotels and restaurants and other people’ drawing rooms is anti- domestic; she shows no interest in being a housekeeper” (146). If Ray had kept Thea as his Queen, her life would be about housekeeping and not artistry. Her dreams of impossible things would have to wither and die, just as Alice puts away her beliefs in “impossible things” when she matures in Wonderland. The allusion to the Alice novels suggests Thea must escape Moonstone and the Wonderland of her childhood. At the end of 47 Thea in Wonderland the Alice review, Cather notices that Wonderland is a rather ordinary place; in other words, it is not wonderful at all. She writes: “I am afraid that all the wonderful people that Alice met are just the same old people we meet every day with Wonderland costumes on” (361). In the 1923 essay “Nebraska: The End of the First Cy- cle,” Cather writes that her Nebraska neighbors “kept themselves insulated as much as possible from foreign influence” and were “provincial and utterly without curiosity” about the world outside their own parish (237). Thea may be seen as being at odds with those provincial residents of Moonstone who have no curiosity about the larger world outside of Moonstone. The novel’s use of the motifs of Wonderland indicate exactly who may want to prevent Thea’s escape into the larger world. James R. Kincaid has noticed that in Through the Looking Glass, “the most consistent attacks on Alice focus on the specific fault of governesses, or adults: evasive, and ultimately vicious, sentimentality” (95). In The Song of the Lark, the everyday people who attack Thea and try to keep her trapped in domestic Wonderland are creatures of sentiment. Ray is “deeply sentimental” (51) with “a sentimental veneration for all women” (57). Thea’s older sister, Anna, reads “sentimental religious story books” (147). Larsen “read a great many novels, preferring the sentimental ones” (184). Mrs. Anderson was just “sentimental” (190). The most vicious attack occurs when Thea’s rival Lily Fisher sings a sentimental poem to a very appre- ciative Moonstone audience oozing sentiment at the “semi- sacred concert of picked talent” on Christmas Eve (65). Thea’s costume that night consists of “her white summer dress and a blue sash,” which reverses John Tenniel’s classic illustration of Alice wearing a blue dress with a white sash in the first edition of the book with colored illustrations (68). Thea’s costume indicates that at that moment she is a reversed Alice, one who doesn’t want to be a queen in Wonderland, despite their shared wounding by the sentimental people who surround both characters. In Through the Looking Glass, Alice replaces Lily, the White Queen’s daughter, the white pawn, on the chessboard. In Song of 48 michelle e. moore the Lark, the performance of Thea’s rival contains everything enjoyed by the sentimental Moonstone audience. It is fitting that Thea’s rival shares the White Queen’s daughter’s name, because Lily will never leave Moonstone, always be a pawn of those around her, and will grow up to be a dowdy matron just like her mother. Nina Auerbach notes that Alice’s identification with the White Pawn suggests that she is in “danger of extinction,” and Thea’s identification with Alice suggests the same deadly fate for Thea—if she stays on the chessboard with other people’s queenly designs for her life (42). The Alice novels are filled with threats to Alice’s existence. Just falling into the rabbit hole may kill her, and The Song of the Lark suggests that Thea, too, may be killed if she falls into any of the holes that open up in front of her on her path. Mr. Kronborg discusses with his wife Thea’s future: staying in Moonstone giving piano lessons while driving out to “Copper Hole” (109). A few pages later, the reader learns that “Before the Kronborgs reached Cop- per Hole, Thea’s destiny was pretty well mapped out for her” (114). The hole Thea’s parents speed toward is a metaphorical vortex that Thea could fall down, which would keep her permanently in the childish, ordinary Wonderland of Moonstone. She escapes to Chicago because Ray— not Thea— is buried in a hole in the ground. But when she travels back home, sitting on the train “speeding westward” toward Moonstone, she begins to think about meeting alternative selves and holes in the ground:

It was as if she had an appointment to meet the rest of herself sometime, somewhere. It was moving to meet her and she was moving to meet it. That meeting awaited her, just as surely as for the poor girl in the seat behind her, there awaited a hole in the earth, already dug. (241)

For Thea, so much had begun with a hole in the earth. “Yes, she re- ﬂected, this new part of her life had all begun that morning when she sat on the clay bank beside Ray Kennedy, under the ﬂickering 49 Thea in Wonderland shade of the cottonwood tree. She remembered the way Ray had looked at her that morning. . . . Suppose there were such a dark hole open for her, between tonight and that place where she was to meet herself?” (240–41). Because Thea moves toward Moonstone instead of away, the burial imagery, with its connotations of Won- derland and fate, reappear in the text. Thea’s future self will not happen if she falls down a hole that opens magically before her and ensures a certain death. One of things Fred teaches Thea at Panther Canyon is to navigate holes that seem to abruptly open in front of her. When they get stuck in a storm, he stops and pants to her, “Gosh, what a hole! Can you jump it? Wait a minute” (360). Later in the same passage, he praises her jump across the hole: “Good jump! I must say you don’t lose your nerve in a tight place. Can you keep at it a little longer?” (361). The scene references the previous holes that Thea has jumped across in her life before meeting Fred, and suggests that she only needs to continuing jumping just “a little longer.” The fact that Fred, not the narrator, voices Thea’s leap across the hole expresses the novel’s ambivalence at Thea’s relationship to the man who helps her navigate deadly holes and stay out of Wonderland, but who simultaneously controls her leap across them and keeps her a pawn on his chessboard. The White Rabbit leads Alice down the rabbit hole, and so in The Song of the Lark, any much older male character who may lead Thea down a deadly rabbit hole becomes associated with rabbit imagery. In “Alice on the Stage,” Carroll explains the White Rab- bit’s character. Carroll asks: “Was he framed on the ‘Alice’ lines, or meant as a contrast?” Then answers: “As a contrast, distinctly. For her ‘youth,’ ‘audacity,’ ‘vigour,’ and ‘swift directness of purpose,’ read ‘elderly,’ ‘timid,’ ‘feeble,’ and ‘nervously shilly-shallying,’ and you will get something of what I meant him to be” (37). Just as the White Rabbit provides a contrast to Alice’s youth, audacity, and single- mindedness, so too do the white rabbits of The Song of the Lark— the older Spanish Johnny, Wunsch, Ray, and Dr. Archie—provide 50 michelle e. moore

a contrast to Thea’s possession of the same characteristics. Cather wrote in a letter to Ferris Greenslet dated 6 April 1915 that she was shortening her novel in order to place emphasis on Thea’s youth and childhood (Letters 200). The use of the white rabbit motif identifies those who threaten Thea’s youthful vigor and, in doing so, will keep her trapped in the Wonderland of Moonstone because she will lack the energy to leave. Spanish Johnny and Wunsch chase after rabbits that lead them down dark, destructive holes into which Thea may follow. When- ever Spanish Johnny disappears from Moonstone periodically, his wife would “soon begin to get newspapers from La Junta, Albu- querque, Chihuahua, with marked paragraphs announcing that Juan Tellamantez and his wonderful mandolin could be heard at the Jack Rabbit Grill or the Pearl of Cadiz saloon” (48). Johnny runs away to a bar named after a rabbit, and so when he runs away, he runs to a rabbit: he falls into the metaphorical rabbit’s hole by being consumed by a passionate audience and his own passion for the music. He returns to Moonstone only “when he was completely wrung out and burned up,—all but destroyed—” (48). He fritters away his energy like the White Rabbit in Alice, and his art almost causes his death every time he chases the white rabbit. The novel suggests that if Thea began chasing rabbits, like Johnny, she would use up her vitality, ultimately leading to her death. The novel similarly depicts Wunsch’s alcoholism as a tendency to follow rabbits down the rabbit hole. The Kohlers take in Wunsch after one particularly bad night of drinking. Spanish Johnny wakes “to find the German standing in the middle of the room in his undershirt and drawers, his arms bare, his heavily body seeming twice its natural girth. His face was snarling and savage and his eyes were crazy.” Johnny runs away looking for help as Mrs. Kohler exclaims to her husband: “Ach if you had your rabbit gun now!” (102). Mrs. Kohler’s call for the rabbit gun suggests that if Wunsch were shot or threatened with the gun, the craziness brought on by his drinking would be controlled. Her line implies 51 Thea in Wonderland that a rabbit is responsible for Wunsch’s behavior: if her husband shot the rabbit, then order would be restored. Because Thea looks up to Wunsch, the episode suggests that if Thea stays in Moon- stone, she may become like Wunsch, chasing the white rabbit into an alcoholic wonderland. The allegory is most clear as Dr. Archie warns Thea directly about the dangers of chasing rabbits, meanwhile posing as one of those potential rabbits himself. One morning, Dr. Archie and Thea sit and watch rabbits in Moonstone. He warns her: “don’t marry and settle down here without giving yourself a chance, will you?” Thea’s reply connects their intimacy to Archie’s warning: “See, there’s another rabbit!” Dr. Archie then issues another stern warning to Thea: “that’s all right about the rabbits, but I don’t want you to get tied up. Remember that” (91). By juxtaposing rabbit watching and Dr. Archie’s warning about being tied to a man, the novel connects the rabbit imagery to the warning and suggests that men who may tie down Thea will be metaphorically drawn as rabbits. Dr. Archie may be one of those rabbits about which he warns Thea. While his role as a love interest is unmistakable in the 1915 version, he is substantially neutered in the 1937 revision. Robin Hayeck and James Woodress have shown how Cather removed suggestive passages that explicitly detail Archie’s attraction to Thea. For example, she removed Fred’s crude line to Dr. Archie about Thea: “If you’re stale, she’ll jack you up, That’s one of her special- ties. She got a rise out me last December that lasted me all winter!” (434). Cather also removed Dr. Archie’s embarrassment at Thea’s décolletage (406), and Dr. Archie’s comment about Thea’s picture on her dying mother’s table: “It would be wonderful to live with anybody who looks like that” (Song 445; see Hayeck and Woodress 656– 57). The last comment about the picture reveals Archie’s designs on marrying Thea, which in turn casts him as one of the potential rabbits he warns Thea about that morning in Moonstone. Cather may have removed the passages because Archie’s attraction 52 michelle e. moore to Thea complicates and possibly sexualizes his affection for her as a child in Moonstone. Dr. Archie’s comment to Thea’s mother repeats the passage from “Friends of Childhood” in which he examines Thea and admires her beauty. Archie tends to the very sick Thea and thinks, “what a beautiful thing a little girl’s body was,—like a flower. It was so neatly and delicately fashioned, so soft, and so milky white” (10). The long passage ends with the narrator’s comment: “Her affection for him was prettier than most of the things that went to make up the doctor’s life in Moonstone” (11). Auerbach’s reading of Charles Dodg- son’s appreciation of little girls offers a framework through which one may read Archie’s appreciation of Thea’s beauty. She points out that “Even Victorians who did not share Lewis Carroll’s phobia about the ugliness and uncleanliness of little boys saw little girls as the purest members of a species of questionable origin, combining as they did the inherent spirituality of child and woman” (32). Dr. Archie may see Thea not as herself but as the embodiment of late nineteenth- century ideas about the spiritual purity of little girls. However, even if Dr. Archie is not looking directly at Thea, but at some complicated array of ideas about “little girls,” his gaze mirrors Dodgson’s when he looked through the camera’s lens at naked girls, including Alice Liddell, on which he based the Alice novels. Lucie Armitt has shown that biographers and critics of Dodgson have taken great pains to downplay the inherent sexuality in his photographs of naked girls. She stresses: “Dodgson’s nude images, or girls ‘sans habillement,’ as he euphemistically titled them, are a form of sexual fulfillment in themselves. Through them he possesses ‘his’ little girls, just as much as any producer or consumer of pornography” (171). Just as Dodgson possessed the girls in the photographs, Archie possesses Thea metaphorically by consuming her child’s beauty, and then later as an investor in her talent. At the end of the novel, Dr. Archie remembers “the night they watched the rabbit in the moonlight” and asks, “why were these things stirring to remember?” (440). Remembering Thea as a child stirring 53 Thea in Wonderland up rabbits seems to stir up Dr. Archie as well. It is unclear exactly how he may lead Thea down a deadly rabbit hole, but the rabbit imagery suggests that he poses a large threat to Thea’s movement away from Wonderland and away from childish Moonstone. Dr. Archie’s association with the White Rabbit also reveals his lack of sophistication as a consumer, marking him as a member of the Moonstone friends. In New York at the novel’s end, Fred Ottenburg laughs to Thea about Dr. Archie eating an overpriced rabbit:

“He can’t be trusted at all, Thea. One of the waiters at Martin’s worked a Tourainian hare off of him at luncheon yesterday, for seven twenty- ﬁve.” Thea broke into a laugh, the deep one he recognized. “Did he have a ribbon, this hare? Did they bring him in a gilt cage?” “No,”—Archie spoke up for himself,—“they brought it in a brown sauce, which was very good. He didn’t taste very different from any rabbit.” (476– 77)

Thea points out that they probably got the rabbit off a “push cart on the East side” (477). Because they laugh at Dr. Archie at the novel’s end, his eating the hare may be seen as an Alice in Wonderland joke. Thea has navigated the path to becoming an opera diva and has achieved “impossible things” by avoiding ersatz rabbits. Dr. Ar- chie, who warned Thea about rabbits, eats the rabbit with gusto, enjoying every bit of her success. Thea’s question about the rabbit’s ribbon reveals the darker aspect of the humorous conversation. Thea, just like the hare she imagines, wears a “pale- blue ribbon around her throat” when she leaves Moonstone for the ﬁrst time (171). The short conversation shows that Thea had the potential to be her own rabbit by getting in the way of herself and leading herself down the deadly hole. Cather acknowledges these aspects of Thea’s character in a letter she wrote to Glendinning Keeble sometime between 15 May 1915 and 19 July 1915. In Janis Stout’s paraphrase, “Thea has con- 54 michelle e. moore trol over her own fortune; was a liar and was lied to.” Thea lies to get what she wants and manipulates those around her to get what she wants for her future. Her potentially conniving ways align her more closely with a complicated Alice, whose characteristics make her appear more as Auerbach writes a “vision of that ‘fabulous monster,’ the Victorian child” (Cather, Calendar 33; Letter 305). Alice disrupts Romantic visions of childhood purity and innocence through her duplicity and tendency to become grotesque. If Thea lies and manipulates those around her, then she cannot be a picture of childhood innocence, which, Cather notes in the letter, may “alienate readers.” Instead, she becomes her own rabbit who leads herself down deadly holes through her own character ﬂaws. The “hare” in the “gilt cage” that Thea jokes about with Dr. Ar- chie and Fred Ottenburg refers to the March Hare, who attends the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party wearing a blue ribbon as a bowtie in John Tenniel’s original illustrations for Alice in Wonderland. In British folklore, the March Hare hops randomly and appears mad because March marks the beginning of mating season for hares. Carroll parodies the folklore of the March Hare by bringing the Hare to the tea table. Cather invites comparison between Fred Ottenburg and the March Hare when she writes of Thea having numerous teas with Ottenburg, and then invites further comparison with Dr. Archie, who tried to see Thea in New York “last March” (434). Ten- niel’s illustration of the March Hare includes a few wisps of straw around the Hare’s head, the nineteenth- century symbol of madness. Archie wears a straw hat twice in the “Friends of Childhood” section, inviting further comparisons between the March Hare and himself and illustrating his mad desire for Thea (45, 89). The conversation about the hare occurs just as Thea signals the end of tea with Dr. Archie and Fred by turning on the lights. Thea, unlike Al- ice, controls the tea table and perhaps the two men who have their sights set on her. Once Thea leaves Moonstone, the novel’s allusions to Wonder- land serve to connect Thea’s visits home to Moonstone with her 55 Thea in Wonderland trip to Panther Canyon. The novel suggests that both places are Wonderlands for Thea. She must return to Wonderland because the narrative takes the form of the hero’s journey. For Alice and Thea, as with all classical voyagers, the knowledge gained from the journey is ultimately self- knowledge, and she brings back the knowledge that her identity has shifted as a result of taking the journey. Auerbach has noticed Alice’s introspection:

Other little girls traveling through fantastic countries, such as George Macdonald’s Princess Irene and L. Frank Baum’s Dorothy Gale, ask repeatedly “where am I?” rather than “who am I?” Only Alice turns her eyes inward from the beginning, sensing that the mystery of her surroundings is the mystery of her identity. (33)

Thea, like Alice, must learn who she is and, more importantly, what her vocation means in order to discover where she should exist and with whom she should consort. Thea must return to Wonderland so that it becomes clear that her identity has shifted as a result of having left home. Travel for Thea, as for Alice, promises the possibilities of epiphany through the discovery of old surroundings again, and through movement into completely new surroundings. In the decades before the turn of the twentieth century, the word “Wonderland” began to expand in meaning to include the Amer- ican West. The Song of the Lark plays on these new deﬁnitions that primarily emerge from Northern Paciﬁc Railway advertising imagery in order to further develop the complicated relationship between Thea’s childhood in Moonstone and her journey toward adult success. In order to accomplish the narrative development and further strengthen the allusion to the Alice novels, Cather revises the Victorian gender coding ascribed to the western frontier in the late nineteenth century. As a young reader and railroad traveler, Cather must have seen this analogy everywhere. The May 1871 issue of Scribner’s Monthly’s cover article is simply titled “The Wonders of Yellowstone” (Bruce 56 michelle e. moore

70). In 1877, Henry N. Maguire published The Black Hills and Amer- ica’s Wonderland, and in 1878, Edwin James Stanley wrote Rambles in wonderland, or, Up the Yellowstone: and among the geysers and other curiosities of the national park. Colgate Hoyt wrote of his September 1878 trip to Yellowstone: “It contains in the same space probably a greater number of natural wonders & curiosities than any other region of the entire globe & thus is rightly named Wonderland” (Brust and Whittlesey 59). In 1882, William Wallace Wylie published Yellowstone National Park, or, The great American wonderland: a complete description of all the wonders of the park, together with distances, altitudes, and such other information as the tourist or general reader desires: a complete hand, or guide book for tourists and in 1883 the Chicago and North Western Railway Company published The early history and rapid progress of that wonderland, central Dakota. In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway (npr) began service to Yel- lowstone and built lavish hotels for the new wilderness tourist. In 1884 the npr published a brochure titled Alice’s Adventures in the New Wonderland: The Yellowstone National Park, which transformed Carroll’s book into an advertising campaign for the “Wonderland Route” to Yellowstone. The brochure’s cover art reimagines Ten- niel’s young Alice as a young woman in a blue dress, western hat, gloves, and belt who beams over a rugged mountain path. The image depicts a woman who possesses a new, thoroughly modern, and rugged version of femininity and whose contours and colors replicate the western landscape she surveys. The brochure cover draws from earlier paintings, such as John Gast’s American Progress (1872), that depict a female muse of western expansion. In Gast’s painting, the female figure, dressed as a Greek goddess, holds a schoolbook and leads settlers westward while Native American and animals flee from her influencing powers of progress and modernity. Stout has demonstrated that Gast’s picture reflects a Victorian gender division. The picture en- codes the western landscape and those who work on it as masculine and the ideas that inspire the work as feminine. She argues 57 Thea in Wonderland that because the new Pullman cars brought large numbers of women to the West, the meaning of the western landscape shifted to hold possibilities for both genders in reality and in representation (117– 19). The npr advertising image of a new Alice suggested to a generation of young, modern women the possibilities provided by train travel and promised that they, too, might become part of America’s West. The Song of the Lark addresses the new possibilities the trains brought to women when Dr. Archie says to Thea: “The railroad is the one real fact of this country” (70). Joseph Urgo has declared that The Song of the Lark is “embodied by the railroad, moving the course of empire westward, paralleled by the telegraph and its imperial message” (137). Women took part in moving the course of empire westward by becoming tourists of America’s West and Southwest. The Song of the Lark considers the complexities of this new use for the railroad by invoking the new version of Alice in the npr advertising brochure. Stout shows that Cather’s familiarity with and sensitivity to the relationship between drawing and copy can be seen in the page layouts at McClure’s in 1907 and 1908 and argues that Cather continued thinking about the relationship between words and images in her later novels. She names The Song of the Lark as a particularly interesting case of what she calls “picture— text interaction” because the title of the novel is also the title of a painting (145). The image on the npr brochure would certainly have appealed to Cath- er, and it provides another example of the “picture-text interaction” Stout identifies as permeating the novel. The narrative draws on a reader’s knowledge of the npr brochure image of Alice in order to show that Thea, taking the train to Moonstone and thinking about “hole[s] in the earth,” speeds back toward Wonderland. The new train routes allowed the western tourist industry to expand quickly, and the word Wonderland, with its connotations of Alice’s curiosity and wandering, expanded in definition along with it to include the cliff dwellings. In 1891, Rev. Charles H. Green bought a large number of cliff- dweller relics that he displayed in 58 michelle e. moore

cities across the United States, including at the Art Institute of Chi- cago. The accompanying brochure refers to the area that is Mesa Verde as “This Wonderland” (Green and Art Institute 31). In 1893, J. W. Buel wrote America’s Wonderland: A Pictorial and Descriptive His- tory, which includes pictures and a description of the Mesa Verde region under the heading “Over the Heights and Into the Deeps of Wonderland” (2). Mitchell Prudden repeats the metaphor in “An Elder Brother to the Cliff- Dwellers,” published in the June 1897 issue of Harper’s Magazine, which begins, “The purpose of this paper is to relate some recent discoveries in the hot wonderland which lies along the San Juan River, and its Northern territories” (58). By the time Cather wrote an article for the 31 January 1916 edition of the Denver Times titled “Mesa Verde Wonderland is Easy to Reach: Colorado Show Place as Authoress Sees It,” the conceit had been well established. Paula Kot has argued that “In adding her story to the reproductions available in park brochures and published advertisements, Cather help to reaffirm the sight’s/site’s authenticity” (406).The Song of the Lark, written two years before the article on Mesa Verde, also helped to assign authentic meaning to the ruins. But the novel does so with a marked ambivalence not found in the newspaper article, because the novel interweaves the meaning of the cliff dwellings with the advertising imagery of the trains that took tourists to the ruins. The novel frames Thea’s visit to the cliff dwellings as a “return” to Wonderland, and the framing indicates that the cliff dwellings pose the same ominous threats to Thea as Moonstone. However, because Thea returns as a tourist, Thea, for the first time, poses a threat to Wonderland because her presence destroys the natural landscape. Fred tells Thea that his father owns “a whole canyon full of cliff dweller ruins” while they are “waiting for their tea at a restau- rant in the Pullman Building” (319, 318). George Pullman built the building they sit in with the profits made from his Pullman cars; Thea sits above the main Pullman office space, located on 59 Thea in Wonderland the floors below her. The location of Fred’s announcement shows neatly that Pullman’s train car will allow Thea to visit the Otten- burg ruins in comfort and style. The tea party in the Pullman building successfully connects the tea party of Alice in Wonderland with the trains and a touristy visit to the cliff dwellings. Kot points out that because of the confluence of narratives that greet the tourist at Mesa Verde, it “is not a place where tourists admire the ruins from an aesthetic distance; rather, here they insert themselves into the story and relive it” (406). In Song of the Lark, when Thea visits the cliff dwellings she inserts herself not just into the story of the ruins but also into her childhood story of Wonderland. She re- lives her childhood time in Wonderland as the nostalgic adult Al- ice featured on the advertising brochure and voiced by Cather in her review of Alice, rather than as the child who could be trapped there forever. Cather drew from her 1912 trip to Arizona when writing Thea’s trip to Panther Canyon. Sharon O’Brien writes of a letter Cather wrote to Elizabeth Sergeant during the trip. O’Brien notes: “Cath- er said that she had not been as happy since childhood— which to her was an androgynous, Edenic time of play and play-acting before gender limited the identities men and women could assume” (411). At the end of the novel, Thea thinks of her childhood in exactly these same terms: as an Edenic Wonderland. She says to Dr. Archie, “I’ve gone to sleep and wakened in the Kohler’s garden, with the pigeons and the white rabbits, so happy! And that saves me” (505). The npr brochure’s image of Alice also re- casts her as a somewhat androgynous woman who is costumed in a female version of a man’s explorer outfit. Her costume and the possibilities of visiting the West afforded her by train travel seem to promise a return to childhood Eden, where she can be an impossibly grown- up Alice. The idea of Wonderland, then, is nostalgic in that it highlights exactly what has been lost— childhood— while simultaneously underscoring the impossibil- ity of its return. 60 michelle e. moore

Kincaid points out that “The Alice books are, above all, about growing up and they recognize both the melancholy of the loss of Eden and the child’s rude and tragic haste to leave its innocence” (93). Ann Fisher- Worth has identified that this “keen sense of loss” is also at the center of Cather’s novels and that “the lives of most of the major characters enact a recurrent tragic pattern, a sense of dispossession, exile and longing” (37). Thea’s time in Panther’s Can- yon may be read as a vacation to Wonderland that underscores that she is no longer a child and can never truly return to Wonderland. The landscape is never as the advertising brochure promises, and the novel’s final emphasis on adult Thea’s dreadfully tired and hag- gard appearance in her dressing room indicates that Thea’s future is not as wonderful as she had hoped for in childhood. Thea’s statement “I only want impossible things” serves as an instruction to read The Song of the Lark as a rewriting of Alice’s Ad- ventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (209). Bernice Slote noticed that in Cather’s early work, “she seemed to think al- legorically and write figuratively,” blending quotations, figures of speech, and classical allusions. Cather’s novel weaves a rich tapestry of allusion, which, Slote contends, “would have drawn forth tomes of analysis, had T. S. Eliot written it” (211). By employing and rewriting Carroll’s novels in her narrative, Cather asks us to think about the dark ramifications of a young, female artist’s belief in Victorian Wonderland, and in doing so infuses the novel with a new modern sensibility.

NOTES

1. Willa Cather’s copies of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Look- ing Glass and What Alice Found There have been lost, so it is impossible to say with any certainty which editions she owned and whether she had multiple copies of the novels. The ﬁrst British edition, published in 1866 by Macmillan and Company in London, has red covers, as does the ﬁrst American edition, published by D. Appleton and Co. in 1866. Macmillian published a facsimile of the novel in 1886 that has red covers. The sequel, 61 Thea in Wonderland

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, published in 1872 by Macmillan, also has red covers.

WORKS CITED

Armitt, Lucy. “‘Stranger and Stranger’: Alice and Dodgson in Katie Roiphe’s Still She Haunts Me.” Women: A Cultural Review 15.2 (2004): 167– 79. Print. Auerbach, Nina. “Alice and Wonderland: A Curious Child.” Victorian Studies 17.1 (Sept. 1973): 31– 47. Print. Bintrim, Timothy. “Recovering the Extra- Literary: The Pittsburgh Writings of Willa Cather.” Diss. Duquesne U. 2004. Print. Bruce, Chris, curator. Myth of the West. The Henry Art Gallery U of Washington, Seattle. Seattle: Henry Art Gallery Association, 1990. Print. Brust, James S., and Lee H. Whittlesey. “‘Roughing It Up the Yellowstone to Wonderland’: The Nelson Miles/Colgate Hoyt Party in Yellowstone National Park, September 1878.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 46.1 (Spring 1996): 56– 65. Print. Buel, James W. America’s Wonderland: A Pictorial and Descriptive History. New York: J. Williams, 1893. Print. Carroll, Lewis. The Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Ed. Martin Gardner. New York: Bramhall House, 1960. Print. Cather, Willa. A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather: An Expanded, Digital Edition. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis P. Stout. The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. —. “Mesa Verde Wonderland Is Easy to Reach: Colorado Show Place as Authoress Sees It.” Denver Times 31 Jan. 1916. The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. —. “Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle.” Nation 5 Sept. 1923: 236– 38. Print. —. “Old Books and New.” The Home Monthly Oct. 1897. Cather, World and Parish 1: 357– 61. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis P. Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. 62 michelle e. moore

—. The World and the Parish: Willa Cather’s Articles and Reviews, 1893– 1902. Ed. William M. Curtin. 2 vols. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. Print. Chicago and North Western Railway Company. The early history and rapid progress of that wonderland, central Dakota. Chicago: Poole Bros., 1883. Print. Fisher- Wirth, Ann W. “Dispossession and Redemption in the Novels of Willa Cather.” Cather Studies 1. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. 36– 54. Print. Green, Charles H., and Art Institute of Chicago. Catalogue of a unique collection of Cliff Dweller relics taken from the lately discovered ruins of southwestern Colorado and adjacent parts of Utah, New Mexico and Arizona: scientiﬁcally estimated to be the oldest relics in the world: a short history of the strange race, region and ruins. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1891. Print. Hals, Carl J., and Northern Paciﬁc Railway Company. Alice’s Adventures in the New Wonderland: The Yellowstone National Park. Chicago: Poole Bros., 1884. Print. Hayeck, Robin, and James Woodress. “Willa Cather’s Cuts and Revisions in The Song of the Lark.” Modern Fiction Studies 25 (1979– 80): 651– 58. Print. Kincaid, James R. “Alice’s Inversion of Wonderland.” pmla 88 (1973): 92– 99. Print. Kot, Paula. “Speculation, Tourism, and The Professor’s House.” Twentieth Century Literature 48 (2002): 393– 426. Print. Maguire, Henry N. The Black Hills and America’s Wonderland. Chicago: Donnelley, Lloyd, 1877. Print. Mosley, Ann. “Alice in the Troll Garden: Willa Cather’s ‘Flavia and Her Artists’ and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.” Teaching the Works of Willa Cather. Ed. Steven B. Shively and Virgil Albertini. Maryville: Greentower P, 2009. 162– 74. Print. O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. Pruden, Mitchell. “An Elder Brother to the Cliff- Dwellers.”Harper’s New Monthly Magazine June 1897: 56– 62. Print. Romines, Ann. The Home Plot: Women, Writing, and Domestic Ritual. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1992. Print. Slote, Bernice. “An Exploration of Cather’s Early Writing.” Great Plains Quarterly 2 (1982): 210– 17. Print. 63 Thea in Wonderland

Stout, Janis P. Picturing a Different West: Vision, Illustration, and the Tradition of Austin and Cather. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2007. Print. Stanley, Edwin James. Rambles in wonderland, or, Up the Yellowstone: and among the geysers and other curiosities of the national park. New York: D. Appleton, 1878. Print. Urgo, Joseph R. Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Print. Wylie, William Wallace. Yellowstone National Park, or, The great American wonderland: a complete description of all the wonders of the park, together with distances, altitudes, and such other information as the tourist or general reader desires: a complete hand, or guide book for tourists. Kansas City: Ramsey, Millett & Hudson, 1882. Print. 3 Ántonia and Hiawatha Spectacles of the Nation

JOSEPH C. MURPHY

In an 1882 photograph taken in Washington dc, Willa Cather, aged about nine, wears a cross on a cotton lace dress and grips a bow and arrow fully her own height (fig. 3.1). She is out- fitted for a recitation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha (1855). At the ripe moment in her performance, Cather reportedly “would drop on one knee and shoot her arrow into the imaginary forest,” in step with Longfellow’s verse: “Then, upon one knee uprising / Hiawatha aimed an arrow” (161).1 Having committed the lines to memory, she embodied them in pose and picture. This pictorial vignette supplies a useful allegory for the argu- ment I will pursue here regarding Longfellow’s far- reaching impact on Cather, where the arrow is Hiawatha’s influence—or more broadly, that of the “white man’s Indian” the poem exemplifies— and the forest is Cather’s creative domain through which that arrow flew and, years later, hit its mark. It struck the heart, I will argue, of My Ántonia (1918), embedding itself in the image of the abandoned plow as “a picture writing on the sun” (237) in book 2, chapter 14, which—given Cather’s familiarity with the poem and the singular allusiveness of her fiction—almost certainly alludes to Hiawatha’s chapter 14, an account of Indian language titled “Picture-Writing.” Far more than a nostalgic reference, this allusion underscores the persisting influence of Longfellow’s poem in the early twentieth century, when a “Hiawatha revival” captivated the

64 Fig. 3.1. Willa Cather as a child, 1882. Philip L. and Helen Cather South- wick Collection. Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska– Lincoln Libraries. 66 joseph c. murphy

American imagination. In the years since Cather’s childhood recitation, the ﬁgure of Hiawatha had evolved in American culture to hypostatize a cluster of problems—immigration, citizenship, language, memory—that also inform My Ántonia. Central to Cather’s novel is a phenomenon that was dramatized in contemporaneous Hiawatha spectacles and conceived as a template for the Ameri- canization of new citizens: the congealing of a literate American identity out of the air from which a pictographic, aboriginal identity is perpetually fading. Situated in this Hiawatha context, My Ántonia appears a more coherent novel— its imagery unexpectedly uniﬁed— and a stranger one, too.

HIAWATHA’S AFTERLIFE

Longfellow, to this day “the most popular American poet who ever lived” (Gioia 64), had a complex but steady hold on Cath- er’s imagination. As a young critic, she broke free of her childhood enthrallment by berating him: Longfellow “killed [Miles Standish] thoroughly,” she wrote in 1894, “along with English hexameter”; and in 1902 she listed him among those nineteenth-century Americans who perpetuated “the methods and sentiment of English poetry” rather than achieving an authentically American style.2 Despite her cooling enthusiasm, Cather never stopped promoting Longfellow. Speaking at the centennial of the Longfellow-Hawthorne graduating class at Bowdoin College in 1925, she reported her frustra- tion at not finding an edition of The Golden Legend at a Portland bookstore to send to her niece (she did, however, manage to send a postcard of Longfellow’s Portland home to her mother).3 When, in 1942, Alexander Woollcott asked her to recommend American classics to include in an Armed Services Edition, Cather suggested that “lots of country boys . . . have a shy liking for some of Longfel- low’s ballads” (Letters 613). It is in her fiction, however, that Cather makes her most persuasive case for Longfellow’s enduring relevance. Several of her au- 67 Ántonia and Hiawatha thentically modern American characters have absorbed Longfel- low’s verse, as if a foundation in this most rhythmic of stylists has prepared them to step to a less conventional beat: visionary settler Alexandra Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913) has read The Golden Leg- end and The Spanish Student on the Nebraska prairie (60); avant- garde artist Don Hedger in “Coming, Aphrodite!” was introduced to The Golden Legend, along with paints and crayons, by a western Pennsylvania priest (9). Repeatedly, Cather keys her Longfellow allusions to the experiences of characters schooled in his poetry. In The Song of the Lark (1915), Ray Kennedy refers to “the youth who bore” (137), in “Excelsior,” to coach Thea Kronborg about worldly striving. In One of Ours (1922), Mrs. Wheeler murmurs a stanza from Hiawatha ending “Ever deeper, deeper, deeper / Fell the snow o’er all the landscape”— her voice “quavering” as a blizzard rages beyond her window (137). Later in the same novel, an “old clergyman,” watching the Anchises embark with its payload of American soldiers, intones a stanza from “a poet who in his [the clergyman’s] time was still popular,” beginning “Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State,” from Longfellow’s “The Building of the Ship.” Like Mrs. Wheeler’s, the clergyman’s voice “quavered,” pulsating with long- treasured feeling suddenly stirred to life (363). Such scenes document the afterlife of Longfellow’s phenom- enal popularity in the nineteenth century, when his lines leaped to the tongue at both fireside and podium, the seemingly natural outpouring of popular sentiment. As Virginia Jackson has argued, this was poetry so artful that it seemed natural, so derivative that it became authentic, so loveable that it turned reading into a form of perception (474). In the modernist period, Cather’s reference to Longfellow is still spontaneous but slightly recherché, as when Godfrey St. Peter, in The Professor’s House (1925), reckons with mor- tality at midlife by recollecting Longfellow’s “The Grave”:

He remembered some lines of a translation from the Norse he used to read long ago in one of his mother’s few books, a little two-volume Ticknor and Fields edition of Longfellow, in blue 68 joseph c. murphy

and gold, that used to lie on the parlour table: For thee a house was built Ere thou wast born; For thee a mould was made Ere thou of woman camest. (272)4

Longfellow’s pliability to the quick of experience coexisted with, and depended on, his poetry’s physical repose in dusty volumes. This dialectic between the spirit and the letter of the text is especially pertinent to his most popular poem, Hiawatha, which pre- sumes to reanimate a vanished aboriginal culture through a highly stylized form of English verse. In Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880– 1930, Alan Trachtenberg identifies Hiawatha as a central figure in the construction of turn- of- the- century American identity after actual Indian cultures had been desecrated and just as waves of Eu- ropean immigrants, like the Shimerdas of My Ántonia, were being incorporated into the national body. From its first appearance in 1855, Longfellow’s Hiawatha had inspired recitations and performances among fans, like Cather, transfixed by the poem’s trochaic tetrameter and charming imagery. Modeled on the mythi- cal Ojibway culture- hero Manabozho and renamed, for euphony, Hiawatha, after the Mohawk founder of the Iroquois Confedera- cy, Longfellow’s ersatz Indian quickly became the white man’s familiar (Trachtenberg 52–55). Major artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Eakins, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens rendered Hiawatha in oils and marble. In the 1890s Hiawatha enthusiasm became an outright mania. Longfellow’s good Indian emerged “newly pictorialized” in the form of staged spectacles, lavishly illustrated editions (by Frederic Remington, among others), postcards, coloring books, silent films, and the Wanamaker’s “Vanishing Race” extravaganza. In the music world, Anglo-African composer Samuel Coleridge- Taylor adapted Hiawatha as a cantata trilogy (1898–1900), and An- tonín Dvořák based the middle movements of his 1893 New World Symphony on episodes from the poem (Trachtenberg 86–89)— a 69 Ántonia and Hiawatha case in point, prior to My Ántonia, of the Bohemian route to Amer- ican fame running through Indian territory. Central to this revival were the Hiawatha pageants known as “In- dian Passion Plays”: outdoor performances, with song and dance, featuring actual Natives dramatizing Longfellow’s version of Ojib- way tradition. Originating in the Great Lakes region, these spectacles were initially sponsored by the railroads to promote tourism in the ancestral Ojibway territories styled “Hiawatha’s Playground.” The pageants spread across the continent and even reached Lon- don and Amsterdam, staged by both traveling and local companies. They involved Natives of many tribes, frequently combining Indi- an languages with Longfellow’s original English text. (The young Ernest Hemingway, himself a reciter of Hiawatha, got to know the Ojibway performers in Petoskey, Michigan, incorporating his experiences in such early stories as “Indian Camp” and “Three- Day Blow.”) L. O. Armstrong, a land agent for the Canadian Pacific Rail- way and one of the first pageant producers, trained Indians in their own forgotten customs, reconstructed by Longfellow’s poem and clarified by ethnographic images. As Natives performed the “recovery” of their ancestral selves for the entertainment of white audiences, they possibly discovered, as Michael D. McNally has argued, “stealthy media for Indian agency between the lines of Longfel- low’s script.” When Indians were unavailable, or not preferred, Boy Scouts and adult fraternal orders filled their places in what proved a flexible and evolving form of Indian minstrelsy (Trachtenberg 52, 91–97; McNally 107– 8, 118). A sampling of Hiawatha activity in New York City in 1913 includes filmmaker F. E. Moore’s “Indi- an Passion Play,” “Acted by an Able Company of Indian Players” at the outdoor Woodland Theatre, and a student performance of Hiawatha that drew four thousand spectators to Hudson Park in Greenwich Village, a short walk from Cather’s apartment at 5 Bank Street (“Indian Passion Play”; “Pack Hudson Park”). This Hiawatha overdrive flourished when it did, Trachtenberg argues, as a kind of ritual sacrifice of Indian cultures to Ameri- can national identity. As decimated Indian populations (no longer 70 joseph c. murphy

“nations” but wards of the state) were consigned to shrinking res- ervations and Indian youths were “civilized” in schools, Hiawatha reemerged to fortify the American nation with the aboriginal presence it had grossly violated. Longfellow’s poem, beginning with the tribe’s laying down arms and ending with Hiawatha’s yielding to the Black Robes, purveyed a reassuring image of the Indian as both compliant to Manifest Destiny and yet available “as fiber for the nation’s morale and iconography for its self- representation” (13). Once viewed as “alien savages,” Indians came to be embraced “as the true, the natural, the ‘first Americans,’ icons of the nation and its territory” (10), “forefathers and -mothers of us all” (xxiii) at a time of disorienting expansion and immigration. New waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe—Catholic, Orthodox, and Jew- ish rather than the predominantly Anglo- Saxon Protestant stock of earlier arrivals— fueled a latent, if uneasy “dream of an Indian me- diation of nationality” (13), even as some of these aliens appeared, as Henry James put it, “inconceivable” (qtd. in Trachtenberg 101). Longfellow’s poem raised the hope of assimilating immigrants by way of a common American ancestor packaged in a veneer of authenticity. Translations of Hiawatha appeared in “virtually all the world’s languages” (Trachtenberg 52), including Latin, Hebrew, Yid- dish, Czech, and Ojibway itself. In Cather’s early story “A Son of the Celestial” (1893), the limited English reading of Chinese immigrant Yung Le Ho includes the Bible and The Song of Hiawatha, which he supposedly admires for an “artificialness” that “appealed to his natural instinct.” The artificiality of Hiawatha’s character, a “tableau vi- vant figure” “already prepared for appropriation as theatrical spectacle,” was essential to his cultural function, Trachtenberg argues (58). By presenting authenticity as compatible with serial performance, early-twentieth- century Hiawatha pageants showcased American identity as performed and constructed, rather than inborn or naturalized (xxii). As universal ancestor, Hiawatha had to be recalled repeatedly from the verge of destruction and rendered “a shade fated always to vanish again, always to come again and reperform the act of vanishing” (60). In fading, Hiawatha drew closer. Fig. 3.2. Augustus Saint- Gaudens (1848–1907), Hiawatha, 1871–72. Carving. Marble. Figure: 60 x 34½ x 37¼ in. (152.4 x 87.6 x 94.6 cm) Base (Granite base) 23 in. Other (Plinth with inscription) 5¾ in. (14.6 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Diane, Daniel, and Mathew Wolf, in memory of Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, 2001 (2001.641). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of Art Resource NY. 72 joseph c. murphy

Several critics have interpreted My Ántonia, or at least its narrator, Jim Burden, as complicit in the removal of Indians, whether in its meager reference to Native peoples on the Nebraska frontier or in symbolism that appears to condone their elimination. Mike Fischer, for example, subjects the novel to an unﬂinching reckoning with the historical facts that fall beyond its ideological purview: Coronado’s depredations in the 1500s, U.S. military cam- paigns against the Indians in the 1860s, and the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. In Michael Gorman’s reading, My Ántonia pitch- es frontier history as a springboard for America’s triumph in the Spanish- American War and its emergence as global power during World War I. My approach places the novel in a different historical frame: the cultural construction of Native Americans as medi- ators of national identity in the early twentieth century. From this perspective, the novel’s progressive representation of immigrant life, lauded by Fischer, is inextricable from the historical amnesia he justly criticizes. Its relative silence about Indians, I argue, is a precondition for their reemergence, on the model of Hiawatha, in more culturally assimilative forms: as the ghostly medium for the relation between the Anglo- American narrator and his Bohemian subject, and as a pretext for the novel’s elegiac tone, communing with a past that eludes the grasp of language.

PICTURE- WRITING

Longfellow’s chapter 14, titled “Picture- Writing,” provides Cather a literary foreground for her own engagement with the dialectic between images and written words. Trachtenberg calls the “Picture- Writing” canto “the heart of the poem” (70), the center- piece of what Angus Fletcher describes as Longfellow’s “implicit treatise on the nature of language” (qtd. in Trachtenberg 69). Long- fellow derived his concept of picture- writing, and other Ojibway lore, from the writings of the nineteenth-century amateur ethnog- rapher Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a geologist and Indian agent who 73 Ántonia and Hiawatha married into an Ojibway family in Michigan. “Picture- writing was the earliest form of the notation of ideas adopted by mankind,” Schoolcraft observed. “There can be little question that it was prac- tised in the primitive ages, and that it preceded all attempts both at hieroglyphic and alphabetic writing” (qtd. in Jackson 483). In Longfellow’s poem, Chief Hiawatha, while “Pondering, musing in the forest / On the welfare of his people” (the contemplative interlude depicted by Saint- Gaudens, ﬁg. 3.2), invents picture- writing in response to a nagging sense of impermanence, ignorance, and isolation:

“Lo! how all things fade and perish! From the memory of the old men Pass away the great traditions, ...... “On the grave- posts of our fathers Are no signs, no ﬁgures painted; Who are in those graves we know not, Only know they are our fathers...... “Face to face we speak together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us To the friends that dwell afar off; Cannot send a secret message, But the bearer learns our secret[”] (227– 28)

In pursuit of permanence, memory, and confidentiality, Hiawatha invents a prototype of written communication: “Wonderful and mystic figures” he paints, “And each figure had a meaning, / Each some word or thought suggested” (228). Thus, “an egg, with points projecting / To the four winds of the heavens” represents the Great Spirit; a serpent suggests the Spirit of Evil; a white circle is Life; a darkened one, Death; and so on. Next, Hiawatha instructs the people to paint their household symbols on the village’s blank grave- 74 joseph c. murphy posts, “Figures of the Bear and Reindeer, / Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver” but with “Each inverted as a token / That the owner was departed / . . . / Lay beneath in dust and ashes” (230). The communal marking of the graves is the catalyzing act that establishes picture-writing as the tribe’s archival medium. The prophets, magi- cians, and medicine men then fall into a frenzy of activity, recording each of their songs in a “separate symbol / Figures mystical and awful, / Figures strange and brightly colored” (230). They work as if their lives depended on it: their bright paint on bark and deer- skin, a stay against oblivion. Longfellow gives special attention to a series of scarlet figures, male and female, representing the “Love- Song.” The last of these figures is “a heart . . . / . . . within a magic circle; / And the image had this meaning: / ‘Naked lies your heart before me, / To your naked heart I whisper’” (231–32). This image of the heart within a circle typifies the picture-writing medium itself, which is essentially a kind of “whispering,” the confidential communication from heart to common heart without recourse to alphabetical script. Longfellow’s project, bolder than his hero’s, is to make Amer- ican Indian culture as transparent as pictures— accessible to every heart— through the artifice of English verse. As Trachtenberg observes, Longfellow and Schoolcraft both subscribed to “the ‘romantic racism’ of the Herderian Volkgeist school” (65), viewing Indians as primitives whose supposed disappearance left behind autochthonic resources for American culture, what Schoolcraft calls “the germs of a future mythology” (qtd. in Trachtenberg 65). Herein lies the irony of Hiawatha, Trachtenberg argues: it is “a pretended translation that obliterates in order to preserve.” The poem “makes Hiawatha or ‘the Indian’ disappear in the act of seeming to give him voice; its own metrical and figurative system disarticulates aboriginal culture from its own systems of thought and speech by subsuming the aboriginal into the Anglo- Saxon nationality of the narrative verse form” (74). The deftness of Longfellow’s “illusion of translation of picture into word” (74) becomes apparent when his text is compared to his source 75 Ántonia and Hiawatha in Schoolcraft’s ethnography, which clearly separates the images of Indian pictographs from their interpretations. In Longfellow, however, “Symbol and interpretation” (231) interlock seamlessly in the rhythmic drive of “a poetic text that seems to show and tell itself” (Jackson 492). In his introduction to Hiawatha, Longfellow likens the reader’s experience of the poem to deciphering the faded inscription on a rustic tombstone. He appeals to those who, rambling in the countryside, sometimes

Pause by some neglected graveyard, For a while to muse and ponder On a half- effaced inscription, Written with little skill of song- craft, Homely phrases, but each letter Full of hope and yet of heart- break, Full of all the tender pathos, Of the Here and the Hereafter;—

“Stay and read this rude inscription,” he beckons, “Read this Song of Hiawatha!” (143). Thus is an alien pictographic culture transformed into the homely trace of a written culture— familiar to readers of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”— and Native Americans become, by implication, those readers’ own ancestors, remote but comprehensible. Cather imitates Longfellow’s ventriloquism of Indian picture speech in a more critical and experimental key. Before discussing the novel’s central “picture writing” scene, I want to look at an earlier passage referring more explicitly to a kind of Indian pic- tography, a literary descendant of Hiawatha’s “magic circle.” Jim describes a trace of Indian activity, a “great circle,” on his grandpar- ents’ own property:

Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornﬁeld, there was, faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used to ride. Jake and Otto were sure that when 76 joseph c. murphy

Fig. 3.3. Currier & Ives, Hiawatha’s Departure, ca. 1868. Prints and Pho- tographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG- pga- 04874.

they galloped round that ring the Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the center; but grandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there. (60)

Here I think Cather intends, at Jim’s expense, a rather fumbling reading of Indian culture, a succession of undigested stereotypes. Jake and Otto’s fixation on savagery is quickly dispelled by the moderating vision, offered by Jim’s grandfather, of good Indians sporting athletic and equestrian skills. Jim follows this up with a pleasingly exotic pattern: sprayed with snow, the circle stands out “with wonderful distinctness, like strokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figure stirred me as it had never done before and seemed a good omen for the winter.” Jim’s color- coded landscape (red and white) hints at the white settlers’ uneasy conquest of Na- tive territory. Although at first the “[b]ig white flakes” were “disappearing in the red grass,” the snow eventually overtakes and freezes 77 Ántonia and Hiawatha the grass, revealing a white circle constituting “a good omen for the winter” (60). This good omen, false in view of the impending winter suicide of Mr. Shimerda, ironically exposes the white con- querors’ inability to read the landscape they have cleared of its recent Native occupants. In Jim’s celebrated description of the plow as “a picture writing on the sun,” the exchange between American and aboriginal cultures becomes more fluid, dynamic, and expressionistic. Here the focus of interpretation is not a primitive inscription but a civilizing implement, the plow. Backlit by the sun, the plow swells to heroic proportions before fading out. It is a strange and mystical sight to Jim and the hired girls, who stand dumbfounded and agog before a “great black figure” that initially defies understanding: “We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. . . . Mag- nified across the distance by the horizontal light,” the plow “stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disc; the handles, the tongue, the share— black against the mol- ten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun” (237). The plow, illumined then snuffed out, is often understood to celebrate a multicultural pioneer age that was already being over- run by a materialistic, monolingual culture— “the end of a first cycle,” as Cather would lament in her 1923 Nation essay (“Nebras- ka”). Loaded with imagery borrowed from Virgil’s Georgics,5 it is further associated with the work of writing, in the light of Gaston Cleric’s lecture in which the dying Virgil recalls “the perfect ut- terance of the Georgics, where the pen was fitted to the matter as the plough is to the furrow” (256). However, suspended from its civilizing work and aligned with the sun, the plow reaches further back, glimpsing, in the uncanny twilight, the pictographic foundations of language. The figure of the plow forges a reverent, almost Gnostic community on the embers of its primal fire: “Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth” (237). Like Hiawatha’s “heart within a magic circle,” standing for the whisper passing from heart to heart, here the plow within the “circle of the 78 joseph c. murphy disk” inspires whispering among a band of witnesses who, however baffled by the figure’s meaning, are bound together by their shared experience of it. Cather’s plow scene recalls the concluding spectacle of historical transition in Longfellow’s poem, where Hiawatha, leaving his tribe in the hands of missionaries, rides a canoe into the setting sun (fig. 3.3). In Longfellow’s scene, as in Cather’s, a community confronts the future and communes with nature (here figuratively “like a prairie”) as it watches an icon of its culture recede on the horizon:

And the evening sun descending Set the clouds on fire with redness, Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, ...... Westward, westward Hiawatha Sailed into the fiery sunset, Sailed into the purple vapors, Sailed into the dusk of evening. And the people from the margin Watched him floating, rising, sinking, Till the birch canoe seemed lifted High into that sea of splendor, Till it sank into the vapors Like the new moon slowly, slowly Sinking in the purple distance. And they said, “Farewell forever!” Said, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!” And the forests, dark and lonely, Moved through all their depths of darkness, Sighed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!” And the waves upon the margin Rising, rippling on the pebbles, Sobbed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!” And the heron, the Shuh- shuh- gah, 79 Ántonia and Hiawatha

From her haunts among the fen- lands, Screamed, “Farewell, O Hiawatha!” (278– 79)

In this protracted slow fade— “floating, rising, sinking”— Hiawatha appears to cycle through multiple avatars as he sears himself into the consciousness of his spectators, an exemplum of the picture- writing he taught them. Paradoxically, his death as picture is his birth into the language that will preserve, in trochaic tetrameter, the final exposure of his pictorial image. As the heron bewails the disappearance of Hiawatha and the passing of tribal culture, the poem retains its Ojibway name in the Romanized form “Shuh- shuh-gah,” another case of the preservation that obliterates. Echo- ing Longfellow’s heron, two birds in Cather’s scene strike notes of mourning just before the plow’s apotheosis: “In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, and somewhere off in the bushes an owl hooted” (237). Cather sustains a similar interval of protracted, meditative, shape-shifting twilight, where the freezing of the image (“exactly contained within the circle of the disk”; “There it was . . .”) seems contingent on perpetual motion (“the ball dropped and dropped”). If Hiawatha is emblazoned in our minds at the point of yielding to Christianization and written language, Cather’s plow is pictorialized, “strengthened and simplified” (254), as it fades into a further stage of Americanization. Cather’s picture- writing scene, like Longfellow’s, is the text’s mystic center, the key to its aesthetic and cultural project. Jim’s narrative continually visits sites where language is just emerging from but slipping back into its pictorial foundations. As Ánto- nia prods Jim to teach her English, “her eyes fairly blazing with things she could not say,” she learns linguistic signs by forming pictorial associations: “Blue sky,” “blue eyes” (25). Letters themselves seem fleeting. Before killing the giant rattlesnake in the prairie- dog town, Jim sees it “lying in long loose waves, like the letter ‘W’” (43–44). A month before his suicide, when Mr. Shimerda kneels to pray at the Burdens’ Christmas tree, “[h]is long body formed a letter ‘S’” (84), as if, like the snake, he were offering himself up to 80 joseph c. murphy

written language in his last pictorial appearance. The aboriginal snake and weary immigrant, like Hiawatha, fade into the scrim of words. And yet Mr. Shimerda ultimately sheds the letter, revisiting Jim after his death with “[s]uch vivid pictures . . . that they might have been Mr. Shimerda’s memories, not yet faded out from the air in which they had haunted him” (98). Ántonia, too, although Jim associates her with “the old woodcuts of one’s first primer,” bypasses the primer’s alphabet and speaks to Jim in cryptography, “by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things” (342). When the letter tightens its grip on the picture, the picture returns to haunt the fringes of the letter, as when Jim’s “old dream about Lena coming across the harvest field in her short skirt. . . . floated . . . on the page” of the Georgics above “the mourn- ful line: Optima dies . . . prima fugit” (262). Jim believes his teacher Cleric just missed becoming a great poet because “he squandered too much in the heat of personal communication”: he would “flash into the lamplight the very image that was in his brain” (252), rather than write it down. No surprise, then, that Cleric’s less scholarly protégé Jim falls back on his native visual vocabulary, “my own naked land and the figures scattered upon it” (254). Jim seizes on the word “figure”—which is Longfellow’s term for Hiawatha’s picture- writing— to describe, for example, the Indian circle in the grass, the plow against the sun, Ántonia herself, and Mr. Shimerda, “a figure moving on the edge of the upland, a gun over his shoulder” (39). The term “figure” loads these images with an explosive potential for meaning; at large in the landscape, they crave fulfillment. It is telling that Cather’s next novel after My Ántonia, One of Ours (1922), portrays a typical Nebraskan of the rising generation, Claude Wheeler, whose prospects in life are truncated not only by the Great War but by his inability to think pictorially. As Cather explained in a 1921 interview, to portray Claude she had to “cut out all picture making because that boy does not see pictures.” She then added, “It was hard to cease to do the thing that I do best” (Bohlke 39), implicitly signaling a shift in One of Ours away from the pictorial orientation of My Ántonia.6 In contrasting One of Ours 81 Ántonia and Hiawatha with its predecessors, Susan J. Rosowski explains that “[f]or Cath- er ‘picture making’ involved an imaginative movement toward a revelatory experience in which one recognizes similarities among disparate parts and participates in the relationship between the finite and the infinite” (96). Trapped in a material world incommen- surate with his romantic notions, then removed to a foreign battlefield, Claude never achieves an integrated vision, one in which the visible world lends meaning to action.7 From this perspective, Jim’s image of the vanishing plow foreshadows not only the passing of the pioneer age, but a decline in the popular capacity to in- terpret such figures at all.

GROUND SHADOWS In Jim Burden’s memories, as in Longfellow’s Hiawatha, reality assumes its most iconic, pictorial form on the brink of disappearance or death. In his memories of people, these are the points at which their identities sink into the bosom of the nation. His narrative runs through a series of such apotheoses. The Burdens’ hired men Jake Marpole and Otto Fuchs are never more themselves than when preparing their ﬁnal departure—laying carpets, building shelves, serving to the last—before boarding a train for the “wild West” and disappearing forever (139). Likewise, the characters of Russians Pavel and Peter are graphically exposed— but also domes- ticated and nationalized— just prior to the friends’ exit from the scene, Pavel in death, Peter in onward migration. The guilt- ridden Pavel makes a shocking deathbed confession to Mr. Shimerda of an atrocity committed in youth— tossing a bride and groom off a sledge to a pack of wolves in the Ukrainian winter— that precipi- tated his immigration with Peter to America. As he tells the story in his native Ukrainian, Pavel “kept pointing all around his bed, as if there were things there and he wanted Mr. Shimerda to see them” (52). These images— “black ground-shadows” of wolves consuming a wedding party in the snow (56)— pass seamlessly from Pavel’s Ukrainian to Mr. Shimerda’s Czech to Ántonia’s effortful 82 joseph c. murphy

English to Jim’s literary text, like a universal symbolism racing beneath language. As such, they become the property of Jim’s indigenous experience, “as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party been sacriﬁced, to give us a painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep,” Jim reports, “I often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashing through a country that looked something like Nebraska and something like Virginia” (59). Even as actors in their remote Ukrainian tragedy, Pavel and Peter are already claimed by the nation of their asylum; they are already, as Jim exclaims, “our Pavel and Peter!” (54). Mr. Shimerda establishes the novel’s paradigm for an immigrant’s pictorial absorption into the American landscape. The old man is never more himself than in the consideration with which he takes his own life— “ﬁxy . . . to the last,” as Otto puts it (92). The suicide’s body, rejected by every graveyard, waits frozen in its morbid peculiarity— a scandal to the melting pot, an inconceivable alien. Nonetheless, Mr. Shimerda’s “intelligence,” “cultivation,” and “personal distinction” appeal to Jim’s youthful American consciousness (194), becoming the inspiration for his commencement address and, one senses, the lodestone of his imaginative life. Jim’s personal devotion to Mr. Shimerda centers on the picturesque resting place of his remains at the southwest corner of the Shimerda property, a future intersection of roads which becomes for Jim “the spot most dear” in the whole country. Buried frozen in the dead of winter, Mr. Shimerda’s body undergoes a long thaw that confounds anyone’s accounting of his death, any “sentence” that would violate his dignity:

Years afterward, when the open- grazing days were over, and the red grass had been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared from the prairie; when all the ﬁelds were under fence, and the roads no longer ran about like wild things, but followed the surveyed section- lines, Mr. Shimerda’s grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it, and 83 Ántonia and Hiawatha

an unpainted wooden cross. . . . The road from the north curved a little to the east just there, and the road from the west swung out a little to the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was never mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft gray rivers ﬂowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the propitiatory intent, that had put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that could not carry out the sentence—the error from the surveyed lines, the clemency of the soft earth roads along which the homecoming wagons rattled after sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I am sure, without wishing well to the sleeper. (114– 15)

Invoking, like Longfellow, the siste viator (stop, traveler) conven- tion of the Graveyard Poets, Jim positions Mr. Shimerda as a universal American ancestor hallowing a crossroads. However, unlike Longfellow’s “half-effaced inscription” in the introduction to Hiawatha, and unlike the grave- posts on which Chief Hiawatha tells his people to paint their household symbols, Mr. Shimerda’s grave is blank, “unpainted.” Of such men, Hiawatha says, we “only know they are our fathers.” The cryptic blankness of Shimerda’s grave passes beneath the letter and the sentence, even beneath the picture; eliding the sleeper’s immigrant identity, it taps into the rhythms of the land itself. This landscape is perfectly poised between atavistic and progressive forces. The tall red grass and the “flowing” roads recall Jim’s early sense of “motion” in Nebraska— “as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping” (15)— and by extension, the era prior to the removal of Indians, an association clarified elsewhere by his reference to “buffalo and Indian times” (45). The roads running past the Shimerda grave, then, vibrate with this primordial disturbance even as they fulfill the surveyor’s plan and point toward the future. 84 joseph c. murphy

The mystic chords of union are even more responsive in Jim Bur- den’s America than in Longfellow’s. What Shimerda’s grave asks of the passerby is not reading and interpretation, as in Longfel- low’s “neglected graveyard,” but simply salutation, “wishing well to the sleeper.” The Shimerda grave thus contrasts pointedly with the ones Cather, in her 1923 Nation essay, reports seeing “[w]hen I stop at one of the graveyards in my own county,” graves with headstones reading: “‘Eric Erickson, born Bergen, Norway . . . died Nebraska,’ ‘An- ton Pucelik, born Prague, Bohemia . . . died Nebraska.’” In its anonymous appeal, the Shimerda cross seems more likely to realize the hope Cather attaches to these inscribed graves: “that something went into the ground with those pioneers that will one day come out again[,] . . . . in elasticity of mind, in an honest attitude toward the realities of life, in certain qualities of feeling and imagination” (“Nebraska” 335– 36). Disremembered by his Christian neighbors, Mr. Shimerda is embraced by a landscape astir with a prehistory reanimated as common language, as reservoir of popular feeling. It is for this reason that when Jim later witnesses Shimerda’s grandchil- dren bursting from Ántonia’s fruit cellar— “a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight”— he beholds them as a kind of high democratic spectacle, “a sight any man might have come far to see” (328, 342).

PLAYING INDIAN By girding his account of American immigrant experience with Indian references, Jim is, as historians say, “playing” or “dreaming” Indian, that is, adopting reconstituted Native traditions to tap a precious and quickly evaporating source of the American spirit. Cather’s classic depictions of “Indian play” are set in the Southwest. In The Song of the Lark, Thea Kronborg imaginatively occupies the perceptions and physical experiences of the Ancient People while vacationing among their cliff ruins in Panther Canyon.8 In The Pro- fessor’s House, Tom Outland, after breaking with his friend Roddy Blake, takes solace among the Anasazi ruins of Blue Mesa, where, 85 Ántonia and Hiawatha he reports, “the feel of the narrow moccasin-worn trail in the flat rock made my feet glad, like a good taste in the mouth” (251). In My Ántonia, the Indian play is less physical; it is, rather, a habit of mind, a feature of the narrator’s intellectual machinery. In Jim’s text the word “Indian” appears almost as often to describe white characters as it does to refer to Indians themselves: Otto Fuchs (“skin . . . brown as an Indian’s” [6]), Mrs. Gardener (“something Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face” [176– 77]), the Widow Stevens (“brown as an Indian woman” [299]). Individual and group identities built around borrowed Indian iconography are, of course, a time- honored American tradition, from the original Indian- costumed Boston Tea Partiers to male fraternal orders like St. Tam- many’s Society, the Improved Order of Red Men, and the Freema- sons, all of which adopted ancient, oftentimes specifically Native American, rituals, costumes, and codes. As Philip Deloria notes, the practices of such fraternal groups served “to construct unique in- sider identities that proved valuable amid the dislocations of a society rapidly embracing modern capitalism” (47– 48), the very disrup- tions Cather documents in My Ántonia, among other works. Given the affinity between Masonic and Indian rituals, Freemasonry attracted a noticeable membership among Native Americans themselves from the eighteenth century forward (Porter). Cather’s introduction to My Ántonia expands these fraternal bonds when the female framing narrator and Jim identify the sin- gularity of their prairie childhood as “a kind of freemasonry” (x) and fixate on the Bohemian girl Ántonia as the “central figure” binding them together (xi). In the narrative itself, Jim first hears about Ántonia from a friendly railroad conductor who “wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged”; “[e]ven his cuff- buttons were engraved with hieroglyph- ics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.” Offering “advice in exchange for . . . confidence,” this decorated functionary implicitly invites Jim into his pictographic society by urging him to witness Ántonia’s “pretty brown eyes” (4). Although Jim sheep- ishly declines, he later remembers the conductor’s invitation when 86 joseph c. murphy he meets Ántonia; and as an adult he effectively joins the man’s fraternity by joining the railroad as a lawyer. Cather’s references to fraternal orders suggest an expansion of communal bonds, where the hieroglyphic imagery associated with Indian play and already mediating bonds among American men reaches to incorporate Cather’s female framing narrator and the immigrant woman unifying Jim’s story. In turn, Ántonia “plays Indian” for Jim. A female, immigrant type of the spectacular Hiawatha, Ántonia becomes an aboriginal ancestor, “battered but not diminished” (321– 22), “a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.” However, in contrast to the perpetually vanishing-and- returning Hiawatha, Ántonia leaves “images in the mind that did not fade— that grew stronger with time” (342). If Hiawatha is, as Trachtenberg argues, “a shade fated always to vanish again,” Ántonia is for Jim a body always in a state of appearing, forever coming into the light— “[a]ll the strong things of her heart [coming] out in her body” (342). As national spectacle, Hiawatha is the rising immigrant Ántonia’s doppel- gänger, the vexing shade prefiguring, then yielding to, then haunting her successful American performance. Ántonia, Hiawatha: both names step to a trochaic beat, such that her name aspires to overwrite his in Longfellow’s text: “Thus it was that [Ántonia] / In [her] wisdom, taught the people / All the mysteries of painting, / All the art of Picture- Writing” (232). Jim’s goal, however, is not to create an Indian-immigrant but to make a fellow American bound to him by the salutary power of the aboriginal. Readers have long understood Jim’s narrative as a form of midlife compensation for a man who is fundamentally lonely—childless, frustrated in marriage, wedded to his railroad job. His literary possession of Ántonia as My Ántonia reori- ents his New York life on an axis with a burgeoning immigrant family out west. But Jim’s adoption of Ántonia’s family partakes of his larger “personal passion” for “the great country through which his railway runs and branches” (xi), still astir with the genius of the Indians the railroads helped displace. Jim’s sensibility has always 87 Ántonia and Hiawatha been attuned to spirit- presences: the ghosts of his parents, “something complete and great” in his grandmother’s garden (18), Mr. Shimerda’s spirit-memories, and the phantoms of his childhood— “a boy and girl [running] along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass” (314). After elevating Ántonia to spectacular status, akin to Hiawatha, Jim sets her and himself against the background of a more prime- val presence. This presence is palpable in the novel’s closing paragraphs, where Jim walks north of Black Hawk to “land . . . so rough that it had never been ploughed up, and the long red grass of early times still grew shaggy over the draws and hillocks” (358). Here, in the “slanting sunlight,” he finds a section of the original road he and Ántonia first took as children from the train depot to the high prairie. Jim replays the motif established in the picture-writing scene, where the traces of his own civilization assume an uncanny, aboriginal cast even as they fade from view. Although the tracks on level land are “almost disappeared,” in the hollows they look “like gashes torn by a grizzly’s claws,” as if registering forces typical of primal founding myths, for instance, Plains Indian legends about the origins of Bear Tepee (Devils Tower).9 Against this backdrop, the Bohemian girl and the Virginia boy are united in memory as they had never been in life, their separate wagons and linguistic spaces somehow fusing into one: “This was the road over which Ántonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness.” This strangeness— a strangeness that obliterates, that literally unmakes language— is the abyss in which Jim’s relationship to Ántonia takes root, in which the “little circle” of their experience is secured (359–60). It is the aboriginal field through which Jim and Ántonia’s shared memories— their “incommunicable past” (360)—are televised between them, like pictures. It is where Jim Burden instinctively ful- fills, through writing, the haunting prophecy attributed to Chief 88 joseph c. murphy

Sea’thl: that in a country wrested from its Native peoples, “The White Man will never be alone” (qtd. in Trachtenberg 30).

NOTES

Research on this essay was funded by a grant from the National Science Council, Taiwan (nsc 99- 2410- h- 030- 014- my3). 1. See Bennett, photographic insert following page 222. 2. Kingdom 384n59; World and Parish 2: 880. 3. Bohlke 155; postcard to Mary Virginia (Jennie) Boak, 12 May 1925. 4. Cather’s recollection of these lines (actually translated from Anglo- Saxon, not Norse) varies slightly from Longfellow’s text (Woodress and Ronning 383). 5. John J. Murphy offers a detailed reading of theGeorgics borrowings in the plow scene (81– 82). 6. W. T. Benda’s spare and suggestive black-and- white illustrations, which Cather carefully supervised (Stout 114–27), bear out My Ántonia’s fundamentally pictorial conception. 7. See Rosowski’s chapter “One of Ours: An American Arthurian Leg- end” (95– 113). 8. See Clere’s illuminating historical study of “Indian play” in The Song of the Lark. 9. See, for example, the account of the Cheyenne narrator Wooden Leg in A Warrior Who Fought Custer (52– 54).

WORKS CITED

Bennett, Mildred R. The World of Willa Cather. 1951. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995. Print. Bohlke, L. Brent, ed. Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986. Print. Cather, Willa. “Coming, Aphrodite!” Youth and the Bright Medusa. 1920. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Mark J. Madigan, Frederick M. Link, Charles W. Mignon, Judith Boss, and Kari J. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2009. 3– 74. Print. —. The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893–1896 . Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Print. 89 Ántonia and Hiawatha

—. My Ántonia. 1918. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Charles Mignon, and Kari A Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1995. Print. —. “Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle.” 1923. In O Pioneers! By Willa Cather. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Sharon O’Brien. New York: Norton, 2008. 331– 38. Print. —. One of Ours. 1922. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Richard C. Harris, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006. Print. —. O Pioneers! 1913. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. David Stouck, Susan J. Rosowski, Charles W. Mignon, and Kathleen Danker. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1992. Print. —. Postcard to Mary Virginia (Jennie) Boak. 12 May 1925. Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection, Archives and Special Collections, U of Nebraska– Lincoln Libraries. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. “A Son of the Celestial.” 1893. The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. —. The World and the Parish: Willa Cather’s Articles and Reviews, 1893– 1902. Sel. and ed. with a commentary by William M. Curtin. 2 vols. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. Print. Clere, Sarah. “Thea’s ‘Indian Play’ in The Song of the Lark.” Cather Studies 9: Willa Cather and Modern Cultures. Ed. Melissa J. Homestead and Guy J. Reynolds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011. 21– 44. Print. Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Print. Fischer, Mike. “Pastoralism and Its Discontents: Willa Cather and the Burden of Imperialism.” Mosaic 23.1 (1990): 31– 44. Print. Gioia, Dana. “Longfellow in the Aftermath of Modernism.”The Columbia History of American Poetry. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 64– 96. Print. Gorman, Michael. “Jim Burden and the White Man’s Burden: My Ántonia and Empire.” Cather Studies 6 (2006). The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. 90 joseph c. murphy

“The Indian Passion Play: ‘Hiawatha’ at the Woodland Theatre Acted by an Able Company of Indian Players— Interesting Picture of Life and Customs.” New- York Tribune 13 July 1913: sec. 4:7. Chronicling America. Web. Jackson, Virginia. “Longfellow’s Tradition; or, Picture- Writing a Nation.” Modern Language Quarterly 59.4 (1998): 471– 96. Print. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Song of Hiawatha. 1855. Poems and Other Writings. Ed. J. D. McClatchy. New York: Library of America, 2000. 141– 279. Print. McNally, Michael D. “The Indian Passion Play: Contesting the Real Indian in Song of Hiawatha Pageants, 1901– 1965.” American Quarterly 58.1 (2006): 105– 36. Print. Murphy, John J. “My Ántonia”: The Road Home. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Print. “Pack Hudson Park for Child Pageant: Three Hundred Youngsters Produce Scenes from Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha.’” New York Times 25 May 1913. Web. Porter, Joy. Native American Freemasonry: Associationalism and Performance in America. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2011. Print. Rosowski, Susan J. The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986. Print. Stout, Janis. Picturing a Different West: Vision, Illustration, and the Tradition of Austin and Cather. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2007. Print. Trachtenberg, Alan. Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880– 1930. New York: Hill, 2004. Print. A Warrior Who Fought Custer. Interpreted by Thomas B. Marquis. Minneapolis: Midwest Co., 1931. Internet Archive. Web. Woodress, James, and Kari A. Ronning. Explanatory Notes. Cather, The Professor’s House 337– 84. Print. PART 2

Presences

4 Willa Cather, Howard Pyle, and “The Precious Message of Romance”

RICHARD C. HARRIS

In the poem “Dedicatory,” which opens April Twilights, Willa Cather wonderfully evokes the sense of childhood play. The poem, dedicated to her brothers Douglass and Roscoe, recaptures the world of the Cather children’s youth and their “vanished kingdom” “on an island in a western river,” where they and other play- mates talked of “war and ocean venture, / Brave with brigandage and sack of cities.” “Wonder tales” they were. These brief lines recall the passage in Alexander’s Bridge in which Bartley Alexander remembers “a group of boys sitting around a little fire . . . on a sand- bar in a Western river” (105– 6) and, in particular, Cather’s short stories “The Treasure of Far Island” and “The Enchanted Bluff,” in which she describes at much greater length the romantic adventures and “fascinating play world” (“Treasure” 277) of her characters’ and obviously her own youth. That world clearly owed much to the storytelling and illustrations in the works of Howard Pyle, generally considered the greatest American storyteller and illustrator of children’s books during the late nineteenth century, the period in which young Willa Cather lived in Nebraska, first on the prairie, then in Red Cloud, and finally in Lincoln. Cather mentions Pyle in a January 1897 Home Monthly article, where she comments on his “delightful stories” and describes his works “as some of the best juvenile books published.” She notes

93 Fig. 4.1. Cather’s inscription to Howard Pyle (1906) in a copy of The Troll Garden. Courtesy of owner of the volume, Peter Harrington, London. 95 “The Precious Message of Romance” that he has not published many works, “for he is not a hack writer, but he writes very much better than men who write more. He is as careful and painstaking and artistic with his children’s books as the very best novelists are with their novels. The Wonder Clock or Salt and Pepper for Young Folks [Pepper and Salt, or Seasoning for Young Folk] cannot fail to make children happy. But best of them all is Pyle’s Otto of the Silver Hand. It is a story of German chivalry in the days of the robber barons” (World and Parish 1: 337).1 Cather, in fact, referred to Pyle’s works throughout her life. For example, in a December 1908 letter to her sister Jessie, Cather describes some British books she has ordered for Jessie’s children as a Christmas gift. She remarks that in only one other case has she seen such beautiful fairy-tale books. According to Cather, these books and the fairy- tale books of Howard Pyle “make all the chro- mo Maxfield Parrish books in this country just look foolish. The illustrations of people like Parrish and Jessie Willcox Smith,” she says, “are not much better than fancy calendars after all, just chro- mo faces and stage scenery” (Cather to Mrs. William Auld). In a 1923 letter to Earl and Achsah Brewster, Cather, commenting on the varied reviewers’ reactions to One of Ours, says she understands exactly what the Brewsters had meant when they told Cather that Pyle’s work also had been highly praised by some and dismissed by others (Letters 336– 37). Cather would meet Pyle when she joined the McClure’s staff in April 1906. Her fascination with his works is evident in a copy of the first edition of The Troll Garden that Cather presented to him shortly after she came toMcClure’s (fig. 4.1). The inscription reads: “Will Mr. Howard Pyle accept through me the love of seven big and little children to whom he taught the beauty of language and of line, and to whom in a desert place, he sent the precious message of Romance. Willa Sibert Cather, April 26, 1906” (Woodress 51). Pyle had joined the magazine’s staff shortly before Cather. David Michaelis notes in his biography of Pyle’s most famous student, N. C. Wyeth, that by the early twentieth century, 96 richard c. harris

Magazine and book illustration no longer satisﬁed Pyle as they once had. Popular tastes were changing. The prestige of medievalism was fading. Picture making had begun to slip from its lofty place in the culture. To apply the termillustra- tion to a canvas seemed all of a sudden to devalue it. At an exhibition of Howard Pyle’s works that winter [1905– 6] in Bos- ton, only eight of sixty- three pictures sold. (138)

Faced with mounting debt, Pyle was also faced with a decision regarding his reputation: Although Harper’s, which had published his stories and illustrations for years, was still eager to have his works, and had raised the price they were willing to pay for them, Pyle was convinced that the stories by other authors which his pictures often accompanied were generally mediocre and lacked “a permanent literary value” (Michaelis 138). Enter S. S. McClure, whose magazine staff was in revolt by late 1905 and whose office was in a state of upheaval in early 1906. Mc- Clure, in Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s words, “lured and Mc- Clured” Pyle (qtd. in Kaplan 90), as he also would Cather, signing him to a year’s contract at the unheard salary of $18,000 as art editor of a new publication McClure had in mind. At the time, magazine art editors “generally earned about $8,000 a year” (Michaelis 141). Pyle accepted the offer but almost immediately began to have second thoughts about the agreement. He was not enthusiastic about working for someone else, especially someone with as strong a personality as S. S. McClure. Also, he was already committed to his painter’s school in Wilmington, Delaware, and he preferred life in Wilmington to life in New York.2 So Pyle effected a compro- mise: He came into the McClure’s office three days a week for a salary of $350 per week. This arrangement too proved unsatisfactory, however. Within about six weeks he had decided to quit McClure’s, and on 10 August he resigned the position (Michaelis 140– 42, 147– 51). Although Cather’s acquaintance with Pyle, it seems, was brief, she nonetheless, even at the age of thirty-two, must have been thrilled to meet the man whose works had contributed so much 97 “The Precious Message of Romance” to her childhood world of play. Her continued admiration and appreciation for his work is obvious from the inscription in The Troll Garden, the numerous references to him in her correspondence, and also in her story “The Treasure of Far Island” (1902).

* * *

Almost everyone familiar with Cather’s early life and literary career is aware of the famous passages in My Ántonia in which Jim Burden describes what seemed “an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America” (3), his “feeling that the world was left behind” (7), and the sense of being “erased, blotted out” (8) by the Nebraska landscape. As Cather’s comments to an interviewer in 1913 indicate, these feelings had been her own, when as nine- year- old girl she had encountered the midwestern prairie for the ﬁrst time (Bohlke 9– 10). Her initial sense of displace- ment must have been overwhelming at times. In 1905 Cather told Witter Bynner, an office boy atMcClure’s , just out of Harvard, that her early years “were pretty much devoted to discovering ugliness” in her surroundings (Letters 88). From the outset, young Willa became aware of many sobering, even gruesome stories associated with the area; in a number of her earlier short stories, barren landscapes and tragic lives are at the center of the narrative. Even in her later, more classically pastoral landscapes, suffering and death are regular visitors or inhabitants, reminding us repeatedly of that pastoral dictum, Et in Arcadia ego. This was not just any young girl, however. For “Willie” Cather was blessed with an insatiable curiosity and a remarkable sensibility. Having been “thrown out into a country as bare as a piece of sheet iron” (Bohlke 10), encountering a landscape in so many ways wanting the charm and atmosphere of her native Virginia, Cather began to explore the new world in which she found herself. And, of course, she discovered there a different charm, both in the land and in its people, especially the new neighbors—Swedes and Danes, Norwegians, Bohemians—whose customs and conver- 98 richard c. harris sation she found fascinating. There were various activities in the Cather home and in the homes of friends, and picnics in nearby Garber’s Grove, of which Cather attended ﬁfteen in the summer of 1889 alone (Rosowski 200). And there was the train station; the Burlington Railroad had four trains passing through Red Cloud each day. In many cases the train brought performers to the Red Cloud Opera House, where young Willa and her friends saw many plays and musical performances. And, of course, there was the land. In that prairie landscape, Cather, brothers Roscoe and Douglass, and several friends found yet another source of excitement and inspiration. This is the world described most fully in “The Treasure of Far Island” and “The En- chanted Bluff,” stories in which Cather is both remembering and “memorializing”—Hermione Lee’s term—her childhood (19). The central setting for both stories is an island in the river near town, which became an enchanted world in a child’s imagination and a cherished place in an older visitor’s or writer’s memory. It is the island of the Sandtown boys of “The Enchanted Bluff” and the Far Island of the story of that name, a “retreat [and] a place of high childish romance” (Brown 40). As Cather tells us in “The Treasure of Far Island,”

Of all the possessions of their childhood’s Wonderland, Far Island had been the dearest. . . . Long before they had set foot upon it the island was the goal of their loftiest ambitions and most delightful imaginings. They had wondered what trees grew there and what delightful spots were hidden away under the matted grapevines. They had even decided that a race of kindly dwarfs must inhabit it and had built up a civilization and historic annals for these imaginary inhabitants, surrounding the sand bar with all the mystery and enchantment which was attributed to certain islands of the sea by the mariners of Greece. (276– 77)

As Cather’s inscription to Pyle indicates, that childhood “Wonder- land” owed much to him. Cather’s mention of a land “inhabited 99 “The Precious Message of Romance” by a race of kindly dwarfs” must have come from her reading of Pyle: many of his Robin Hood and King Arthur stories, as well as his book The Wonder Clock, contain references to dwarfs. More- over, both the subject matter and the mood described in Pyle’s fiction and illustrations are clearly reflected in “The Treasure of Far Island.” There, for example, Margie, commenting on Douglass Burnham’s great success, notes that he has achieved what he has “as they used to do it in the fairy tales, without soiling your golden armor” (273).3 By the time Cather was ten years old, Pyle had already established himself as an illustrator of note. His earliest works, illustrated animal fables and fairy tales, appeared regularly in Scribner’s and St. Nicholas in the mid-1870s. These were genres he would continue to explore. By the late 1870s Pyle had established himself with stories and illustrations in Harper’s and had become very successful. By the early 1880s he had become a household name (Abbott 101).4 He is considered by many art historians to have been the major influence in what is known as the Golden Age of American illustration, roughly 1880 to 1920. The Wonder Clock, for example, originally published in 1888, was one of his most successful works. A collection of twenty- four fairy tales, each accompanied by a poem and an illustration, the volume was an immediate success and would remain so popular that thirty years later it sold six times as many copies as it had upon its original publication (Abbott 108). In addition, Pyle’s works are quite clever and are marked by an appealing sense of humor. “I try to make them as witty as I can,” Pyle said (Abbott 35). Pyle’s appealing writing style in concert with his remarkable illustrations made his books irresistible to children. His attempts “to indoctrinate a small lesson” (Abbott 35), to include advice about common sense and good behavior, no doubt won parents’ approval as well.5 Pepper and Salt, or Seasoning for Young Folk (1885), a collection of eight stories written and illustrated by Pyle and twenty- four poems each also with an accompanying illustration, is representative of this type of work by Pyle. The breakthrough work in Pyle’s career, however, was The Mer- 100 richard c. harris

Fig. 4.2. Howard Pyle, illustration from Otto of the Silver Hand, 1888. ry Adventures of Robin Hood, published in 1883, the same year that Charles Cather moved his family from Virginia to Nebraska. Pyle began considering such a volume in 1876. He wrote to his mother on 30 November of that year, “I have been thinking lately that stories from the life of Robin Hood might be an interesting thing for 101 “The Precious Message of Romance”

St. Nicholas. Children are very apt to know of Robin Hood without any very clear ideas upon his particular adventures. And then how gloriously they would illustrate” (Abbott 31). It was Pyle who first organized the Robin Hood tales into a coherent narrative and made the borderline criminal into the heroic figure we think of today. As Pyle’s earliest biographer remarks, “Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, all are intensely human personages, yet all move in an atmosphere that is brimming with fanciful notions” (Abbott 113). Pyle’s Merry Adventures of Robin Hood was an immediate success. Mark Twain called Pyle’s edition “the best Robin Hood that was ever written” (qtd. in Michaelis 35), and in the opinion of many, after more than 130 years, it remains the best edition of the Rob- in Hood stories ever published. Twain insisted that Pyle was the only person who should do the illustrations for his version of the story of Joan of Arc. Frederic Remington was so impressed with Pyle’s painting “Pirates Used to Do That to Their Captains Now and Then,” which appeared in Harper’s Monthly in November 1894, that he wrote Pyle asking to trade works for it and telling Pyle that he could take anything in his studio in exchange (Abbott 145). The noted American artist Joseph Pennell compared Pyle’s illustrations in Otto of the Silver Hand to those of Albrecht Dürer (Abbott 117). Admiration for Pyle’s work was not limited to the United States, however. In England, William Morris, who himself had done so much to re-create the world of the Middle Ages, had nothing but praise for Pyle’s stories and illustrations. In 1882, twenty- nine-year- old Vincent van Gogh asked his brother Theo, “Do you know an American magazine called Harper’s Monthly? There are wonderful sketches in it . . . things in it which strike me dumb with admiration,” and he noted, in particular, drawings by Howard Pyle (van Gogh 1: 453). Van Gogh also mentions Pyle in several letters to artist friend Anton Ridder van Rappard, praising Pyle and some other illustrators as “great black- and- white artists of the people” and declaring one of Pyle’s illustrations “a damned fine thing” (3: 329, 382). Van Gogh, in fact, was so impressed with Pyle’s artistry that 102 richard c. harris he collected the two- page tearsheets of Pyle’s illustrations printed in Harper’s. Pyle’s books, published by Harper and Brothers, are visual- ly beautiful, a characteristic that Cather later found so appealing about the books that Alfred Knopf produced. In addition to the illustrations, Pyle’s writing style in these works is “a very successful adaptation of archaic English, not so complex as to be hard to read, but sufficiently antique to lend the charm of age to the narrative” (Abbott 114). Pyle’s ingenious “re-creation” of a sort of “older” En- glish is an element of his writing that Cather specifically noted in her inscription in The Troll Garden, where she refers to the “beauty of language” in his works. While Cather might have encountered any number of Pyle’s illustrated fairy tales or his illustrations on American history, his works set in the Middle Ages and the series of stories and illustrations having to do with pirates clearly were at the heart of the imaginative worlds young Willie Cather and her brothers created. As one writer assessing Pyle’s career said in 1907, “The culture of the imagination is a vital part of Mr. Pyle’s theory” (Trimble 459). It was the child’s and adolescent’s imagination (and those of any number of “big children” as well) that Pyle knew so well and appealed to so effectively. So, on the one hand, what better subject exists for stories and illustrations for young people than the Middle Ages, with its ste- reotypical knights and fair maidens, its examples of chivalry and romance and adventure? Pyle’s four volumes on King Arthur, previously created stories collected and published between 1902 and 1910, captured both in text and in pictures that magical, heroic world. Cather’s favorite, as noted, was Pyle’s second medieval book, Otto of the Silver Hand, published in 1888 (fig. 4.2, p. 100). It is a tale of a different sort, providing, according to Cather’s 1897 Home Monthly article, “a very fair idea of what that phrase ‘the Mid- dle Ages’ meant” (World and Parish 1: 337). Pyle’s story begins with an indication of his didactic intention: “This tale that I am about to tell is of a little boy who lived and suffered in those dark mid- 103 “The Precious Message of Romance” dle ages; of how he saw both the good and the bad of men, and of how, by gentleness and love and not by strife and hatred, he came at last to stand above other men and to be looked up to by all” (2). Set in medieval Germany, Otto of the Silver Hand traces the adventures of a young boy as he encounters the world at large for the first time. In this respect the novel is both romantic tale and dis- turbing bildungsroman. Young Otto, the son of a brutal German robber baron, becomes witness to his father’s ruthlessness, especially in his rivalry with another baron. In the course of various intrigues, Otto is captured by the rival baron and imprisoned in the enemy castle, where the rival baron has Otto’s right hand cut off.6 During an exciting rescue, Otto’s father dies valiantly in single combat with the evil knight, holding his position on a bridge so his son and comrades can escape. (In that battle Otto’s father, of course, kills the rival baron.) The good and just Otto eventually ends up meeting Emperor Ru- dolph, who takes Otto into his court. Otto subsequently marries a sweet young maiden named Pauline and establishes a new regime as the baron of the castle of Drachenhausen. His missing right hand is replaced with a hand made of silver, and the new motto of Drachenhausen becomes, “A silver hand is better than an iron hand.” As was noted earlier, Cather’s fascination with this book remained strong throughout her life. One of the more interesting references to Otto appears in a 1941 letter to Roscoe in which Cather mentions the recurring problem with her right hand. (We should remember that this letter was written about fifty years after Cather had likely first read Pyle’s novel.) Her surgeon, she says, had tried to convince her to give up writing by hand and to compose simply by dictating, something, Cather declares, “absolutely impossible to me and against all my taste and habits.” So the Knopf office contacted Dr. Frank Ober, a hand specialist in Boston, who constructed a metal forearm and hand brace for her. Cather concludes the letter to Roscoe with the comment, “You know, with my metal glove, I feel just like Otto of the Silver Hand!” (Letters 599– 600). Fig. 4.3. Howard Pyle, “The buccaneer was a picturesque fellow.” Source: Howard Pyle, The Fate of Treasure Town, published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine, December 1905. 105 “The Precious Message of Romance”

Despite the obvious moral or ethical foundation of his stories and the seriousness of works like Otto of the Silver Hand, Pyle remarked in a letter to a reader that his works were not for those “who plod so amid serious things” that they are reluctant to give themselves over to the “land of fancy” he creates. Both as a writer and an illustrator, he declares, he “lift[s] the curtain that hangs between here and No- man’s- land” and invites the reader to follow him into the imaginative world he creates (qtd. in Abbott 112–13). Some years later, of course, the term “no-man’s- land” would come to have a much different meaning. However, Pyle’s use of the term here and elsewhere is interesting: that is exactly the term Cather uses to describe Far Island in her 1902 story (“Treasure” 265). As “The Treasure of Far Island” opens, Douglass Burnham returns after a twelve-year absence to the midwestern town where he grew up. (Cather here, of course, uses the name of her own brother.) The boy, who had been “the original discoverer” of Far Island, now twenty- seven and a celebrated New York playwright, is reunited with his childhood friend Margie, with whom he rem- inisces about the times they had shared on the enchanted island. Although the story’s rather sentimental ending compromises the narrative somewhat, Cather’s description of the world they had shared is nonetheless very effective. The details she provides in the story are clearly based on actual memories as well as material from children’s books and other literature. More speciﬁcally, the story is invested throughout with the kind of romance found in the worlds of knights and especially pirates created by Howard Pyle. As Pyle’s biographer Charles D. Abbott noted in 1925, “Pirates and their adventures held a strange attraction for him; he was never more content than when he found some half- forgotten account of a notorious buccaneer, and had plenty of time to spend in an examination of it” (132). Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (a book that Cather praised highly) appeared in 1883, but it was Pyle who deﬁned and popularized the pirate not only for his generation but for ours as well. Pyle took the generally crude and villain- ous character of history, transformed him enough so that he ap- 106 richard c. harris

pealed to many fascinated by what has been called a sense of “the masculine primitive” (Loechle 62– 63), and created a literary type whose adventures often seemed heroic, even if his actions outside the law often led to sad consequences. The swashbuckling heroes of the Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn movies of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the pirate captain of the Johnny Depp/Jack Spar- row movies of today, basically owe their creation and costuming to Pyle’s figures of over a century ago. Pyle’s first major achievements in this genre were the short story “Rose of Paradise,” which appeared in the 23 July 1887 Harper’s Weekly, and a two-part article titled “Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main,” which appeared in Harper’s Monthly in August and September of that year. The illustrations for these works were considered “epoch- making” (Abbott 141), especially the picture titled “Marooned,” which brilliantly captures the utter despair of a pirate sitting on a beach, resigned to his fate. Other stories were published in Harper’s magazines throughout the 1890s and in the first decade of the twentieth century, and were included in various book- length volumes thereafter. Important novel-length stories of pirates by Pyle were also published between roughly 1890 and 1910. Ten years after Pyle’s death in 1911, his seven pirate stories were collected and published by Harper and Brothers, with copies of the original illustrations, under the title Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (fig. 4.3, p. 104). A review of the publication of a collection of pirate stories titled “The Rose of Paradise” clearly acknowledges the appeal of Pyle’s works to readers both younger and older. The reviewer praises the “exceedingly spirited” narrative of the story, then adds, “The book is one that boys will be apt to read with ea- gerness, and which we are disposed to recommend as wholesome reading for them, and which will not be despised by the grown- up men who have not outgrown their liking for the kind of literature which they best enjoyed when they were boys” (Literary News 334). More than any other Cather short story, “The Treasure of Far Island” recounts the child’s or adolescent’s imaginative sense of romance and adventure, and makes clear Cather’s debt to Pyle’s 107 “The Precious Message of Romance” medieval and pirate fictions and illustrations. As in Pyle’s tales, Cather’s story is filled with names of exotic settings—Far Island, Silvery Beaches, Glass Hill, Salt Marshes, Huge Fallen Tree, The Uttermost Desert—and is peopled with “kindly dwarfs,” pirate chiefs, “gallant lads,” and even “a captive princess.” And it is filled with other paraphernalia of medieval and pirate romances. In the buried treasure rediscovered by Douglass and Margie near “the bleached skeleton of a tree” with a cross “hacked upon it,” there is a “manuscript written in blood, a confession of fantastic crimes, and the Spaniard’s heart in a bottle of alcohol, and Temp’s Confederate bank notes . . . Pagie’s rare tobacco tags . . . and poor Shorty’s bars of tinfoil” (279– 80). There is a silver ring that had belonged to Douglass’s father, but which in the world of childhood romance had been “given to a Christian knight by an English queen, and when he was slain before Jerusalem a Sar- acen took it and we killed the Saracen in the desert and cut off his finger to get the ring” (280). In addition, this had been a world of swords (a butcher knife stuck in young Pirate Chief Douglass’s belt), intriguing markings and messages on a faded treasure map, and a boat named the Jolly Roger. “Wild imaginings”— Cather’s phrase—these had been (280). Despite Margie’s reference to Douglass’s “golden armor” and the reference to the Crusades, the childhood world of “The Treasure of Far Island” is not so much that of the knight and “enchanted princess” (“Treasure” 273) but rather of pirate adventurers. Cather, in fact, uses the words “pirate” or “pirates” seven times in the story.7

* * *

Willa Cather, of course, would move on from that childhood world of imagination and adventure that was such an important part of her youth. However, Sandy Point, the imaginary town she and her brothers Douglass and Roscoe created, remained an essential part of her memory and an important reference point for the rest of her life.8 Writing Roscoe from Venice on 16 July 1908, 108 richard c. harris

Cather declared, “Here at last is a place as beautiful as Sandy Point ever was in the days of its pride and power.” In a letter to Roscoe on 13 February 1910, she again mentioned Sandy Point, describing her work as managing editor at McClure’s as a “harder job to boss than Sandy Point” (Letters 130). (Young Willa Cather had been elected mayor of Sandy Point.) On 8 July 1916, as what would become My Ántonia began to take shape in her mind, Cather told Roscoe that she “didn’t seem to have acquired a single new idea since Sandy Point” (Letters 226). Sandy Point was more than a mere memory or creative reference point for Cather, however. It was an emotionally charged ground of her being. “Art,” she says in The Song of the Lark, “is only a way of remembering youth” (506). Writing to Irene Miner Weisz in early 1931, Cather again recalled her happy childhood and commented, “I want someone from Sandy Point to go along with me to the end” (Letters 442). Her childhood friend Jim Yeiser, a comrade who also never forgot Sandy Point, in a sense did just that. Answering a letter from Cather only weeks before her death—over half a century after their adventures at Sandy Point— he wrote from San Fran- cisco that thinking about those days long ago made him homesick, and he concluded, “Remember, Willa, if there is anything more I can ever do let me know. The founder and mayor of Sandy Point always will receive prompt attention.” Those childhood experiences and the child’s love of play remained dear to all of those who had played at Sandy Point and had read tales of adventure and intrigue— “wonder tales,” as Cather called them in “Dedicatory.” When the mature Willa Cather looked back on her childhood in Nebraska, she fondly remembered the transforming power of a child’s imagination, which could create a world unto itself. Cath- er’s early reading of Pyle and others always lay at the heart of her memories of that period in her life. One of the other books she read early on was George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. In an “Old Books and New” column written for Home Monthly in November 1897, Cather described Tom and Maggie Tulliver as “two wonderful figures which have never been surpassed in English fiction,” and 109 “The Precious Message of Romance” remarked, “I wonder why it is that no one else has ever been so successful in painting that strongest and most satisfactory relation of human life, the love that sometimes exists between a brother and sister, a boy and a girl who have laughed and sorrowed and learned the world together from the first. . . . When you have travelled the wide earth over and seen the beauties of all lands and seas, what spot is it that your heart cries out for with unassuaged longing but the spot, no matter where, no matter how desolate, where you have been good and happy and a child!” (World and Parish 1: 363– 64).9 The goodness and happiness of Willa Cather’s childhood owed much to the actual settings and people and circumstances of her life, but also to her reading, and to the fascination with the magical worlds of knights and pirates, of heroes and villains, of adventure and intrigue that she discovered in the works of Howard Pyle, and through her youthful imagination re- created with her brothers and friends “on an island in a western river.”10

NOTES

1. Cather also paraphrases a passage from Otto of the Silver Hand in an article that appeared in the Lincoln Courier in September 1895 (World and Parish 1: 265). 2. In addition to his own artistic accomplishments, Pyle as teacher made a major contribution to American illustration art. His Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art and his summer school at Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, which became known as the Brandywine School, became the training grounds for numerous illustrators, among them N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Jessie Willcox Smith, Violet Oakley, Stanley Arthurs, and Harvey Dunn. 3. An untitled 1899 poem Cather sent to Roscoe with a Christmas gift copy of Gilbert Parker’s 1897 novel The Seats of the Mighty: A Romance of Old Quebec conveys the sense of imaginative romance that Cather remembered from their childhood days:

Lift high the cup of Old Romance, And let us drain it to the lees; Forgotten be the lies of life, For these are its realities. 110 richard c. harris

The complete typescript copy of the poem is in the Helen Cather South- wick Collection of the Willa Cather Foundation; the poem, published without the first three stanzas, can be found in April Twilights (69). 4. Charles D. Abbott’s 1925 biography remains an indispensable source of information about Pyle. Abbott had access to and quoted freely from Pyle’s diary and correspondence, which were subsequently lost. Also, Ab- bott notes that James H. Canfield, father of Dorothy, was one of Pyle’s most enthusiastic admirers (196–97). 5. In their study of Pyle’s treatment of the Arthurian legends, Alan and Barbara Tepa Lupack comment that Pyle was “providing a model for behavior and in the process, Americanizing, or at least democratizing, the medieval legends . . . not only the Grail but also the concept of nobility itself” (50). 6. Cather’s fascination with various types of mutilation has long been noted. It is interesting that in one of the fragments of her unfinished last novel, Hard Punishments, the hands one of the main characters, a boy named Pierre, “are now useless.” Murphy notes that in Thomas Okey’s The Story of Avignon, Cather’s chief historical source for Hard Punishments, Cather marked a passage recounting the cutting off of the hand of Jean de Astraca for theft. 7. In a March 1897 “Old Books and New” column for Home Monthly, Cather, writing under the name Helen Delay, states, “People who still care for stories of ‘Buccaneers and gold and all the old Romance retold’ will find something to please them in Mr. Clarence Herbert New’s ‘Under the Pacif- ic’ in the February Lippincott.” This passage is not included in the March 1897 “Old Books and New” column printed in World and Parish 1: 340–43. 8. For Claude Wheeler in One of Ours, the voyage to Europe on the An- chises evokes “memories of old sea stories read in childhood,” which “kin- dled a warm spot in his heart” (403). 9. In “The Treasure of Far Island,” Cather names her lead female character “Margie,” a close approximation to “Maggie.” 10. For a discussion of Cather’s depiction of childhood in relationship to the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, see Smith.

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Brown, E. K. Willa Cather: A Critical Biography. Completed by Leon Edel. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print. Cather, Willa. Alexander’s Bridge. 1912. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Tom Quirk and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2007. Print. —. “Dedicatory.” April Twilights (1903). Rev. ed. Ed. Bernice Slote. 1968. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. 3. Print. —. “The Enchanted Bluff.” Willa Cather’s Collected Short Fiction 69– 77. Print. —. Letter to Mrs. William Auld. 17 Dec. 1908. Texas Women’s U, Denton. —. Letter to Roscoe Cather. 16 July 1908. Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection. Archives and Special Collections, U of Nebraska– Lincoln. —. My Ántonia. 1918. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Charles W. Mignon, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994. Print. —. “Old Books and New.” Jan. 1897. World and Parish 1: 333– 37. Print. —. “Old Books and New.” Nov. 1897. World and Parish 1: 361– 65. Print. —. One of Ours. 1922. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Richard C. Harris, Frederick W. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. “The Treasure of Far Island.” Willa Cather’s Collected Short Fiction 265– 82. Print. —. Willa Cather’s Collected Short Fiction, 1892– 1912. Ed. Virginia Faulkner. Intro. Mildred R. Bennett. Rev. ed. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. Print. —. The World and the Parish: Willa Cather’s Articles and Reviews, 1893– 1902. 2 vols. Ed. William M. Curtin. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. Print. Delay, Helen [Willa Cather]. “Old Books and New.” Home Monthly 6 (Mar. 1897): 16. The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered. Ed. Heather Campbell Coyle. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 2011. Print. 112 richard c. harris

Kaplan, Justin. Lincoln Steffens: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. Print. Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: Double Lives. New York: Pantheon, 1989. Print. Loechle, Anne M. “Gunpowder, Smoke, and Buried Doubloons: Adventure and Lawlessness in Howard Pyle’s Piratical World.” Howard Pyle 59– 71. Print. Lupack, Alan, and Barbara Tepa Lupack. “Howard Pyle and the Arthurian Legends.” Howard Pyle 47– 57. Print. Michaelis, David. N. C. Wyeth: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1998. Print. Murphy, John J. “Toward Completing a Triptych: The ‘Hard Punishments’ Fragments.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 55.2 (Fall 2011): 2– 8. Print. Review of “Rose of Paradise.” Literary News 7 (Nov. 1887): 334. Print. Rosowski, Susan J. Historical Essay. A Lost Lady by Willa Cather. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski, Charles W. Mignon, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997. 177– 233. Print. Smith, Elaine. “April Twilights (1903): Echoes from a Child’s Garden.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 56.1 (2012): 8– 16. Trimble, Jessie. “The Founder of an American School of Art.” Outlook 23 Feb. 1907: 452– 60. Print. van Gogh, Vincent. The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, with Reproductions of All the Drawings in the Correspondence. 3 vols. Greenwich: New York Graphic Society, 1959. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. Yeiser, Jim. Letter to Willa Cather. 7 Mar. 1947. Charles E. Cather Collection. Archives and Special Collections, U of Nebraska– Lincoln. 5 “Then a Great Man in American Art” Willa Cather’s Frederic Remington

ROBERT THACKER

Among the most discussed scenes in Cather’s ﬁction is the beginning of the narrative proper of My Ántonia. Ten- year- old orphan Jim Burden has embarked from Virginia for Nebraska in the company of Jake Marpole, “one of the ‘hands’ on my father’s old farm under the Blue Ridge,” Jim writes, and the two travel west “all the way by day- coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey.” Along the way, Jake, who is older but not much more worldly than his charge, “bought everything the news- boys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch- charm, and for me a ‘Life of Jesse James,’ which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read” (My Ántonia 1–2). This reference to this satisfying book, doubtless a dime novel, as Ja- nis Stout has maintained in a recent article on this scene’s contexts, seems but a passing detail. Yet the reference is notable by its position in the second paragraph of Jim’s narrative, itself Cather’s second assay of the subject of prairie pioneering. With it, she acknowledges the presence and cultural power of the myth of the West it proclaims just as Jim ventures there; so doing, she signals that with her story we are entering what Stout has called a “different” West, a place where the West’s primary actors— Natives, soldiers, outlaws, and cowboys— are largely absent.1 Instead, Cather offers an alternative West: Burden ﬁnds only pioneer homesteaders, immigrants from all over the country and the globe, caught in the acts of tak-

113 114 robert thacker ing up land and farming. That is, he ﬁnds the American West as a new landscape and a new living space, a growing but quotidian place. Before leaving My Ántonia, it is worth noting that Cather is writing— in 1917 or 1918— about her own ﬁrst trip west, which had taken place in the spring of 1883.

THE PRESENCE OF FREDERIC REMINGTON Another person from the East who came west for the first time in the early 1880s was Frederic Sackrider Remington (1861– 1909) of Canton and Ogdensburg, New York. About twelve years older than Cather, he had attended the art school at Yale for a year and would later study at the Art Students League in New York for a term in 1886. The rest, of course, is history: Remington went on to become the late- nineteenth- century illustrator and champi- on of the North American West: his images were everywhere in periodicals and books (by Parkman, Roosevelt, and many others); in the mid-1890s he began sculpting; he wrote and published stories of the West. (One needs to note, though, that he spent most of his time near New York City. Cather, for her part, lived in Man- hattan after 1906, traveling regularly.) He became famous, and famously successful, because of all this. When the editor of Collier’s prevailed upon him to write “A Few Words from Mr. Remington” for its 18 March 1905 issue, he looked back to his first trip west, in 1881, to Montana and contextualized himself by writing that “I had brought more than ordinary schoolboy enthusiasm to [George] Catlin, [Washington] Irving, [Josiah] Gregg, Lewis and Clark, and others on their shelf, and youth found me sweating along their tracks. I was in the grand silent country following my own inclina- tions, but there was a heavy feel in the atmosphere. I did not immediately see what it portended, but it gradually obtruded itself. The times had changed.” As is well known in Remington scholarship, he then recounts sharing a campfire with “an old wagon freighter who shared his bacon and coffee” with the nineteen-year- old tourist. The old man had gone west from Iowa and “had followed re- 115 “Then a Great Man in American Art” ceding frontiers, always further and further West. ‘And now,’ said he, ‘there is no more West.’” This man’s comments had had a deep effect on Remington, who wrote that “[h]e had his point of view and he made a new one for me” (“Few Words” 550– 51). Commenting on this passage and carrying it further, Nancy K. Anderson has written that Remington was “[a]lready inclined to believe that the West he had read about as a boy was soon to be overtaken by derby hats and smoking chimneys, [so] Remington resolved to record the ‘wild riders and the vacant land’ before they vanished forever: ‘Without knowing exactly how to do it, I began to try to record some facts around me, and the more I looked the more the panorama unfolded’” (Anderson, “Curious” 21, quoting Remington, “Few Words” 551). In discussing Remington’s autobiographical account, Anderson also makes the point that in his version of things Remington’s passage is reminiscent of a passage at the beginning of Catlin’s Let- ters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians (1841) (see Thacker, Great Prairie 56–62). It is, certainly. Yet the interesting thing about Remington’s resolve is that it was made—or he says it was made and the facts of his biography bear that version of things out—in the face of the knowledge that the conditions he sought to define and illustrate were gone. Cat- lin, for his part, was bent on documenting what Natives looked like and how they lived on the Upper Missouri before time en- forced the inevitable change coming with Euro- American settlement. That is, he was engaged during the 1830s with what William H. Goetzmann and Joseph T. Porter have called “romantic docu- mentary” against Remington’s “romantic nostalgia.” Just how either artist is seen in relation to his initial intentions (as opposed to his recollection and assertion of them once the work has been substantially accomplished) is of less interest than, again, his presence. There would have been no Paul Kane had there not first been a George Catlin— the latter’s experience served as model for Kane’s own intentions to paint the Natives of western Canada (see Thack- er, “Introduction”). Equally, there would not have been the icono- 116 robert thacker

graphic Wild West we know now without the presence of Reming- ton, who himself was indebted to Catlin, Irving, Gregg, Lewis and Clark, and others— as he admitted in 1905. Yet as Remington offered his brief account of his beginnings as an artist to the readers of Collier’s in March 1905, he was, and he had been since he had returned from the Spanish- American War in Cuba, confronting formal aesthetic problems posed by color and landscape rather than any nostalgia for a bygone era. “Disillusioned by war and with his martial and emotional repertory exhausted,” writes Peter H. Hassrick, Remington “put his artist-correspondent days behind him and began to focus on color, landscape, and subject matter drawn from his own prodigious imagination. This al- tered focus remained vitally important to him for . . . the remainder of his life” (39). Put another way, Remington had moved since the war to other subjects, other places, and most emphatically to other ways of seeing the West. Images from this period of Rem- ington’s career confirm this: The End of the Day (1904), Evening in the Desert, Navajoes (1905– 6), The Last March (1906), Waiting in the Moonlight (1907– 9), The Sentinel (1907), Pete’s Shanty (1908). While not all of these are of western scenes, most are—none, certainly, are of the Old West with its confrontations, its narratives of violent conflict, its stark confrontations. While there are many more images like these, and there are also scores of images done during the 1900s that are in keeping with Remington the illustrator, the last decade of Remington’s life was one focused on a different West: the American West as living space, a place to be alive, to be human. This is the same West that Cather re-creates in her “prairie trilogy” of the 1910s. But in this Remington had a problem: as his audience saw such images as he gradually offered them inCollier’s and at his annual exhibits at the Knoedler Gallery in New York (1905– 9), many among them had been expecting something else. Many expected “romantic nostalgic,” cowboys and Indians in conflict: images of the Old West as he had produced them for twenty years, the same sort of thing Jim Burden finds in his “Life of Jesse James.” 117 “Then a Great Man in American Art”

ANOTHER PRESENCE: WILLA CATHER As I have worked on Remington I have come more and more to wonder about what Cather made of his presence. More than that, as I come to him now I am aware that I am, if you will, doing so through the eyes of Willa Cather. By the time Cather reached her mid- teens in Red Cloud, Nebraska, Remington’s career (and fame), through his increasingly ubiquitous illustrations of the West published in Harper’s, Outing, and elsewhere, would have been itself a presence in her world. Moving east to follow a career path similar to his, Cather made contacts during the early years of the century among the summer art colony at Cos Cob, Connecticut— with John Twachtman and with Remington’s friend Childe Hassam, among others—which in turn led her to New York in 1906 to work for McClure’s Magazine (see Skaggs; Thacker, “She’s Not a Puzzle”). She eventually became its managing editor and, as such, worked with artists and illustrators who doubtless knew Remington and his work. While Remington had not illustrated for McClure’s since 1901, and had only done so for two years, Cather would have been aware that he had, and as a transplanted westerner she would have been well aware of his presence. She might also have been aware—and maybe even visited—his exhibits of lost bronzes and recent paintings at the Knoedler Gallery in the ﬁve years after 1905.2 The Knoedler, one of New York’s “French Galleries” (as Cath- er would later recall they were called in “Coming, Aphrodite!” [1920]), had been a prominent art dealer there since 1846. In 1996, Ann Landi wrote about the gallery’s founder in an ARTnews essay celebrating the gallery’s sesquicentennial:

One of the ﬁrst dealers to show the Barbizon School in the U.S., [Michael] Knoedler also championed Frederick E. Church. . . . By the end of the century, Knoedler represented other outstanding Americans— Homer, Ryder, Chase, Sargent, Cassatt— and developed a privileged clientele that included John Jacob Astor, H. O. Havemeyer, Henry Clay Frick, and 118 robert thacker

William H. Vanderbilt. (114)3

In March 1908 Cather took time out from a business trip in Bos- ton to run a personal errand: she visited a variety of shops to select, purchase, and arrange the framing for a group of reproductions for her brother Roscoe and his wife, who had just built a house in Lander, Wyoming. Cather chose seven prints, among them a van Dyck self- portrait, Jules Breton’s The Song of the Lark (which Cather would later use as inspiration for and take as the title of her third novel), two images by N. C. Wyeth, one by Maxfield Parrish, and Remington’s Caught in the Circle (1900). Writing to her brother on 2 March to report on her success, Cather commented that “personally, I would have sent you all brown photo- gravures of French and Dutch pictures that I like, but I thought you might like some of the real modern fellows better” (106). The fact that Remington appears here, in 1908, as one of “the real modern fellows” is telling. Given her own aestheticism, and given especially her struggle at this time to “make herself born” as an artist, as she would write in the highly autobiographical record of that struggle in The Song of the Lark (1915) (Song 196), it is difficult to believe that Cather would have been unaware of the presence of Remington’s exhibitions at the Knoedler each December from 1906 to 1909— that is, in the four years following her own arrival in New York City. Lo- cated on 355 Fifth Avenue at the corner of Thirty- Fourth Street, the Knoedler Gallery was only ten blocks from Cather’s office at McClure’s (44–60 East Twenty-Third Street, near Park Avenue), and about thirty blocks from her Washington Square apartment. The reviews Remington’s shows garnered confirm that critics noticed his remaking of himself. No longer just an illustrator of “men with the bark on,” he became something quite different during the 1900s: an accomplished impressionist, praised by Childe Hassam and Willard Metcalf among The Ten; a landscape painter— and eastern landscapes painted on Ingleneuk, his island on the St. Lawrence River, at that. It was during this time, too, that Remington visibly showed his frustrations with his new work by 119 “Then a Great Man in American Art” burning many images that dissatisfied him. For instance, on 19 De- cember 1908 he wrote in his diary: “Fine day— worked all morning on the cowboys in early morning light. If a man could paint that elusive thing it would not be interesting from lack of color. Burned it up together with other failures.” Getting just what he was after vexed him, and, as he also wrote, he regretted letting some of those images get away and so escape the fire. But most clearly, as Stephen Tatum has detailed in In the Rem- ington Moment, Remington did get what he wanted on some of his canvases. This was clear to the art critics who were watching him as he exhibited at the Knoedler during the last years of his life. An assessment by Mary Fanton Roberts (under the pseudonym Giles Edgerton) appeared in the Craftsman in March 1909: “[I]t is not only as a painter of exceptional interest that posterity will seek his work, but as a pioneer worker in the presentation of phases of American civilization” (662). Roberts continues:

What more complete justiﬁcation for such a course could an artist ask than Mr. Remington’s exhibit this winter at Knoedler’s? No advertising canvass of the country to bring people to look at his pictures; no play in any subject for popular approval; no swerving to the smallest degree from his original purpose or from the development of that purpose of that purpose along lines most satisfactory to himself, as an artist without fear and with much reproach, yet, a result of success beyond the greatest hopes of the student of years ago. In all his latest work Mr. Remington has portrayed the Indians of the West as they existed to each other, and the cowboy and the scout and the traveler, each as typical as the characters in Bret Harte’s stories, approaching death of a certain phase of our civilization. (Edgerton 664– 65)

Ironically, the best assessment of Remington’s presence appeared in Scribner’s in February 1910, just after his premature death from appendicitis in late December 1909. It was written by Royal Cortis- soz, a contemporary art critic whose reviews of Remington’s work 120 robert thacker

had been both critical and positive; before his death the artist had had a hand in selecting him for the job. Cortissoz’s piece gains added weight through the effect of the artist’s absence:

I have seen paintings of his that were hard as nails. But then came a change, one of the most interesting noted in some years past by observers of American art. Mr. Remington suddenly drew near the end of his long pull. He left behind him the brittleness of the pen drawings which had once scattered so profusely through magazines and books. His reds and yellows which had blared so mercilessly from his canvases began to shed the quality of scene painting and took on more the aspect of nature. Incidentally the mark of the illustrator disappeared and that of the painter took its place. As though to give his emergence upon a new plane a special character he brought forward, in an exhibition in New York, a number of night scenes which expressly challenged attention by their originality and freshness. Since then he has made another exhibition only to deepen one’s sense of his broader and stronger development. (186–87)

Throughout, Cortissoz understands the experimentation Rem- ington was engaged in then, the inﬂuences he used, and the focus he kept on his subject, the West. He asserts: “Under a burning sun he has worked out an impressionism of his own” (192). Cortissoz saw that Remington was taking the aesthetics and techniques of the impressionists and making them work in a region that might seem antithetical to their use. At the same time, the critic notes new effects and new subjects in the 1909 exhibition. He has this to say about The White Country: “The little landscape ﬁts naturally into one’s conception of this American painter. It suggests a talent that is always ripening, an artistic personality that is always pressing forward” (195).4 This line concludes Cortissoz’s essay and leaves readers expecting more—both from the critic and, especially, from the forward- pressing artist. By then Remington had, to paraphrase Auden’s famous line from his elegy to Yeats, “become his admirers.” 121 “Then a Great Man in American Art”

CATHER’S “COMING, APHRODITE!” Willa Cather was one of those admirers. What is more, she doubtless saw Remington’s relevance to her own ambition throughout the trajectory of what might be called her critical years: from 1911, when she leftMcClure’s , to 1920, after she had published her first four novels with Houghton Mifflin and was in the process of moving to the much better arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf. Cather’s admiration for and appreciation of Remington as “a great man in American art” (as she would write in “Coming, Eden Bower!”) is evident in the story that was to open her first book published by Knopf. There, after Remington had been dead for a decade and she had established herself as the first American novelist to write in powerful ways of the West as both pioneering and post-conquest living space— with but the glancing reference to the outlaw West with “The Life of Jesse James,” and a few others to cowboys and Indians and soldiers— Cather wrote and published “Coming, Aphrodite!” “Coming, Aphrodite!” is a New York story set in Washington Square that details the brief but intense romance between a painter, Don Hedger, who lives largely alone but for his dog, and Eden Bower, a young singer bent on worldly success. She is stopping in New York for a time on her way to Europe and takes the apartment next to Hedger’s. Cather is careful to define each character with long perspective; first detailing the young woman’s background and acknowledging her subsequent fame, she writes that “Eden Bower was, at twenty, very much the same person we all know her to be at forty, except that she knew a great deal less. But one thing she knew: that she was to be Eden Bower” (33). And as she ends the section that this quotation begins, Cather writes of Hedger and of the two together:

Each of these two young people sensed the future, but not completely. Don Hedger knew that nothing much would ever happen to him. Eden Bower understood that to her a great deal would happen. But she did not guess that her neighbour 122 robert thacker

Fig. 5.1. Frederic Remington (1861– 1909), Moonlight, Wolf, ca. 1909. Oil on canvas. 20 1/16 x 26 in. (50.96 x 66.04 cm). Gift of the Mem- bers of the Phillips Academy Board of Trustees on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Addison Gallery, 1956.2. Photo credit: Addison Gal- lery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Art Resource NY.

would have more tempestuous adventures sitting in his dark studio than she would ﬁnd in all the capitals of Europe, or in all the latitude of conduct she was prepared to permit herself. (37)

As this quotation shows, at its bottom “Coming, Aphrodite!” is a debate over an artist’s best relation to an audience: Is it better to pursue an art for art’s sake, wherever it leads, or to find a paying audience and keep it? This question was the one Cather herself was confronting when she put Remington among “the real modern fellows” in 1908. By the time she wrote “Coming, Aphrodite!” she had devised a plan to do both and was well embarked on it by her 123 “Then a Great Man in American Art” novels of the 1910s; she was also about to explode into the intensity of the five novels she would produce in the 1920s. After appearing in a bowdlerized and retitled version (“Coming, Eden Bower!”) in George Nathan and H. L. Mencken’s Smart Set in August 1920, this story would appear in its intended form in the first book of Cath- er’s to be published by Knopf, Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920).5 Arguably, Cather’s plan worked. Arguably, too, it was a plan modeled by Remington’s career and is offered as the crux of the difference between Cather’s protagonists in “Coming, Aphrodite!” Early in “Coming, Eden Bower!” Cather writes that Hedger “had got over a good deal of the earth’s surface, in spite of the fact that he had never in his life had more than three hundred dollars ahead at any one time, and he had already outlived a succession of convic- tions and revelations about his art.” She continues:

Though he was now but twenty- six years old, he had twice been on the verge of becoming a marketable product; once through some studies of New York streets he did for a magazine, and once through a collection of pastels he brought home from New Mexico, which Remington, then a great man in American art, happened to see and generously tried to push. But on both occasions Hedger decided that this was something he didn’t wish to carry further,—simply the old thing over again and got nowhere,— so he took enquiring dealers something in a “later manner,” and they put him out of the shop. When he ran short of money he could always get any amount of commercial work because he was an expert draughtsman and worked with lightening speed. The rest of his time he spent groping his way from one kind of painting into another, or traveling about without luggage, like a tramp, and he was chieﬂy occupied with getting rid of ideas he had once thought very ﬁne. (“Eden Bower” 309)6

While it is clear that some of these details owe to Cather’s own strivings, the similarities to Remington during his time as a successful commercial illustrator and his later experiments during the 124 robert thacker

1900s are evident— he too groped throughout his last decade “from one type of painting into another. ” That he is directly mentioned in the story demonstrates the connection, as well as the ubiquity of his presence, both when he was alive and when Cather was writing the story about ten years after his death. And although evidence for a direct connection is only circum- stantial, it is strong. Cather uses a phrase in the story that seems like it may be a direct link to one of Remington’s last— and arguably most compelling—images: Moonlight, Wolf (ca. 1909, ﬁg. 5.1, p. 122). Describing Hedger in his studio, completely focused on his work, imaginatively isolated and obsessed, Cather writes:

When he was working well he did not notice anything much. The morning paper lay before his door until he reached out for his milk bottle, then he kicked the sheet inside and it lay on the ﬂoor until evening. Sometimes he read it and sometimes he did not. He forgot there was anything of importance going on in the world outside of his third ﬂoor studio. No- body had ever taught him that he ought to be interested in other people; in the Pittsburgh steel strike, in the Fresh Air Fund, in the scandal about the Babies’ hospital. A grey wolf, living in a Wyoming canyon, would hardly have been less concerned about these things than was Don Hedger. (15)

Moonlight, Wolf offers an image of “a grey wolf, living in” what appears a canyon, whether in Wyoming or not. The painting was not included in any of Remington’s Knoedler exhibitions— its title is not among those listed in the published catalogs. Even so, the fact that Cather makes this reference in a story that names Reming- ton and describes the circumstances of his fame, and probably also draws upon his situation to create the character Hedger later calls “the worst painter in the world,” Burton Ives, seems at least for- tuitous. If Cather’s knowledge of Moonlight, Wolf is not provable, though, Remington’s high regard for it is clear. In an undated note to the dealer Annesley & Company—they had evidently written seeking paintings, as they had previously—Remington offers them 125 “Then a Great Man in American Art”

The Emigrants (ca. 1904) and adds “Some of your people ought to try the Wolf—that is the real thing” (Remington to Annesley & Co., n.d.). “Coming, Aphrodite!” is an odd story in that in a central episode Cather has Hedger regularly peeping through a hole in a closet at Bower while she is doing her daily workout in the nude—thus it foregrounds matters of point of view and subject in art. What is more, there is an ongoing awareness of “the modern” in art. As the two are developing their relationship, Bower asks Hedger if he has studied in Paris. He replies: “No, I’ve never been to Paris. But I was in the south of France all last summer, studying with C— — . He’s the biggest man among the moderns,— at least I think so” (29). This ﬁgure is probably Cezanne:

Hedger began to relate how he had seen some of this French- man’s work in an exhibition, and deciding at once that this was the man for him, he had taken a boat for Marseilles the next week, going over steerage. He proceeded at once to the little town on the coast where the painter lived, and presented himself. The man never took pupils, but because Hedger had come so far, he let him stay. . . . Being there and working with C— — was being in Paradise, Hedger concluded; he learned more in three months than in all his life before. (29– 30).

Sharing such intimacies, the two fall for each other hard, and Hedger, for his part, remembers being with her “[o]n the roof, in these warm, heavy summer nights, with her hands locked in his, [and] he had been able to explain all his misty ideas about an un- born art the world was waiting for; had been able to explain them better than he had ever done to himself” (63). He told her things that he had not said to his mentor in France. When the couple quarrel and subsequently part, it is over “an abstraction,” Cather writes. Bower tries to have Burton Ives, an ex- tremely successful painter who, Bower says, “has a Japanese servant and a wine cellar, and keeps a riding horse,” help Hedger’s career (61). Hedger refuses. She does not understand, and asks: 126 robert thacker

“What’s the use of being a great painter if nobody knows about you?” Eden went on persuasively. “Why don’t you paint the kind of pictures people can understand, and then, after you’re successful, do whatever you like?” . . . Hedger melted a little. “My dear, I have the most expensive luxury in the world, and I am much more extravagant than Burton Ives, for I work to please nobody but myself. ” (61)

Claiming to disregard the public, Hedger asserts that he is “painting for painters . . . who haven’t been born” (61). For him, Ives— whose name Mark Madigan sees in connection with the famed artistic partnership of Currier and Ives (Youth 393), but whose prosperity and personal details are similar to Remington’s— is “almost the worst painter in the world; the stupidest, I mean’” (60). More than his assessment of the man himself, Hedger is appalled at Bower’s very suggestion: “He had never in his life been so deeply wounded; he did not know he could be so hurt. He had told this girl his deepest secrets. . . . And she had looked away to the chat- tels of this uptown studio and coveted them for him! To her he was only an unsuccessful Burton Ives” (62– 63). For her part, ever practical and clearly aiming at great success for herself through her own art, Bower hoped to “gild Hedger’s future, ﬂoat him out of his dark hole on a tide of prosperity, see his name in the papers and his pictures in the windows on Fifth Avenue” (62). Fifth Avenue is, of course, where the Knoedler was located, and where presumably Remington’s latest paintings were displayed in windows that Cath- er may well have passed by and paused to look in. As the story ends, Cather has the very successful Bower back years later from Europe in New York. She passes through and paus- es in Washington Square, where she and Hedger had lived, and takes her chauffeured car to one the “French Galleries”— again, like Knoedler’s—where she inquires of Hedger’s reputation as an artist. The director, a Frenchman, tells her that Hedger “is one of the ﬁrst men among the moderns. That is to say, among the very moderns. 127 “Then a Great Man in American Art”

He is always coming up with something different. He often exhibits in Paris” (72). Here, using much the same language she used to describe Remington, among others, in a letter to her brother Roscoe in 1908, Cather presses on to offer a description that might well be used to describe herself. Hedger, the director continues, “is a great name with all the young men, and he is decidedly an influence in art. But one can’t definitely place a man who is original, erratic, and who is changing all the time” (73).7 Hedger ultimately fails Bower’s highest test: he may be talked about in Paris, but the trajectory of his career has not led to the sort of success she has achieved herself there since she left him eighteen years before. She has come to New York to be feted as she plays the lead in Coming, Aphrodite! It should be clear just why “Coming, Aphrodite!” seems so apt in this association. Beyond Cather’s overt reference to Remington as a possible sponsor of Hedger’s career, her creation of an artist who was single-mindedly focused on his art, hardworking and pro- ductive, and who was always changing and experimenting rings accurate to Remington. And to Cather. In Remington’s later works— the nocturnes and those evincing impressionist experiments with color—Cather had a model for what she would ultimately do herself: treat the American West as living space rather than as the scene of violence and death involving Natives, soldiers, outlaws, and cowboys. Here, arguably, a painting like The Outlier (1909)—which Rem- ington painted numerous times as it moved from a Metcalf- inspired version with a dark palette to the bright and affecting final version seen in the Brooklyn Museum, the one that Remington said Hassam thought the “best of my pictures” (Diary, 14 October 1909)— embodies his West as living space. So, too, does Moonlight, Wolf, which features a dark palette of shades of green to black capturing “a grey wolf, living in a [western] canyon” pausing at a water source, staring directly at the viewer with haunting yellow eyes, stars flicking above, moonlight illuminating the whole scene. Cather repeatedly did same sort of thing through her prose. Moreover, Cath- 128 robert thacker er creates in Burton Ives an artist who has found an audience willing to pay for what he produces, and as for Ives, for Remington it paid for his suits, his club, his horses, his summer places, his palatial home in Connecticut. But like Cather, Remington managed to have both audience and aesthetic as he transformed himself during the last decade of his life. And here we are, admiring yet—recognizing that the great fact of Remington’s presence, as Willa Cather appre- hended, was one to learn from, to model, and to extend.

NOTES

1. Stout’s “Willa Cather’s West” is a detailed and persuasive analysis of Cather’s awareness of the mythic West of the Native, soldier, outlaw, and cowboy; she quite sensibly explains Cather’s relation, and that of some other women writers as well, to these considerations—the masculine western, particularly. She notes Jim’s “Life of Jesse James” at the outset of My Ántonia and, more significantly, notes a letter Cather wrote to Louise Imo- gen Guiney in August 1912 after her first trip to the Southwest earlier that year. Cather comments that the people there are “so outrageously over- nourished and self-satisfied and so busy living up to Owen Wister and Remmington [sic].” This article followed, and is connected to, Stout’s Pic- turing a Different West. 2. Remington exhibited “A Collection of Lost Wax Bronzes” at the Knoedler from 16 January to 1 February 1905. Beginning in 1906, he exhibited new paintings each December there. The last exhibition was from 29 November to 11 December 1909 (Remington File). 3. In the years just before and after her move to New York, Cather was well aware of the social and economic prominence of the sort of collectors named here. See Thacker, “She’s Not a Puzzle.” 4. The White Country (ca. 1909) is a signed oil landscape picturing snow- covered hills seen from a distance. It was used as an illustration for Cortis- soz’s essay in Scribner’s. 5. For a good account of why the story was refused by other magazines before Nathan and Mencken accepted it contingent on revisions for Smart Set, see Woodress 312– 16. 6. Here I have elected to use the Smart Set version of this passage, since Cather seems to tip her hand with the appositive “then a great man in American art.” In the book version, which includes more than three hun- 129 “Then a Great Man in American Art” dred variants, of which a third are substantive, the phrasing becomes “then at the height of his popularity” (Youth 10; for variants see Youth 471– 76). 7. This passage might well be applied to Cather herself. For example, it is clear that the experience of ghostwriting S. S. McClure’s My Autobiogra- phy (1914) affected her approach to narration and led to a second and more intimate novel about prairie pioneering, My Ántonia. See Thacker, “‘It’s Through Myself’”).

WORKS CITED

Anderson, Nancy K. “‘Curious Historical Artistic Data’: Art History and Western American Art.” Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West, by Jules David Prown et al. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992. 1– 35. Print. —. Frederic Remington: The Color of Night. Washington dc: National Gallery of Art, 2003. Print. Cather, Willa. “Coming, Aphrodite!” Cather, Youth and the Bright Medusa 3– 74. Print. —. “Coming, Eden Bower!” Smart Set Aug. 1920: 307– 29. Print. —. Letter to Roscoe Cather. 2 Mar. [1908]. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. 104– 6. Print. —. Letter to Louise Imogen Guiney. 17 Aug. 1912. College of the Holy Cross, Worchester, Massachusetts. —. My Ántonia. 1918. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Charles W. Mignon, and Kari Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholar Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. Youth and the Bright Medusa. 1920. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Mark J. Madigan, Frederick M. Link, Charles W. Mignon, Judith Boss, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska, P, 2009. Print. Cortissoz, Royal. “Frederic Remington: A Painter of American Life.” Scribner’s 47 (Feb. 1910): 181– 95. Print. Edgerton, Giles [Mary Fanton Roberts]. “Frederic Remington, Painter and Sculptor: A Pioneer in Distinctive American Art.” Craftsman 15.6 (Mar. 1909): 658–70. Print. 130 robert thacker

Goetzmann, William H., and Joseph C. Porter. The West as Romantic Horizon. Omaha: Center for Western Studies, Joslyn Art Museum, 1981. Print. Hassrick, Peter. “Frederic Remington the Painter: A Historiographic Sketch.” Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raissonné of Paintings, Watercolors, and Drawings, by Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster. 2 vols. Cody: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 1996. 1: 36– 62. Print. Landi, Ann. “Whistler, Winslow Homer, and Whitney Payson.” ARTnews Dec. 1996: 114– 17. Print. Madigan, Mark J. Explanatory Notes. Cather, Youth and the Bright Medusa 377–456. Print. Remington, Frederic. Diary 1907– 9. Frederic Remington Museum, Odgensburg, New York. —. “A Few Words from Mr. Remington.” Collier’s 18 Mar. 1905. The Collected Writings of Frederic Remington. Ed. Peggy and Harold Samuels. New York: Doubleday, 1979. 550– 51. Print. —. File. Knoedler Gallery Library. New York, New York. —. Letter to Annesley & Company. N.d. Moonlight, Wolf ﬁle. Addison Gallery of American Art. Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. Samuels, Peggy, and Harold Samuels. Frederic Remington: A Biography. Garden City: Doubleday, 1982. Print. Skaggs, Merrill Maguire. “Young Willa Cather and the Road to Cos Cob.” Willa Cather’s New York: New Essays on Cather and the City. Ed. Merrill Maguire Skaggs. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP. 43– 59. Print. Stout, Janis P. Picturing a Different West: Vision, Illustration, and the Tradition of Cather and Austin. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2007. Print. —. “Willa Cather’s West: The Question of Intentionality.” Literature Compass 5.1 (2008): 1– 10. Web. Tatum, Stephen. In the Remington Moment. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2010. Print. Thacker, Robert. The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1989. Print. —. “Introduction: No Catlin without Kane; or, Really Understanding the ‘American’ West.” One West, Two Myths II. Ed. C. L. Higham and Robert Thacker. Calgary: U of Calgary P, 2006. 1– 13. Print. —. “‘It’s Through Myself that I Knew and Felt Her’: S. S. McClure’s My Autobiography and the Development of Willa Cather’s 131 “Then a Great Man in American Art”

Autobiographical Realism.” American Literary Realism 33 (2001): 123– 42. Print. —. “She’s Not a Puzzle So Arbitrarily Solved: Willa Cather’s Violent Self- Construction.” Violence, the Arts, and Willa Cather. Ed. Joseph R. Urgo and Merrill Maguire Skaggs. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2007. 124– 36. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. 6 Willa Cather, Ernest L. Blumenschein, and “The Painting of Tomorrow”

JAMES A. JAAP

Willa Cather was both enamored of and inspired by the region, people, and culture of the American Southwest. Scholars have had a lot to say about her relationship to this region, but even so, gaps remain. One unexplored aspect of Cather’s Southwest experiences is her relationship with the modernist American painter Ernest L. Blumenschein. Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Dayton, Ohio, Blumenschein began his career illustrating works by Joseph Conrad, Stephen Crane, and Jack London for such publications as Century, McClure’s, and Harper’s. In 1907, Blumenschein provided the illustrations for Cather’s third story in McClure’s, “The Name- sake.” He and his wife, the painter Mary Greene Blumenschein, were friends of Cather and Edith Lewis, and while their names do not appear in the biographies of Cather by Bennett, Lee, or Woodress, Blumenschein’s work and theories of art are an important presence in Cather’s ﬁction, speciﬁcally in “Coming, Aphro- dite!” and Death Comes for the Archbishop. In “Coming, Aphrodite!” Cather bases the character of Don Hedger at least in part on Blu- menschein. In addition to biographical similarities, Hedger’s work depicting Native American customs and his theories of modern art are quite similar to Blumenschein’s work and published writings. In Archbishop, several of Cather’s descriptions bear a visual and thematic similarity to three of Blumenschein’s modernist landscapes from the 1920s. I hope here to shed new light on Cather’s

132 133 “The Painting of Tomorrow” friendship with the painter, her developing ideas related to modern art, and her use of modernist techniques in Death Comes for the Archbishop. Ernest Leonard Blumenschein was born on 26 May 1874. His family moved to Ohio in 1878 after his father was hired to conduct the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, and after his mother’s death in 1881 the young Ernest took up the violin. He became a concert violinist at the age of seventeen, but it was art and illustration that inspired him. In 1891 he received a scholarship for violin to the Music Academy of Cincinnati, but after one year, and against his father’s wishes, he transferred to the city’s Art Academy. In 1893 he studied at the New York Art Students League, and in 1894 at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1896 he returned to New York to work as an illustrator, and in early 1898 he made his first trip to Arizona and New Mexico. Later that spring, he convinced friend and fellow painter Bert Phillips to join him on a second journey west, and after several months painting in Colorado, the two headed to New Mexico. During this leg of their trip, one of their wagon wheels broke, and Blumenschein took the wheel to be repaired in nearby Taos, New Mexico. This journey would be the inspiration for much of his later work and career. As he walked the twenty- two miles to Taos, Blumenschein was inspired by what he saw. In his essay “The Broken Wagon Wheel: Symbol of Taos Art Colony,” published in the Santa Fe New Mexican on 26 June 1940, Blumen- schein writes: “No artist had ever recorded the superb New Mexico I was now seeing. No writer had, to my knowledge, ever written down the smell of this sagebrush air, or the feel of the morning sky. I was receiving, under rather painful circumstances, the first great unforgettable inspiration of my life.” Blumenschein stayed in Taos for three months and then returned to New York to resume his work as an illustrator of popular magazines and books. Begin- ning in 1910 he spent his summers in Taos, and in 1915, he along with several others founded the Taos Society of Artists.1 In 1920 he moved his family permanently to Taos and was finally able to give up illustrating and focus on painting. During his lifetime, Blumen- 134 james a. jaap

schein was the best known of all the Taos painters and received numerous honors and awards during his career. His work embraces impressionist and post- impressionist techniques, including the focus on the changing nature of light and shadow, the abstract rendering of the natural world, and the use of vivid colors. Today his work hangs in many of the world’s greatest galleries. We are not exactly sure when Cather and Blumenschein met, but in a letter to Ferris Greenslet dated 13 September 1915, Cather writes, “Miss Lewis and I met several old friends in the artist colony at Taos, among them Herbert Dunton2 and Blumenschein” (Let- ters 208). During Cather’s time at McClure’s, Blumenschein provided several illustrations for the magazine; for example, in the May 1907 issue he illustrated a story by Michael Williams titled “A Fight in One Round.” Also, Blumenschein’s wife, Mary Greene Blumen- schein, herself an accomplished artist, was interviewed in the 10 May 1915 edition of Every Week, possibly by Edith Lewis (“Mrs. Blu- menschein”). In his 1947 notes for an autobiography never written, Blumenschein lists Cather as one of the persons he would “sketch” (“Ernest Blumenschein Papers”). There are numerous other biographical connections, including common friends such as Mary Austin, Mabel Dodge, and her husband, Tony Luhan, but the first confirmed professional connection between Blumenschein and Cather, as mentioned, are the two illustrations Blumenschein provided for Cather’s story “The Namesake” in the March 1907 Mc- Clure’s. The first, “Lyon,” depicts a young man, presumably the title character, gazing absently into the distance. The second, “Despite the Dullness of the Light, We Instantly Recognized the Boy of Hartwell’s ‘Color Sergeant,’” is based upon Henri Fantin- Latour’s famous painting A Studio in the Batignolles, a portrait of Édouard Manet’s studio that includes Monet, Renoir, and Zola among others gathered around the great Manet. Similarly, Blumenschein’s illustration shows a group of artists gathered around the sculptor Lyon Hartwell, who is discussing his inspiration and namesake, his uncle who died during the Civil War. When the story was being prepared for publication in late 1906 and early 1907, Blumen- 135 “The Painting of Tomorrow” schein was in Paris and the Fantin- Latour painting at the Musée de Luxemborg. Blumenschein probably had permission to copy it (Duryea 81). Cather most likely had seen the Fantin- Latour painting during her visit to Paris in 1902, and we can imagine she was greatly pleased with Blumenschein’s illustration paralleling her story of Hartwell with the great Manet. Cather’s 1920 story “Coming, Aphrodite!” presents another connection between Cather and Blumenschein. Although the prototype for the painter Don Hedger has never been positively identified, a number of biographical and artistic similarities point to Blumenschein. In addition to several biographical parallels between Hedger and Blumenschein,3 Hedger, like Blumenschein, has “been a good deal” in the Southwest and paints the people and culture of the region. Both experiment with subject and composition; both focus on the Southwest region, and both influence a younger generation of artists. For example, Hedger shows Eden his painting “Rain Spirits, or maybe Indian Rain,” “a queer thing full of stiff, supplicating female figures.” Hedger’s explanation to Eden reveals his fascination with the people and culture of the region: “Indian traditions make women have to do with the rain- fall. They were supposed to control it, somehow, and to be able to find springs, and make moisture come out of the earth” (Youth 49). Native American customs and traditions had long been a focus of Blu- menschein’s writings and work. For example, in a 1917 article from the American Magazine of Art titled “The Taos Society of Artists,” Blumenschein writes that the Pueblo Indians “have always maintained their customs and their religion even until now, when they are struggling against the mighty white race that threatens to swal- low them up and spit them out again” (448). Several paragraphs later, Blumenschein states, “I had to write this little bit about the Pueblo inhabitants if only to counter- act the impression so common in our country that our Indians are not quite respectable” (449). Hedger’s description of his painting is similar to Blumen- schein’s 1923 painting Dance at Taos,4 which depicts several lines of female dancers in a traditional Indian dance and mixes bright col- 136 james a. jaap ors and shifting forms to create a sense of movement and rhythm. This painting has strong political overtones, for in 1921 the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued Circular 1665, which attempted to ban religious dances. These dances, the circular stated, promoted “[s]uper- stitious cruelty, licentiousness, idleness, danger to health and shift- less indifference to family welfare” (qtd. in Miller 123). InDance at Taos, Blumenschein captures the emotion, movement, and beauty of the ceremony and rejects the notion of its “superstitious cruelty” and “licentiousness.” One can imagine this topic would have been of interest to Cather, who had written about immigrant customs and traditions in her major works. Cather may also be referencing Blumenschein through Hedger’s idealism and artistic experimentation. Early in the story, Hedger tells Eden how he is moving away from realistic portrayals in favor of a more impressionistic style: “You see I’m trying to learn to paint what people think and feel; to get away from all that photographic stuff” Youth( 49). Later, when Eden discusses the popular artist Bur- ton Ives, Hedger scoffs at the idea of painting to make money, of painting for the public: “A public only wants what has been done over and over. I’m painting for painters,—who haven’t been born” (61). Twenty years later, when Eden returns to New York and is reminded of Hedger, she asks an art dealer, “Is he [Hedger] a man of any importance?” “Certainly,” the dealer responds. “He is one of the first men among the moderns. That is to say, among the very moderns. He is always coming up with something different” (72). Al- though this exchange could refer to many painters, Cather seems, at least in part, to be referring to Blumenschein for his embrace of modern art. Like Hedger, Blumenschein was always changing. According to Sascha Scott, Blumenschein’s paintings “underwent a significant stylistic shift” during the late 1910s. He began to experiment with post- impressionist-derived aesthetics, intensified his palette, and “emphasized pattern through the flattening and repetition of forms and often restricted pictorial space by denying illu- sionistic perspective.” He also focused more on the Native peoples and landscapes of the Southwest and became a leading spokes- 137 “The Painting of Tomorrow”

Fig. 6.1. Ernest Blumenschein (1874– 1960), The Lake, ca. 1927. Oil on canvas. 24 1/8 x 27 in. Courtesy of National Academy Museum. New York. person for modern art. In his contribution to Century’s April 1914 “Modern Art Number” on the 1913 Armory Show, “The Painting of Tomorrow,” Blumenschein defends the works displayed at the 1913 Armory Show and explains his conversion to modern art. His words echo those of Hedger. While there have been numerous critics of post- impressionism, Blumenschein argues that by challenging realism and returning to the primitive, post-impressionism has added “a new truth . . . to our knowledge and one which will be welded into all future art” (850; emphasis in original). Given Cath- er’s interest in art and modern art, it is likely she would have read her “old friend’s” article in Century. By 1914, Cather had two stories published in the magazine, “The Willing Muse” in August 1907 and “The Joy of Nellie Dean” in October 1911, and she was still read- 138 james a. jaap

Fig. 6.2. Ernest Blumenschein, Mountains Near Taos, ca. 1926. Oil on canvas. 22½ x 49½ in. (57.15 x 125.73 cm). Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Helen Blumenschein. © Estate of Ernest Blumenschein.

ing the magazine in 1915; in a 27 June letter she writes Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant that she has just read Sergeant’s article on the poet Frederic Mistral from the July 1915 volume “with the greatest delight!” (Letters 203). Blumenschein continued to defend “modernist” art throughout his career. In a 1919 interview that appeared in El Palacio, Blumenschein is described as a “recognized authority on modern art and on the trend of post-impressionism” (“Blu- menschein Is Interviewed” 84). By 1920 Cather had witnessed Blu- menschein’s career go from an illustrator for popular magazines to an award- winning experimental painter. In many ways, Blumen- schein’s writings and career parallel the idealistic and experimental words of Don Hedger— painting for those artists “who haven’t been born.” Having established that Cather knew, worked with, and at least partially based a character upon Blumenschein, I would like now to discuss what I think is an even deeper connection between the two artists: the presence of Blumenschein’s work in Death Comes for the Archbishop. By the time of the novel’s publication in 1927, Blumenschein had separated himself from the more traditional Taos Society of Artists, which he had founded, and become a leading American painter and expert on modernist painting. His 139 “The Painting of Tomorrow” work became more abstract and experimental in shape and color. While he continued to emphasize Native customs and traditions, he now focused on Southwest landscapes, particularly around Taos and Santa Fe. Finally able to quit working as an illustrator and devote all of his time to painting, he and his family had moved permanently to Taos in 1920. By 1927 he had shown his work around the country and had won several prestigious awards, including a silver medal at the Sesquicentennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1926. Although neither the artist nor his work explicitly appears in the novel, many of Cather’s descriptions bear a visual and thematic similarity to three of Blumenschein’s famous modernist landscapes: The Lake (1927), Mountains Near Taos (1926), and Sangre de Cristo Mountains (1925). Cather wrote that Death Comes for the Archbishop was partially inspired by Puvis de Chavannes’s St. Genevieve frescoes, which she saw in the Panthéon in Paris in 1902. These two series of murals, the first painted between 1874 and 1878 and the second between 1895 and 1898, depict the life of St. Genevieve in separate panels. In her article on the writing of the novel that appeared in Common- weal on 23 November 1927, Cather states that since she “first saw the Puvis de Chavannes frescoes . . . I have wished that I could try something a little like that in prose.” For Cather, the life of Arch- bishop Lamy of Santa Fe gave her the opportunity to write “something in the style of a legend, which is absolutely the reverse of the dramatic treatment” (“A Letter” 376). In his 1965 article “Narrative without Accent: Willa Cather and Puvis de Chavannes,” Clinton Keeler explores the connections between the novel and the Pu- vis murals and asserts that the style of Cather’s novel reflects Pu- vis’s: both lack movement, both are episodic in plot structure, and both are marked by “flat tones, few contrasts and no vivid colors” with “little distinction between foreground and background” (122). Moreover, Keeler argues, rather than turning inward to explore the artist’s consciousness, as many impressionists would do, Pu- vis’s work focuses on external and historical subjects: “He avoided the new optical analysis of the impressionists and returned to the 140 james a. jaap

monumental painting of the Renaissance” (120). Archbishop, Keeler argues, is similar: “Writing at a time when the innovations of Joyce and others led fiction within the mind, within the process of consciousness, Cather turned to an earlier period” (126). According to Keeler, Cather thus rejects both modernism and impressionism in the novel. In her 2003 article “Willa Cather and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: Extending the Comparison,” Cristina Giorcelli revisits the connections between the murals and the novel. While she argues that Kee- ler’s main points are “indisputable,” Giorcelli does not view either artist as rejecting modernism and impressionism; rather, she considers Cather’s attempt at re-creating Puvis’s style an embrace of a modernist aesthetic. While his work has often been considered traditional, writes Giorcelli, “several art historians have claimed that Puvis is, in effect, the hidden, inescapable master of such avant- garde artists as Cezanne, Picasso, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat, Ma- tisse, Degas, Brancusi, Malevich, Munch—that is, of cubism, fau- vism, and expressionism” (73). While the murals and the novel are traditional in subject, they are experimental in form and technique. According to Giorcelli, “Cather must have detected in the work of Puvis certain aspects of modernist originality. . . . Cather’s modernist quest probably found in Puvis’s art an inspiration and model for her own masterpiece, its chromatic hues, moods, detail, and, above all, structure” (86). It is my belief that Cather’s “modernist quest” may also have been complemented by the works of her “old friend” Ernest Blumenschein. It is easy to see similarities between Blumenschein’s paintings and Cather’s descriptions of the New Mexico landscape. Both the novel and the paintings depict the natural beauty of the region, specifically the vastness of the land and sky in contrast to the mi- nuteness of humankind, and each creates landscapes characterized by motion and shifting light. The Lake, one of Blumenschein’s modernist landscapes, shares many similarities with Cather’s descriptions (fig. 6.1). This painting centers on a scene with heavy 141 “The Painting of Tomorrow”

Fig. 6.3. Ernest Blumenschein, Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 1925. Oil on canvas. 50½ x 60 in. Courtesy of American Museum of Western Art, Denver— The Anschutz Collection. Photo by William J. O’Connor. thunderclouds looming above, and the viewer’s gaze is directed not toward the lake or the cabin in the foreground but rather to the oval clouds swirling in the vast sky. Shadows spread across the lake, the mountains, and the fields. Light breaks through above the clouds, but below, darkness and shadows dominate, and the lake reflects this changing sky. Almost hidden in the valley, the solitary cabin is dwarfed by the mountains and clouds. While Blu- menschein paints one specific moment, the dominant impression is one of motion; the shifting storm clouds alter the reflections and the shadows, and the viewer feels that if he turned away for just one second, the entire scene would change. According to Pe- ter Hassrick, the painting provides “an impressive contrast in na- 142 james a. jaap ture’s moods”; the calm scene of the lake and the small home are in sharp contrast to the dark storm clouds on the horizon, and the “painting pulsates—its air is as electric as it is fresh” (162). Blumen- schein worked on The Lake between 1923 and 1927 and presented it to the National Academy of Design when he was inducted into the academy in 1927 (Hassrick 162). It is possible that Cather saw The Lake during her visits to the Southwest in 1925 and 1926 while she was composing her novel. Cather’s descriptions of the sky also pulsate with electricity, and they resemble Blumenschein’s painting in several ways— the vastness of the land and sky, the altering of the landscape by the shifting light, and the smallness of humanity in comparison to the natural world. Bishop Latour, for example, comments several times on the awe- inspiring and changing nature of the sky. In book 2, when he recalls his first travels to “mesa country,” he notes the difference between the Southwest and other areas of the nation. On his journey through the Midwest he had “found the sky more a desert than the land; a hard, empty blue,” but in the Southwest the sky is constantly changing, and the huge clouds reflect the land below. La- tour observes, “there was always activity overhead, clouds forming and moving all day long”; these changing cloud formations, “[w] hether they were dark and full of violence, or soft and white with luxurious idleness,” dramatically change the landscape, and this constant shifting of light and shadow alters both the land and human perspective. “The desert, the mountains and mesas, were continually reformed and re- coloured by the cloud shadows”; to him “[t]he whole country seemed fluid to the eye under this constant change of accent, this ever-varying distribution of light” (100–101). Later in the novel, Latour again comments on the changing nature and vastness of the Southwest sky in contrast to the smallness of humankind, observing that in the Southwest, “the sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still,—and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than any- 143 “The Painting of Tomorrow” where else in the world.” Everything is small in comparison. “Even the mountains were mere ant- hills under it” (245). In addition to The Lake, a series of paintings Blumenschein completed of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains also offer a striking similarity to Cather’s prose descriptions. The Sangre de Cristos, which surround the Taos valley, represented to Blumenschein the essence of Taos; in 1917 he wrote: “One can’t tell about Taos without dwelling on the mountains that box in the valley on three sides” (“Taos Society” 445). He celebrated these mountains in many paintings, but one of his most famous is Mountains Near Taos (1926) (fig. 6.2). This painting captures the light of the afternoon sun on the mountains and a small settlement. As he did in The Lake, Blumenschein depicts the changing nature of the sky, the vastness of the land, and the comparative smallness of humanity. The painting is centered on the pyramid-like mountains that tower above the valley and the pueblo. Although these angular, purple-shaded mountains appear barren, upon closer inspection they are partially snow- covered and forested with aspens and evergreens, a stark contrast to the undulating and fertile Taos valley. The sun is to the right, out of the frame, and the reflection on the mountains and shadows on the valley and pueblo indicate a late-afternoon setting. Behind the mountains, but only partially in frame, a thundercloud looms, and in front of the pueblo a small, barely visible crowd is gathered. The perspective of the painting, elevated and distant, provides a pan- oramic view of the entire valley. Although, unlike The Lake, Moun- tains Near Taos is not centered on motion, the shifting of light and shadows does create a sense of movement. The movement, however, is based on the daily passage of time as opposed to a fast-moving thundercloud. Blumenschein’s vibrant use of color, embrace of design, use of angular shapes almost to the point of abstraction, and contrast of light and dark to create form qualify this work as modern (Hassrick 178). Cather’s description of the Taos valley in Archbishop echoes Mountain Near Taos in the use of color, the emphasis on the ever- 144 james a. jaap changing light and sky, the depiction of the smallness of humanity in comparison to the natural landscape, and the focus on the sharp tips of the mountains as a contrast to the fertile valley. Bishop La- tour and Father Martinez pause before Taos pueblo “gold- coloured in the afternoon light, with the purple mountain lying just behind them.” The entire scene is bathed in purples, golds, greens, and pinks; Cather refers to “Gold-coloured men,” “clouds of golden dust,” the “purple mountain,” the “light green” mountain forest, and the “pink adobe town” (158–59). These are not Keeler’s “flat tones,” but vibrant and distinct colors. Cather’s narrative also emphasizes the changing nature of the light. A group of men are gathered, Latour observes, “apparently watching the changing light on the mountain.” These are similar to the barely visible figures Blumen- schein includes in his painting. Also like Blumenschein, Cather emphasizes the mountain: “Though the mountain was timbered, its lines were so sharp that it had the sculptured look of naked mountains like the Sandias. The general growth on its sides was evergreen, but the canyons and ravines were wooded with aspens” (159). Even the perspectives are the same. Blumenschein’s point of view, like Latour’s, is elevated and distant, almost at eye level with the mountains and looking down into the Taos valley. When Latour travels to Arroyo Hondo and approaches the village, he is stopped at a step canyon: “Drawing rein at the edge, one looked down into the sunken world of green fields and gardens, with a pink adobe town, at the bottom of this great ditch” (174). This is not an antimodernist description, as Keeler might argue. In fact, the similarities to Blumenschein’s painting—the vibrant use of col- or, the use of angular shapes, and the contrast of light and dark to create form— qualify this work as modern. Unlike the previously discussed paintings, Blumenschein’s San- gre de Cristo Mountains (1925) shares a thematic rather than a stylistic similarity to Cather’s novel, although the painting does share similarities with the works just discussed (fig. 6.3). This large painting is, according to Hassrick, “historic in narrative and modern in 145 “The Painting of Tomorrow” treatment” (168). A pueblo village shining in the winter afternoon sun centers the painting, but the bulk of the canvas is taken up with the snow-covered Sangre de Cristos, which remain mostly in shadow. In this version, the mountains are not sharp but rounded, almost billowy, and the dark and fast-moving storm clouds add a somber and threatening element to the painting. This mood is enhanced by the procession of penitents and their onlookers in the foreground of the canvas, their bent backs mirroring the curves of the mountains. Carrying a cross through the snow-covered fields, this group is a part of the Penitente Brotherhood, a sect devoted to the suffering of Christ and characterized by their willingness to inflict pain upon themselves. This is Taos in the mid-1800s, then known as Don Fernando de Taos, around the time of the setting of Death Comes for the Archbishop. Sangre de Cristo Mountains resembles the previously discussed Blumenschein paintings stylistically, as well as Cather’s descriptions of the mountains and the Taos valley: the changing and shifting light, the vastness of the landscape and sky, and the smallness of humanity in relation to nature. Blu- menschein’s use of light and shadow, his vibrant colors, and his abstract rendering of the mountains are again evidence of his developing embrace of modernism. While Cather does not refer to this exact scene in Archbishop, the thematic similarities between the painting and Cather’s novel are worth exploring, especially Cather’s references to the Penitentes in book 5. Father Martinez warns Latour against attempts at reform of the brotherhood: “If you try to introduce European civilization here and change our old ways, to interfere with the secret dances of the Indians, let us say, or abolish the bloody rites of the Penitentes, I foretell an early death for you” (55). These “old ways,” while out- dated, still hold importance among the Native peoples. Trinidad, perhaps Father Martinez’s son, embraces this “fierce and fanatical” sect (160). Martinez explains that during Passion Week, Trinidad “goes up to Abiquiú and becomes another man; carries the heavi- est crosses to the highest mountains, and takes more scourging 146 james a. jaap

than anyone. He comes back here with his back so full of cactus spines that the girls have to pick him like a chicken” (156). Senõra Carson, wife of Kit Carson, later informs Latour how during Pas- sion Week in Abiquiú, Trinidad had tried to be crucified but was too heavy and the cross fell over. He then tied himself to a post “and said he would bear as many stripes as our Savior—six thousand, as was revealed to St. Bridget.” He could barely take one hundred before fainting. The people of Abiquiú “[t]his year sent word that they did not want him.” When Latour asks if he should forbid these practices, Senõra Carson replies: “It will only set the people against you. The old people have need of their old customs” (163). John Murphy writes that Cather read several firsthand accounts of the brotherhood (449–50). Perhaps she had seen this depiction of the brotherhood in Blumenschein’s masterpiece. Willa Cather and Ernest Blumenschein were friends for much of their lives, and in many ways their careers parallel each other; born within a year of one another, both served long apprenticeships, Cather as a journalist and Blumenschein as an illustrator, and both became celebrated and famous artists. Although Cather refers to Blumenschein as one of her “old friends,” her connection to the painter has never been explored. While we cannot be sure how many times Cather and Blumenschein visited each other, or even when their acquaintance began, we know he is a presence in her fiction. Cather refers directly to Blumenschein in “Coming, Aphro- dite!” when she emphasizes the experimental nature and idealism of Don Hedger’s Southwest work. Hedger, like Blumenschein, is an artist willing to change, but one who remains true to his ideals. Hedger, like Blumenschein, embraces modern art and techniques and eventually becomes an important influence on a younger generation of painters. In Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather’s stylistic and thematic similarities to three of Blumenschein’s paintings indicate that Cather was likely aware of her friend’s modernist landscapes. Both his paintings and Cather’s descriptions emphasize the changing nature of light and the ways that light alters 147 “The Painting of Tomorrow” one’s perspective. While Keeler may have argued that Archbishop is distinctly antimodern, like Blumenschein’s paintings, it is squarely within the realm of modernist experimentation.

NOTES

1. Other founding members were Joseph Henry Sharp, E. Irving Crouse, Oscar Berninghaus, and W. Herbert Dunton. See Bickerstaff for more information. 2. W. Herbert Dunton (1878– 1936) was an illustrator of magazines and books who, at the suggestion of Blumenschein, moved to Taos in 1912 and helped found the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. Like Blumenschein, he is known for his paintings of the American Southwest. 3. Both produced illustrations quickly in order to make money; Blu- menschein continued to illustrate works to stay ﬁnancially aﬂoat until 1920. Both are also athletic: Hedger “practises with weights and dumb- bells, and in the shoulders he was as strong as a gorilla” (12); Blumenschein was an outstanding athlete, and played baseball and competitive tennis throughout his life. 4. Dance at Taos, 1923, is a 27½ x 30½ inch oil on canvas and is currently part of the collection at the New Mexico Museum of Art.

WORKS CITED

Bickerstaff, Laura M.Pioneer Artists of Taos. 1955. Revised and expanded ed. Denver: Old West Publishing, 1983. Print. Blumenschein, Ernest L. “The Broken Wagon Wheel: Symbol of Taos Art Colony.” Santa Fe New Mexican 26 June 1940. Print. —. “The Painting of Tomorrow.” Century Magazine 87.6 (Apr. 1914): 845– 50. Print. —. “The Taos Society of Artists.” American Magazine of Art 8.11 (1917): 445– 51. Print. “Blumenschein Is Interviewed.” El Palacio 6.6 (1919): 84– 86. Print. Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. 1927. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy, Charles W. Mignon, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999. Print. —. “A Letter on Death Comes for the Archbishop.” Commonweal 23 Nov. 1927. Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop 373– 79. Print. 148 james a. jaap

—. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. Youth and the Bright Medusa. 1920. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Mark J. Madigan, Frederick M. Link, Charles W. Mignon, Judith Boss, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2009. Print. Duryea, Polly Patricia. Paintings and Drawings in Willa Cather’s Prose: A Catalogue Raisonne. Diss. U of Nebraska– Lincoln, 1993. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. “Ernest Blumenschein Papers, 1873– 1964.” Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institute. Web. Giorcelli, Cristina. “Willa Cather and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: Extending the Comparison.” Literature and Belief 23.2 (2003): 71– 88. Hassrick, Peter. “Chasing Rainbows: Taos in the 1920s.” Hassrick and Cunningham 129– 96. Print. Hassrick, Peter, and Elizabeth J. Cunningham, eds. In Contemporary Rhythm: The Art of Ernest L. Blumenschein. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 2008. Print. Keeler, Clinton. “Narrative without Accent: Willa Cather and Puvis de Chavannes.” American Quarterly 17.1 (Spring 1965): 119– 26. Print. Miller, Skip Keith. “Superstition and the Artist’s Defense of Native Rights.” Hassrick and Cunningham 119–27. Print. “Mrs. Blumenschein on Painting.” Every Week 10 May 1915. Web. Murphy, John J. Explanatory Notes. Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop 381– 512. Print. Scott, Sascha. “Blumenschein, Ernest.” Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford UP. Web. 7 From The Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart, and Die Walküre to Die Winterreise

DAVID PORTER

To keep an idea living, intact, tinged with all its original feeling . . . to keep it so all the way from the brain to the hand and transfer it on paper a living thing . . . that is what art means, that is the greatest of all the gifts of the gods. And that is the voyage perilous.

— Nebraska State Journal, 1 March 1896

Cather’s familiar words from 1896 provide an apt entrée to the relationship between The Song of the Lark and Lucy Gayheart. Song, published in 1915, traces the long and hard journey by which its heroine moves from early intimations of her musical talent to their brilliant realization. Lucy, published twenty years later, moves from its heroine’s bright glimmerings of musical discovery to the fading of these fugitive gleams. This essay suggests that Cather underscored the gulf between these musical journeys by constantly projecting Lucy’s against the template of Thea’s, a contrast reﬂec- tive also of the differing trajectories of Cather’s own life at these two stages in her career.1 Throughout Song, Cather endows Thea with the qualities essential to navigating the voyage perilous. First, there is the openness to ideas themselves. Composer Paul Hindemith likened the process of

149 150 david porter composition to seeing an entire landscape momentarily revealed in a brilliant flash of lightning, then struggling for months to recover and record the vision so briefly glimpsed (60– 61). His analogy suggests not only the drudgery that follows the lightning but also the receptivity the artist must have to respond to these sudden flashes when they occur. This latter is a quality that Cather possessed in great measure— recall, to mention but one instance, how watching the wheat harvest on a June day in 1912 suddenly gave her the idea for “The White Mulberry Tree,” a moment Elizabeth Shepley Ser- geant likened to “a great sound of cymbals in the air” (84). In Song, Cather constantly suggests a similar receptiveness in Thea. There is her powerful response to the wagon ruts left by early settlers (“the wind brought to her eyes tears that might have come anyway” [60]); the catalytic effect of having her own room (“her mind worked better. . . . Pleasant plans and ideas occurred to her which had never come before” [64]); the “passionate excitement” she feels after reading a Heine poem with Wunsch (“Together they had lifted a lid, pulled out a drawer, and looked at something” [87– 88]).2 It is this same quality that attracts the attention of conductor Gustav Mahler when Thea sings the part of a Rhine Maiden in a performance of Das Rheingold, as Fred Ottenburg recalls: “‘She seems to sing for the idea. Unusual in a young singer.’ I’d never heard [Mahler] ad- mit before that a singer could have an idea. She not only had it, but she got it across. . . . She simply was the idea of the Rhine music” (435– 36). In the passage used as this chapter’s epigraph, Cather speaks of the god-given gift of “keep[ing] an idea living, intact . . . all the way from the brain to the hand,” a process directly relevant to the evolution of Song itself, as Cather commented in a March 1915 letter to Ferris Greenslet: “The death of the noble brakeman was the original germ of the story, I suppose. It happened when I was about thirteen. . . . Ever since then this story has been in the back of my head in one form or another. It has gone through many incarna- tions, but the germ of it, the feeling of it, has never changed” (Let- ters 199). Thea draws on a like compound of persistence and vision 151 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart to survive the frustrations of her piano lessons with Harsanyi, the affronts of voice study with Madison Bowers, her long apprenticeship in Germany, and the professional slights that greet her at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Harsanyi marvels at her “unusual power of work,” her “way of charging at difficulties . . . as if they were foes she had long been seeking” (Song 195). Thea’s accompanist, Landry, comments on her struggle to master the role of Fric- ka in Das Rheingold: “When she begins with a part she’s hard to work with: so slow you’d think she was stupid if you did n’t know her. . . . It goes on like that for weeks sometimes” (492). A third component of the process is the sudden revelation— like a second lightning flash— that makes everything fall into place. In Bee- thoven: His Spiritual Development (1927), a book Cather knew well, J. W. N. Sullivan describes Beethoven’s compositional process in terms of experiences, perhaps extending over years, that are “gradually co- ordinated in the unconscious mind of the artist” and released by “what psychologists call a ‘tripper’ incident” (126, 141). Richard Har- ris has compared the way such incidents often catalyzed materials long brewing in Cather’s mind— the “explosion and enlightenment” (Sergeant 116) when she thought of combining “Alexandra” and “The White Mulberry Tree” into O Pioneers! or how seeing Lyra Garber’s obituary suddenly triggered the writing of A Lost Lady (Harris 22– 23). This too is a process Cather writes into Thea. After the lesson where she has struggled with the folk song “Die Lorelei,” Harsanyi recalls the moment when she grasped it, “as if a lamp had suddenly been turned up inside her. . . . Until she saw it as a whole, she wan- dered like a blind man surrounded by torments. After she once had her ‘revelation’ . . . then she went forward rapidly” (Song 213). Landry uses similar language of Thea’s breakthrough with the role of Fric- ka: “All at once, she got her line— it usually comes suddenly, after stretches of not getting anywhere at all” (492).3 Cather’s description of Thea’s climactic performance as Sieg- linde captures the arrival achieved both by Thea in Die Walküre and by Cather in Song, and in language rich in intimations of the qualities each brought to this voyage perilous: 152 david porter

That afternoon nothing new came to Thea Kronborg, no enlightenment, no inspiration. She merely came into full possession of things she had been refining and perfecting for so long. . . . [T]his afternoon the closed roads opened, the gates dropped. What she had so often tried to reach, lay under her hand. She had only to touch an idea to make it live. While she was on the stage she was conscious that every movement was the right movement, that her body was absolutely the instrument of her idea. Not for nothing had she . . . kept it filled with such energy and fire. All that deep- rooted vitality flowered in her voice, her face, in her very fingertips. She felt like a tree bursting into bloom. (525– 26)

Flash forward now to Lucy Gayheart’s final icy walk—the end of her journey—which inverts, even plays off this language that twenty years earlier Cather had written for Thea. For Lucy, the roads become ever more impassable, what she reaches for ever farther from her hand, her body ever less the instrument of her intentions—and her fingertips scarcely able to put on her skates when she reaches the river.4 Lucy too had possessed energy, fire, deep- rooted vitality, but they fail her in this frozen world where nothing flowers, where no trees bloom. At the end her voice too fails her, as she futilely shouts “Harry!” into the bitter wind, then watches him disappear.5 To juxtapose these two episodes is starkly to reveal the gulf that separates these two young musicians, a gulf that Cather in Lucy Gayheart constantly suggests by implicit cross- references of just this sort. Song is about perilous voyages completed, Lucy about the opposite; indeed, Lucy’s story is itself a voyage perilous of a very different ilk.

FROM SONG TOWARD LUCY: 1916– 1932

In retrospect, one can trace a gradual erosion of the tran- scendent vision of artistic arrival that Cather created at the close of Song, a trajectory that reaches its conclusion in the tale of loss, both 153 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart artistic and human, that Cather will tell in Lucy Gayheart. Even in the years immediately following the publication of Song, she writes four stories about singers whose careers contrast sharply with Thea’s in character and outcome: Cressida Garnet of “The Diamond Mine” (written 1916), whom managers chose less for her artistry than for her conscientious reliability (100); Kitty Ayrshire, who in “A Gold Slipper” (1916) admits that though she knows art’s higher calling, that way is not hers (160) and in “Scandal” (1916) courts public notice by letting herself be thought more scandalous than she really is; and Eden Bower, who in “Coming, Eden Bower!” (1920) willingly compromises her art, and herself, to garner public recognition and monetary gain, and of whom our last glance is of a face “hard and settled, like a plaster cast” (“Coming, Aphrodite!” 74).6 The erosion continues into the 1920s. In a tragic subplot of One of Ours, a brilliant young violinist, David Gerhardt, is killed in the last stages of World War I. Before he dies he sees his Stradivarius smashed, and when asked about his career, he notes “the regular pulsation of the big guns sound[ing] through the still night” and says, “That’s all that matters now. It has killed everything else” (552). Cather links young talent with premature death again in her 1925 essay on Katherine Mansﬁeld, describing her genius as a writer in terms of musical “timbre, [which] cannot be deﬁned or explained any more than the quality of a beautiful speaking voice can be,” and commenting, “That she had not the happiness of developing this glorious gift to the full, is one of the sad things in literary history” (47, 49). That same year Cather published “Uncle Valentine,” in which a talented young composer— one modeled on Ethelbert Nevin— is killed just two years after the “golden year” in which he composed “all of the thirty- odd songs by which he lives” (31). Among these is “I know a wall where the red roses grow” (37), a song whose roses recall both Nevin’s brilliant career and his early death. And whereas the climactic scene of Song peaks in the union of Siegmund and Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walküre, the memorable opera scenes of The Professor’s House and My Mortal Enemy focus on separation and loss— the poignant vignettes from Thomas’s Mi- 154 david porter

gnon in the former (91– 94), the young soprano’s powerful performance of “Casta Diva” from Bellini’s Norma in the latter (59– 61).7 Although Cather’s ever- darkening musical journey will eventually lead to Lucy Gayheart, her ﬁrst extant allusion to that novel, in a 15 October 1926 letter to Louise Guerber, is jaunty:

I won’t be back in town before November 4th or 5th, probably. I’m ﬂirting a little with a story that’s been knocking round in my head for sometime. Title “Blue Eyes on the Platte”— platte, not plate. Rather frivolous and decidedly sentimental, love’s- young- dream sort of thing. (Letters 387)

Her letter fills out Edith Lewis’s comment that “writing a story about a girl like Lucy” had been on Cather’s mind “several years” before she began the novel (173–74) and provides a baseline for following the subsequent stages in the novel’s evolution. This late-1926 letter is light and playful, and one wonders whether meeting the lively Louise may have been the “tripper incident” that released this story from its long “knocking round” in Cath- er’s head.8 By late 1927, however, just a year later, Cather’s father had suffered a serious heart attack, harbinger of the series of trag- edies she would face in the years ahead, and her next piece of fiction differs sharply from the frivolous tale she had described to Louise: “Double Birthday,” a draft of which Cather completed in early 1928.9 The story revolves around Marguerite Thiesinger, a talented young musician who initially lacks the ambition to become a professional singer, eventually discovers that drive and plunges into serious study, but just as she is primed for success is stricken by cancer and dies. A comment from Dr. Englehardt confronts the existential ramifications of his protégée’s tragedy: “Youth, art, love, dreams, trueheartedness—why must they go out of the summer world into darkness? Warum, warum?” (52–53). Underscoring this “Why?” for Cather was Sullivan’s Beethoven book (published in late 1927), which focused on the incomprehensible cruelty of the composer’s early deafness, and which Cather clearly echoes in “Double Birthday.”10 155 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart

“Double Birthday” is a pivot point in the evolution of Lucy Gay- heart. Its heroine’s story foreshadows that of Lucy, who also lacks musical ambition through most of the novel, is suddenly spurred toward serious study near the end of book 2, then dies before she can put this new ambition to work. At the same time, Cather in “Double Birthday” also looks back, setting the story of her young soprano against the backdrop of The Song of the Lark (compare the implicit contrasts she had created between Thea and the singers of her 1916– 19 stories). Marguerite Thiesinger is reminiscent of Thea in both name— “Thie– singer”— and appearance: “a sturdy, blooming German girl standing beside the piano . . . glowing with health. She looked like a big peony just burst into bloom and full of sunshine” (49); but the tragic outcome of her story diverges sharply from Thea’s— the very strategy that Cather will repeatedly employ in Lucy Gayheart. In 1932 Cather again revisited the heroine of Song. Her 1915 dust-jacket copy had described that novel as “[t]he story of a great American singer,— her childhood in the Colorado desert, her early struggles in Chicago, her romantic adventures among the ruins of the Cliff Dwellers in Arizona, her splendid triumphs on the operatic stage. It is a story of aspiration and conﬂict, of the magnificent courage of young ambition.”11 In contrast, here is how she describes Thea Kronborg in the new preface she wrote for Song in 1932:

Her human life is made up of exacting engagements and dull business details, of shifts to evade an idle, gaping world which is determined that no artist shall ever do his best. Her artistic life is the only one in which she is happy, or free, or even very real. . . . [T]he harassed, susceptible human creature comes and goes, subject to colds, brokers, dressmakers, managers. But the free creature, who retains her youth and beauty and warm imagination, is kept shut up in the closet, along with the scores and wigs. (Song 618)

This description of Thea mirrors Cather’s own life in 1932, and as 156 david porter such suggests the professional discouragement she was feeling as she began writing Lucy Gayheart. Equally important, it reveals— as did “Double Birthday”— that though the heroine of Song was still much in mind, Cather was now seeing Thea’s career in a far different light—one sardonic, even mocking (it is in this same preface that Cather suggests that ending Song with Thea’s success was a mistake). The new preface is dated 16 July 1932. On 24 July— just eight days later— Cather wrote Blanche Knopf that she had ﬁn- ished her new preface to Song and that she had “begun a new book, just as an experiment; if my interest grows, I’ll go on with it. If it bores me, I’ll drop it. It’s about a young thing, this time. If I ﬁnish it, I’ll call it simply by her name, ‘Lucy Gayheart.’” Taking a cue from her new preface to Song, Cather in this new novel constantly projects her “young thing”— as she had Marguerite Thiesinger— against the paradigm of Thea Kronborg.

A DARKER COUNTERPOINT: LUCY GAYHEART AND THE SONG OF THE LARK The Song of the Lark and Lucy Gayheart are Cather’s only two novels with young female musicians as their central figures, and no one who reads both can fail to note their larger similarities of plot. In both a small-town midwestern girl displays an early gift for the piano and goes to Chicago to pursue advanced study. For both a caring piano teacher opens new possibilities in the world of vocal music: Mr. Harsanyi persuades Thea that her future lies in voice, not piano; Mr. Auerbach enables Lucy to become rehearsal pianist to a great singer, Clement Sebastian. Both women meet with success in these new realms: Thea’s singing eventually leads to an operatic career in New York, while Lucy’s work as a rehearsal accompanist earns her Sebastian’s invitation to follow him to New York in that capacity. At the same time, however, no one who reads both novels can fail to observe that Thea’s and Lucy’s similar beginnings lead to radically different conclusions: at the end of Song Thea has become 157 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart a leading soloist at the Metropolitan Opera, while at the end of book 1 of Lucy the heroine’s New York plans have vanished with Sebastian’s death, and at the end of book 2 her renewed interest in a musical career falters and she herself drowns. The editors of Cather’s Selected Letters describe Lucy Gayheart as “a darker counterpoint to the triumphant Thea Kronborg” (465), and it is impossible to believe that an author as intentional and self- aware as Wil- la Cather would not have recognized this relationship (especially given the similar counterpoint she had created between Margue- rite Thiesinger and Thea Kronborg a few years earlier in “Double Birthday”). This is not the place to discuss Cather’s intentions, or her expectations as to her readers’ responses, with respect to the “dark counterpoint” that Lucy plays on Song. The texts of the two novels are historical artifacts, both of them created by Cather, and it is a simple fact that the text of Lucy often does recall that of Song. The extent of these intertextual links, and their frequent closeness, merit more attention, as does the fact that they regularly begin in similarity only then to diverge—just what Cather had done in “Double Birthday” with Marguerite Thiesinger. Readers familiar with both novels will frequently encounter passages in the later text that invite them to set Lucy and her experiences against Thea and hers in ways that evoke rich perspectives on both novels. Two pairs of passages from the novels afford good examples. As Thea returns by train to Chicago to resume her studies, she sobs through the night, resenting the “stupid, good-natured child” she had been when she first went there: “How much older she was now, and how much harder! She was going away to fight, and she was going away forever” (273). As Lucy makes a similar return to Chicago, she lies “in the dark . . . giv[ing] herself up to the vibra- tion of the train. . . . That sense of release and surrender went all over her body; she seemed to lie in it as in a warm bath” (26). After Thea leaves her first orchestra concert, she plunges into the cold and crowded Chicago streets and senses “some power abroad in the world bent on taking away from her that feeling with which 158 david porter

she had come out of the concert hall. Everything seemed to sweep down on her to tear it out from under her cape. . . . Very well; they should never have it. . . . As long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers. She would live for it, work for it, die for it” (224). In contrast, here is Lucy as she faces Chicago’s winter and its crowds: “She went slowly across the town, getting a kind of comfort out of the crowded streets and the people who rushed by and bumped into her. . . . In the city you had plenty of room to be lonely, no one noticed, she reflected. . . . [T]onight all these people seemed like companions, and she felt a kind of humble affection for them” (65–66). Whether Cather was intentionally echoing the two Song passages in the corresponding passages in Lucy we cannot know— nor need we. Lucy comes across as compliant, complacent, even a bit spine- less in the Lucy passages when they are read alone, but these qualities are yet more apparent to readers who recall the fierce, feisty independence of Thea in their Song counterparts. Such implicit correspondences are especially marked in the musical subtexts of these novels. Both women, for instance, become vocal accompanists in Chicago. Lucy loves accompanying Sebas- tian, and her respect for him is such that she refrains from making even positive comments. In her assumption of Sebastian’s superiority, and of her own subordinate role, she is the self- effacing rehearsal accompanist that many soloists seek.12 Not so Thea, whose very talent and assurance—she is by nature a prima donna!— make it impossible for her to be rehearsal or lesson accompanist for less- talented singers without revealing by facial tics and barbed comments her dismay over their flaws of execution and taste. That said, it is of course Thea who will go to New York as an operatic diva, while Lucy is for a time headed to New York as but a rehearsal pianist— and never gets there. The contrasting musical episodes that dot the stories of the two heroines diverge in similar ways, with Thea’s moving toward discovery and arrival, Lucy’s toward loss and aporia— “lostness.” On the evening when Thea first sings for Mr. Harsanyi, the hymn with which she begins, “Come, Ye Disconsolate,” reflects her feelings at 159 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart this stage of her Chicago training, as do the words of the aria she sings from Gluck’s Orfeo, “Alas, I have lost you” (207– 8). But the last line of the second hymn she sings, “Rejoice, for the Shepherd has found his sheep,” sounds the opposite theme (207), and Thea notes that this hymn won her a job when she first came to Chica- go (just as here she is taking the first step toward a singing career). An informed reader knows too that Gluck’s Orfeo will find his Eurydice— as Fred will find Thea’s score of that opera, and Thea will find both Fred and her own musical self. When a few days later Thea works through “Die Lorelei” with Harsanyi, she finally understands the song’s gently flowing ending when Harsanyi reminds her of the song’s setting: “It is the river.— Oh, yes, I get it now!” she says (213). What’s more, that river is the Rhine, the river so central to the Wagner operas in which Thea will later make her mark. And when Thea attends her first orchestra concert in Chicago, there are further discoveries, and further fore- shadowings of her later career. She senses in Dvořák’s New World Symphony “first memories, first mornings long ago; the amazement of a new soul in a new world” (221– 22). So absorbed has she been in this first part of the concert that the second half, consisting of music from Wagner’s Ring, largely passes her by, but it too is filled with significance— and with hints again of the Rhine: “So it happened that with a dull, almost listless ear she heard for the first time that troubled music, ever-darkening, ever- brightening, which was to flow through so many years of her life” (222). If Song moves toward Wagner and discovery—including Sieg- mund’s and Sieglinde’s of each other—Lucy moves toward winter and separation, and it is Schubert whose music sets the tone, a composer whose tragic early death Cather knew well from the book of Schubert letters that Knopf had published in 1928.13 The program where Lucy first hears Sebastian sing begins with Schubert lieder, and the concert strikes Lucy as “a discovery about life, a revelation of love as a tragic force, not a melting mood, of passion that drowns like black water. As she sat listening to this man the outside world seemed to her dark and terrifying, full of fears and dan- 160 david porter

gers that had never come close to her until now” (33).14 Sebastian’s second concert is yet more ominous, a performance of Schubert’s greatest cycle, Die Winterreise, in which a wandering singer makes a “winter journey” to sites associated with long- lost love. Its barren, frozen world of loneliness, tragic memories, and failed hopes is precisely where Lucy and Harry will find themselves in books 2 and 3. Even Schubert songs that seem to bode well prove false. Se- bastian’s first concert begins with a song that thanks the Dioscuri for protecting sailors (31– 32)—but Clement will die when his sail- boat capsizes in a storm. Lucy associates Schubert’s “Die Forelle” with “a joyousness which seemed safe from time and change” (81), but she ignores that Schubert’s trout gets snared in the water and dies, much as Sebastian will die locked in Mockford’s arms, and as Lucy will die snagged under the ice by a submerged tree.15 It is fitting that in Lohengrin, the one Wagner opera Lucy and Harry attend during his Chicago visit, “the music [keeps] bringing back things [Lucy] used to feel in Sebastian’s studio; belief in an invisible, inviolable world” (111)—the world into which Harry has now intruded, and which Lucy will soon lose when Sebastian dies. In contrast, Thea’s singing of Elsa in this same opera is the first in the sequence of operatic performances which in the final book of Song climax in her triumphant musical homecoming as Sieglinde in Die Walküre: “this afternoon the closed roads opened, the gates dropped” (525).

AWAKENINGS Both in these instances and elsewhere, Lucy Gayheart plays off The Song of the Lark in ways that highlight qualities that Thea possesses— and that Lucy lacks. Lucy has musical talent, and she responds warmly to Sebastian’s music-making, but never does she evince Thea’s passion for ideas and their catalyzing power; never does she set high musical goals for herself and show Thea’s stub- born drive to attain them; and when at last her ambition is sparked by the compelling performance of an aging soprano in The Bohe- 161 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart mian Girl, circumstances and her own character conspire to prevent her from fulfilling that ambition.16 Ironically underscoring this final forking of the ways is the fact that the closest correspondences between the two novels are those that link their heroines’ reawakenings—Thea’s in Panther Can- yon, Lucy’s following the aging soprano’s performance. Catalyzing both are scenes of nature in all its freshness: for Thea, the “high sparkling air,” the “rapid, restless heart” of the canyon’s stream, its “glittering thread of current” (Song 326, 334); for Lucy, “the feeling of wonder in the air” as she recalls the performance she has just heard, the “long-forgotten restlessness” it stirs, its memories of spring-times past (“It was there, in the breeze, in the sun”), the cold air she breathes as she throws open the window in her room (itself an act that recalls Thea; see Lucy 194). Inchoate expectations soon fill both women: “[I]t was as if [Thea] were waiting for something to catch up with her. . . . Here she could lie for half a day undistracted, holding pleasant and incomplete conceptions in her mind—almost in her hands” (329– 30). “It was long before Lucy got to sleep that night. The wandering singer had struck something in her that went on vibrating; something that was like a purpose forming. . . . When she awoke in the morning, it was still there” (192). Living in the canyon leads Thea to recall Ray Kennedy’s belief “that one ought to do one’s best” (337, cf. 332); the Bohemian Girl soprano inspires Lucy at once to return “to a world that [strives] after excellence” (192). Both women experience sudden revelations about the evanes- cent sweetness of life and the need to seize life at once. As Thea stands one morning in her bathing pool, “something flashed through her mind. . . . The stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself,—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?” (334– 35; emphasis added). As Lucy thinks back on the soprano’s performance, “everything in her was reaching outward, straining forward. . . . Suddenly something flashed into her mind. . . . What if— what 162 david porter if Life itself were the sweetheart? It was like a lover waiting for her in distant cities— across the sea; drawing her, enticing her, weaving a spell over her. . . . Those splendours were still on earth, to be sought after and fought for” (194–95; emphasis added). For once, Lucy even sounds like Thea! Soon thereafter, Lucy writes Auerbach about returning to study in Chicago: “The only way for me, is to do the things I used to do and to do them harder” (196). Thea makes a similar decision to go at once to Germany: “One’s life was at the mercy of blind chance. She had better take it in her own hands” (339).

FUGITIVE GLEAMS

That these awakenings— even their words— are so similar renders the more painful that after them Thea’s and Lucy’s journeys once again diverge. From Panther Canyon, Thea will press forward to Germany and New York, while even at its peak Lucy’s ambition is to go back to Chicago. For Thea, Panther Can- yon is a reawakening to the musician and person she had almost lost in Chicago, and the gateway to the greatness she will attain in “Kronborg.” For Lucy, the reawakening and enlarging of her musical ambitions prove as illusory as the joy and safety she had naïvely associated with Schubert’s “Trout.” The soprano’s performance leads Lucy’s thoughts back to Clem- ent Sebastian: “[He] had made the fugitive gleam an actual possession. . . . She must go back into the world and get all she could of everything that had made him what he was” (194–95). She recalls the Mendelssohn aria with which their music- making had begun: “If with all your heart you truly seek Him, you shall ever surely find Him. He had sung that for her in the beginning, when she first went to him. Now she knew what it meant” (195).17 But as with the “Trout,” this seemingly positive musical augury also proves false— before long Lucy is headed not back to the world but to the river and her death, and finding has become losing. Indeed, Sebastian’s “fugitive gleam” precisely describes the delusory hopes that keep arising in Lucy’s mind in this last section— and plays once again 163 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart off the remembered backdrop of Thea, who manages throughout to turn her dreams and ambitions into reality. It is no accident that a repeated motif in Lucy Gayheart is that of a briefly brilliant sunset sky—a fugitive gleam. Such a sky appears as Lucy and Harry skate to the distant island early in book 1 (11–12); it appears again as Lucy after Christmas anticipates returning to Chicago to resume her studies (“before sunset an unaccountable pink glow appeared in the eastern sky. . . . On sunny afternoons it was sure to be there, a pink rouge on the hard blue cheek of the sky” [198–99]); and it appears one last time at the very end of the book, this time to Harry: “[A]t the south window streaks of orange sunlight made a glow like candlelight in the dusky chamber. . . . When he came out of the house the last intense light of the winter day was pouring over the town below him, and the bushy tree- tops and the church steeples gleamed like copper. After all, he was thinking, he would never go away from Haverford. . . . What was a man’s ‘home town,’ anyway, but the place where he had had disappointments and had learned to bear them?” (242). The way in which this “fugitive gleam” lights up Harry’s town but then fades into darkness and disappointment exactly reprises the motif’s first appearance, where Lucy and Harry watch the sun send “quivering fans of red and gold over the wide country” as they sit on the island “in a stream of blinding light; it burned on their skates and on the flask and the metal cup. Their faces became so brilliant that they looked at each other and laughed. In an instant the light was gone; the frozen stream and the snow-masked prairie became violet, under the blue- green sky. Wherever one looked there was nothing but flat country and low hills, all violet and gray. Lucy gave a long sigh” (10). Given the many ties between Lucy Gayheart and Schubert’s Win- terreise, it is revealing that one of the later songs in that cycle is titled “Täuschung” (Delusion) and that the song’s words prefigure those just quoted: “A light dances invitingly in front of me, I follow after it hither and thither. . . . Ah, one as wretched as I gladly surrenders to the beguiling gleam/bright deception [bunten List], 164 david porter

which gives him promise of a bright warm house, and of a loved soul within it. For me delusion is the only prize!”18 Disappointment, darkness, and loss filled Willa Cather’s life too in the years leading up to Lucy Gayheart, and undermined her artistic efforts—just listen to her letters. May 1928, soon after her father’s death: “For this year, my family concerns, father’s death and mother’s consequent breakdown have simply wiped out everything else. . . . Sometimes the difficulties of life are just too much for one, and then it is best to keep away from the desk” (Letters 409–10). April/May 1929, on caring for her mother in California: “[T]here is nothing to write, nothing to say or do . . . except to stand until one breaks, and the quicker that happens the better, if only one can break clear in two, and not just halfway. That’s why I’ve not written, because I’ve lost my bearings and can’t write except as bitterly and desperately as I feel” (415). March 1930: “The trouble is one can’t think of much but the general futility of existence” (427). September of the same year, to Dorothy Canfield Fisher on her mother’s death: “these vanishings, that come one after another, have such an impoverishing effect on those of us who are left— our world suddenly becomes so diminished—the land- marks disappear and all the splendid distances behind us close up. These losses, one after another, make one feel as if one were going on in a play after most of the principal characters are dead” (433). November 1932, just as Cather was starting to write Lucy Gayheart: “after one is 45 it simply rains death, all about one, and after you’ve passed fifty, the storm grows fiercer” (474). There is no precise equivalency between Cather and Thea Kronborg, and the same is yet more true of Cather and Lucy Gay- heart. That said, two contiguous and indisputable facts— that Cather had written much of herself into Thea Kronborg, and that so many aspects of Lucy Gayheart so clearly play off the template of Song— make it impossible not to suspect that Lucy’s story too contains much of Cather. The letter excerpts just cited lend credence to this suspicion, as does Edith Lewis’s poignant description of how, from 1928 on, the malignancies of fortune gradually took their toll 165 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart on Cather’s spirit and energy (including a passing comment that “the old heroic days of opera seemed to have gone forever” [Lewis 172]). As Cather looked back during these years on Thea Kronborg, whom in 1915 she had created in part as an image of herself and her own emergent artistry, Thea’s brilliant career must ever more have seemed a fugitive gleam, a mocking delusion, and in 1928 she projected against that backdrop a young singer, Marguerite Thiesinger, whose truncated career reflected the cruel diminishments Cather was experiencing in her own life. In 1932 her new preface to Song took a step further in its implicit conflation of Thea’s closeted, wraithlike existence with Cather’s own. Lucy Gayheart represents the end point of this trajectory in the contrasts Cather created between its tragic heroine and the triumphant Thea of 1915. Here too one senses the impact of the composer whose music fills her new novel, who also had seen the brightest of futures prove a fugitive gleam. In 1824, the year Schubert recognized that his disease and decline were irreversible, he described himself to a friend as “someone whose most brilliant hopes have come to nothing, someone to whom love and friendship are at most a source of bitterness, someone whose inspiration . . . for all that is beautiful threatens to fail” (Deutsch xii–xiii). It was the fading of just such beguiling hopes that Franz Schubert wove so deeply into Die Winterreise, Wil- la Cather into Lucy Gayheart.19

NOTES

1. This essay complements my Historical Essay in the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition of Lucy Gayheart. Although at times it touches on material covered there, it approaches Song from a very different perspective and consists largely of insights spawned by the writing of that essay that were interpretative rather than “historical.” I thank the other editors of that edition, Guy Reynolds and Kari A. Ronning, for their helpful comments on these materials and for their encouragement to pursue them in this different format and venue. 2. See the Professor’s discovery of the structure for his history in the Sierra Nevadas he sees from the Mediterranean: “St. Peter lay looking up 166 david porter at them from a little boat riding low in the purple water, and the design of his book unfolded in the air above him, just as definitely as the mountain ranges themselves. And the design was sound. He had accepted it as inevitable, had never meddled with it, and it had seen him through” (105). 3. Landry comments also on the period in Germany when Thea was working on the role of Elizabeth in Tannhäuser while her mother was dying at home— and how Thea’s grief kept informing the part so as eventually to render her interpretation of the last act “heart-breaking. . . . might be any lonely woman getting ready to die” (493– 94). 4. The icy roads of Lucy’s last walk were much on Cather’s mind as she put the finishing touches on Lucy Gayheart. On 10 June 1934, just weeks before completing the novel, she wrote Louise Guerber Burroughs, “In these days one has to squeeze one’s memory hard to remember just what it was like to walk over frozen country roads in certain weathers. . . . this morning I sat down and made myself remember” (Letters 495). 5. Those alert to Lucy’s counterpoint on Song may notice how the Platte’s changing sands and currents destroy Lucy and her dreams, whereas at the end of Song, Cather’s image of the shifting sands and currents of the Venice lagoon evokes the tidings of children that “bring to the old, memories, and to the young, dreams” (539). 6. References given are to Youth and the Bright Medusa, the first half of which Cather in 1920 devoted to these four stories (albeit with some changes— for example, “Coming, Eden Bower!” becomes “Coming, Aph- rodite!”). For fuller discussion of these works and others from 1916 to 1925, see my Historical Essay in Lucy Gayheart. 7. For discussion of these two scenes and their undercurrents of loss and separation, see my Historical Essay in Lucy Gayheart. 8. See Skaggs’s “Another Look” on Cather’s friendship with Louise Guerber as a possible catalyst for the writing of Lucy Gayheart— and Lou- ise as one more prototype for its heroine. 9. Although “Double Birthday” first appeared in the February 1929 issue of Focus, Cather refers to completing a first draft of it in a letter of 15 Feb- ruary 1928 (Calendar, #1828). 10. The most striking echo relates to “Thus Fate knocks at the door,” Bee- thoven’s famous description of the first movement of his Fifth Symphony (Sullivan 143). Sullivan describes how fate struck in what Beethoven called “the one sense which should have been more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in highest perfection” (110). Contrast Cather’s description of Marguerite’s cancer: “But Fate struck, and from 167 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart the quarter least under suspicion— through that blooming, rounded, generously molded young body, from that abundant, glowing health which the Doctor proudly called peasant vigor” (51). See fuller discussion in my Historical Essay in Lucy Gayheart. 11. See Porter, On the Divide 37. The language virtually duplicates that in Houghton Mifflin’s 1915 advertising brochure forSong , much of which Cather herself wrote (see On the Divide 11). 12. Sebastian seeks subordination even in his concert accompanist. Al- though he admires James Mockford’s artistry, when Mockford suggests that he be listed on programs as “assisting artist” rather than “accompanist,” Sebastian tells Lucy, “I won’t have it” and alludes to Mockford as someone whose job is to “play second fiddle” (97); soon after, he informs her that Mockford will not be returning for the next season (128). 13. For evidence that Cather drew on Deutsch’s book of Schubert letters in writing Lucy Gayheart, see my Historical Essay, where also I discuss the abundance of Schubert performances—including of his song cycles—that filled both the 1928 centennial of his death and the following years. For a full discussion of the extensive role played by Schubert lieder throughout Lucy Gayheart, see Lee 341– 43 and my Historical Essay. 14. In addition, the words of Sebastian’s encore, a setting of Byron’s “When We Two Parted,” strike her as an “evil omen”—as they prove to be for both Sebastian and herself (Lucy 34). 15. On the role of “Die Forelle” in the novel, see Porter, “Schubert’s ‘Trout’” 3– 6. 16. On the stark contrasts between Lucy and Thea, see Skaggs, After 151ff., esp. 156: “The real charge Cather levels against Lucy in this novel is her lack of high seriousness, her lack of ambition.” 17. John Murphy has suggested that the “Him” in the aria may suggest “Life itself”— which Lucy has just compared to “the sweetheart” and to “a lover waiting for her” (Lucy 195). 18. The translation is from Schubert: 200 Songs, p. xiii, with minor editing by David Porter. With this passage compare both the home Harry imagines sharing with Lucy (“You shall have the kind of house you like” [Lucy 116]) and the advice Mr. Auerbach gives Lucy: “A nice house and garden in a little town, with money enough not to worry, a family— that’s the best life” (142). 19. In her early 1936 essay “Escapism,” Cather wrote of “the seeming original injustice that creatures so splendidly aspiring should be inexorably doomed to fail” (On Writing 22). Her words uncannily recall the novel she 168 david porter had published the previous year, and its contrasts with Song: with “creatures so splendidly aspiring,” compare the young Schubert, Cather in the early teens, and Thea Kronborg; with those “inexorably doomed to fail,” compare Schubert after he is stricken in his mid-twenties, Cather in the early 1930s, and Lucy Gayheart.

WORKS CITED

Cather, Willa. A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather: An Expanded, Digital Edition. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis P. Stout. The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. —. “Katherine Mansﬁeld.” Borzoi 1925. New York: Knopf, 1925. 47– 49. Print. —. The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893–1896 . Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Print. —. Letter to Blanche Knopf. 24 July 1932. Barbara Dobkin Collection, New York, New York. —. Lucy Gayheart. 1935. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. David Porter, Kari A. Ronning, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2015. Print. —. My Mortal Enemy. New York: Knopf, 1926. Print. —. One of Ours. 1922. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Richard C. Harris, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006. Print. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Kari A. Ronning, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. Uncle Valentine and Other Stories. Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1973. Print. —. Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies of Writing as an Art. Intro. Stephen Tennant. 1949. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. Print. 169 From Song of the Lark to Lucy Gayheart

—. Youth and the Bright Medusa. 1920. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Mark J. Madigan, Frederick M. Link, Charles W. Mignon, Judith Boss, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2009. Print. Deutsch, Otto Erich, ed. Franz Schubert’s Letters. New York: Knopf, 1928. Print. Harris, Richard. “Willa Cather, J. W. N. Sullivan, and the Creative Process.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 37 (1993): 17, 21– 24. Print. Hindemith, Paul. A Composer’s World. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1953. Print. Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: Double Lives. New York: Pantheon, 1989. Print. Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living. 1953. Intro. John J. Murphy. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000. Print. Porter, David. “Following the Lieder: Cather, Schubert, and Lucy Gayheart.” Cather Studies 10: Willa Cather and the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Anne L. Kaufman and Richard H. Millington. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2015. 328– 48. Print. —. Historical Essay. Cather, Lucy Gayheart 251– 347. Print. —. On the Divide: The Many Lives of Willa Cather. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2008. Print. —. “Schubert’s ‘Trout’ and Lucy Gayheart: A Rainbow of Reﬂections.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 57.2 (2014): 2– 6. Print. Schubert: 200 Songs. Ed. Sergius Kagen. Vol. 1. New York: International Music Company, n.d. Print. Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. Willa Cather: A Memoir. 1953. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1963. Print. Skaggs, Merrill Maguire. After the World Broke in Two: The Later Novels of Willa Cather. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1990. Print. —. “Another Look at Lucy Gayheart and Another New Lucy.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 57.2 (Summer 2014): 12– 15. Print. Sullivan, J. W. N. Beethoven: His Spiritual Development. New York: Knopf, 1927. Print. 8 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester Prostitution and Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady

CHARMION GUSTKE

In a letter addressed to her mother, Mary Virginia Boak Cather, on 2 March 1925, Willa Cather, seeking her mother’s forgiveness after a quarrel, reminds her that the last time they had been “cross” at one another was “about poor Mrs. Garber”: “and you see now, don’t you, that I understood her better than you thought I did, and that though I admired certain things, I was never taken in by her” (Letters 367). Cather’s compassionate regard for Mrs. Garber, the inspiration behind A Lost Lady’s Mrs. Forrester, generated tension between Cather and her mother, who seemingly disapproved of Mrs. Garber’s lifestyle following the death of her husband in 1905 when she was left in straitened circumstances, providing meals, in a failed attempt to make ends meet, to railroad workers in her home—an enterprise not befitting a woman living alone in Red Cloud, Nebraska (Dunbier 140– 41). Cather’s sympa- thies for the woman she loved very much in her childhood, however, did not cloud her perspective of the widowed Mrs. Garber’s questionable choices. The publication of A Lost Lady, with its complicated, sexually charged portrait of Mrs. Forrester, confirms that Cather was aware of Mrs. Garber’s compromised social position and was thus not as naive about her as she may have seemed to her mother.1 While Mrs. Garber’s unconventional survival tactics certainly influenced Cather’s construction of A Lost Lady, this essay is not directly concerned with the Garber biography, but rather with the marketing of female sexuality on the frontier at the turn of the

170 171 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester century, and the way in which prostitution informs the characterization of Mrs. Forrester. A Lost Lady (1923), written in five months and the first novel Cather conceived and produced knowing that Knopf would publish it (Rosowski 177), captures Cather’s conflicted understanding of the way in which the market governs people and property, and explores the specifically challenging role of women within this dynamic on the frontier. Marian Forrester, I argue, is a “woman of exchange” between the social systems of the Old West (Captain Forrester) and the early stages of capitalism (Ivy Peters). Cather’s depiction, through the peephole of Niel Herbert, of the commodification of Mrs. Forrester’s body and land suggests that the sex trade is a by- product of commercial development, confirming Cather’s suspicion of risky business deals and her criticism of the exploitation of female sexuality. Sweet Water is thus portrayed as a town that is all but ruined, like Mrs. Forrester, by the commercial- ization ignited by the “railroad aristocracy” and completed by the industriousness of men like Peters.2 The trafficking of Mrs. For- rester is illuminated when read in connection with the alarming rise of prostitution in Colorado, the young state that produced by 1900, after recovering from the Denver Depression of 1893, more industry than all the other states lying between California and the Great Plains due to technical revolutions in the mining industry (Neuschatz 62). As Edith Lewis notes, Cather first set her story in Colorado, “and wrote it at some length in this setting” before writing things “just as she remembered them,” “but she was still not wholly satisfied with the construction of the story.” Torn between two versions of the novel, Lewis states that Cather came to the conclusion that her first method was right. While most scholars agree that the setting of A Lost Lady mirrors the town of Red Cloud, I claim that the presence of Colorado, as Cather’s first location, pervades the novel, allowing Cather freedom to create a sexually charged narrative that resembles real people and real memories but is not limited to historical or biographical specificities.3 Reading Colorado, not as the “artifi- 172 charmion gustke cial climate” suggested by Lewis (124– 25), but as the site of culture, capitalism, and sex work reveals the ways in which Mrs. Forrester is exchanged in an economy dominated by male purveyors. Prostitution in Colorado was a direct result of the mining boom and the expanding grid of the capitalist enterprise spreading throughout the state through the introduction of outside capital. Women, as products within this system, were explicitly com- modified, assigned prices, and engaged according to their market value. As George Kibbe Turner writes in “The Daughters of the Poor,” published in McClure’s in 1909 when Cather was managing editor of the magazine, mining districts, “the camps of male labor- ers,” were excellent markets for the trafficking of young women (46). Turner’s article focuses primarily on the way in which corrupt Tammany political power supports “the business enterprise for the marketing of girls . . . developed by men intimate with the political machines of the slums” (58). Yet he expands his investigation of prostitution beyond the boroughs of New York to include both a national and a global critique of “the trade of procuring and selling girls”—a business that is “organized and specialized after its kind exactly as all other business has done” (59), insisting that “there are no boundaries to this business; its travelers go constantly to and fro . . . peering into new places, especially where men congregate on the golden frontier” (48).4 Prostitutes were brought out West by cadets, “local boys” (59) whom Turner describes as a key figure in the sex industry: “The cadet is a young man averaging from eighteen to twenty- five, who after having served as watch- boy or ‘lighthouse,’ secures a staff of girls and lives upon their earnings” (49). The cadet keeps an eye on marketable and vulnerable women who know little about American economic life, patiently waiting for the right moment to seduce them. Once he takes control of the woman’s mind and body, having convinced her to trust him, the cadet, similar to Peters, employs the woman as “an asset” in order to live “a life of absolute ease” (Turner 59). Peters, like the stealthy cadet, stalks the Forresters as they “come down in the world like the rest” (Lost 100), taking the first oppor- 173 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester tunity to exploit the financially desperate Mrs. Forrester and drain the marsh for profit. The effortlessness of Peters’s objectification of Mrs. Forrester is apparent in the way he boasts to Niel about the gains of converting the Forrester wetlands into wheat; in the fact that he is “just mean enough to like to shoot along” their creek more than anywhere else (100); in his careless flirting with Mrs. Forrester, “as if she were a kitchen maid”; in his lacking “the manners of a pig” as he rudely ignores the increasingly ill Captain For- rester (114); and in his “unconcernedly” groping Mrs. Forrester’s breasts while she is making pastry (161). Indulging in the public spectacle of the Forresters’ financial ruin, Peters oversees Mrs. For- rester’s transition from the elegant wife of the princely Captain to a “common woman” who is “sadly broken” (162). The splintering of the Forresters’ property thus mirrors Mrs. Forrester’s own division as she transgresses the boundaries of widowhood, refusing “to immolate herself” upon the death of her husband (161). The cost of her survival is great and requires that she becomes a woman of exchange between the pioneer men of the Old West and a new breed of men like Peters, “trained in petty economics by hard times” (102), whose pimping of Mrs. Forrester prepares her for her next role in South America as the wife of Henry Collins. The trafficking of Mrs. Forrester from the Great Plains of the Midwest to the frontier of South America in Argentina therefore completes her commodification and connects her to the many “working” women of her time who immigrated to Buenos Aires in order to escape the demoralizing scrutiny and legal sanctions of conservative North America. Turner reports that many cadets and their prostitutes moved to Buenos Aires to form their own colony and would often marry or pretend to marry in order to travel freely as sex worker and manager (46). In the Argentine Republic, the cadet found a market that rivaled the East, transferring women to “slave houses” in the suburbs of Buenos Aires (46), the city in which the exiled Mrs. Forrester is last seen— “a good deal made- up” with her rich, but “stingy” and “quarrelsome” husband (165). Our final sighting of Mrs. Forrester, as the wife of a wealthy but 174 charmion gustke

“cranky old Englishman,” textually inscribes her in slippery territory, highlighting the monetary markers of her marriage: furs, maid, valet, estate, “a fine French car,” and “a big stock ranch” (165). As Emma Goldman argued in 1917, “it is merely a question of degree” as to whether a woman “sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men” (20). Goldman’s essay, “The Traffic in Wom- en,” condemns muckraking journalists such as Turner for crusad- ing against indecency while overlooking the industrial system and “Moloch of capitalism” driving women to prostitution (19–20). 5 Cather’s portrayal of Mrs. Forrester, now Mrs. Collins, with its emphasis on the economy of marriage, is more in line with the rhetoric of Goldman than that of Turner. By retiring Mrs. Forrester to Argentina, Cather underscores the relationship between sex, gender, and money, suggesting that the economic inferiority of women requires that they pay for their existence either in marriage or prostitution. While I am not suggesting that Mrs. Forrester’s final years have been squandered in a brothel, I am claiming that she has sold herself to the highest bidder— “like most of the women down there” with dyed hair, plenty of powder and a “little red” (165). The color red, the international color of prostitution, emphasizes Mrs. Forrester’s link to other women on the market and echoes Cather’s use of red in her 1908 poem “London Roses,” which appears at the conclusion of Turner’s article—an appendage of sorts, announcing Cather’s concern for these “Ruddy blooms of corruption.” Turner’s outcry against prostitution, as Cather noted in a letter to Aunt Franc in January 1910, resulted in a grand jury investigation of the Tammany connection to the “white slave trade” (Letters 128).6 Not surprisingly, Cather does not expound upon this investigation other than to say that the inquiry was bound to be superficial due to the savoir faire of Tammany Hall. Cather’s commentary on the damaging institution of prostitution, with its “Highways of darkness” and endless “squalor,” thus resides in the poem itself. Read in the context of the female labor market, roses may be interpreted as the “budding and blooming” female bodies of “sweat-sour” sex workers in London’s West End and Trafalgar Square (both known 175 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester for prostitution), “rubbed in a million hands” and “perfumed with a thousand years.” These same roses, “the Western male’s oldest publicly acceptable tribute” to female sexuality (Skaggs 48), will appear throughout A Lost Lady to tangibly connect the objectification of the female body with Mrs. Forrester, most notably the “prickly bunch” wild roses “with flaming buds” that Niel throws into a “mudhole” upon discovering her affair with Frank Ellinger: “This day saw the end of that admiration. . . . It was gone, like the morning freshness of the flowers” (81– 82). By the time Cather wrote A Lost Lady, in the winter and spring of 1922, between her return from Nebraska and a brief teaching stint at Bread Loaf in Vermont, the national conversation about prostitution had moved away from criminal concerns and was primarily focused on the health risks of the trade and the fact that “uncontrolled venereal disease could decimate an army as surely as casualties in battle” (Connelly 144). As Mark Connelly demonstrates, “Under the Chamberlain-Kahn Act (1918), the government could quarantine for the ‘protection of the military and naval forces of the United States’ any woman suspected of having venereal disease” (144). The presence of a sexually transmitted disease came with the presumption of prostitution; during the war any Ameri- can woman could legally be detained if the Interdepartmental So- cial Hygiene Board decided that her lifestyle or sexual behavior indicated that she might be infected with a sexually transmitted disease. The threatening correlation of sex and contagion is nowhere more apparent than when Mrs. Forrester desperately tromps to Judge Pommeroy’s office late at night in the pouring rain to phone Ellinger:

She was watching the telephone as if it were alive. Her eyes were shrunk to hard points. Her brows, drawn together in an acute angle, kept twitching in the frown which held them,— the singular frown of one overcome by alcohol or fatigue. . . . Her blue lips, the black shadows under her eyes, made her look as if some poison were at work in her body. (125) 176 charmion gustke

This monstrous portrayal of Mrs. Forrester is ripe with the imagery and language of madness and disease— the hallucinating, deep- set eyes, the discolored lips, and the wasted, weary features combine to make the sexualized, lovesick Mrs. Forrester a danger to both herself and others. By cutting the telephone wire and quarantining Mrs. Forrester in the judge’s office for the evening, Niel is able “for once” (128) to protect her from the public humiliation and personal disease associated with adultery. Once the Captain suffers his second stroke, however, Mrs. For- rester’s decline is inevitable. With an invalid husband and financial struggles, she goes to “pieces” while “everything changed” around her and she faced the world with the weary exhaustion of an over- worked caretaker, nurse, housemaid— “She was worn out” and numb to the bustling invasion of the Mrs. Beasleys and Molly Tuck- ers (131–32). Drudging in the kitchen” “half-dressed” and fueled on coffee and brandy, “[a]ll the bars were down. She had ceased to care about anything” (133) as her home and her very existence are exposed in their naked humanity, revealing “nothing remarkable at all” (132). Cather’s portrayal of the vulnerable Mrs. Forrester is at its most moving here, with an amplified sense of injustice toward the town gossips, “so important and pleased with themselves” (132), who eagerly prey on the Forrester place “like ants” (132) seeking the spoils of last night’s dinner. Niel’s outrage at this disgrace and his decision, regardless of what it costs him (135), to “send every one of those women trotting down the lane” (134) in order to care for the Captain himself, reflects Cather’s own disappointment with small- mindedness and her belief that the “strong feeling that comes out of the living heart is the thing most necessary—and most rarely found” (Letters 643). As James Woodress states, the period during which Cather wrote A Lost Lady marks the beginning of her “sense of alienation” from American life (336).7 Despite having finally overcome her financial struggles, Cather felt “let down” by her thirty years of “striving” as a writer, and this discontent would both underscore and fuel her work from this point forward (Woodress 336). For Susan J. Rosowski, 177 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester

Cather’s creative response to her dissatisfactions with the world, specifically with the “vulnerability of something fine threatened by commercialism” (177), as is evident in A Lost Lady, is authoritative and establishes her as a writer with an uncompromising devotion to art, who begins with an emotion that teases her for years until she finds the proper form to put it in (181– 88). The obituary notice of Mrs. Lyra Anderson, known in Red Cloud as Mrs. Silas Garber, the wife of a former governor of Nebraska and one of the prominent ladies of the town, served as the catalyst for these emotions, flooding Cather with expressive memories that had been haunting her in the form of a beautiful ghost for twenty years “before it came together as a possible subject for presentation. All the lovely emotions that one has had some day appear with bodies, and it isn’t as if one found ideas suddenly. Before this the memories of these experiences and emotions have been like perfumes” (Bohlke 79). And this is the point: Mrs. Forrester is intangible, the ephem- eral embodiment of ideas, of images, of the effect a handsome and powerful woman has on the senses of an impressionable child. She is not, as Cather clearly states, a character study, “but a portrait like a thin miniature painted on ivory. . . . I wasn’t interested in her character when I was little, but in her lovely hair and her laugh which made me happy clear down to my toes” (77). From the outset, Cather acknowledges that this is a story about pleasure and objectification, about desire and sexual energy— a “thin” and dimin- utive representation of a woman whose physical presence greatly influenced her, as does her loss. This loss is expressed through the injury, pain, and oppression that pervade the novel: Peters’s ruthless blinding of the woodpeck- er; the many disappointments Niel suffers over Mrs. Forrester’s transgressions; the destruction of the Forresters’ land; Captain For- rester’s helpless decline; and Mrs. Forrester’s loss of economic mobility, caused by the Captain’s decision to pay his creditors at the Denver bank rather than secure his wife’s future. Captain Forrest- er’s choice to save his name rather than his wife forces Mrs. Forrest- er to market her sexuality more and more blatantly as the novel 178 charmion gustke

progresses, paralleling her loss of financial security with her loss of decorum: “She seemed to have lost her faculty of discrimination; her power of easily and graciously keeping everyone in his proper place” (145). As the Captain’s wife, Mrs. Forrester was able to maintain outward appearances, to set boundaries and to adhere to the principles of her class, however loosely. But without the Captain, or his money, she ignores, with “hysterical defiance” (148), the divi- sions of age and class, willfully engaging in the oppressive social relations of what Gayle Rubin terms the sex/gender system. The sex/gender system refers to the political economy of sex and gender in ways that the term patriarchy does not, indicating the existence of distinct relations and domains of production between sex and the economy (Rubin 39). Patriarchy, according to Rubin, does not “maintain a distinction between the human capacity and necessity to create a sexual world, and the empirically oppressive ways in which sexual worlds have been organized” (40). The sex/ gender system, however, distinguishes social and sexual relations and refers to the specific gender-stratified systems of oppression. For Rubin, Marx and Engels, while providing an analysis of the evolution of commodities (Marx) and demonstrating sex oppression as an integral aspect of capitalism (Engels), do not connect economic systems with sexual systems (36–39). Rubin thus expands upon their work in order to portray the political and economic forces apparent in the “social organization of sexuality and the re- production of the conventions of sex and gender” (41). One of the most notable aspects of the sex/gender system is the way in which women are exchanged as gifts, placing the oppression of women within a social system benefiting men (45). In this context, women are used as a conduit between men, establishing dominance, creating relationships, and signifying worth. As Rubin notes, the exchange of women is a powerful concept because it places the oppression of women within the specificities of a social system rather than in biology (45). The sex/gender system, as it is appears in A Lost Lady, is constructed through the exchange and circulation of Mrs. Forrester 179 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester

Fig. 8.1. Jeannie Rogers, prototype for Nell Emerald in A Lost Lady, wearing her infamous emerald earrings. Courtesy of the Denver Public Library, Western History Collection, F- 29645. and is instituted through the social relations of the many men of the novel. Mrs. Forrester, as a gift shared between men, both young and old, is converted, based on her market value and the political economy of her marriage, from a “lovely lady” (25) to a “flighty and perverse” widow (145). The Forresters’ home, a house well known from “Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a charm of at- 180 charmion gustke mosphere” (7), as Skaggs notes, is suggestive of a brothel (48). Once Mrs. Forrester becomes known as the “Merry Widow” who is now “after the young ones,” her comfortable, “well- conducted house” (66) is degraded to a place “where common fellows behaved after their kind and knew a common woman when they saw her” (162). But even prior to the Captain’s death, Mrs. Forrester is sexualized through the gaze of male voyeurs, chatting with Peters, for example, “in her wrapper and slippers, her sleeves rolled up and her throat bare” (112). Niel is “annoyed” and “irritated” by Mrs. For- rester’s informality: “It was one thing to greet the president of the Colorado & Utah en déshabillé, but it was another to chatter with a coarse- grained fellow like Ivy Peters” (112). The repetition of dishabille here connects to the reader’s first impression of the domesti- cated yet alluring Mrs. Forrester, who was “attractive in a dishabille, and she knew it,” as she welcomed the Captain’s friends (10). For Niel, it is acceptable, even eye-catching for her to show a little skin, give a little peep to wealthy men, but it is scandalous to expose herself to men like Peters. Mrs. Forrester was known to greet her husband’s powerful associates, “even the hardest and coldest of his friends,” with “a but- tery iron spoon” or “cherry- stained fingers,” and she would often “rush to the door in her dressing-gown, brush in hand and her long black hair rippling over her shoulders” (10). Her sexuality and worth as an object of desire are undeniable. Mr. Forrester is gratified to “hear these gentlemen admire his fine stock” (9) as they approach his house, and he is equally gratified to watch them admire his wife and “leap nimbly to the ground and run up the front steps as Mrs. Forrester came out on the porch to greet them” (10). Following the feminist analysis of Luce Irigaray, who finds the language of Marx far more useful than Rubin does, “the economy of exchange— of desire— is a man’s business” (177). Mrs. Forrest- er, always “lady-like” in the eyes of great men like Cyrus Dalzell and other “admiring middle- aged men” (Lost 10), is valued here according to her marketability among businessmen; her beauty and charm serve to maintain the Captain’s capital and prestige. As a 181 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester commodity, Mrs. Forrester “is a mirror of and for man,” giving up her body in order to become a symbol of her husband’s material wealth (Irigaray 177). That she could turn the most sour of men into “animated” suitors vying for her gay attention satisfies Captain Forrester while simultaneously increasing Mrs. Forrester’s value. “The Captain knew his wife better even than she knew herself; and that, knowing her, he,—to use one of the Captain’s expressions,— valued her” (136). Her value, however, is not inherent to her sex or gender, but is a by-product of the social and economic relations between men. Mrs. Forrester’s status as a commodity is determined “under the watchful eyes” (Irigaray 196) of her many male guardians, be it Niel, the Captain, Judge Pommeroy, Ivy Peters, Frank Ellinger, or Mr. Collins. In Sweet Water specifically, she is valued to the extent that she is more beautiful, more interesting, and more sophisticated than any other woman in town. In her home and in the community, she maintains a monopoly over other women and is rarely in the company of any other female other than her Bohemian cook. According to Irigaray, “The interest of businessmen requires that commodities relate to each other as rivals” (196). This rivalry is most apparent with the “safe” and “pasty” Constance Ogden (128) with whom Mrs. Forrester competes for Ellinger’s attention—a competition she will lose, not because she is less attractive, but because she has less cash. For Niel, on the other hand, whose possession of the “idea” of Mrs. Forrester is indispensable to his growth as a young man, charm will always trump money in the marketi- zation of women: “[C]ompared with her, other women were heavy and dull; even the pretty ones seemed lifeless,— they had not that something in their glance that made one’s blood tingle” (39). To understand Mrs. Forrester’s success as an object of admiration and delight is to understand her in terms of her superiority to other women and the pleasure she ignites in her admirers. Mrs. Forrester’s tantalizing and overt sexuality, nonetheless, are out of place in the conservative town of Sweet Water: “How strange that she should be here at all, a woman like her among common 182 charmion gustke people! Not even in Denver” had Niel seen women as elegant (39). Torn between the conventional Sweet Water and the more progressive politics of Colorado, specifically Denver, where she spent her winters prior to the Captain’s accident and where her lover Frank Ellinger resides, Mrs. Forrester is subject to a schism that separates her physical, working body from “an envelope that is precious, im- penetrable, ungraspable” (Irigaray 176). Her city sophistication, as Niel imagines it, marks her as dominant and unknowable, as “be- longing to a different world” (40) than Nebraskan women. Niel is beguiled by her “gay” stories of Colorado “and the young men she kept dangling about her” (75). Following Irigaray, Mrs. Forrester, as a commodity, is divided between two “irreconcilable bodies”— her natural body and her socially valued body, which is exchangeable and an expression of masculine values (180). It thrills Niel to think of the “disparity” between her life in Sweet Water and the glamour and intrigue of her time spent in Colorado; he is fascinated by the contrast, “the magic of contradictions” (75), oblivious to the hard work necessary in creating illusion, and unaware of the sexual and economic systems governing cities such as Denver. While the inexperienced Niel may be naive about the rowdy ways of Denver, where approximately 480 prostitutes were working in 1882 (MacKell 58), Frank Ellinger certainly is not:

He had, when he was younger, been notoriously “wild,” but that was not held against him, even by mothers with mar- riageable daughters, like Mrs. Ogden. Morals were different in those days. Niel had heard his uncle refer to Ellinger’s infatuation with a woman called Nell Emerald, a handsome and rather unusual woman who conducted a house properly licensed by the Denver police. Nell Emerald had told an old club man that though she had been out behind young Ellinger’s new trotting horse, she “had no respect for a man who would go driving with a prostitute in broad daylight.” (47– 48)

Frank Ellinger and Nell Emerald are the novel’s most salient connections to prostitution, foreshadowing the distorted social order 183 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester that will prevail in the seller- buyer- consumer culture of the plot. Ac- cording to Jan MacKell, two main madams ran successful brothels in Denver during the later part of the nineteenth century—Mattie Silks and Jeannie Rogers (fig. 8.1). Although both were attractive and unusual women, Rogers fits Cather’s description of Nell Emerald, as she was known for her fine dress, ever- present emerald earrings, and excellent horsemanship: “In 1880, she was arrested along with madam Eva Lewis for racing their horses through town. The pastime seems to have been popular among prostitutes” (MacKell 60). Articles about Rogers circulated in the papers, and her connection to the police was widely known: “It was said that the chief of police from St. Louis would come to visit, and Jeannie even had a portrait of him hanging in her brothel” (MacKell 59). The police chief assisted Rogers in opening her Denver house by black- mailing one of Denver’s leading citizens who reportedly donated $17,780 to help construct the establishment that would later become the infamous House of Mirrors at 1942 Market Place. Rog- ers eventually married Jack Wood, a bartender at the Brown Pal- ace Hotel (the hotel where Frank Ellinger lives), who was fourteen years younger than her and whom she shot when she found him with another woman. When asked why she shot him, police reported that she said, “I shot him because I love him, damn him” (60). Although Wood lived, others connected to Rogers did not. In 1894, Ella Wellington (of Omaha) committed suicide at the House of Mirrors, followed by the overdose of her lover Frederick Sturg- es; and a string of three unsolved murders of prostitutes occurred, prompting the Denver papers to dub notorious Market Street “Stranglers Row” (66). Kristin A. Gensmer reminds us that sex work is, and was, a perilous profession subject to economic instability, disease, addic- tion, violence, and an array of other dangers, making prostitution a high- risk and marginalized form of labor (15). Most studies of Victorian-era prostitution, “discuss sex workers as women who made a rational choice based on the limited professional opportunities available to them” (Gensmer 15). Due to a lack of materi- 184 charmion gustke al evidence, the secrecy of the trade and the media phenomenon of white slavery (Soderlund 5), it is difficult for scholars to make an informed analysis of prostitution and stereotypes often prevail (Gensmer 15). Although the “specific reasons for prostitution likely varied with each woman,” “a need to be self- sufficient coupled with a desire for economic mobility undoubtedly motivated many women” (Gensmer 15). It is this desire, her willingness to use sex in exchange for economic security that connects the enigmatic figure of Mrs. Forrester to the institution of prostitution. “Money is a very important thing,” Mrs. Forrester proclaims to Niel. “Realize that in the beginning; face it and don’t be ridicu- lous in the end” (108). Mrs. Forrester’s keen awareness of the power of money echoes Cather’s own preoccupation with financial concerns. As a savvy businesswoman, she was aware of the ways in which a male-dominated economy structures, limits, and controls the financial destiny of many women. Cather worked hard to secure and manage her own finances, and knew where every dollar was earned and spent. When she wrote A Lost Lady, she had just moved from Houghton Mifflin to Knopf, “sensitive to the need to protect her books as well as herself from commercial pressure.” Cather “wanted a publisher who believed in her as an artist” (Ro- sowski 178), but she also knew that it made good financial sense to be marketed by Knopf as an artist. Cather’s depiction of the trafficking of Mrs. Forrester, when read through the lens of feminist scholars such as Goldman, Rubin, and Irigaray, demonstrates the way in which the female body is exchanged and objectified in accordance with the social economy of the sex/gender system. Reading Mrs. Forrester, her ruin and her renewal, against the background of sex work in Colorado, a state where almost all profits were tied in one way or another to the mining industry, further highlights the way in which capitalism demands that women, to survive economically, in marriage or in work, must market themselves in accordance with their value, talents, and resources. Where- as Cather’s “London Roses” claims that prostitution is “Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears— ” (61), A Lost Lady, 185 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester written more than ten years later by a more worldly Cather, portrays a compassionate view of the complexities and nuances of women who choose to trade their bodies for financial security, condemning men like Ivy Peters, who seek dominion “over the people who had loved those unproductive meadows” (102), while slyly applauding women like Mrs. Forrester, who did not die with the pioneer but employed their charms and perseverance to embrace “life on any terms” (161).

NOTES

1. Mrs. Garber was left with a minimal income after the death of her husband due to the decline of the Garbers’ wealth that began after the failure of Garbers’ Farmers and Merchants Bank in the Panic of 1893; Garber put up his land as security to pay the depositors, leaving his widow financially strained. Although she attempted to maintain the Garber place by serving meals to railroad workers, she eventually rented her home to hog- raisers and lived in “rented rooms” until leaving Red Cloud and marrying banker Swan Augustus Anderson, the much younger widowed husband of her niece Aileen, in 1915. See Dunbier 140 and Rosowski 195. 2. Keeping in mind that naming is a powerful act in Cather’s fiction, Skaggs reminds us that “sweet water” in Greek slang is associated with liminal female sexuality: “a strayed woman is said to be of the sweet water” (50). I expand Skaggs’s reading to argue that Mrs. Forrester is viewed as having strayed once she begins trading sex for financial security; she has moved beyond the boundaries of social acceptability and into the murky waters of sex work. 3. In an interview with Flora Merrill in 1925, Cather recalls A Lost Lady as a “ghost” without form until one day it appeared with bodies and ideas: “It is the difference between a remembered face and having that friend one day come in through the door. She is really no more yours than she has been right along in your memory” (Bohlke 70). 4. Turner makes unsubstantiated claims linking local prostitution and corruption to a global conspiratorial network, invoking scandal without thorough investigation and ultimately helping to “discredit the entire endeavor of exposure journalism.” See Soderlund 123. 5. Turner’s exposé had far- reaching implications and was promoted, by McClure’s nonetheless, as “one of the most notable things the magazine 186 charmion gustke ever published . . . largely instrumental in causing legislation dealing with the ‘white slave’ traffic to be passed in many States.” In the months following the article’s publication, “McClure’s found itself blindsided as a debate over the trade’s very existence began to take place in Tammany meeting places, but also in daily newspapers, criminal courtrooms, and in a New York grand jury inquiry into Turner’s claims.” See Soderlund 120– 21. 6. Cather wrote: “There is to be a Grand Jury investigation as a result of our article on Tammany and the white slave trade, but the Tammany people are playing their cards so well that I am afraid the investigation will be a very superficial affair” Letters( 128). Also see McClure. 7. Woodress cites Prohibition, Isabelle Hambourg’s move to Europe, the failure of the world war, “Communist witch hunts,” and the garish capitalism of the Roaring Twenties as factors leading to Cather’s increasing disillusionment.

WORKS CITED

Bohlke, L. Brent. Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches and Letters. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986. Print. Cather, Willa. “London Roses.” McClure’s Magazine 34 (Nov. 1909): 61. —. A Lost Lady. 1923. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski, Charles W. Mignon, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. Connelly, Mark Thomas. The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1980. Print. Dunbier, Lonnie Pierson. Lyra and Silas Garber: A First Couple in Frontier History. Santa Fe: Western Edge P, 2002. Print. Gensmer, Kristin A. “Of Painted Women and Patrons: An Analysis of Personal Items and Identity at a Victorian- Era Red Light District in Ouray Colorado.” Diss. Colorado State U, 2012. Web. Goldman, Emma. “The Traffic of Women.” 1917. The Traffic in Women and Other Essays on Feminism. Hadley: Times Change P, 1970. 19– 32. Print. Irigaray, Luce. The Sex Which Is Not One. Trans. Catherine Porter. New York: Cornell UP, 1985. Print. Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record. 1953. Intro. John J. Murphy. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2000. Print. 187 The Trafficking of Mrs. Forrester

MacKell, Jan. Brothels, Bordellos, and Bad Girls: Prostitution in Colorado, 1860– 1930. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2004. Print. McClure, S. S. “The Tammanyzing of Civilization.” McClure’s Magazine 34 (Nov. 1909): 117– 28. Neuschatz, Michael. The Golden Sword: The Coming of Capitalism to the Colorado Mining Frontier. New York: Greenwood, 1986. Print. Rosowski, Susan J. Historical Essay. Cather, A Lost Lady 177– 233. Print. Rubin, Gayle S. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader. Durham: Duke UP, 2011. 33– 65. Print. Skaggs, Merrill Maguire. After the World Broke in Two: The Later Novels of Willa Cather. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1990. Print. Soderlund, Gretchen. Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885– 1917. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013. Print. Turner, George Kibbe. “The Daughters of the Poor: A Plain Story of the Development of New York City as a Leader Center of the White Slave Trade of the World, under Tammany Hall.” McClure’s Magazine 34 (1909): 45– 61. Web. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. 9 The Outlandish Hands of Fred Demmler Pittsburgh Prototypes in The Professor’s House

TIMOTHY W. BINTRIM

Complaining of prototype hunters to her lifelong friend Carrie Miner Sherwood, Willa Cather muttered, “You can never get it through people’s heads that a story is made out of an emotion or an excitement, and is not made out of the legs and arms and faces of one’s acquaintances” (Letters 492; Cather’s emphasis). Of course, scholars know better. Serious readers can both appreci- ate the aesthetics of Cather’s fiction and discern the “legs and arms and faces” of her friends and casual acquaintances that, more often than not, provided the initial emotion or excitement. A case in point is Mark Madigan’s explication of Cather’s “rift and reconcili- ation” with Dorothy Canfield over her use of the “prominent facial scar and a taste for extravagant clothes” of their mutual friend Eve- lyn Osborne in “The Profile,” which Cather intended to include in the short-story collection The Troll Garden (Madigan, “Regarding” 1– 5). Attention to the features of acquaintances that Cather transferred to characters (even composite characters like Tom Outland) reveals connections both biographical and critical. I have long wondered about professional librarian John March’s speculation, in his 1993 volume A Reader’s Companion to the Fiction of Willa Cather that Tom Outland and Godfrey St. Peter were inspired by real prototypes connected to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie In- stitute of Technology (556, 657–58). (Because the university, now Carnegie Mellon, underwent several name changes during its first

188 189 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler century, for the sake of clarity I will use its long- standing nickname, “Tech,” henceforth.) This essay grows out of that curiosity, probing connections between The Professor’s House and the real English professor Haniel Long. I find that only some of March’s identifications have merit. Among those that do not is his claim that Long, who taught at Tech from 1910 to 1929, shared the physical appearance of Tom Outland (556), and that Long’s wife, Alice Knoblauch Long, had the personality of Lillian St. Peter (657). These claims are sup- ported neither by photographs of the Longs in the Cather Foun- dation Archives (see figs. 9.1 and 9.2) nor by the published recollections of friends and students. In 1968 the Cather Foundation was given photographic portraits of Haniel and Alice Long by the couple’s son and literary executor, Anton V. Long, who noted in an accompanying letter that his parents were writers Cather knew in Pittsburgh (A. Long to Miriam Mountford). Neither photograph resembles Cather’s descriptions of Tom or Lillian. May Sarton, a close friend of Haniel and Alice Long in their later years, described them as looking like “an early American painting; he spare, tall, with lean high cheekbones and a wide mouth; she, plump as a tea cozy, with light child- voice and soft, vague hands” (1– 2). Con- spicuously absent from any surviving account of Alice is Lillian St. Peter’s hard upper lip. Strangers did sometimes underestimate Alice’s intelligence due to her high-pitched, childlike voice—until the acuity of her conversation revealed the quality of her mind (Vermorcken, Pittsburgh 86– 101). Haniel’s students recalled Alice as a “lovely, calm” companion to their professor (McLaughlin 418). For his part, Haniel was universally described as “spare and tall,” of nervous temperament, but not particularly “well built,” a phrase Cather applied to both Tom Outland and Godfrey St. Peter (Profes- sor’s House 13, 111). The smoggy Pittsburgh winters aggravated Han- iel’s bronchitis, a chronic affliction that later made him abandon the city he loved for the more healthful climate of New Mexico. Haniel’s decision to give up teaching in Pittsburgh for writing and publishing in Santa Fe could have suggested Tom Outland’s turn to cattle herding after his bout with pneumonia, but the Longs’ re- 190 timothy w. bintrim location came only in 1929, about five years too late to have influenced The Professor’s House. In keeping with Anton Long’s letter, it is likely that Cather knew the Longs socially; they had too many friends and interests in common for it to have been otherwise, but without access to Long’s daybooks (now in the ucla Libraries) the extent of their acquaintance is hard to determine (A. Long to Miriam Mountford).1 More promising is March’s notation that “Tom [Outland]’s death . . . [was] suggested by that of a Carnegie Institute of Technology student” (556). Once again, however, the facts are slightly off. When he was sent to war in 1918, the young artist in question, Frederick A. Demmler, had finished his formal schooling and was earning siz- able commissions in Boston and Pittsburgh as a portrait painter. He was never a student at Tech, but he was a close friend of Han- iel Long, who was exactly his age. Fred grew up in Allegheny City with six brothers and a sister (Miller; Caplan, “Requiem”), a large German family much like the Engelhardts of “Double Birthday.” Between 1904 and 1906, while teaching at Allegheny High School, Cather taught English to Fred and his brothers Oscar and Wil- liam (Caplan, “Requiem”; Hutchinson). Fred, say Kathleen Byrne and Richard Snyder, “made an impression on his English teacher with his better- than- average scholarship and his artistic talent” (66). In what may be a tribute to Fred Demmler, Godfrey St. Peter remembers Tom Outland as “Always very different from the other college boys. . . . Always had something in his voice, in his eyes. . . . One seemed to catch glimpses of an unusual background behind his shoulders when he came into the room” (Professor’s House 130). Ron Caplan, a Pittsburgh-based fine arts publisher, revived interest in both Demmler and Long in the late 1960s, when he published selections of Long’s writings as If He Can Make Her So and conducted interviews with Fred’s brother, Oscar. Oscar Demmler told Cap lan that Cather’s acquaintance with Fred extended beyond the classroom: “[Fred] attended the Sixth Ward Public School [in what was then Allegheny City] and graduated from Allegheny High School in 1907, where he had been a student and close friend of the Fig. 9.1. Haniel Long, 1920s. Courtesy of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society. Fig. 9.2. Alice Long. Courtesy of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society. 193 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler writer Willa Cather” (Caplan, “Requiem”; emphasis added). Some of Cather’s fellow teachers at her previous place of employment, Central High, complained that she gave too much attention to her gifted students (Byrne and Snyder 62). Indeed, certain favorites, such as Fred Otte and Louis Johns, would later enter her fiction (Otte 46; Byrne and Snyder 65). Fred Demmler probably fit her notions of the ideal male artist. Just as Cather had dabbled in illustrating while literary editor of the University of Nebraska’s Hesperi- an magazine, Fred illustrated both Allegheny High’s magazine and its newspaper. In fact, Fred probably was on the newspaper staff when Cather wrote her farewell letter to her junior class, which appeared in a 1906 issue of the Wah Hoo (Byrne and Snyder 63– 64, 66). A dozen years after leaving Pittsburgh, with her own career established in New York, Cather may have learned from Pittsburgh friends of Fred’s death in Belgium a week before the Armistice. Soon after, a memorial exhibition of his paintings was mounted at the Carnegie Institute by the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, of which group he had been president, a show that later moved to Boston (“Obituary”). Was March correct in assuming that Cather combined Fred’s best features with those of other young men she had known in Pittsburgh (including her younger brother Jack), to make Tom Outland? For having died at age thirty, Fred Demmler left a remarkably rich legacy in paintings and photographs, family legend, and the prose and poetry of his friends. But two generations later, it is difficult to sort fact from legend. A family story holds, for example, that Cather in 1919 visited Pittsburgh to ask Fred’s mother, Mrs. Wilhemina Augusta Demmler, how it felt to lose a son at the front. I heard this family story from Mrs. Eileen Hutchinson, now in her nineties. Oscar Demmler had been a close friend of Mrs. Hutchin- son’s father, who died early. Mrs. Hutchinson judged that by the tone of Oscar’s recollection, Wilhemina Demmler did not take of- fense at Cather’s request. Although Cather is not known to have visited Pittsburgh after 1916, the record of her travels during these 194 timothy w. bintrim years is far from complete, so the Demmler family anecdote may well be verified by further research (Hutchinson).2 In death as well as life, Fred was remembered by friends for the passion with which he devoted himself to painting, his athleticism and good looks, and his tempered idealism, which ultimately led him to sacrifice his life when his professional career was just beginning. In these ways, as in ways more concrete, Fred Demmler resembles Cather’s Tom Outland. This identification is made more interesting, at least for me, because in first decade of the century, in Boston and in Pittsburgh, Fred Demmler was openly bisexual, as documented in detail by his lover, Boston journalist Lucien Price, in his book-length memoir, Immortal Youth: A Study in the Will to Create.3 Published by a Boston art house in 1919 with a first run of a thousand copies, the book circulated far beyond that city. Cath- er may have received a copy from a mutual friend in Pittsburgh or Boston, or even have been loaned a family copy if she visited the Demmlers.4 Despite its candid account of same- sex love, the book evidently met the approval of Fred’s family, who accepted Fred for who he was. Price’s memoir opens with a rich description of his first view of Fred at a working-class pub in Boston in 1912, which invites the reader to glance back to the frontispiece, a tipped- in color print of a self-portrait in oils that Fred made for the author before leaving for war (see fig. 9.3):

Anyone would have taken a second look at him; also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit. What was there about him that attracted attention? It was hard to say. The dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? The rugged features and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? The hands; very large and ﬁnely muscled? (I have never seen a more beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) It was all of these things and none of them. Rather it was the look of one with immense forces in reserve, bound on an errand. (7)

Curiously, this sounds not unlike Godfrey St. Peter taking the mea- Fig. 9.3. Self-portrait by Fred Demmler for Lucien Price. Reproduced from Immortal Youth, 1918. 196 timothy w. bintrim

sure of the perspiring Tom Outland who had just entered his life via his garden gate. Toward the end of his first meeting with Tom, Godfrey’s attention is arrested not by the raw turquoises his visitor offers to St. Peter’s daughters but “by the hand that held them: the muscular, many lined palm, the long, straight fingers with soft ends, the straight little finger, the flexible, beautifully shaped thumb that curved back from the rest of the hand as if it were its own master” (Professor’s House 121).5 The professor’s description echoes Price’s account of Fred’s hands as “large, strongly muscled, marked with heavy veins, the fingers full- fleshed at their tips, the skin bronzed by the sun” (Immortal Youth 44). This eroticized description of both men’s hands could be coincidental, but if one looks back at Cath- er’s “The Professor’s Commencement” (1902), a story set at Pitts- burgh’s Central High a few years before she met Demmler, the homoeroticism between teacher and student is markedly different. In this story, Professor Emerson Graves’s hands are conspicuous- ly effeminate: “delicate, sensitive hands curving back at the finger ends, with dark purple veins showing prominently on the back. They were exceedingly small, white as a girl’s, and well kept as a pianist’s.” Graves remembers “his restless, incorrigible pupil with the gentle eyes and manners of a girl, at once timid and utterly reckless . . . who had suffered a little, sung a little, struck the true lyric note, and died wretchedly at three- and- twenty in his master’s arms” (486– 87). While Graves’s unnamed Ganymede undoubtedly contains the germ of Paul (seen from the other side of the podium), Fred Demmler and Haniel Long may have inspired the very different pairing of Outland and St. Peter after 1902. Price comments that his own attraction to Demmler was “no isolated personal impression. Wherever [Fred] went, people felt the same intense curiosity about him” (Immortal Youth 7). Women were often drawn to the painter, and Price admits that Fred sometimes returned their attention. Fred dressed well, adds Price, even while painting, but had a habit of rolling his sleeves past the elbows, “as if his wrists could not abide cuffs” (8). In a photo of Demmler taken in his Pittsburgh studio (see fig. 9.4) one can see that the painter 197 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler indeed had the outsized, muscular hands Cather gave to Tom Out- land, whose “fine long hand with the backspringing thumb . . . never handled things that were not the symbols of ideas” (Professor’s House 260). Cather, whose powers of observation and memory are well documented, may have recalled these hands as Fred’s distin- guishing feature. The loving father from whom Fred inherited his hands, William Edward Demmler, made a comfortable living selling commercial kitchen equipment. Fred’s other grandfather, and namesake, Fred Mayer (1832– 1910), had wanted to be an artist, but in order to support his family he became an architectural sculptor instead, design- ing flowerbeds, ornaments for downtown buildings, church altar- pieces, and a stone lion that graced the family home in Allegheny, which his grandson assiduously copied in snow (Miller; Immor- tal Youth 9). After graduating from high school, Fred tried studying architecture at Cornell, but after two years he decided his true calling was painting. With his family’s backing, he began a four- years course at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston (Mill- er), studying with impressionists Frank W. Benson and Edmund Tarbell, two of the group known as The Ten. The Museum School, of course, was where Kathleen St. Peter’s friends recommended she develop her skill at watercolors (Professor’s House 65). During these four years in Boston (1909– 13), Fred shared a studio with two friends on Beacon Hill, a fifth-floor rear apartment at 94 Charles Street, less than five hundred feet from 148 Charles Street, where Mrs. James T. Fields was still receiving visitors—including Willa Cather (Immortal Youth 13). James Woodress recalls that Cather first met Mrs. Fields in February 1908, visited again for a week in May 1911, returned near the end of April 1912, and called for the last time at New Year’s 1913 (195, 197, 239, 257). Knowing Cather had worked for a decade in Pittsburgh, Mrs. Fields or a mutual acquaintance may have mentioned the handsome young painter on the block who hailed from the neighboring city of Allegheny. It was at this time that Fred became lovers with Lucien Price (fig. 9.5). Other of Tom Outland’s characteristics probably derived from Fig. 9.4. Fred Demmler in his Wood Street studio in Pittsburgh (Speigelman Art Galleries). Courtesy of Demmler Family and Ron Caplan of Breton Books. Fig. 9.5. Lucien Price as a young man, 1901. Courtesy of Western Reserve Academy, Hudson, Ohio. 200 timothy w. bintrim

Cather’s youngest brother, Jack, who followed his sister to Pitts- burgh in September 1914, at which time she resumed work on The Song of the Lark. Her chief interest in the industrial college that Andrew Carnegie had opened just four years earlier across the ravine from the Carnegie Institute was having Jack complete his degree there. He had just ﬂunked out of the University of Nebraska, transferring at the age of twenty to Tech, where his sister could keep an eye on him. Dedicated to promoting industrial design and efficiency, Tech had a surprisingly good English faculty, including poet Haniel Long, who had known Witter Bynner (then a graduate student) at Harvard and who encouraged an obscure under- classman named T. S. Eliot to keep writing poetry (Armitage 231). We know that Jack’s sister helped him select classes (Bennett 624), and her own stories (such as “The Professor’s Commencement”) suggest she respected Harvard men. It is thus possible that Jack Cather took a class with Long, as he did with Elizabeth Vermorck- en, then teaching rhetoric.6 Jack’s academic transcripts from Tech have not survived, but his sister’s letters hint that he once again squandered his opportunities. Assuming cheer that rings false, Wil- la wrote to Elsie Sergeant that “it was great fun to get [Jack] started. He is just off the farm and has never before been out of Nebraska.” She described Jack as “over six feet [tall], rather good looking and twenty years old. I think you would like him, though he will say ‘yes ma’am’ to older women—older than twenty” (Letters 195). In The Professor’s House, Lillian St. Peter similarly had to break Tom of the youthful habit of “addressing her as Ma’am” (120). The details of this letter suggest that Jack’s physical build and country manners informed Tom Outland’s naïveté. Cather’s letter to Sergeant did not conﬁde that during the prior two years at the University of Nebraska, Jack covered much ground in football and track but neglected his studies. In October, Willa assured Aunt Franc that Jack “is doing well at his school. . . . I often drop in at his rooms when I am out walking. . . . He is with older people a great deal, which is very good for him. He has grown much more manly and serious since he has been here” (Letters 196). 201 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler

However, Jack lasted only one month in electrical engineering before switching to Tech’s new dramatic arts program. Although Tech had been founded to improve industrial design, the school pioneered some progressive ideas, including its dramatic arts program, the first degree- granting program offered by an American university. Jack’s lack of intellectual effort must have irritated Wil- la, who had worked so hard to earn her own education. Having been a high school teacher, she knew how rare an opportunity Jack had wasted at Lincoln. According to Kari Ronning, who looked up his University of Nebraska transcript, “[Jack’s] grades were abys- mal. He did pass Drill. He had a number of incompletes which he fulfilled with minimal grades (60s), plus outright Fs in rhetoric and applied mechanics, plus Ds in math.” Because there is no record of grades for the second semester of Jack’s second year, Ron- ning concludes that he may have dropped out mid- year. By Christmas 1916, not only his sister’s watchful eye but also the situation in Europe helped Jack get serious. He did not volunteer for the French Foreign Legion, as would Tom Outland, or seek an officer’s commission by joining the infantry early, like Claude Wheeler. Instead, Jack avoided direct service by leaving Tech to take a war job at Smethport, Pennsylvania, working for the Brit- ish government as an analytic chemist (Bennett 624). After the draft was instituted, Jack had another reason to seek deferment: he had met a young woman named Irma Wells, granddaughter of a surgeon general of the Union army, Sylvanus Dwelley Freeman (Bennett 623). They married abruptly in July 1918, just a month after his cousin G.P. had been killed in France (see fig. 9.6; Bennett 623). With the same letter to her brother Roscoe of 19 July 1918 in which she expressed her satisfaction with G.P.’s posthumous cita- tion for valor, Willa conveyed her surprise at Jack’s hasty marriage (Letters 259; see also 659). Clearly, neither she nor Roscoe had met the bride. Jack’s work testing munitions- grade wood alcohol, acetic acid, and acetone made in Pennsylvania’s wood chemical factories was certainly relevant to the war effort, and he may have had good reasons Fig. 9.6. Jack Cather and Irma Wells Cather at the time of their marriage (ca. 1920). Courtesy of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Collection of the Nebraska State Historical Society. 203 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler to marry rather than enlist.7 But his big sister seemed to think he should have done more. She wrote to Aunt Franc upon hearing that G.P. had enlisted, saying, “I wish Jack were going. I really do, though I think he is very useful where he is” (Letters 244). Her depiction of Claude Wheeler and later Tom Outland as enlisting confidently perhaps stems from her mixed feelings about Jack’s deferment. While Jack Cather was struggling to find himself at Tech, Fred Demmler was struggling to develop his own style and to resist the salable— but he thought too- polished—manner of Benson and Tarbell. Demmler seemed destined to brush elbows with the great. A friend at the Museum School, Alexander James, was the youngest son of philosopher William James and the nephew of novelist Henry James. Little wonder, then, that to celebrate their grad- uation Fred and Alexander went abroad to tour the galleries of Paris, Munich, and London, where the two were granted an audience with Henry James as well as John Singer Sargent (Immor- tal Youth 29). The grand tour that began so auspiciously, however, was interrupted when Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were as- sassinated, German troops occupied Belgium, and England rose to Belgium’s defense (Immortal Youth 28). While most Americans rushed home, Fred remained in London. He was in the crowd on Downing Street when the British Cabinet issued their midnight ultimatum that Germany withdraw from Belgium. Fred wrote, “It gave one an odd feeling to realize that behind the drawn shades sat men who were settling the question of life and of death for hundreds of thousands. The crowd cheered, I did not” (qtd. in H. Long, Pittsburgh Memoranda 58). Unlike Tom Outland, Fred did not immediately enlist. Rather than join up, he returned to Pittsburgh, took a downtown studio on busy Wood Street, and painted as if his days were numbered. Over four months he produced dozens of portraits of family members, newspapermen, and other friends, among them Haniel Long (Miller). Between 1914, when Fred returned to Pittsburgh from Boston, and 1918, when he departed for war, Demmler enjoyed a close 204 timothy w. bintrim

friendship with Long. The two men had been born the same year (1888) and interacted as equals, not professor and student. Their cerebral friendship resembled that between Godfrey St. Peter and Tom Outland. Of this relationship, Cather wrote using painterly language, “Through Outland’s studies, long after they had ceased to be pupil and master, [St. Peter] had been able to experience afresh things that had grown dull with use. . . . To share [Tom’s] thoughts was to see old perspectives transformed by new effects of light” (Professor’s House 258). According to Caplan (in an opinion seconded by Price), “[Fred’s] friends found him a quiet, rather inarticulate person,” one who thought and read deeply but spoke mainly through his brush (“Requiem”; Immortal Youth 22). Both Fred and Haniel opposed the war, believing with Tolstoy that “violence is no way to settle a quarrel” (H. Long, Pittsburgh Memoran- da 59). Despite deep skepticism about this particular war, Fred’s eventual decision to answer the call to service became a touchstone for Long. On at least four separate occasions over the next twenty years, Long addressed epistolary poems to his dead friend, much like Godfrey St. Peter rehearses his memories of Outland after Scott McGregor doubts that Tom had ever been more than “a glittering idea” (Long, “Envoi to Fred Demmler” and “To a Painter- Conscript”; Professor’s House 110). If she visited the Carnegie Art Gallery during the autumn of 1914, Cather may have recognized not only Fred’s signature but one of his subjects as well. On exhibit was The Black Hat, a portrait in oils of Ethel Shreiner Buxton, one of the painter’s classmates at Allegheny High (Miller). Another Demmler portrait, of Haniel Long, today hangs in the Rare Book Room of Carnegie Mellon’s Hunt Library. The portrait appears to be unﬁnished, but family legend says it was left so deliberately. “Fred wanted to show Haniel at the start of his career, with a full life . . . ahead of him,” explained the Book Room’s curator (Johnsen). While sitting for the portrait, Long was himself making a portrait of the artist, a poem he titled “The Poet Has His Portrait Painted”: 205 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler

I know what you are doing And it is dangerous. . . . I am not deceived but I give myself to you. You are six feet away Yet you leap at me leap into my being with your eyes. (qtd. in Caplan, “Requiem”)

Price also was struck by Demmler’s ferocious concentration as he painted, exclaiming, “Nobody who had seen him paint could ever feel quite safe with him again” (Immortal Youth 24). The professor and the painter talked often as America was drawn inexorably toward war. Neither knew what to do about conscription (H. Long, Pittsburgh Memoranda 59). Haniel and Alice were married with a small child, so Haniel would not be among the first called. Two of the seven Demmler brothers were already deployed in Europe. Their father, Edward, checked the conscription numbers in the newspaper each day dreading that his remaining sons would be called (Caplan, “Flowers”). When his number was drawn, Fred deliberated three days and then answered the draft (H. Long, Pittsburgh Memoranda 59). Initially, he was offered a relatively safe assignment as a camouflage painter. Instead of accepting this assignment as his due, he requested active duty in the infantry so another would not die in his place (Miller). In April 1918 he shipped to France, and after the first battles in the Argonne Forest he was promoted to lieutenant because his superiors noticed that “he was afraid of nothing” (Caplan, “Requiem”). Six months later, as he was leading his machine gun company on a predawn advance, Fred was wounded in the left side by fragments of a high- explosive shell (Miller). Evacuated to a field hospital, he died of wounds on 2 No- vember, All Souls’ Day, nine days before the Armistice, while his works were on display at the Associated Artists annual exhibition in Pittsburgh (Burns; Miller). Back in Pittsburgh, Haniel Long decided that the best tribute 206 timothy w. bintrim

an English professor could offer to his conscripted students was to publish their writings. Carnegie Tech War Verse collected the poems that his students (male and female) had sent to their families from Europe or from training camps, which, due to influenza, were nearly as deadly as the front. Three poets had died before the volume appeared, including Richard Mansfield II, who had been a freshman in Tech’s drama program. A second volume, The Sol- dier’s Progress, compiled extracts of letters written by Pittsburgh youth, including some, like Fred Demmler, who were not students at Tech. The university press produced both volumes in less than a month so that they would reach the families by Christmas. The Soldier’s Progress contained (anonymous) excerpts from a letter by Demmler to a Pittsburgh friend. Cather probably did not notice these two small anthologies during the holidays while thirty thousand gis were flooding New York, celebrating the end of a long, grim war (Letters 267). Her letters do not mention the Longs, nor do Alice and Haniel appear often in the critical record: just a brief mention inChrysalis and a small notice in the Fall 1968 Pioneer Memorial Newsletter acknowledging the gift of two books from Anton Long, with a comment that “the Longs were people in Pittsburgh who influenced Willa Cather’s writing” (Mountford 3). Yet the Longs shared so many acquaintances with Cather that they must have known each other in Pittsburgh, and perhaps later in Santa Fe. As Cather’s serious readers know, she discovered Santa Fe and Taos a decade before either place became a fashionable writers’ colony. While returning from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh in 1924, the Longs’ train was delayed near Santa Fe. During that two- hour wait, Haniel and Alice, like so many artists before them, fell in love with the high desert. They eventually joined a thriving writer’s colony anchored by Poetry magazine coeditor Alice Corbin Henderson, novelist Mary Austin, and poet Witter Bynner, whose troubled friendship with Long went back to their Harvard days (Cline). Starting in 1925, the Longs split their time between Santa Fe and Pittsburgh, where Haniel continued to teach part- time until 1929, 207 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler when he resigned from Tech to devote himself to writing (Kraft 94). Long himself said that bronchitis and eye trouble made him leave Pittsburgh (Armitage 231). The Longs found the brilliant sunshine and dry air of Santa Fe tonic for Haniel’s health as for his literary output, which soon turned to Southwest politics and history, especially that of the Spanish adventurers. The couple bought an adobe house with a walled rear garden not far from Witter Byn- ner’s sprawling house. Part of the year they had Elsie Sergeant as a neighbor, whom Haniel knew through the New Republic. Sergeant had come west on the advice of her physician, who prescribed exercise on horseback as therapy for the leg injuries she had suffered on a deserted French battlefield (Sergeant, Willa Cather 164). From 1920, Elsie lived part of the year in what she called her “Mud House” in the Tesuque Valley, six miles north of Santa Fe (“The Journal of a Mud House”). Sergeant decided to renovate the Mud House with local labor, although she and her friend spoke no Spanish. Cather read and praised the four-part series in Harper’s that Sergeant used to underwrite the project (Sergeant, Willa Cath- er 165, 170), but she probably did not visit the Mud House in 1927. Cather had known Bynner at McClure’s, but he had taken Dorothy Canfield’s part in the conflict over “The Profile” and further an- gered Cather by cutting words without her permission from “‘A Death in the Desert’” before it appeared in McClure’s in January 1905 (Madigan, “Regarding”; Madigan, Historical Essay 351). These affronts, his open homosexuality, and his reputation as a disorder- ly drunk probably made Cather avoid Bynner in Santa Fe, cutting out the Longs by association (Cline 36– 37, 132–35; Kraft 92– 95). Sergeant’s profile of “The Santa Fe Group” that appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature in December 1934 acknowledged that outsiders like Cather and D. H. Lawrence had given New Mexico its best literature in English, but it predicted that the colonists at Santa Fe would also produce literature of lasting value. “Long is no less beloved and naturalized in Santa Fe than Bynner,” Sergeant wrote. “Despite his love of books and gardens and music, [Haniel] belongs to the outland regions” (“The Santa Fe Group” 354). Al- 208 timothy w. bintrim though Sergeant lowercased “outland,” she may have unconsciously associated Haniel with the adaptable, transplanted genius of The Professor’s House. In 1936, Long published what is considered his masterpiece, Inter- linear to Cabeza de Vaca, a novella imagining the spiritual transformation of that conquistador marooned in the American Southwest. Long’s great theme, best realized in Interlinear, celebrated human resilience or our ability to adapt to circumstance, often by reinvent- ing ourselves and subordinating our wants to the needs of others (Schulman). Interlinear, a poet’s between- the- lines amplification of the letter de Vaca wrote to the Spanish monarch after his repatri- ation, captures in forty-one pages de Vaca’s profound discovery of his ability to heal—and even raise the dead— during his eight- year barefoot trek across Texas to the Pacific. The themes of this work were anticipated in Pittsburgh Memoranda, published in 1935 in Santa Fe but begun two decades earlier (ca. 1916) in Pittsburgh in blank verse, a form that Long abandoned for a modernist pastiche of “terse prose passages” (often the actual words of historic persons) inter- spersed with brief poetic commentaries (Schulman). The chapter titled “Frank Hogan and Fred Demmler” drew memoranda from Long’s 1918 Carnegie Tech anthology of soldiers’ letters. Like St. Peter conversing with Tom Outland, Long spoke directly to Fred Demmler:

Seventeen years is a long time, to a man alive: What has happened to you, old crony? ...... Do you know what God knows now? And is the truth different from what the living can catch a glimpse of— ...... To do one’s best As neighbor and citizen, along with earning the needs Of one’s family, meaning to nourish any outward manifestation Of the pure and all- healing inward. 209 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler

Is there a way you could tell me, Or is that what you are telling me? (60– 61)

Reﬂecting on their friendship near the end of his own long life, the ex- professor turned outland poet commented that Demmler’s “perfect unconcern” for his own survival “has helped me more than anything else; he was remarkable in every way, and I love him for the manner of his acquiescence” (qtd. in A. Long, “Address”).

NOTES

1. One letter from Long to Cather exists in the Haniel Long Papers at ucla (Schulman 44). It may request an endorsement for Pittsburgh Mem- oranda, Long’s book published in 1935, because Long wrote at about the same time to Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters, whose endorsements appear on the jacket of the first edition. Cather is not known to have replied. Her lack of response may be due to her own declining health and injured hand rather than indifference toward Long’s career. 2. Of course, Cather may have telephoned Mrs. Demmler in 1919, but a physical visit to Pittsburgh cannot be ruled out. The current project was greatly aided by two members of the Demmler family. I met Mrs. Eileen Hutchinson though Andrew Jewell, chair of our plenary session at the In- ternational Cather Seminar in Arizona (June 2013), who shared a letter Mrs. Hutchinson had just written him commending the Selected Letters and explaining her friendship with the Demmlers. Later in the summer of 2013, I and my daughter Sylvia were invited to tea at Mrs. Hutchinson’s apartment in Sewickley, where we had a memorable interview seated under one of Fred’s paintings. Her impeccable memory and generosity made the people and times come alive. Another great help was a catalogue raisonné of Fred’s paintings compiled by Dorli Demmler McWayne, Oscar Demmler’s biological daughter, when she was an undergraduate art major. Now a professional flutist in Alaska, Ms. McWayne graciously read and commented on early versions of this essay. Her catalogue raisonné, a copy of which is at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, is indispensable for any serious study of Fred Demmler’s career. 3. Price remembered Demmler not just by writing Immortal Youth but also throughout his forty-year career with the Boston Globe. The reflective essays he published annually for All Souls’ Day were later collected as Lita- 210 timothy w. bintrim ny for All Souls, published by Beacon. Additionally, historian Jonathan Ned Katz notes that Price wrote and privately published All Souls, an “eight- volume series of novels on a homosexual emancipation theme,” which he began in 1919 and finished in 1962. The first volume, Hellas Regained, can be read online through HathiTrust. Price’s relationships with Demmler and Harvard classmate Fred Middleton also feature prominently in chapter 4 of Shand- Tucci’s The Crimson Letter. 4. A volume that from its inscription appears to be a family copy of Im- mortal Youth is held in the library of the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, a local collection that owns six of Demmler’s most representative works. 5. Anders offers a nuanced and critically informed reading of Godfrey St. Peters’s physical and spiritual reaction to Tom Outland (97– 117). 6. Byrne and Snyder record that one of Jack’s English teachers was Eliz- abeth Vermorcken, who later wrote an error- strewn account of her acquaintance with Willa Cather and Isabelle McClung in These Too Were Here. Cather’s Selected Letters reveals that Jack Cather’s favorite professor at Tech was Harold Geoghegan (234– 35), an expert on period costume who taught in Tech’s art history department but whose advanced degree at the University of Dublin was in English literature (“Harold Geoghegan”). 7. Evidently, Jack’s wartime employment conferred enough experience for him to succeed in industry without a degree. In later years he became an analyzing chemist for Standard Oil in Wyoming, then Kendall Oil in Bradford, Pennsylvania, where he helped that company perfect its high- octane gasoline (Bennett 623).

WORKS CITED

Anders, John P. Willa Cather’s Sexual Aesthetics and the Male Homosexual Literary Tradition. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999. Print. Armitage, Shelley. “Haniel Long.” Dictionary of Literary Biography 45: American Poets, 1880– 1945. Detroit: Gale, 1986. 229– 37. Print. Bennett, Mildred R. “What Happened to the Rest of the Charles Cather Family?” Nebraska History 54 (1973): 619– 24. Electronic facsimile. NebraskaHistory.org. Nebraska State Historical Society. 2011. Web. Burns, Lee. “Exhibit of Artists Opens This Morning.” Pittsburg Dispatch 24 Oct. 1919. Microﬁlm. Byrne, Kathleen D., and Richard C. Snyder. Chrysalis: Willa Cather in Pittsburgh, 1896– 1906. Pittsburgh: Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, 1980. Print. 211 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler

Caplan, Ron. “Flowers for Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh Press 7 Jan. 1968. Microﬁlm. —. “Requiem for a Painter.” Pittsburgh Press 9 June 1968. Photocopy in Demmler ﬁle of Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Cather, John Esten (Jack). Academic transcript from the U of Nebraska, 1912– 13. Special Collections, Love Library, Lincoln, Nebraska. Print. Cather, Willa. “The Professor’s Commencement.” New England Magazine 26 (June 1902): 481– 88. The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. Web. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Kari A. Ronning, and Frederick Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. Cline, Lynn. Literary Pilgrims: The Santa Fe and Taos Writers’ Colonies, 1917– 1950. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2007. Print. “Harold Geoghegan, 1911– 1942.” Pittsburgh Post- Gazette 5 Sept. 1942: 4. GoogleNews. Web. Hutchinson, Eileen. Personal interview and correspondence. July–Nov. 2013. Johnsen, Mary Catherine. Letter to Dick Cowen. 28 Feb. 1991. Haniel Long Collection, Carnegie Mellon U Special Collections. Print. Katz, Jonathan Ned. “Rediscovering Lucien Price.” Harvard Advocate 7 Nov. 1988: 52– 53. OutHistory.org. 8 June 2012. Web. Kraft, James.Who Is Witter Bynner? A Biography. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1995. Long, Anton. “Address on Dedication of Fred Demmler’s Portrait of Haniel Long.” 10 Mar. 1975. Haniel Long Collection, Carnegie Mellon U Special Collections. Print. —. Letter to Miriam Mountford. 26 Nov. 1968. Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial. Print. Long, Haniel, ed. Carnegie Tech War Verse. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology P, 1918. Web. —. “Envoi to Fred Demmler.” Southwest Review 60 (1975): n.p. Haniel Long Collection, Carnegie Mellon U Special Collections. Print. —. If He Can Make Her So. Ed. Ron Caplan. Pittsburgh: Frontier P, 1968. Print. —. Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca. Santa Fe: Writers’ Editions, 1936. Online facsimile edition. “The Writers’ Editions of Santa Fe, New Mexico.” John C. Campiglio Archive. 2011. Web. 212 timothy w. bintrim

—. Pittsburgh Memoranda. Santa Fe: Writers’ Editions, 1935. Online facsimile edition. —. The Soldier’s Progress. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology P, 1918. Web. —. “To a Painter- Conscript.” Notebooks 1918. Haniel Long Collection, Carnegie Mellon U Collections. Print. Madigan, Mark J. Historical Essay. Youth and the Bright Medusa by Willa Cather. 1920. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Mark J. Madigan, Frederick M. Link, Charles W. Mignon, Judith Boss, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2009. 313– 75. Print. —. “Regarding Willa Cather’s ‘The Proﬁle’ and Evelyn Osborne.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 44.1 (Spring 2000): 1– 5. Print. March, John. A Reader’s Companion to the Fiction of Willa Cather. Ed. Marilyn Arnold. Westport: Greenwood, 1993. Print. McLaughlin, Florence C. Rev. of If He Can Make Her So, by Haniel Long. Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 52.4 (Oct. 1969): 416– 19. Web. Miller, Donald. “Immortal Youth Remembered: Frederick A. Demmler.” Carnegie Magazine Jan. 1978: n.p. Haniel Long Collection, Carnegie Mellon U Collections. Print. Mountford, Miriam, ed. “World Wide Interest in Willa Cather.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 12.2 (Fall 1968): 3. Web. “Obituary: Fred A Demmler.” American Art News 17.10 (14 Dec. 1918): 4. Web. Otte, Fred, Jr. “The Willa Cather I Knew.” Willa Cather Remembered. Ed. Sharon Hoover. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. 42– 47. Print. Price, Lucien. Immortal Youth: A Study in the Will to Create. Boston: McGrath- Sherrill, 1919. Project Gutenberg eBook 39330. 1 Apr. 2012. Web. Ronning, Kari. Message to the author. 31 May 2013. E- mail. Sarton, May. “The Leopard Land: Haniel and Alice Long’s Santa Fe.” Southwest Review 57 (Winter 1972): 1– 14. Print. Schulman, John. “‘Genius Loci’: A Southwesterner, Once of Pittsburgh, Comes Back into Print.” Rev. of Pittsburgh Memoranda, by Haniel Long. Pittsburgh History 75.1 (Spring 1992): 41– 47. Web. Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. “The Journal of a Mud House.” Harper’s Magazine Apr. 1922. Web. —. “The Santa Fe Group.” Saturday Review of Literature 8 Dec. 1934: 352, 354. Web. —. Willa Cather: A Memoir. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1953. Print. 213 The Outlandish Hands of Demmler

Shand- Tucci, Douglass. The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality, and the Shaping of American Culture. New York: St. Martin’s, 2003. June 2011. eBook. 2 Jan. 2015. Vermorcken, Elizabeth Moorehead. Pittsburgh Portraits. Pittsburgh: Boxwood P, 1955. Print. —. These Too Were Here: Louise Homer and Willa Cather. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1950. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. 10 Translating the Southwest The 1940 French Edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop

MARK J. MADIGAN

Marc Chénetier wrote that all translations are doomed to a degree of failure “the way all writing fails compared with the daz- zling, burning desire behind it” (42). Cervantes put it a different way: “Translation is the other side of a tapestry” (877). Most famously, Rob- ert Frost commented, “Poetry is what is lost in translation” (Unter- meyer 18). The French translator, Spanish novelist, and American poet each call our attention to the difficulty of the translator’s art. Willa Cather became familiar with the challenges of translation early in her writing career. In Pittsburgh she experienced them firsthand when translating French and German texts as read aloud by her friend, George Seibel. Her translation of Heinrich Heine’s Christmas poem, “The Three Holy Kings,” appeared in the Home Monthly in December 1896 (Cather, April Twilights 37).1 When que- ried about the translation by Dorothy Canfield Fisher many years later, Cather claimed to have forgotten it. She joked, “No, I don’t remember translating Heine’s Three Kings, but how like me to be translating from a language in which I couldn’t have conjugated a single verb!” (3 January [1947]). Cather’s own work appeared in sixteen different languages during her lifetime, and to her those translations were no laughing matter.2 She followed the publication of her foreign editions, but except for those in French, which she read proficiently, she relied upon multilingual friends for judgments of their quality. Letters

214 215 Translating the Southwest recently made available lend rare insight to Cather’s involvement in the translation process. Drawing upon these and other archival documents, this essay focuses on a French edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop that appeared in 1940 under the imprint of Édi- tions Stock. The translation was initially undertaken by esteemed novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, but Cather criticized her work so strongly that another translator, Christine Carel, was assigned to the project. About no other translation, including five others published in French during her lifetime, was Cather as vexed.3 In her epistolary criticism of both translators, she demonstrated not only her concern for the reception of her work in France, but also an unwavering authority over her southwestern material. Most of all, she wanted French readers of Archbishop to be able to visualize the landscape of the Southwest and recognize its inhabitants as she described them in her original edition. These same letters offer a view of Cather constructing her artistic persona and managing her literary reputation for an international readership. In 1945, Cather wrote to Ferris Greenslet that she owned nine of the eleven published translations of Death Comes for the Archbishop. (The novel is now translated into twenty- four languages, second only to My Ántonia.) Cather’s attentiveness to those editions is evident in her particular fondness for the work and the American Southwest. She once wrote to E. K. Brown that she considered it her best novel (Woodress 391). As John J. Murphy details, Cather researched her material thoroughly and with pleasure, visiting the region on six occasions before the novel’s publication (331– 39). Her copy of the novel, personalized with pasted-in photographs from her trips, testifies to the strong connection she felt to the Southwest. In the light of Cather’s affection for the novel and the region, it is not wholly surprising that one of the points on which she cri- tiqued the French translators of Archbishop was their portrayal of the landscape. In her letters, Cather not only criticized Yourcenar and Carel, but also explained how an Italian translator, Alessandra Scalero, rendered a geographically and culturally accurate depiction of the Southwest in her own translation of the novel. It is use- 216 mark j. madigan ful to consider the story behind Scalero’s translation, as it provides context for Cather’s criticism of the French translators. In the summer of 1935, Cather traveled to Italy and France with Edith Lewis. It would prove to be Cather’s final trip to Europe. They departed from New York the first week of August, disem- barked in Genoa, and quickly sought refuge from a heat wave. Af- ter resting in the village of Cortina in the Dolomite Alps for nearly two weeks, they traveled to Venice on 27 August, lodging at the Hôtel Royal Danieli.4 On 25 September they left Venice to visit Is- abelle McClung Hambourg at her home near Paris. They returned to New York in early November. The reason for Cather’s stay in France was clearly personal. She explained the rationale for the Italian segment of the trip, her second visit to that country, in a 14 July 1935 letter to her sister Elsie:

I haven’t even made out our itinerary yet, but I have to be in Venice about the ﬁrst of September to arrange some disagreements between Italian publishers and the translators of death comes for the archbishop and shadows on the rock. As a purely business proposition it would not be worth travelling as far as San Francisco for, but there are some very distinguished and scholarly gentlemen who are concerned with and about this edition, among them Father Giordano [sic], the head of the Vatican Library.5

In an 18 April 1935 letter to Cather, Alfred Knopf discloses the nature of the disagreements to which she referred. The translator of Shadows on the Rock, Gino de Negri, was in dispute with his Italian publisher over the delivery of his contract and payment of an advance. Knopf wrote that de Negri wanted to solicit interest from other publishers for an Italian edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop, a request to which Knopf consented. Cather does not mention her meeting with the Italian publishers and translators in her correspondence, but it appears their negotiations were successful, as de Negri’s translation of Shadows on the Rock was published later that year. The Italian edition of Archbishop, translated by Alessandra Scalero, followed in 1936. 217 Translating the Southwest

Why Scalero was chosen to translate Death Comes for the Arch- bishop is unknown. Whatever the reason, she was well qualiﬁed for the assignment as a skillful translator of American, British, French, and German literary works by John Dos Passos, Daphne du Mauri- er, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, and Virginia Woolf, among others. Between 1930 and 1966 she translated thirty-eight books, many of them in the publisher Mondadori’s prestigious Medusa series, which claimed to present “The Great Storytellers of Every Coun- try.” Despite the high quality of her work, Scalero apparently was not well compensated, and it seems that her reason for translating Archbishop was ﬁnancial need rather than a special literary interest. As British novelist Richard Aldington wrote to his publisher, “She’s a poor devil, and she gets some lire out of Mondadori if she can get ahead of the others” (Gates 146; see Bernardini). Shortly before Cather departed for Italy in August 1935, Mar- guerite Yourcenar began translating Death Comes for the Archbishop into French. On 10 June, Knopf wrote to Cather that the French publisher Éditions Stock described Yourcenar as “a very well- known writer herself and the translator of Virginia Woolf’s last book [The Waves].” According to critic Bérengère Deprez, Yource- nar’s translations in this period were done “mostly to earn a living” (82). Like Scalero, this may have motivated her work on Archbishop. Although Yourcenar was “very well-known” in France by the mid- 1930s, as her publisher wrote, that was not the case in the United States. Recognition in this country would not come until 1951 with the publication of her celebrated novel Mémoires d’Hadrien (Mem- oirs of Hadrian). In April 1938, three years after beginning work on Archbishop, Yourcenar traveled from New Haven, where her partner, Grace Frick, was completing graduate study at Yale, to New York to discuss the translation with Cather. Whether Cather requested the meeting with Yourcenar or vice versa is not known. A year earlier, Yourcenar had a similar meeting with Woolf about her translation of The Waves, which was yet to be published. Woolf subsequently described Yourcenar as “some intolerable necessary bore” 218 mark j. madigan

who “wasted one of my rare solitary evenings” (109). Joan Acocella writes that Yourcenar “came from the minor nobility and didn’t hide it. Most of the people who knew her, even friends, addressed her not as Marguerite, but as Madame” (242). Whether Cather shared Woolf’s personal feelings about Yourcenar is open to con- jecture. What is certain is that she was not pleased by Yourcenar’s draft translation of Death Comes for the Archbishop. In a three- page letter to Knopf dated 19 April 1938, Cather delineated six objections to Yourcenar’s work (Letters 546– 48). She began by criticizing Yourcenar’s choice of an edition from which to translate. That text, an English- language edition published in Germany by Tauchnitz in 1929, contained “many errors,” according to Cather. Since Yourcenar was no farther away than New Haven, she merely had to request a recent, corrected edition from her or Knopf, Cath- er wrote. Her second objection focused on Yourcenar’s alleged ignorance of the Southwest, of which Cather complained:

Madame Yourcenar has never been in the Southwest at all, and seems to have no conception of how very different that country is from any other part of the United States. She has not informed herself about its people or customs. . . . In so far as that country and people are concerned, her mind is an utter blank. Yet she says that there are some descriptive passages in the book (I don’t know how many) which she must “paraphrase.” How can one paraphrase descriptions of a landscape which one has never seen, or even informed oneself about? (Letters 546– 47)

Cather’s third and fourth criticisms were related. She wanted Yourcenar to retain Spanish words, such as “mesa,” “adobe,” “arroyo,” and “hacienda,” that were in the original text and commonly used in the Southwest.6 There were no other names for such things, she reasoned, for “You cannot call an arroyo a ditch or a ravine.” Yource- nar countered that French readers would find the foreign words of- fensive and incomprehensible. Cather responded that brief footnotes could be used, but Yourcenar replied that they, too, would 219 Translating the Southwest be objectionable to French readers. Cather retorted that French author Prosper Mérimée successfully employed footnotes in his novellas. Dismissing that idea “with great decision,” Yourcenar asserted that footnotes would make the book look “old- fashioned.” Whether she noticed Cather’s own footnote on the dying of the Pecos pueblo in the original edition is an open question.7 Fifth, Cather lauded Scalero’s “very excellent” Italian translation of Archbishop, which used the Spanish words in the manner she preferred. Scalero’s footnotes for these words were “enlightening,” according to Cather, who concluded, “The Italian translation clearly and faithfully reproduces the English text of the book” (547). There is no record of why Scalero treated the Spanish words as she did, but she had previously employed similar footnotes in translations of works by D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Cather explicated the “heart of the matter” in her sixth point: “Madame Yourcenar feels that this book accurately translated would not make, as she says, ‘beautiful French.’ I have every admiration for the writer who wishes to write his own language beautifully, and I am afraid she has chosen a book which is not suited to the kind of French she wishes to write.” Cather reiterated that she was displeased by Yourcenar’s refusal to use “local New Mexican– Spanish words” and her plan to “paraphrase the passages describing a country which she has never seen and about which she has read very little” (548). In conclusion, she emphasized that the Ital- ian translator Scalero proved a faithful translation could be made in the manner she described and demanded to see page proofs of Yourcenar’s work prior to publication. The comments of Woolf scholar Françoise Pellan support Cather’s analysis of Yourcenar’s deficiencies as a translator. On Yourcenar’s translation of Woolf’s The Waves, Pellan writes: “As a text, it is undoubtedly very beautiful, and a pleasure to read. As a translation, it is deeply, almost insidi- ously, unfaithful to the original” (55). Yourcenar’s unpublished correspondence at Harvard’s Houghton Library reveals that Cather’s letter to Knopf was a “deal- breaker.” In a 4 May letter to Yourcenar, Maurice Delamain, co-owner of Édi- 220 mark j. madigan tions Stock, summarized Cather’s objections and asked Yourcenar to send him her still-to- be- completed translation, for which she would be paid a prorated sum. The project would be taken over, he wrote, by a translator who would adhere to Cather’s wishes and use Scalero’s Italian translation as a model. On 5 June, Yource- nar sent Delamain her 253- page manuscript (Unknown writer to Yourcenar, 9 June 1938). There is no evidence of Cather and Yource- nar ever meeting again, although they both spent the summers of 1943 to 1945 on Mount Desert Island in Maine (see Durrans). Cather wrote to Knopf’s secretary, J. Florence Rubin, on 18 De- cember 1938 to inquire about the new French translation, stating, “The relatives of these long-dead Bishops unceasingly and affec- tionately pursue me.” On 19 January 1939 Knopf sent her a typescript by Christine Carel, a translator who had no book- length publications.8 Four days later, Cather wrote to Yaltah Menuhin Stix that she was trying to prevent a “very poor” French translation of Archbishop from being published. “The Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Slovak ones are said to be very good,” she complained, “so why should the French one be so dull and plodding! Isn’t it stupid!” (Letters 568). On 31 January, Rubin wrote to Knopf that Cather had read five chapters of Carel’s work and found it just as bad as Yourcenar’s (Rubin). In a 2 February letter, Cather addressed her critique directly to Carel. She began with a comment about the title, noting that Gustave Flaubert’s niece, Caroline Franklin-Grout, had read Death Comes for the Archbishop in English and insisted that the French title must be La mort et l’archêveque. Franklin-Grout’s experience as the executrix of her uncle’s estate granted her “convincing authority,” Cather maintained.9 Cather’s most salient points were made in her letter’s conclusion. She again focused on the physical characteristics of the South- west and the use of Spanish words that had entered the lexicon of the region, asserting that they should be retained and footnoted:

In this book the country is the protagonist of the story. The surface of the earth, its deserts, mesas, arroyos, formed the 221 Translating the Southwest

chief difficulty against which the missionary priests had to struggle. The long passages describing the country are not “landscape painting” or ornamental writing. They merely state the perplexing realities which confronted these two priests every day. I have spent much time in the Southwest, and have ridden on horseback over many of the roads and trails over which Archbishop Lamy and Father Machebeuf travelled. (Cather to Carel, 2 February 1939).

Cather advised Carel to use Scalero’s translation as a model and enclosed a copy of the Italian book with her letter. She wrote, “If you are interested in making a thoroughly good translation, you, like the two priests, must courageously face the geographical and geological difficulties.” In closing, she offered that “These explanations, the Italian version, and the corrections on pages 40 to 90, may give you a little enthusiasm for the country, and make clear to you some things which are now vague.” Carel’s translation of Death Comes for the Archbishop, dutifully titled La mort et l’archevêque, was published in paperback by Éditions Stock in February 1940. It included a preface by historian André Ar- tonne, which focused on the novel’s prototypes and historical background. Five years later, on 23 August 1945, Cather wrote to Ferris Greenslet: “One might think that the French translation would be very good, but I had to send it back to the French publishers because it sounded like a school girl’s exercise in French and, above all, because all the footnotes explaining western terminology were incorrect and absurd. ‘Trappers,’ for instance, in the footnote appeared as ‘a religious order.’” In the same letter, written from North- east Harbor, Maine, Cather again praised Scalero’s translation and recommended her for a proposed Italian translation of My Ántonia:

An Italian friend read a large part of the Italian translation to me and he approved of it heartily. I myself examined all the footnotes carefully and I should say they were models for lexi- cographers. I wish I had the Italian translation here or that my secretary were not away on her vacation. Perhaps when I go 222 mark j. madigan

home, late in September, it will not be too late to give you the name of the woman who translated the Archbishop. In case she is still living she would be incapable of doing a slovenly job.

The name of the woman was, of course, Alessandra Scalero, but she had died in 1944. The Italian translation of My Ántonia was published in 1947.10 To be fair to Yourcenar and Carel, it should be noted that both lacked formal training in translation and worked in a time before the field was professionalized. At the center of their tension with Cather was a demand for fidelity to the original text, an issue as vexing to translators today as it was then. Yourcenar would now be aligned with the school of translation that affords translators more license than the source- oriented concept of translation. Her approach calls to mind a humorous remark by Argentinian author and translator Jorge Luis Borges, who once said of a novel by Wil- liam Beckford that “the original was not faithful to the translation.” Finally, Cather admitted to Greenslet that she could not bring herself to read the French edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop. Presumably fatigued by her interactions with Yourcenar and Car- el, she may have been afraid to find that the published translation did not meet her standards. Yet her engagement with the edition is no less significant and revealing. Underscored in her letters is the degree of authority she claimed over her southwestern material. In composing, Cather could represent the region as she wished. Foreign- language editions, though, demanded that she cede a measure of control to her translators, which she did not do easily in this case. In her statement that “the country is the protagonist of the story” she established that she did not use the Spanish words for mesas, arroyos, and other topographical features of the South- west as verbal ornaments, but rather as vital details contributing to the development of what she called the novel’s central character. Above all, Cather’s letters show how well attuned she was to the important role translations played in the development of her international reputation. Chénetier explains that Cather was still 223 Translating the Southwest building name recognition in France when work on the translation of Death Comes for the Archbishop began (27).11 The close attention she gave to the French edition is indicative of her regard for French readers, whose national literature she revered, and her desire to elevate her stature in their country. If footnotes made the translation look “old- fashioned,” as Yourcenar asserted, Cather did not mind, as long as it was in the manner of a classic French author such as Mérimée, of whom she wrote in 1929, “I believe he is not fashionable in France at present, but he has almost everything I like in a writer” (Letters 420). In France, as in her home country, what interested Cather most was enduring literary quality, not the fashion of the moment.

NOTES

1. Cather published two other translations: “The Errand” (from Heine), in the 6 November 1897 Pittsburgh Courier, and “Had You But Smothered that Devouring Flame” (from Alfred de Musset), in the 11 December 1897 Pittsburgh Courier (April Twilights 38– 40). 2. Hannah German’s “A Bibliography of Translations of Willa Cather’s Work” is the source for the number of languages into which Cather’s work was translated during her lifetime. The bibliography is accessible online at the Willa Cather Archive. 3. In a 1921 interview, Cather claimed that all of her novels (Alexander’s Bridge, O Pioneers! and My Ántonia to that date) were being translated into French, but that did not come to fruition (Bohlke 35). Cather played an active role in the French translation of My Ántonia by Victor Llona, the first of her work in French. In a 14 December 1920 letter she instructed publisher Ferris Greenslet to send Llona a $50 advance with the remainder to be paid upon publication. After reading a sample of Llona’s translation, however, she sent the manuscript to her francophone friend Dorothy Can- field Fisher for further evaluation. In a 10 April 1921 letter to Fisher, Cather wrote, “I am puzzled because it seems to me about the sort of translation I would make myself with help of a dictionary— which must mean that it’s bad enough! It’s too literal, and I fear it’s not always grammatical. . . . What is the use of a poor translation of a book where the story is prac- tically zero? There is nothing left!” Fisher appears to have regarded the translation more favorably, for Cather subsequently asked publisher Fer- 224 mark j. madigan ris Greenslet to give Llona more time (Cather to Greenslet, 27 April 1921). Some of his work seemed worthwhile, she wrote. On 1 May she wrote to Laura Hills that she was working on the translation, which was to be published serially prior to book publication, and on 6 July she told Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant that the translation had been “dumped upon me for revision.” In an interview published in the Webster County Argus on 29 Sep- tember 1921, the project was said to be completed (Bohlke 27–28), but the serial publication never appeared. Llona’s translation of My Ántonia was published by Payot in 1924 (see Palleau-Papin). 4. A notable guest during Cather’s stay at the Hôtel Royal Danieli was philosopher George Santayana, who was registered there from 10 Septem- ber to 15 October 1935 (Holzberger 551). 5. Igino Giordani (not “Father Giordano”) was not a priest, but was indeed the head of the Vatican Library. He was also the translator of the first Italian edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop, published in 1936. 6. As early as 24 October 1908, Cather commented on the incorporation of Spanish words into English. She wrote to Sarah Orne Jewett, “In the West we had a kind of Latin influence, as you had an English one. We had so many Spanish words, just as you had words left over from Chaucer” (Letters 116). 7. Of the pueblo of Pecos, Cather writes in a footnote, “In actual fact, the dying pueblo of Pecos was abandoned years before the American occupa- tion of New Mexico” (130). Cather also included footnotes on the pronun- ciation of the title character’s name in My Ántonia, the history of the Notre- Dame- des- Victoires church and the Hôpital Général in Shadows on the Rock, and the origins of characters’ surnames in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. 8. Carel’s other book-length translation is of Vicki Baum’s 1944 novel Hotel Berlin ’43, which appeared under the title Berlin- Hotel ’43 in 1947. 9. Éditions Stock’s correspondence with Yourcenar refers to her translation variously as La mort prend l’archevêque, L’archevêque va mourir, and La mort vient pour l’archevêque. The working title of Carel’s translation that Cather saw is unknown. Cather and Franklin- Grout met at Aix-les- Bains in August 1930, an encounter Cather describes in “A Chance Meeting” in Not Under Forty. 10. Two Italian editions of My Ántonia were published in 1947. One was translated by Gabriele Baldini and published by Longanesi, the other was translated by Jole Jannelli Pinna Pintor for Giulio Einaudi Editore. 11. By 1935, My Ántonia (1924), “Coming, Aphrodite!” (1925), Shadows on the Rock (1933), and My Mortal Enemy (1935) had been translated into French. 225 Translating the Southwest

WORKS CITED

Acocella, Joan. “Becoming the Emperor: How Marguerite Yourcenar Reinvented the Past.” New Yorker 14 and 21 Feb. 2005: 242– 51. Print. Bernardini, Caterina. “Religiosa, Provinciale, Modernista: The Early Reception of Willa Cather in Italy.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 59.2 (Fall–Winter 2016): 13–19. Print. Bohlke, L. Brent, ed. Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. Print. Cather, Willa. April Twilights and Other Poems. Ed. Robert Thacker. Letters selected and edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Everyman’s/Knopf, 2013. Print. —. Death Comes for the Archbishop. 1927. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy, Charles W. Mignon, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990. Print. —. Letter to Christine Carel. 2 Feb. 1939. Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection. Archives and Special Collections, U of Nebraska– Lincoln Libraries. —. Letter to Elsie Cather. 14 July 1935. Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection. Archives and Special Collections, U of Nebraska– Lincoln Libraries. —. Letters to Dorothy Canﬁeld Fisher. Dorothy Canﬁeld Fisher Collection. Special Collections, Bailey/Howe Library, U of Vermont, Burlington. —. Letters to Ferris Greenslet. Houghton Library, Harvard U. —. Letter to Laura Hills. “May Day” [1921]. Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. —. Letter to Alfred Knopf. 19 Apr. 1938. Barbara Dobkin Collection, New York. —. Letter to [J. Florence] Rubin. [18 Dec. 1938]. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, U of Texas, Austin. —. Letter to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. 6 July [1921]. Alderman Library, U of Virginia, Charlottesville. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. Cervantes, Miguel de. The Adventures of Don Quixote. Trans. J. M. Cohen. New York: Penguin, 1988. Print. Chénetier, Marc. “Shadows of a Rock: Translating Willa Cather.” In Cather Studies 8: Willa Cather: A Writer’s Worlds. Ed. John J. Murphy, Françoise 226 mark j. madigan

Palleau- Papin, and Robert Thacker. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2010. 23– 45. Print. Delamain, Maurice. Letter to Marguerite Yourcenar. 4 May 1938. Houghton Library. Harvard U. Deprez, Bérengère. Marguerite Yourcenar and the USA. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009. Print. Durrans, Stéphanie. “The Translation in the Closet: Willa Cather and Marguerite Yourcenar.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review 58.2 (Winter 2015): 50–55. Print. Gates, Norman, ed. Richard Aldington: An Autobiography in Letters. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1992. Print. German, Hannah. “A Bibliography of Translations of Willa Cather’s Work.” The Willa Cather Archive. Ed. Andrew Jewell. U of Nebraska– Lincoln. October 2007. Web. Holzberger, William G., ed. The Letters of George Santayana, Book One, [1868]– 1909. Vol. 5 of The Works of George Santayana. Ed. William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge: mit P, 2001. Print. Knopf, Alfred. Letters to Willa Cather. Barbara Dobkin Collection, New York. Letter to Marguerite Yourcenar. 9 June 1938. Houghton Library, Harvard U. Murphy, John J. Historical Essay. Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop, 325– 71. Print. Palleau-Papin, Françoise. “Slowly, but Surely: Willa Cather’s Reception in France.” Studies in the Novel 45 (2013): 538–58. Print Pellan, Françoise. “Translating Virginia Woolf into French.” The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Europe. Ed. Mary Ann Caws and Nicola Luckhurst. London: Continuum, 2002. 54– 59. Print. Rubin, J. Florence. Letter to Alfred A. Knopf. 31 Jan. 1939. Barbara Dobkin Collection, New York. Untermeyer, Louis. Robert Frost: A Backward Look. Washington dc: Library of Congress, 1964. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. Woolf, Virginia. Leave the Letters Till We’re Dead: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. VI, 1936– 1941. Ed. Nigel Nicholson. Asst. ed. Joanne Trautmann. London: Hogarth P, 1980. Print. PART 3

Articulation The Song of the Lark

11 Elements of Modernism in The Song of the Lark

ANN MOSELEY

When literary critics think of Willa Cather and modernism, they think first of A Lost Lady and The Professor’s House, perhaps even of My Ántonia, but they hardly ever think of The Song of the Lark. However, if we expand our parameters and definitions of modernism beyond the “high modernism” of the 1920s, as Rich- ard Lehan and other literary historians such as Ricardo J. Qui- nones, Sanford Schwartz, and Michael Levenson have done, we find several elements of modernism in this early novel. Although I am certainly not arguing that The Song of the Lark— a chronological narrative written primarily in what Cather famously called “the full- blooded” style (On Writing 96)— is a model of prototypi- cal modernism, an examination of this novel in light of the more Continental modernism of her day reveals significant modernist qualities. Contemporary discussions of modernism reject the traditional view that the “period” of modernism was confined to 1914 through World War II. Indeed, many modernist critics identify an early modernist period beginning around 1890 (Lehan, Literary Modern- ism ix) and incorporating the aesthetic and decadent movements, with figures such as Baudelaire and Walter Pater being viewed as precursors of later modernism. And although modernism was, in some ways, a rejection not only of literary naturalism but also of romanticism, there are also many direct connections between romanticism and modernism. Viewing modernism as “a revision of

229 230 ann moseley

Romanticism” (30), Lehan writes: “The moderns were trying to adapt to what they saw as the hostile reality of naturalism, and they did this by going to a Romantic theory of the beautiful (aestheticism) and by working inward to theories of consciousness” (3– 4). As shown in several essays in Willa Cather and Aestheticism (Watson and Moseley), Cather was influenced by Walter Pater and the two different directions that, according to Lehan, his thought took: “toward a theory of the beautiful as the end of life with art as its own justification, and a theory of sensation that moved the concept of self away from empiricism toward an informed subjectivity” (23). Thea, like Cather, seeks “the inaccessibly beautiful” (Song 498), and in Panther Canyon “her power to think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation” (330). Emphasizing sensations over abstractions, Pater defined “success in life” as the ability “to burn, always with a hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy” (236)— the ecstasy that Thea Kronborg feels after hearing Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony in Chicago, the determi- nation that “as long as she lived that ecstasy was going to be hers” (224). From its beginnings, Lehan says, “Modernism created two contexts: the literary- aesthetic and the social- political. The major modernists for the most part kept the two categories separate . . . by affirming that literature (that is, art) was its own justification, and that such aestheticism was independent of moral purpose” (Liter- ary Modernism 42– 43). This essay will focus primarily on elements of aesthetic modernism in The Song of the Lark, but it will also include some important connections to the social and cultural modernism that was developing alongside the aesthetic and that also influenced the novel. As I have argued elsewhere,1 the first part of The Song of the Lark is essentially romantic in nature, as exhibited in the intuition of the child Thea, in whom, as Professor Wunsch implies, artistic knowledge is “inside from the beginning” (Song 86); in her love of and identification with nature, especially with the sand hills and its vegetation; in her desire for a holistic and organic view of life and art— that “sense of wholeness and inner well- being that she 231 Elements of Modernism had felt at moments ever since she could remember” (239); in her awareness of her second self, her “sturdy little companion” (175); and in her piano teacher Harsanyi’s feeling that “a lamp had suddenly been turned up inside of her” when she gets a musical idea (213). All of Thea’s friends and supporters— Dr. Archie, Ray Kenne- dy, Johnny Tellamentez, and Professor Wunsch— are themselves ro- mantics in one way or another: Archie in his sentimentalism, Ken- nedy in his love of adventure and the Southwest that attracts Thea to him, Johnny in his wanderlust and love of music, and Wunsch in his love of music and his current state of romantic degeneration. As the novel develops, however, this early romanticism transforms into something else—into a modernism that clearly remains deeply rooted in the old romanticism. The modernism that lies under the surface in the whole novel but that flows most freely in “The Ancient People” and “Kronborg” has clear foundations in the ideas of major thinkers of Cather’s day (most of whom were ro- mantics themselves) who influenced modernism as a whole— the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson, the early anthropologist Franz Boas, and the composer Richard Wagner. In his 1908 book The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, H. L. Mencken declared, “There is no escaping Nietzsche. . . . He has colored the thought and literature, the speculation and theorizing, the politics and superstition of the time. . . . [E]ven the newspapers are aware of him.” Because of George Seibel’s memorial essay on Cather, we know that she did not “escape” Nietzsche (1844–1900) either. Seibel reports that one day after Cather had become telegraph editor of the Pittsburg Leader, she telephoned him and asked him to “talk about Friedrich Nietzsche for about five minutes, slowly and distinctly.” So, Seibel did so—“Zarathustra in a nutshell, the [concept of the] Superman put through a nutmeg grater,” he says, “everything I could misremember from an unforgettable lecture of two hours and forty minutes.” The following day he learned “why the telephone had been subjected to this strain. Willa had gone to interview the pianist Harold Bauer for the Leader. He talked mainly about Nietzsche, so volubly and volcanically that she might as 232 ann moseley

well have been listening to a thunderstorm on the Brocken” (16– 17). Whatever she learned about Nietzsche that day, and however much she read by and about Nietzsche in later years,2 it is certain that—although her only direct mention of Nietzsche in The Song of the Lark is an oblique reference to a “Nietzsche club” (305)— she knew of his idea of the Übermensch (Overman, Superman), discussed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1886), and of the Apollonian- Dionysian polarity at the heart of The Birth of Tragedy (1872), which Lehan gives “a special place” among modern literary writers (40). Indeed, Cather creates in Thea a kind of Überfrau, a superwoman who stands above her peers in creativity and strength. Thea’s declaration that “[a] child’s attitude toward everything is an artist’s attitude” and that she is “more or less of an artist now” but then “was nothing else” (506) recalls Nietzsche’s modernist creator Zarathus- tra, likening himself to a child, to someone who has been awakened (2). In Heirs to Dionysus, John Burt Foster says that Nietzsche views “the feeling of increased strength or fullness” as “the precondition for creativity” (120), along with a healthy body (Zarathus- tra 16). Thea often has this feeling of strength, fullness, and good health, but never more so than on the train returning to Moon- stone when she observes a poor young woman dying, probably of tuberculosis. “How horrible to waste away like that,” Thea thinks, “when one ought to be growing fuller and stronger and round- er every day. Suppose there were such a dark hole open for her, between tonight and that place where she was to meet herself? Her eyes narrowed. She put her hand on her breast and smiled— though she was ashamed of it—with the natural contempt of strength for weakness, with the sense of physical security which makes the savage merciless” (241).3 Zarathustra advises his listeners to “ﬁrst be such as love themselves” (109) and argues for the human acceptance of “passion for power” and “selfishness” that the world has cursed (120). In a similar vein, Thea is so dedicated to her art that the young men she meets in Chicago boardinghouses believe her to be “cold, 233 Elements of Modernism self- centered, and unimpressionable” (289). In Panther Canyon, Fred observes that “Thea was one of those people who emerge, unexpectedly, larger than we are accustomed to see them,” and even before she goes to Germany she appears to Dr. Archie “taller and freer,” and “her whole augmented self . . . made him feel that his accustomed manner toward her was inadequate” (409). Accord- ing to James Huneker, Cather’s contemporary and a major source for the character of Fred Ottenburg, “Nietzsche had the true ascetic’s temperament. . . . To become a Superman one must renounce the world” (261). Likewise, Thea chooses to remain in Dresden to debut as Elizabeth in Tannhäuser rather than return to her dying mother, explaining to Dr. Archie that her work has replaced her personal life (501) and that “[i]f you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard” (504). But even more important to the novel than the inﬂuence of the Overman/Superman on Thea’s character are Nietzsche’s ideas in The Birth of Tragedy, the earlier book in which, according to Leon Surette, Nietzsche appears as “the Wagnerian celebrator of myth and ancient wisdom” (168), the book that made the biggest “literary impact” (179) on Cather and on modernism itself, and the book in which, Foster says, Nietzsche portrays his ideal of cultural excellence as found in the ancient Greek world (87). This book too, argues Andrea Gogröf- Voorhees, reveals the late- German “romantic traits in [Nietzsche’s] own nature,” even though he later decries romanticism (108). Nietzsche begins by introducing the two concepts that will thread their way not only through his entire book but also through modernism itself:

We shall have gained much for the science of aesthetics when we have come to realize . . . that the continuous evolution of art is bound up with the duality of the Apolline and the Di- onysiac. . . . We have borrowed these names from the Greeks who reveal the profound mysteries of their view of art to those with insight, not in concepts, admittedly, but through 234 ann moseley

the penetratingly vivid figures of their gods. Their two deities of art, Apollo and Dionysos, provide the starting point for our recognition that there exists in the world of the Greeks an enormous opposition, both in origin and goals, between the Apolline art of the image- maker or sculptor . . . and the imageless art of music, which is that of Dionysos. These two very different drives . . . exist side by side, mostly in open conflict, stimulating and provoking . . . one another to give birth to ever- new, more vigorous offspring in whom they perpet- uate the conflict inherent in the opposition between them, an opposition only apparently bridged by the common term “art”—until eventually . . . they appear paired and, in this pairing, finally engender a work of art which is Dionysiac and Apolline in equal measure: Attic tragedy. (14)

To the best of my knowledge, the first critic to associate the terms Apollonian and Dionysian with Cather’s writing was Ber- nice Slote, in her 1966 essay “First Principles: The Kingdom of Art” (81).4 In 1979, I applied these terms in detail to The Song of the Lark, but at that time I relied more on my knowledge of the myths of these two deities than on Nietzsche. The need remains to connect Nietzsche’s own interpretations of the Apollonian and Dionysian, and how they affected modernism, to Cather and particularly to Song. While favoring Dionysian elements, Nietzsche distinguishes between these two aspects of art and, if somewhat reluctantly, admits the need for both, asserting that “the difficult relationship of the Apolline and the Dionysiac in tragedy truly could be symbol- ized by a bond of brotherhood between the two deities: Dionysos speaks the language of Apollo, but finally it is Apollo who speaks that of Dionysos. At which point the supreme goal of tragedy, and indeed of all art, is attained” (Birth 104). But let’s first review the polarities between the Dionysian and the Apollonian that Nietzsche distinguishes. According to Nietzsche, every artist is “either an Apolline- dream artist or a Dionysian artist of intoxication or finally— as, for example, in Greek tragedy— 235 Elements of Modernism an artist of both dream and intoxication at once” (19). Dionysian elements dominate part 1 of Song, “Friends of Childhood.” Span- ish Johnny experiences what Nietzsche calls “Dionysiac stirrings, which, as they grow in intensity, cause subjectivity to vanish to the point of complete self-forgetting, awaken[ed] either under the influence of narcotic drink . . . or at the approach of spring when the whole of nature is pervaded by lust for life” (17). Early in the novel, Thea accompanies Dr. Archie on a visit to Johnny’s home, to which Johnny has just returned after one of his fits of wandering: “What was termed his ‘wildness’ showed itself . . . in his feverish eyes and in the color that burned on his tawny cheeks. That night . . . his eyes were like black holes” (46–47). As Cather explains, “[h]is talents were his undoing. He had a high, uncertain tenor voice, and he played the mandolin with exceptional skill. Periodically he went crazy. There was no other way to explain his behavior. . . . [S] ome night he would fall in with a crowd at the saloon and begin to sing. He would go on until he had no voice left. . . . Then he would play his mandolin furiously, and drink until his eyes sank back into his head. At last, when he was put out of the saloon at closing time, and could get nobody to listen to him, he would run away. . . . When he was completely wrung out and burned up,— all but destroyed . . . [he] always came back to [his wife] to be taken care of” (47– 48). Thus, Dionysian music, which can be destructive as well as creative as illustrated in ancient Bacchic orgies, is both Johnny’s passion and his undoing. Thea’s piano teacher also shows Dionysian tendencies. At first Professor Wunsch quietly sits with his hosts in the grape arbor (associated with Dionysus as the god of wine), sipping Mrs. Kohler’s homemade wine and, when the time comes, giving Thea her piano lesson. He plays and sings for her the great aria of loss from Gluck’s Orpheus (78– 81)— which is the structuring myth for Thea’s later quest in Panther Canyon. Having once been a great musician himself, he also tells Thea, “Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. . . . There is only one big thing—desire” (84). However, 236 ann moseley while providing a Dionysian impetus for Thea, he is finally overcome by a Dionysian nature unbalanced by the Apollonian, and soon he begins drinking too much, chops down the Kohlers’ dove house, and threatens their trees, after which he leaves town. Thea herself is absorbed by both youthful and artistic desires, so much so that she lies on the floor of her room “in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation”— filled with passion that the elder Dumas felt essential to drama (156). But, as shown by Cather’s imagery, Thea is also starting to develop a balanced life, a life with Apollonian as well as Dionysian elements. She begins to have a “double life” in her new cave-like attic room (64); and when she returns to Moonstone from her first year of study in Chicago and realizes that she cannot live her life in the little town of her birth, she fears that “[t]here were certain dreams that might refuse to come to her at all except in a little morning cave, facing the sun— where they came to her so powerfully, where they beat a triumph to her” (265). Cather associates the sun with Apollo, one of whose roles is that of the Greek god of the sun, just as she associates Dionysus with the moon, under which his worship took place. In Chicago, Thea’s piano studies with Andor Harsanyi develop her love of music as well as her musical intellect, for from him she gets “musical idea[s] and understanding” that she had never had before. She visits the Art Institute but, significantly, is at this point more interested in the “casts” (218)—the sculptures or images that Nietzsche associated with Apollo. Thea’s mother, Ray Kennedy, and Dr. Archie have provided some order for her young life, and she has a necessary— if negative— Apollonian experience with her cold but intelligent voice teacher, Madison Bowers and his pseudo-artist pupils. However, it is not until Thea accepts Fred Ottenburg’s invitation to spend the summer exploring the cliff dwellings of Panther Canyon that she has the full creative Apollonian experience that, combined with her Dionysian background, will ultimately make her the true artist she longs to be. After her depressing experiences in Chicago, Thea descends into Panther Canyon like Orpheus searching for 237 Elements of Modernism his Euridice, and in so doing she goes “back to the earliest sources of gladness that she could remember. She had loved the sun and the brilliant solitudes of sand and sun” long before her life had become encumbered with other things (326). In the ranch house where she stays, she is awakened each morning by “the first fierce shafts of sunlight” (327) that come through her window, and she spends her days in the clean, sun- baked cliff dwellings: “This was her old idea: a nest in a high cliff, full of sun” (328). These sunny days in these womb-like dwellings bring calm to her life and, along with her ritualistic baths, prepare her for the musical ideas that she begins to develop here, Dionysian ideas that have “almost nothing to do with words” (330)— with the dialogue that Nietzsche associates with Apollo (Birth 46). “She was singing very little now, but a song would go through her head all morning, as a spring keeps welling up, and it was like a pleasant sensation, indefinitely prolonged. It was much more like a sensation than like an idea. Music had never come to her in that sensuous form before” (330). Here Thea is approaching that ideal balance between Apollonian ideas (intellect) and Dionysian sensual forces (emotions), a balance that leads to true art. Indeed, one day she has an epiphany about the nature of art: “The stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself,—life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?” (334– 35). In the canyon Thea finds fragments of this sheath, of the pottery that held the artistic desire of the Native women (354). This sheath, of course, represents Apollonian form and order, whereas the water represents Dionysian life and desire. When Fred comes to the canyon, she rejects the idea of his being “the Apollo of a homey flat” for her (349), but by this time she has thrown off her lethargic, dream- like state. She realizes that “with her at least— voice was, first of all, vitality,” and she feels “a liveli- er movement in her thoughts” and “a desire for action” (338). This emphasis on vitality shows the influence on Cather of another important precursor to modernism, Henri Bergson (1859– 1941), the 238 ann moseley

French philosopher whose book Creative Evolution Cather read in 1912 (Cather to Sergeant, 12 September [1912], Letters 167). As W. T. Jones explains, Bergson’s “metaphysics was ‘Romantic’ in its emphasis on dynamism and continuity,” in “its denial of the capacity of reason to know the inner nature of reality, and in its assertion that reality can nonetheless be known— in intuition” (15– 16). Challenging Spencerian and Darwinian mechanism, Bergson, according to Lehan, “created a systematic, rigorous philosophy that became the foundation for modernism” (Literary Modernism 47). Indeed, Lehan asserts, the modernists “would have had to invent” Bergson if they had not already had him, for he not only gave them “a liberated sense of time” but also released them from the limita- tions of Darwinian mechanism, which “robbed the universe of a creative unfolding and man of the corresponding creative power of a deep subjectivity within which the mythic, the primitive, and the intuitive could survive” (“Bergson” 307). Besides the modernists’ interest in myth and the primitive, literary artists such as Cather, Faulkner, Stevens, and Eliot were drawn to Bergson because he wrote like a writer; that is, he frequently used metaphors and images to present his ideas. For example, he compared creative evolution to “a shell, which suddenly bursts into fragments,” in contrast to “a solid ball shot from a cannon” (Cre- ative 98). Moreover, he employs art (145), an artist (177), and a novelist (100) in other philosophical comparisons. To him, the existence of intuition is proven “by the existence of an aesthetic faculty along with normal perception. The intention of life . . . is just what the artist tries to regain, in placing himself back within the object by a kind of sympathy, in breaking down, by an effort of intuition, the barrier that space puts up between him and his model” (177). Similarly, in her 1922 essay “The Novel Démeublé” Cather identifies realism as “an attitude of the mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and can- dour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme” (On Writing 37). The resemblance between these two statements as well 239 Elements of Modernism as Cather’s reference to Bergson in the 1922 preface to Alexander’s Bridge suggest his influence on her. In Bergson and American Culture, Tom Quirk points out that The Song of the Lark is particularly filled with Bergsonian ideas (144– 54). Basic aspects of Bergson’s philosophy that surface in Song, and especially in “The Ancient People”— which Quirk calls “the mystical and aesthetic center of the novel”—are those of the two selves, intuition, perception, duration, and most centrally, élan vital (vital force)—elements that will be discussed in the following paragraphs. From the time Thea moves into her little attic room in Moonstone, she begins to experience “a double life,” having “thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends” (64). In Moonstone she must keep her artistic self hidden under what Bergson calls the social self (Time 231), but she takes her true self to Chicago, where Harsanyi discovers it—the “secret” of her voice—and tells her “the strongest need of your nature now is to find yourself, to emerge as yourself” (Song 232). In Chicago, Thea has trouble discovering her real self, for Bow- ers teaches voice through intellect rather than intuition, and Thea cannot learn that way. According to Bergson, “intellect goes in the inverse direction” to the intuition that leads toward life (Creative 267). Whereas “intelligence treats everything mechanically” (Cre- ative 165), just as Bowers teaches “as if he were in a laboratory” (Song 239), instinct (the precursor to intuition) “proceeds . . . organical- ly” (Creative 165). Bergson asserts that “it is to the very inwardness of life that intuition leads us.” Intuition is, as he defines it, “instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely” (176). In Panther Canyon, when Thea first climbs the ancient water trail, “she began to have intuitions about the women who had worn the path, and who had spent so great a part of their lives going up and down it. She found herself trying to walk as they must have walked. . . . She could feel the weight of an Indian baby hanging to her back as she climbed” (333). Thea’s developing intuition will help her “find her 240 ann moseley

way home” as an artist, just as Cather wrote in her 1922 preface to Alexander’s Bridge that the guide that helps a writer find her way home is “what Mr. Bergson calls the wisdom of intuition as opposed to intellect” (197). Elements of Bergsonian pure perception, duration, and élan vital are also present in the novel. Thea has strong perceptions in the canyon, perceptions that appeal vividly to her senses. The scent of the chokecherry blossoms is “almost sickeningly sweet after a show- er,” and the “bright, flickering, golden-green,— cottonwood seed- lings” provide “a living, chattering screen” for her bath (329). Quirk calls attention to the “pure perception” she experiences when “her power to think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation. She could become a receptacle for heat, or become a color, like the bright lizards that darted about on the hot stones outside her door, or she could become a continuous repetition of sound, like the cicadas” (Quirk 26; Song 330). Here, she feels as if she is “waiting for something to catch up with her. For the first time she experiences music as a “sensation” (Creative 229–30). Her languor- ous form, and the form of her music, is, as Bergson describes the process, in “evolution,” her “body changing form” to a “snapshot view of a transition” (302)— of her awakening as an artist. Lying in the canyon under the sun, Thea leaves mechanical, clock time behind her and, through her memory, experiences duration, or real time, which is, according to Bergson, “a continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future” (Creative 4) and creates a “succession of our conscious states . . . when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states” (Time 100). As her past lengthens into her present, Thea not only reconnects to the places and people of her childhood but also relates intuitively to the Indian women who had walked the same path hundreds of years earlier and inspired her for later “heroic parts” (500). The central image that serves as the catalyst for Thea’s personal and artistic epiphany— the stream and the broken pottery (334)—further recalls Bergson, who, like the modernists, recognized the importance of form, of stable views or 241 Elements of Modernism images of life that initially occur as snapshots but that can, in the process of “Becoming,” be transformed into eternal “Forms” (Cre- ative 302, 317– 18). Interestingly, Bergson uses a musical metaphor to further explain duration and its interconnection with space (which he calls simultaneity— another modernist concept). To Bergson, the “gradual organization of our successive sensations” results in a unity re- sembling that of a phrase in a melody” (Time 110– 11). Without actually singing, but with songs going “through her head” in a new, sensuous way, Thea knows that her voice is now more interesting: “She had begun to understand that . . . voice was . . . vitality, a lightness in the body and a driving power in the blood” (338). Cather’s idea of vitality here derives from Bergson’s concept of the élan vital (Creative 340–41), which Bergson believes is behind the creation of all life. Seeking to answer the question “Where . . . does the vital principle of the individual begin or end?” Bergson looks “further and further back” toward “the individual’s remotest ancestors” and concludes: “Being . . . one with his primitive ancestor, [man] is also solidary with all that descends from the ancestor in divergent directions. In this sense each individual may be said to remain united with the totality of living beings by invisible bonds.” In spite of the “gaps and incoherences” common to all life, “each living being” is part of “the collective whole of all others” (Creative 43). In “The Ancient People” Thea first achieves this sense of vitality and wholeness, later exhibited in her performance as Sieglinde. Another influence on “The Ancient People” in particular is Franz Boas (1858–1942). Born and educated in Germany, Boas immigrated to the United States in 1884 and in 1899 became the first professor of anthropology at New York’s Columbia University (N. F. Boas 123). In his discussion of Cather’s cultural modernism, Richard H. Mill- ington suggests that Cather’s work is “animated by the kind of perspectives the new anthropology”—that of Boas and his students— “made available” (57) and points out that Cather would have known of Boas’s work through a 1910 McClure’s article by Burton J. Hendrick discussing the anthropologist’s work on “immigrant 242 ann moseley

skull sizes,” work that was an “important early attack on theories of racial determinism” (57). It is not known whether or not Cath- er knew Boas and his wife, but his expeditions and his 1911 book The Mind of Primitive Man were well known by the reading public.5 Boas’s primary thesis in The Mind of Primitive Man is that “[t]here is no fundamental difference in the ways of thinking of primitive and civilized man” (17). Cather’s treatment of “The Ancient People” in The Song of the Lark not only shows a Boasian sympathy and respect for Native culture but also includes details and observations resem- bling some of those in Boas’s groundbreaking book. Especially relevant to our discussion here is the artistic heritage of the primitive people who inhabited Panther Canyon—in reality the ancient Sinagua who lived in Walnut Canyon near Flag- staff, Arizona. Boas says that we “must bow to the genius of all” (85) those who helped develop ancient civilization. Recognizing affin- ities among ancient cultures of the American Southwest, Cather demonstrates connections between the “aborigines” (as Ray Ken- nedy calls them) whose burial mounds he and his friends excavated and the tools— “the grinding stones, and drills and needles made of turkey- bone” (333– 34)— that Thea and Old Biltmer find in Panther Canyon. Boas, like Cather and Ray, admires “the perseverance of primitive man in the manufacture of his utensils and weapons” (Boas 48). As Biltmer explains, the ancient people “had developed masonry and pottery far beyond any other crafts” Song( 334), and Ray declares that “if those old fellows had learned to work metals once, your ancient Egyptians and Assyrians would n’t have beat them very much. . . . Their masonry’s standing there today, the corners as true as the Denver Capitol” (128). According to Marc Manganaro, Boas, like other modern anthro- pologists, focuses on “cultural traits in local contexts” (5). Boas defines culture as “the totality of the mental and physical reactions and activities that characterize the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually in relation to their natural environment, to other groups, to members of the group itself and of each individual to himself” and includ- 243 Elements of Modernism ing “the products of these activities and their role in the life of the group” (56). Obviously, the canyon itself determined much of Sinagua culture— their type of housing and their methods of self- protection as well as their food and water and their methods of obtaining them. They built their dwellings in the hollow space created, in Cather’s description, where a “stratum of rock, softer than those above, had been hollowed out by the action of time until it was like a deep groove running along the sides of the canyon” (327). And, after they had made their dwellings, “the next thing was to house the precious water. [Biltmer] explains to [Thea] how all their customs and ceremonies and their religion went back to water. . . . [T]he water was the care of the women. The stupid women carried water for most of their lives; the cleverer ones made the vessels to hold it. Their pottery was their most direct appeal to water, the envelope and sheath of the precious element itself. The strongest Indian need was expressed in those graceful jars, fashioned slowly by hand, without the aid of a wheel” (334). In taking her bath at the bottom of the canyon, Thea feels that the water has “sovereign qualities, from having been the object of so much service and desire” as the Indian women carried their jars up the path from the bottom to the top of the cliff (334). Cather, like Boas, admires the primitive people’s “willingness to undergo privation and hardship . . . to fulfill [their] desires” (48). Boas recognizes the presence of originality (49) and aesthetic needs (58) in primitive people, though he admits that the development of decorative arts does not take place until after the culture has a reliable food supply (71)— one such as the Sinagua would have had from the stream running through Walnut Canyon (until it was dammed up in modern times) and from crops grown on the flat tableland on either side of the cliffs of Walnut Canyon. Boas identifies “culture areas” (55) among which pottery was distributed (60), as shown in the variety of pottery fragments that Thea discovers: “jars done in a delicate overlay, like pine cones”; “patterns in a low relief, like basketwork”; “pottery decorated in color, red and brown, black and while, in graceful geometrical patterns”; “a 244 ann moseley crested serpent’s head, painted in red on terra-cotta”; and “a bowl with a broad band of white cliff- houses painted on a black ground” (Song 336). Some of this pottery supports Boas’s claim that primitive decorated art derives from nature and reality (64), a belief that Ray holds as well (129). As Sinagua style was simple reddish- brown paddle- and- anvil pottery, these other types of pottery attest to dis- semination through area trade. Division of labor, Boas theorizes, also contributed to the development of decorated art objects such as “the beautiful pottery of the Pueblos” (70), but Boas believes that the purpose of primitive art was symbolic as well as aesthetic (83). Likewise, Thea views the pottery she finds as symbolic—as vessels to hold the water of life, indeed life itself: “The Indian women had held it in their jars. In the sculpture she had seen in the Art Institute, it had been caught in a flash of arrested motion. In singing, one made a vessel of one’s throat and nostrils and held it on one’s breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals” (335). Cather’s association of the primitive with originality, with artistic desire, and with art itself parallels her association of Thea with the primitive and the savage. Harsanyi tells Theodore Thomas that Thea is “a fine young savage” with a voice that “is a wild thing” (226–27); Fred accuses her of “turning savage” on him when he kisses her in Panther Canyon and she pushes him away; and Fred says that experiences like Thea’s having to go onstage to sing Sieg- linde in the middle of the performance without any rehearsal is “the kind of rough deal that makes savages of singers” (482). More than once Cather compares Thea to an Indian woman. To Ray, both Thea and her mother “carried their heads like Indian women, with a kind of noble unconsciousness” (135), and climbing up the water trail in the canyon Thea finds herself “trying to walk as [the Indian women] must have walked,” feeling “the weight of an Indi- an baby hanging to her back” (332). In various ways, then, Cather reflects a modern Boasian view of culture, as in what Manganaro calls Boas’s reading of culture “according to the standards of . . . wholeness” (27). Similarly, Thea develops a sense of “wholeness and 245 Elements of Modernism inner well-being” not only after Harsanyi helps her recognize that voice is her artistic genre but also in Panther Canyon and in her final performance. Indeed, “The Ancient People” is a fully modernist text in the center of The Song of the Lark. In Panther Canyon “everything was simple and definite” for Thea, “as things had been in childhood. . . . Her ideas were simplified, became sharper and clearer” (337). Thea has discovered, as Cather writes in “The Novel Démeublé,” that “[t]he higher processes of art are all processes of simplification” (On Writing 40). This section also employs the modernist techniques of juxtaposition, a search or a journey, mythic archetypes, and symbolic images such as “life- giving water or sunlight”— all formalis- tic qualities that Linda Wagner- Martin associates with modernism (4– 5). Except for the time gaps between parts 5 and 6 and between part 6 and the epilogue, the novel as a whole employs a traditional chronological plot structure, but “The Ancient People”— like “Tom Outland’s Story”—metaphorically opens a window and lets in the “fresh air” of Panther Canyon between the adjacent “overcrowd- ed” sections. The canyon itself is a site imbued with the unknown myths and rituals of the ancient Sinagua people. Moreover, the entire section portrays Thea’s Orphic quest for a new understanding of herself and her art in a Freudian landscape rife with birth imagery— the “darkness [that] had once again the sweet wonder that it had in childhood” (326) on her first night and the bright sunlight that wakens her on her first morning; the V-shaped inner gorge of the canyon itself with its fringe of cedars and piñons (327) that Ellen Moers has called “the most thoroughly elaborate female landscape in literature” (228); the sunny cave that Thea takes for her own as she sleeps and waits “for something to catch up with her” (328– 29); and the bathing pool nestled below her cave where she takes her ritualistic baths (329). The novel’s central modernist image, of course, is that of the stream and the broken pottery, which invokes Bergson’s vision of the vitality of life and art. The final section of the novel, “Kronborg,” focuses on Thea as a 246 ann moseley

Wagnerian diva, and in so doing it portrays not only the Bergso- nian vitality of her performances but also the balance of Dionysian and Apollonian qualities that makes her a consummate artist. Ini- tially worshipped and then reviled by Nietzsche, Richard Wagner (1813–83) was both the last of the great romantic composers and a forerunner of modernism. Lehan emphasizes the importance of myth, archetype, and symbol to modernism, stating that “Wagner made varied use of these elements in his tetralogy Der Ring des Ni- belungen (1853–1874) in which nature is violated when the Rhine maidens’ gold is stolen and ‘manufactured’ into a ring. Wagner created a myth appropriate to that moment of history when an industrial system challenged the values of an agrarian culture. Before we return to lost agrarian innocence, we witness the combat and then the death of Siegmund at the hands of Hunding; Siegfried, his son, is killed later by Hagen. When the spirit of nature (the land) is violated, the mythic hero is needed to help restore (as does Siegfried) the lost balance” (Literary Modernism 77). To the young Nietzsche, “the mythic musical grandeur” of Wagnerian opera was “altogether new” and completely shattered “the feeble art and literature that came before it. . . . Because Wag- ner’s art has achieved the ‘highest and purest effect’ that theater can reach,” he thought, “it will inevitably bring ‘innovations everywhere’” (Levenson 2). Although the Wagnerian operas of love and heroism in which Thea performs derive from the ancient German past (Das Rheingold and Die Walküre) and the Christian Middle Ages (Lohengrin and Tannhäuser), they are all music- dramas that exemplify Wagner’s idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total art work,” in conjunction with the idea of interdisciplinarity that, Juliet Koss claims, is “at the heart of modernism” (xi). According to Foster, when Nietzsche wrote The Birth of Tragedy he believed that he had found “in Wagner’s operas . . . the strongest evidence for the new influx of tragic myth needed to accomplish . . . cultural transformation” (90). In her performances, Thea exhibits and combines Nietzsche’s two essential elements of trag- 247 Elements of Modernism edy, the Dionysian and the Apollonian. When Fred describes her performances as a Rhine maiden to Dr. Archie and again when he analyzes her performance of Elsa, he associates Thea with “the idea,” with the intellectual aspect of art and music that Nietzsche connected to Apollo and the dialogue of opera (Birth 46). To Harsanyi, however, the secret that explains her success is the Dionysian quality of passion. These spectator responses, along with those of others in the audience, relate to Levenson’s declaration that “modernism needs to be understood not as an elite craft refined in secret but as a complex exchange between artists and audiences” (3). At the climactic moment of her final performance of Sieglinde, Thea “came into full possession [my italics] of things she had been refining and perfecting for so long” (Song 525), acting “freely to gain possession [my italics] of [herself]” as Bergson believed was necessary to accomplish pure duration (Time 232). That afternoon,

She had only to touch an idea to make it live. While she was on the stage she was conscious that every movement was the right movement, that her body was absolutely the instrument of her idea. Not for nothing had she kept it so severely, kept it filled with such energy and fire. All that deep-rooted vitality flowered in her voice, her face, in her very fingertips. She felt like a tree bursting into bloom. . . . [E]verything in her [was] at its best and everything working together. (526)

For this epiphanic scene, Cather draws on three of her premod- ernist inﬂuences. Her rendition of Thea’s performance connects closely with Wagner’s own poetic description of the recognition scene between Sieglinde and her brother Siegmund, in which the spring “warms them, lo, the branches / Break into blossom; Bud and bough / Submit to his sway” (Wagner, Die Walküre, act 1, p. 15). Thea’s “deep-rooted vitality” represents the “vital process, something like the ripening of an idea,” like “the sprouting and ﬂower- ing” of form that Bergson associates with art (Creative 340– 41). With 248 ann moseley

“everything working together,” Thea has also achieved the artistic wholeness of Dionysian and Apollonian elements that Nietzsche says are required to create an ideal performance for the true “aesthetic spectator” (Birth 105). For her friends Fred, Archie, Harsanyi, and even Johnny Tellamantez, Thea provides this ideal performance and accomplishes what Cather declared (as Evelyn Fun- da reminds us [29]) the true artist must do: the “performer ‘must rouse [the audience’s] strongest emotions, stir their holiest memories’” (Cather, Kingdom 217). In The Song of the Lark, both Cather and Thea accomplish these goals of eliciting emotions and memories from their audiences.

NOTES

1. See my Historical Essay 569, 575– 79 and “Willa Cather’s Transitional Novel” 225– 30, 234– 36). 2. Byrne and Snyder report that although “there is no record of the books Cather selected from the library shelves,” she “used to carry them out by the armful” (69). According to Tom Barnes in Reference Services at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, the library acquired Thus Spake Zarathustra in the week ending 6 February 1904 and, according to the Clas- sified Catalog of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, 1895– 1916, acquired The Birth of Tragedy sometime between 1907 and 1911. The editions were probably Alexander Tille’s translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All or None, published by Macmillan (New York) in 1896, and William August Haussmann’s translation of The Birth of Tragedy, published by Macmillan (New York) in 1909 (Barnes, 30 April and 5 May 2013 emails). These volumes would have been available for Cather to read while she was in Pitts- burgh, either while she resided there between 1896 and 1906 or on her numerous visits there to Isabelle McClung, especially when she was working on The Song of the Lark in Pittsburgh in the fall of 1913, late spring of 1914, and fall and early winter of 1914 (Moseley, Historical Essay 580–82). Cal- lander suggests that Nietzsche’s nihilism may provide a clue to Niel Her- bert’s name in A Lost Lady and further argues for Cather’s emphasis on the aesthetic and the existential as understood by Nietzsche. 3. Slote writes that Cather, during her journalistic years, “was caught in that ancient pull of the gods, torn between the Dionysian and Apollonian 249 Elements of Modernism forces of rapture and repose, release and containment. That conflict was at the very center of her creative will. She wanted both in one. Sometimes she achieved wholeness, as in the temporal-sacred metaphor of art, or even in the figure of the ‘voyage perilous,’ in which were joined both brain and hand, power and craft. But much more was unresolved. That story is harder to tell, for never again after this summer of 1896 would Willa Cather speak so frankly of what she desired, feared, and worshipped in the kingdom of art” (81). I explored these terms in my dissertation, “The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Mythic Quest” (1974), and in my essay “The Dual Nature of Art in The Song of the Lark” (1979). For other discussions of Nietzsche and his ideas of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, see H. M. Jones; Borgman; and Wolff. 4. The first major treatment of Bergson’s influence on Cather is Loretta Wasserman’s “The Music of Time.” 5. Although Cather mentions a “Mrs. Boas” in three letters to Mrs. Char- lotte Stanfield (12 June [1921], #544, p. 83; n.d. [10 June 1922], #600, p. 91; 16 October [1926], #852, 127, all in Cather, Calendar), there is no proof that this Mrs. Boas was the wife of, or indeed any relation of, Franz Boas. According to Tom Barnes in Reference Services at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, sometime in the week ending 23 December 1911 the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh acquired Franz Boas’s The Mind of Primitive Man: A Course of Lectures Delivered Before the Lowell Institute. Boston, Mass. And the Nation- al University of Mexico, 1910– 1911 ([Macmillan, 1911]; Barnes, 30 April and 5 May 2013 emails).

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Borgman, Paul. “The Dialectic of Willa Cather’s Moral Vision.” Renascence 27 (1975): 145– 59. Print. Byrne, Kathleen D., and Richard C. Snyder. Chrysalis: Willa Cather in Pittsburgh, 1896– 1906. Pittsburgh: Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, 1980. Print. Callander, Marilyn Berg. “Another Answer to Myra’s Question: Cather’s Existentialism and the Evidence in the Willa Cather Collection.” Willa Cather: New Facts, New Glimpses, Revisions. Ed. John J. Murphy and Merrill Maguire Skaggs. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2008. 158– 68. Print. Cather, Willa. A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Janis Stout. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893–1896 . Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. Print. —. Preface. 1922. Alexander’s Bridge. 1912. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Tom Quirk and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2007. 195– 98. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art. 1949. Foreword by Stephen Tennant. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. Print. Foster, John Burt. Heirs to Dionysus: A Nietzschean Current in Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981. Print. Funda, Evelyn. Reading Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark.” Western Writer’s Series 137. Boise: Boise State UP, 1999. Print. Gogröf- Voorhees, Andrea. Deﬁning Modernism: Baudelaire and Nietzsche on Romanticism, Modernity, Decadence, and Wagner. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Print. Hendrick, Burton J. “The Skulls of Our Immigrants.” McClure’s Magazine 35 (May 1910): 36– 50. Print. Huneker, James. Egoists: A Book of Supermen. New York: Scribner, 1909. Print. Jones, Howard Mumford. The Bright Medusa. 1952. Excerpted in Willa Cather and Her Critics. Ed. Kames Schoeter. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1967. 235– 48. Print. 251 Elements of Modernism

Jones, W. T. The Twentieth Century to Wittgenstein and Sartre. 2nd ed. A History of Western Philosophy, vol. 5. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975. Print. Koss, Juliet. Modernism after Wagner. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Print. Lehan, Richard. “Bergson and the Discourse of the Moderns.” The Crisis of Modernism: Bergson and the Vitalist Controversy. Ed. Frederick Burwick and Paul Douglass. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. 306– 29. Print. —. Literary Modernism and Beyond: The Extended Vision and the Realms of the Text. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2009. Print. Levenson, Michael. Modernism. New Haven: Yale UP, 2011. Print. Manganaro, Marc. Culture, 1922: The Emergence of a Concept. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002. Print. Mencken, H. L. The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. Kindle book. 1908. Millington, Richard H. “Willa Cather’s American Modernism.” The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather. Ed. Marilee Lindemann. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. 51– 65. Print. Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976. Print. Moseley, Ann. “The Dual Nature of The Song of the Lark.” Western American Literature 14.1 (1979): 20– 32. Print. —. Historical Essay. Cather, The Song of the Lark 549– 615. Print. —. “The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Mythic Quest.” Diss. U of Oklahoma, 1974. Print. —. “Willa Cather’s Transitional Novel: The Song of the Lark as a Romantic Naturalistic Novel with a Modernist Center.” Willa Cather’s “The Song of the Lark.” Ed. Debra L. Cumberland. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. 225– 40. Print. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Ed. Raymond Geuss and Ronald Speirs. Trans. Ronald Speirs. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Print. —. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1883– 91. Trans. Thomas Common. N.p.: Paciﬁc Publishing Studio, 2011. Print. Pater, Walter. The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. London: MacMillan, 1910. Print. Quinones, Ricardo J. Mapping Literary Modernism: Time and Development. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985. Print. Quirk, Tom. Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1990. Print. 252 ann moseley

Schwartz, Sanford. The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot, and Early Twentieth Thought. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985. Print. Seibel, George. “Miss Willa Cather from Nebraska.” New Colophon 2.7 (1949): 195– 208. Rpt. Willa Cather Remembered. Comp. Sharon Hoover and Brent Bohlke. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. 11– 21. Print. Slote, Bernice. “First Principles: The Kingdom of Art.” The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements, 1893– 1896, by Willa Cather. Ed. Bernice Slote. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966. 31– 112. Print. Surette, Leon. The Birth of Modernism. Montreal: McGill- Queen’s UP, 1993. Print. Wagner, Richard. Lohengrin. Metropolitan Opera House Grand Opera Libretto. New York: Fred. Rullman, n.d. Print. Wagner- Martin, Linda. The Modern American Novel, 1914– 1945. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Print. Wasserman, Loretta. “The Music of Time: Henri Bergson and Willa Cather.” American Literature 57.2 (May 1985): 226– 39. Print. Watson, Sarah Cheney, and Ann Moseley, eds. Willa Cather and Aestheticism: From Romanticism to Modernism. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2012. Print. Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. “Time and Memory in Sapphira and the Slave Girl: Sex, Abuse, and Art.” Cather Studies 3. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1996. 212– 37. Print. 12 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness” Reading the Deep Map of Cather’s Southwest

DIANE PRENATT

Willa Cather discovered the American Southwest a decade after she discovered Europe. I use the word “discovered” deliberately, despite its postcolonial baggage, because for Cather, to encounter a landscape was to discern what it had to reveal, to un- cover its meaning. As a child transplanted from Virginia to Nebras- ka, she may have developed an early disposition for such discoveries, but her imaginative experience of landscape and its relation to her writing were redeﬁned by her ﬁrst trip to Europe in 1902, and especially by her visit to Provence. Something about Lettres de mon moulin (1869; Letters from My Windmill), the collection of stories by the Provençal writer Alphonse Daudet, had seemed “very sympathetic to her, very suggestive,” reports Edith Lewis, and when Cather visited the setting of Daudet’s stories she “found something in the Provençal landscape that deeply stirred her, something that in a hidden way linked itself with the American West” (56). What Cather discovered in Provence affected her encounter ten years later with the physical environment of the Southwest, Elizabeth She- pley Sergeant writes, which “made available a path in which a new artistic method could evolve from familiar Nebraska subject matter” (Willa Cather 85). Cather applied her “new artistic method” to The Song of the Lark (1915), in which Thea’s experience in Panther Canyon indicates that embodied imagination, ritualized behavior, and historical-personal memory contribute essentially to the development of the artist.

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In Provence in 1902, Cather had discerned a layering of time and space, history and geography that was as much a sensual delight as it was a concrete affirmation of her prodigious reading in literature and history. There, in “Daudet’s country,” where the Roman past lin- gered on the surface of the Provençal present, she realized, “In Italy itself one could scarcely feel [more] the presence of Rome, of the empire and all it meant . . . than here in the land where the richest and proudest of its colonies flourished” (“In the Country” 946, 947, 951). In Arles she had seen “splendid brown” women and identified their beauty as “Moorish” and “strangely Roman” (948–49); she was ready to believe the old story that the Arlésiennes “owe their beauty to the vows they used to make to their pagan Venus” (951). She imagined the bustling commercial city on the Rhone, that “great highway to Italy” (937), displaying its ostentatious wealth two millennia earlier with “a Chicago like vehemence” (950). The improb- able but apt comparison between twentieth-century Chicago and ancient Arles announces the link Cather was beginning to forge between Provence and the American West. Her imaginative recon- struction of Roman Arles indicates that her “new artistic method” evolved from reading the deep map of Provence. The term “deep map” was first used by William Least Heat- Moon in his 1991 narrative of Chase County, Kansas, PrairyErth (a deep map). Heat- Moon quotes Jim Burden in Cather’s My Ántonia (1918) to describe how the “apparent emptiness, near nothingness” of treeless Chase County makes one feel “erased, blotted out” (12). Hoping to discover a rich complexity in the stark landscape, he begins by discerning in a patchwork of county maps he has laid out on the floor “a kind of grid such as an archaeologist lays over ground he will excavate. Wasn’t I a kind of digger of shards?” he asks (15). Heat-Moon thought his exploration might yield “a topo- graphic map of words that would open inch by inch to show its long miles” (15). But PrairyErth is dense and deep rather than linear, a six- hundred- page inventory of the minutiae of material space, a chronicle of geohistorical time inscribed by folk memory. As Susan Naramore Maher defines them in her recent Deep Map Country: 255 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness”

Literary Cartography of the Great Plains (2014), cartographic narratives like PrairyErth cross disciplines of geology, cultural geography, biology, and folklore; they “create cross-sectional narratives of natural history, illuminating the strata in which deep time and human time collide. . . . [T]hey mark the shifts and migrations, booms and busts, erasures and additions, always keeping an eye open for the palimpsests of former worlds” (15). In PrairyErth, Heat-Moon observes, the deep map of Chase County “unroll[s] like a Chinese scroll painting or a bison- skin drawing where both beginnings and ends of an event are at once present in the conflated time of the American Indian” (15)—the kind of map that might be drawn by a meticulous French priest over forty years of travel with an Indian guide, or by a little girl riding her pony across the Divide, her head full of the stories of immigrant women. Grounded in her deep map reading of Provence, Cather was predisposed to discern the evidence of a dynamic ancient history in the American Southwest when she visited the area in 1912. The “new artistic method” that grew out of the imaginative link between Provence and the American West finds its first expression in The Song of the Lark (1915). Using her own experience as a reference for Thea Kronborg’s in the “Ancient People” section of the novel, Cather retrieves the past of the cliff dwellers and re-places it into Thea’s present. She depicts the past not as so much factual material to be learned by the visitor but as a sensory human history pulsing through the present: a living past, not dead at all (to paraphrase Wil- liam Faulkner), not even past. As Thea becomes more attentive to the presence of the past in the southwestern landscape, her imaginative activity becomes more embodied, her behavior becomes more ritualized, and her personal memory merges with historic memory. Thea’s development as an artist is dependent on these shifts in disposition and behavior, which also contribute to the self- completion of characters in Cather’s later fiction like Tom Outland (The Professor’s House, 1925) and Archbishop Latour (Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927). Thea’s transformation in Panther Canyon thus reveals Cather’s expe- riential understanding of authentic artistic development. 256 diane prenatt

Panther Canyon reanimates Thea. She has been listless, “half anaesthetized” (321), physically ill, and disappointed in the lack of progress she has made in her musical training. More than halfway through the novel, Thea is standing on the threshold between un- comprehending, resistant apprenticeship and the full possession of her musical talent. Fred Ottenburg, who does so much to support Thea’s artistic development, has invited her to recuperate from the difficult Chicago winter at his family’s ranch in Arizona, where his father “owns a whole canyon full of Cliff-Dweller ruins” (319). Virtually alone at the ranch for two months before Fred arrives on his way to California, she is purged of the anxiety and struggle that made up her daily life in Chicago; she is “ashamed to think of what an apprehensive drudge” she had been (338). In the canyon, her personality “seemed to let go of her,” its “old fretted lines . . . erased” (326). She is “released from the enslaving desire to get on in the world” (326). She is “getting back to the earliest sources of gladness,” “the sweet wonder [of] . . . childhood” (326). She luxuriates in the sunny warmth of the canyon, bathing outdoors and sunning herself, picnicking, napping. She also does archaeology. Because when Thea dislodges ﬂakes of carbon from the roof of the cliff dwellings and concludes that they are “the cooking smoke of the Ancient People” (332); when she walks the water trail in imagined imitation of the cliff- dwelling women who had walked it before, their posture formed by the cliff city architecture and the babies they carried on their backs; when she follows Old Henry Biltmer’s directions to ﬁnd “relics” in the ruins of the cliff dwellers (333); when she looks carefully at the colors and patterns on potsherds, matching the pictorial representation of the cliff houses on one to the actual scene before her—Thea is doing what archaeologists do: she is examining the material environment to understand its inhabitants and material artifacts to understand their makers; she is locating a culture in time and space. Like Heat- Moon in Prai- ryErth, she is a “digger of shards,” and to see her as an archaeologist expands our understanding of Cather’s particular deep map of the Southwest. 257 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness”

Archaeology is one of many disciplines that cross in the field of deep mapping; in turn, deep mapping has enriched and complicated archaeology. Influenced by the idea of the deep map, Mike Pear- son and Michael Shanks in their 2001 study Theatre/Archaeology radically reenvision archaeology as a “creative event” that pulls the past into the present to reveal the dynamic “axes of time and space” marking the deep map (xiv, 26). Using the common language of deep mappers, they define the archaeologist’s field as a “stratigra- phy . . . [a] folding, faulting, and erosion” of history and geography (24–25); it is a juxtaposition and interpenetration of time and space. “Archaeology’s temporality is not primarily linear, from past to present,” they write, “but turbulent, past and present percolating” through a “historical density” (10, 3; emphasis in original); “the past bubbles around us” (xvii). In contrast to deep mappers like Loren Eiseley and John McPhee, who are interested in the geological- historical nexus of a place, or others who write about what Maher identifies as “the biology of place” (71), Pearson and Shanks emphasize the artifact as evidence of human ritual. They insist on the relation of the artifact to the physical landscape and the human body and decry its isolation in a museum case. They are interested in the way artifact “attests” to ritual—social, sacred, domestic— that has no written correlative. The archaeological project, they contend, is “the documentation of unwritten happening, attested through material trace” (9); it is “to create an authentic account of the lost event” (2)— not simply to identify, for example, a clay jar as something that contained water, but to imagine the water carrier’s physical behavior in the landscape and social environment, as the clay jar attests to it. “[T]he social needs to be understood as an embodied field,” they contend (xvi; emphasis in original). Moving beyond the fundamental site-specificity of traditional archaeology, Pearson and Shanks discern the sensuality of place and its relation to the “embodied and ineffable” nature of human experience, past and present (10). They reconstruct sensoria, “culturally located ar- rays of the senses” in acknowledgment of “the phenomenological qualities of things and places” (10, xvi). 258 diane prenatt

Pearson and Shanks’s radically revised archaeology departs from the positivist origins of the discipline and its compilation of social science data, which also contributed to the document-driven realist ﬁction Cather criticized in “The Novel Démeublé” (1922). In the terms Cather uses in that essay, Pearson and Shanks seek to understand the way “material things . . . exist . . . in the emotional penum- bra” (40) of a person or community, rather than to undertake “the cataloguing of a great number of material objects” (37). We are not interested so much in the composition of the ﬂoor, Pearson and Shanks say, as in the dust between the tiles, in the grain and patina of the wood. They privilege the anecdotal, the quotidian, the intimate, the liminal, the idiomatic. To adopt the analogy Cather uses to illustrate Professor St. Peter’s experience of “interwoven” official and personal history, they are more interested in “the little playful pattern of birds and beasts” depicted in the Bayeux tapestry than in “the big pattern of dramatic action” enacted by its knights and heroes (Professor’s House 100). Like Cather, they believe that “a new society begins with the salad dressing rather than the destruction of Indian villages” (Cather, “On Shadows” 388). Thea performs as a radical archaeologist in Panther Canyon. Like Pearson and Shanks, she recovers the embodied, ritualistic behavior to which the potsherds and the cliff dwellings attest:

She began to have intuitions about the women who had worn the path, and who had spent so great a part of their lives going up and down it. She found herself trying to walk as they must have walked, with a feeling in her feet and knees and loins which she had never known before— which must have come up to her out of the accustomed dust of that rocky trail. She could feel the weight of an Indian baby hanging to her back as she climbed. (Song 332)

Here, Thea creates what Pearson and Shanks would call an authentic account of the lost event, a quotidian act of unwritten history, discernible only in the landscape itself and in the material traces of the cliff dwellers. Her imaginative recovery of the cliff- dwelling 259 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness” women’s domestic ritual leads to the epiphany she experiences while bathing in the canyon: as they carried water, she realizes, so does her voice carry music, so does her art carry “life itself” (335). Equally important, her re- creation of ritual is an embodied act, consistent with Pearson and Shanks’s assertion that the social past has to be understood as “an embodied field” (xvi). In re- performing the act, Thea increases her own sense of embodiment. Before Thea ever visited Panther Canyon, her interior experience characteristically manifested itself in her body. Her “faculty of observation was never highly developed”; “she experienced [things] physically and remembered them as if they had once been a part of herself” (331). Fred has noticed many times “how vehemently her body proclaimed her state of feeling” (321). “[H]er back was most extraordinarily vocal. One never needed to see her face” to gauge her mood (321). But over the course of her dispiriting winter in Chicago she had become dissociated from her body, degraded by a dirty room with no running water and a chambermaid who “was such a dirty creature that Thea would not let her touch her cot,” “too sick to care” that the medical student attending to her “had exceeded his rights” (315). As she becomes reanimated in Panther Canyon, however, Thea reclaims her body, bathing and sleeping in the canyon. Her embodied engagement with the intangible is deepened as well. She holds “pleasant and incomplete conceptions in her mind— almost in her hands” (330). A song goes through her head “more like a sensation than an idea. . . . [H]er power to think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation” (330). She becomes more aware of her own physical connection to elements of the ancient landscape around her, constructing her own sensori- um. She feels capable of a kind of synaesthetic transformation into “a mere receptacle for heat,” like “the hot stones outside her door,” or “a color, like the bright lizards” or “a continuous repetition of sound, like the cicadas” (330). Thea’s sensory interchange with the landscape also exemplifies the function of “somatic mind,” which Kristie S. Fleckenstein defines in “Writing Bodies: Somatic Mind in Composition Stud- 260 diane prenatt

ies” (1999) as a faculty that “locates an individual within concrete spatio- temporal contexts . . . [and] recognizes the cultural, historical, and ecological systems that penetrate and reconstitute these material places” (281). Somatic mind, then, demands a relationship with the deep map of one’s environment. Fleckenstein asserts that a state of “being-in- a- material- place,” a “corporeal certainty” (286, 288), is essential to the development of somatic mind, which will facilitate the embodied writing practice she advocates as an alternative to merely discursive (i.e., intellectualized) writing. Her rich and suggestive exploration of embodied writing practice extends beyond composition studies to provide an explanation for the imaginative and creative process in general. In Fleckenstein’s terms, Thea’s music practice in Chicago is discursive; she learns and then performs almost mechanically. It is only in isolated moments, as when she performs for the Nathanmeyers, that she truly inhabits her own body. In Panther Canyon, as she grows increasingly embodied, she develops “corporeal certainty”: her “[i]dentity expands to include the entire system of information exchange that comprises [her] location in a specific place at a specific moment” (Fleckenstein 288). Fleckenstein outlines a process of embodiment whereby the material boundary between self and environment becomes “permeable” (286); Thea “could become a mere receptacle for heat, or become a color, . . . or she could become a continuous repetition of sound” (Song 330). The writer (artist) undergoes an “immersion,” an experience in which “the boundaries between self and reality dissolve,” which Fleckenstein defines as a moment of “slippage between the is and the as if ” (295)— between metaphor and simile. Thea’s epiphany is embodied metaphor: the water the Indian women had held in their jars, the arrested motion caught in the Art Institute sculpture, what one “holds on one’s breath” in the “vessel of one’s throat and nostrils” (335)— these elements exchange identities, creating permeability between the physical boundary of Thea’s singing voice and the jars of water, the sculpture in arrested motion. From immersion, Fleckenstein finally states, there is “emergence” that balances the pleasure of boundless embodiment 261 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness” with a commitment to “culture and accountability” (297). Thea emerges from her experience having claimed her identity and her “older and higher obligations” to her art (339). Acutely conscious of her own embodiment, Thea develops an empathic awareness of the lived experience the cliff dwellings had housed: “certain fears and desires; feelings about warmth and cold and water and physical strength” (333). From the landscape itself, “out of the rock-shelf on which she lay[,] . . . certain feelings were transmitted to her, . . . not expressible in words, but . . . translate[d] . . . into attitudes of body” (333). Other critical readers of The Song of the Lark, notably Sharon O’Brien, have called our attention to the embodied quality of the Panther Canyon landscape. While it may be true that “Cather imagined the land as female” with its “womb-like” and labial topographical features (O’Brien 410, 411), my point here is a different one: what is important for Thea is that her own embodiment allows her to imagine the bodies that once inhabited that particular landscape. Observing a ruined watchtower in Panther Canyon where the ancient people had ensnared eagles, Thea imagines over and over again, “[s]ometimes for a whole morning,” “the coppery breast and shoulders of an Indian youth” throwing a net and struggling with an eagle (333). As a kind of archaeologist, she imagines the embodied Indian in his natural landscape and social environment, as the watchtower attests to it. Thea’s increased embodiment also changes the tenor of her relationship with Fred when he arrives at Panther Canyon, and throughout his stay their behavior with each other becomes increasingly sexual. He and Thea spend days exploring the canyon, and at one point he shows her how to throw a heavy stone off a ledge, far out onto the rocks below. The scene is playful, but it soon becomes sexualized: Fred registers the fact that “there weren’t many girls who could show a line like that from the toe to the thigh, from the shoulder to the tip of the outstretched hand” (342). He teaches her to move beyond imagined constraint and launch her body into space, “stretch[ing] her arm in position, whirl[ing] round on her left foot to the full stretch of her body” (341– 42). 262 diane prenatt

Fred is essentially teaching her how not to throw like a girl. The image of the ancient (male) Indian throwing the net, which Thea had imagined repeatedly, resonates in her repeated attempts to throw the stone correctly. The scene literalizes Thea’s development of feminine embodied consciousness as Iris Marion Young delin- eates it in her landmark essay, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenome- nology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility and Spatiality.” “For many women as they move in sport,” Young observes, “a space surrounds them in imagination which we are not free to move beyond” (143). Young identifies that bounded imaginary space as the source of “inhibited intentionality” and notes that “[f]emi- nine existence appears to posit an existential enclosure between herself and the space around her” (147, 149). Assenting to Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s location of subjectivity in the body rather than in the mind, Young concludes that feminine consciousness remains undeveloped when the feminine body does not move into all of the space that is available to it. The “Ancient People” section of Cather’s novel illustrates Young’s claim: as Thea becomes increasingly physical and sensate in the southwestern landscape, she becomes increasingly conscious and intentional. In Panther Canyon she reclaims her body through physical behavior in the landscape which imitates that of the ancient cliff dwellers, and it becomes the center of her consciousness. Her embodiment has increased her sensory pleasure and deepened her understanding of the source of art. It also leads Thea to enact her own agency as an artist: reflecting on her experience of Panther Canyon, she decides to go to Ger- many to study, refining her aim and moving beyond constraining boundaries in that way as well. In the stratigraphic landscape of the Southwest, the radical archaeologist pulls the ritualized life of the ancient cliff dwellers into the present. In her 1916 essay on Mesa Verde for the Denver Times, Cather wrote: “Everything in the cliff dweller villages points to a tempered, settled, ritualistic life. . . . Their lives were so full of ritual and symbolism that all their common actions were ceremonial. . . . [T]heir settled mode of living, their satisfying ritual, seem 263 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness” to have made this people conservative and aristocratic” (“Mesa Verde” 332). “The Ancient People” presents an early delineation of Cather’s lifelong attention to the ritualistic quality of everyday life. Ten years later, in “Tom Outland’s Story,” for example, Fr. Duchêne deduces from material traces that the mesa dwellers “purif[ied] life by religious ceremonies and observances” (Professor’s House 219); in Archbishop, Latour appreciates the Indian “veneration for old customs” (143), which he finds similar to Catholic practice. In the two later novels, historic cultural rituals underlie the ordered, sensual ritual of St. Peter’s and Latour’s personal lives. In Song, the ritualized nature of past life bubbles up into Thea’s present: “The atmosphere of the canyon was ritualistic” (334). The material traces of the cliff dwellers— the potsherds, the “grinding- stones, and drills and needles made of turkey- bones” (333– 34)— attest to the rituals of their lives. Thea is able to receive her epiphanic understanding of the function of art— that, like a jar holding water, art holds “for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself” (335)— because she has imagined and attempted to enact the ritualized behavior of the ancient women who carried the jars. Old Henry explains to Thea that the water the women carried in pots was the origin of “the customs and ceremonies and religion” (334) of the cliff dwellers. She is bathing with a new “ceremonial gravity[,] . . . splashing water between her shoulder- blades” (334) when she realizes that her own art is like the ancient potter’s art. Her epiphany is an enacted metaphor derived from a newly aware— a bodily conscious— experience of the water that used to be carried in the painted jars whose fragments she sees around her. By the time Cather visited the Southwest and wrote The Song of the Lark, the water- jar carrier, or “olla maiden” (olla is the Pueblo word for “water jar”), had become an icon of Pueblo culture. In “‘A New Mexican Rebecca’: Imaging Pueblo Women,” Barbara A. Bab- cock examines the tradition of the olla maiden as “the classic met- onymic misrepresentation of the Pueblo” and the nature of Anglo America’s cultural investment in the image (403; emphasis in origi- 264 diane prenatt

nal). She finds that, by the 1880s, the olla maiden was represented in travel literature and images as analogous to Palestinian women— women whom Anglo Christian readers would have identified with the ancient time of the Bible, nonthreatening orientialized Others. “This is aesthetic primitivism,” Babcock asserts, “and this is a form of colonial domination—a gaze which fixes and objectifies, which masters” (404). Song participates in the primitivist discourse of its time. Cather’s description of Thea’s experience in Panther Canyon is replete with the tropes of modernist primitivism cataloged by Marianna Torgovnick in Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives (1990): in Panther Canyon, Thea has become childlike, one with nature, free (8). Viewing the figure of the olla maiden in Cath- er’s novel as an appropriation of the orientalized Other is consistent with O’Brien’s claim that Cather approached the American Southwest through her experience of nineteenth- century French fiction, which orientalized Mediterranean France and North Afri- ca, as well as biblical and church history (407). “France to Cather was the symbolic location of the Other,” O’Brien states (135); Bab- cock argues that “the Southwest is America’s Orient” (406; emphasis in original). As a radical archaeologist, however, Cather seems much more interested in slippage and connection than in the binaries generated by the vocabulary of alterity. The jars and potsherds Thea discovers bring her “centuries nearer” to their makers (336); they bind her “to a long chain of human endeavor” and make “the world seem older and richer” (337). “[S]he herself seemed older” as well (337): “The Cliff- Dwellers had lengthened her past” (339). Human history becomes personal history. Like Tom Outland, who names the ancient mummified body “Mother Eve,” slipping timeless biblical history into familial relationship, Thea appropriates an ancestry from the ancient women potters, who were artists before her. Fred witnesses the extension of Thea’s personal history into cultural history when he sees her standing on the edge of a projecting crag, waving to him, throwing an arm over her head—occupying the space available to her. He “rhetorically addressed the figure in the air. ‘You are 265 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness” the sort that used to run wild in Germany, dressed in their hair and a piece of skin. Soldiers caught ’em in nets’” (353). He recognizes the historical density of her life. There are nearly a thousand years of history in that girl. Like a radical archaeologist myself, I want to poke around in the dust between the tiles just a little further, to pull more of the anecdotal and personal past into our present reading of The Song of the Lark. So I ask, did Cather think of herself as an archaeologist? Her early correspondence with Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant attests to their sharing a kind of archaeological sensibility; a shared appreciation of the deep map was a foundation of their early friendship. By the time Sergeant and Cather first met, Sergeant had been to Europe twice, with prolonged stays in France. During their first meeting, Sergeant captivated Cather with a story from her 1908 trip to Greece, when she saw Anatole France in an Athens museum, clutching a goblet from the excavated Mycenaean treasure (Willa Cather 38), a stratigraphic image enfolding some three millennia of history. The women shared a love of Avignon and the Rhone Valley, Daudet’s country; in fact, in a letter written during her 1912 Southwest visit, Cather encourages Sergeant, as desperate as she was to find “four walls in which one can write,” to go to Avignon; “I know you can work at Avignon,” she repeats two months later (Letters 151, 161– 62). And Cather seems eager to have Sergeant understand the link between Provence and the American South- west: when she wants to convey the magnificence of the country surrounding Albuquerque, she writes to Sergeant that “the valley of the Rhone is nothing to it” (Letters 151). Trying to discern its deep map, she writes that it needs “a new tragedy or a new religion, some crusades or something” (151). During a visit to the Museum of Natural History in May 1914 to see excavated cliff- dweller artifacts, Sergeant was transported by Cather’s description of “the burning sun of Arizona; the cry of the cicada in the great silence of a cliff city; the aromatic odor of yellow flowers growing in rocky crevic- es” (Willa Cather 123). Cather could just as easily have been describing sunny Provence, with its cigales (cicadas) and wild mustard. 266 diane prenatt

When Sergeant returned from a third trip to France, in 1913, Cather insisted on “[m]ore, more, tell her more about Provence. Like the Southwest it was a land that made one mad with delight” (Willa Cather 97; emphasis in original). Sergeant would spend several years in the Southwest herself, in the 1920s and 1930s, with other “Bryn Mawrters” who used their rigorous educations and highly developed social consciences to advocate for the retention of Indian rights to traditional education and religious practices and for the re- valorization of Pueblo culture, including its artifacts. Sergeant worked with John Collier for the Indian Defense Association and later for the Commission for Indian Affairs, and for the School of American Research. In 1923 she published an article in The Nation about New Mexico, part of the same series as Cather’s “Nebraska: The End of the Cycle.” She describes the inhabitants of New Mexico as “pioneers in space and time” and notes the “Palestinian” quality of some of the villages (“New Mexico” 577). She states that the archaeological possibilities of New Mexico are immense and that “a pottery jar as fine as any in Crete can be had for the digging” (579), preempting by a couple of years Fr. Duchêne’s judgment that Cliff City pottery is similar or identical to “early pottery from the island of Crete” (Pro- fessor’s House 218). In 1922, Sergeant published a four- part article in Harper’s titled “The Journal of a Mud House” about the renovation of an adobe house in Tesuque, where she lived while working in New Mexico. It is itself a deep map reading, the stratigraphic study of topography, local culture, folkways, and economics, as well as the reflective memoir of a woman trying to establish “a room of one’s own.” Despairing of the transformation of old churches filled with santos into “neat little modern sanctuar[ies] with polished oak pews and commercial Madonnas all golden hair, pink cheeks, and blue robes” (57)— in other words, the disappearance of material traces that attest to ritual— Sergeant exclaims, “If only the Southwest could be ruled by a Roman Catholic potentate with an archaeological and aesthetic tradition!” (57). Sergeant’s article was published three years before “the idea of Death Comes for the Arch- 267 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness” bishop came to [Cather],” as Edith Lewis reports it, “in a single evening . . . essentially as she afterwards wrote it” (139). In these early years of friendship with Cather, archaeology was hardly new to Sergeant, a major in history and political science at Bryn Mawr, where the history curriculum included a course in “The Primitive Societies of America.” While Sergeant was at Bryn Mawr, an important collection of red- and black-painted Greek vases and sherds was assembled there by the director of her major department. Those artifacts may have influenced the professional choices of Ser- geant’s classmate and lifelong friend, Hetty Goldman, who went on to earn a doctorate in archaeology from Radcliffe and in 1911 became the first woman to direct an excavation on mainland Greece. By the time she first met Cather, Sergeant’s cultural experience was extensive— in some ways, beyond Cather’s— and her political con- science was highly developed. She was quite sensitive to the cultural politics of European immigrants, for example, and chided Cather for her apparent apathy toward the Italian artisans of Washington Square, forced into degraded work in the garment trade (Willa Cath- er 36). This discernment of the “political meanings of space” is also a kind of deep map reading, which Susan Stanford Friedman identifies as a “geopolitical reading” (110). Sergeant would be likely to question whether a St. Louis beer baron like Otto Ottenburg could—or should—“own a whole canyon full of Cliff- Dweller ruins.” Cather and Sergeant shared a frank fascination with men whom they constructed as primitives. Cather’s captivation with Julio, described in her 1912 letters to Sergeant, has been treated in detail by Sharon O’Brien and James Woodress, but it is worth noting once again that Cather describes Julio as (thrillingly) primitive and that she is very much aware of the construction. She hates to be one of those people who “rave about the beauty of untutored youths of Latin extraction” (Letters 159), she writes to Sergeant, but raves on nonetheless: “He’s never read anything but the prayer-book, so he has no stale ideas—not many ideas at all, indeed” (158; emphasis in original). She sees the historical past in him: “[H]e has the long strong upper lip that is so conspicuous in the Aztec sculpture” 268 diane prenatt

(159). The very next year, Sergeant matched Cather’s Aztec with her Fauve, “the wild man from a Provençal vineyard . . . le sauvage, as his mother called him” (Willa Cather 114). Both women are in- trigued by men whose cultural past is so clearly discernible in the present, as Fred was by his imagined tribal Thea. Torgovnick states that “the idiom ‘going primitive’ is in fact congruent in many ways to the idiom ‘getting physical’” (228), and indeed, Sergeant’s stories of the Fauve, according to her memoir, lead the two women to banter about marrying these men and to a conversation about the incompatibility of marriage and children with the life of the artist. Two friends, cartographers of considerable depth, their heads bent over the map of a beloved place: it’s a lovely image. But it is also instructive. “A ‘wonder’ that has only a geological history can be interesting for only a limited space of time,” Cather wrote to Sergeant from the Grand Canyon in 1912 (Letters 157–58). And so, from a land that at first glance appeared “unstoried” (as her friend Robert Frost would call it), Cather created and re- created inhabitants, artifacts, rituals; she recovered its history and replaced it in the history of a girl like herself, an “orphan soul trying to find its kin somewhere in the universe” (“Joseph” 97). The nexus of geology and history, space and time, continued to resonate in her fiction, in the juxtapositions and interpenetrations of European and American culture in One of Ours (1922), The Professor’s House (1925), Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), and Shadows on the Rock (1931). The Song of the Lark (1915) may be its most intense expression, however: the historic past of the ancient potters welling up into the personal present of the twentieth- century opera singer to create “life itself” (273).

WORKS CITED

Babcock, Barbara A. “‘A New Mexican Rebecca’: Imaging Pueblo Women.” Journal of the Southwest 32 (1990): 400– 437. Print. Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. 1927. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy and Charles W. Mignon. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1999. Print. 269 “The Earliest Sources of Gladness”

—. “In the Country of Daudet.” Nebraska State Journal 19 Oct. 1902. Rpt. The World and the Parish. Ed. William M. Curtin. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. 2: 946– 52. Print. —. Review of Joseph and His Brothers. 1936. Not Under Forty. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. 96– 102. Print. —. “Mesa Verde . . . .” Denver Times 31 Jan. 1916. Rpt. Cather, The Professor’s House 327– 36. Print. —. “The Novel Démeublé.” 1922. Not Under Forty. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. 43– 51. Print. —. “On Shadows on the Rock.” Saturday Review of Literature 17 Oct. 1931. Rpt. Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy, David Stouck, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2005. 387– 89. Print. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. Fleckenstein, Kristie S. “Writing Bodies: Somatic Mind in Composition Studies.” College English 61 (1999): 281– 306. Print. Friedman, Susan Stanford. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. Print. Heat- Moon, William Least. PrairyErth (a deep map). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. Print. Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record. 1953. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1976. Print. Maher, Susan Naramore. Deep Map Country: Literary Cartography of the Great Plains. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2014. Print. O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Ballantine Books, 1987. Print. Pearson, Mike, and Michael Shanks. Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. “The Journal of a Mud House.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine Mar. 1922: 409– 22; Apr. 1922: 585– 98; May 1922: 774– 82; June 1922: 56– 67. Print. —. “New Mexico: A Relic of Ancient America.” Nation 2 Nov. 1923: 577– 79. Print. 270 diane prenatt

—. Willa Cather: A Memoir. 1953. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1963. Print. Torgovnick, Marianna. Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. Young, Iris Marion. “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility and Spatiality.” Human Studies 3 (1980): 137– 56. Print. 13 Re(con)ceiving Experience Cognitive Science and Creativity in The Song of the Lark

JOSHUA DOLEŽAL

Anyone hazarding a scientific reading of Willa Cather’s work might take warning from her scorn for her former professor Lucius Sherman at the University of Nebraska. Sherman’s An- alytics of Literature (1893) counted word frequency and used equa- tions to measure sentence length and “ratios of force” (Woodress 80). In his preface, Sherman claims great success with his “objective” method in literature classes: “Those accustomed to write in a lumbering awkward fashion began to express themselves in strong, clear phrases, and with a large preponderance of simple sentences. . . . Students apparently without a taste for reading, or capacity to discern common literary excellencies, were enabled to appreci- ate and enjoy poetry as well as the best” (v). Sherman sums up his results in a voice redolent of the laboratory: “Things vague were made definite. Grounds of judgment before indeterminate or hidden were made plain. Criticism was rendered confident; and no little enthusiasm was aroused” (v). Little wonder that Cather was not impressed. She parodied his Analytics in an anonymous poem that appeared in The Hesperian in 1893: “Ah I counted, Queen, and counted, / And rows of figures massed / Till e’en my days are numbered / And I’m counted out at last” (qtd. in Woodress 81). While Cather defended experimental science in her 1890 commencement speech, “Superstition vs. Investigation,” and remained fascinated by medicine throughout her life, long after her youthful

271 272 joshua doležal scientific ambitions had cooled, she despised reductive thinking. In a 1943 letter to Sigrid Undset, Cather characterized the “cold pride of science” as the “most devilish thing that has ever come into this world” and as the “absolute enemy of happiness” (623–24). By aligning herself with nineteenth- century romanticism in her early novels and essays, Cather distanced herself and her artistic protagonists from the scientific materialism that influenced her realist and naturalist contemporaries. This polarity is strongest in the early novels, but it persists in her 1922 essay “The Novel Démeublé,” where she writes, “Literalness, when applied to the presenting of mental reactions and of physical sensations, seems to be no more effective than when it is applied to material things. . . . Characters can be almost de- humanized by a laboratory study of the behavior of their bodily organs under sensory stimuli—can be reduced, indeed, to mere animal pulp” (50– 51). Cather resisted reductive forms of realism and naturalism by emphasizing the interplay between body and mind in her artists, who are awakened viscerally and ex- istentially while deeply connected to nature. Recent work in cognitive science offers a fresh prism for reading Cather’s aesthetics, suggesting that her commingling of naturalism and romanticism in her representations of artistic awakening reveals a form of modernism. As Astradur Eysteinsson suggests, rather than eschewing the “real world,” modernists sought reality “at a different level of human existence, reality as it is processed by the human consciousness” (184). Modern psychology challenged the concept of the uni- fied mind, suggesting that consciousness was a “flux of sensations and perceptions, dissolving from one occasion to the next, and ruled (if ruled at all) by unconscious desires not always available to conscious awareness” (Matz 220). While emphasizing the disinte- gration of selfhood, modern novelists also explored the process of self-making, the very project that Cather’s artists undertake. Rather than receiving inspiration passively, Cather’s artists actively construct their visions from lived experience, awakening not to the divine or the magical but to their individual power to perceive, and thus to infuse meaning into, physical reality. 273 Re(con)ceiving Experience

Perhaps the most iconic of these awakenings emerges in The Song of the Lark, where Thea Kronborg is transformed in the desert landscape from an “apprehensive drudge” to an artist illuminated by a “power of sustained sensation” (Song 330). Her liberation has been read as akin to “religious ecstasy” (Rosowski 67), as a release of sexual and creative energy (O’Brien 410), as an intellectual em- igration from Thea’s family ancestry to the broader “tradition of artistry” (Urgo 139), as an escape from language into a silent absorption of music and ideas (Cumberland 67), as a symbolic extension of cultural unity and ecological growth (Moseley 220, 225), and as a fictionalized account of Cather’s own discovery of “a new, vigorous, confident self” during her trip to Arizona and New Mex- ico in 1912 (Stout 124). I will extend these readings to a discussion of blending theory, which applies linguistics and neuroscience to the study of consciousness and offers a fresh understanding of the relationship between cognition and creativity in The Song of the Lark. Thea Kronborg’s emergence as an artist requires a return to the most fundamental elements of thought in Panther Canyon, where she rediscovers her innate gift for blending, experiencing ideas as sensations that she later translates into stage roles where there is a “basic idea . . . pulsing behind every bar she sings” (464). This simultaneously active and passive process of re(con)ception, a term I borrow from Mark Bruhn (563), defines her growth as an artist. By emphasizing Cather’s attention to the visceral root of artistic epiphany, I will show how her anticipation of recent discoveries in brain science reveals the modernist exploration of reality through the human consciousness.

BLENDING THEORY AND THE IMAGINATION As Mark Bruhn notes, “the reigning topic of the day” in cognitive science is imagination (543). While emerging theories of cognition vindicate some principles of romanticism, such as the central role of blending in the imagination, they also include some 274 joshua doležal significant revisions of nineteenth-century thinking. “Romantic theory may stand in relation to the cognitive science of imagination,” Bruhn writes, “as a storehouse of more or less clearly formu- lated issues and distinctions, some of which might be reframed as theoretically powerful and empirically testable hypotheses” (548). One of the issues that cognitive science reframes and revises is the polarity of romantic and scientific explanations of the imagination. In his Biographia Literaria (1817), Samuel Taylor Coleridge contrasts his sense of the imagination as an independent power with the scientific view of cognition and creativity as driven by “blind mechanism” or an “agency wholly independent and alien” (81). Coleridge declares, “The inventor of the watch, if this doctrine be true, did not in reality invent it; he only looked on, while the blind causes, the only true artists, were unfolding themselves” (82). The imagination, as Coleridge understands it, is a creative force independent of external and material causes, like a “water- insect” that “wins its way up the stream, by alternate pulses of active and passive motion, now resisting the current, and now yielding to it in order to gather strength and a momentary fulcrum for a further propulsion” (86). Similarly, he argues, in the mind “[t]here are evidently two powers at work, which relatively to each other are active and passive; and this is not possible without an intermediate faculty, which is at once both active and passive” (86). This intermediate faculty, the imagination, is “the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, . . . a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM” (202). While Coleridge’s definition of the imagination anticipates many of the principles of blending theory, he regarded scientific and romantic explanations of human creativity as antipodal worldviews. Cognitive science reveals a modernist fusion of romanticism and realism by demonstrating that imagination “grow[s] out of bodily experience” and is a form of “embodied human understanding” (Johnson xiv, xv). Aristotle associated imagination with sense perception, as did Thomas Hobbes and other Enlightenment- era thinkers. The fresh contribution of cognitive science to this old 275 Re(con)ceiving Experience conversation is a sense that even though the mind is the body, the dynamic and recursive exchange between sensual experience and thought is innately creative, not fundamentally mechanistic. A foundational premise of blending theory is that the intellectual gift taken for granted in metaphor— connecting two unrelated things—is the foundation of thought. As Mark Johnson explains, metaphor is “one of the chief cognitive structures by which we are able to have coherent, ordered experiences” (xv). Metaphor is like our instinctive sense of balance, without which “our physical reality would be utterly chaotic, like the wildly spinning world of a very intoxicated person”; just as physical balance keeps us upright, metaphor “holds together several aspects of our understanding of the world” (74). Because metaphorical reasoning gives structure and meaning to experience, metaphors might be understood as “‘structures of understanding’ because they are patterns in terms of which we ‘have a world,’ which is what is meant by ‘understanding’ in its broadest sense” (82–83). Other neuroscientists characterize consciousness as a “leaderless string quartet” that dynamically composes a symphony “without a unifying score” (Hill 112). While the metaphors used to explain consciousness differ, cognitive scientists agree that creativity and reason are interdependent. Blending theory, developed by Gilles Fauconnier (a neuroscien- tist) and Mark Turner (a linguist), resonates with Coleridge’s sense of the imagination as composed of both active and passive facul- ties. Sensation triggers thought, which moves dynamically and re- cursively between linked mental spaces created by sensory experience and a “blended space,” or simply “the blend” (41). The result is an integration network: “Building an integration network involves setting up mental spaces, matching across spaces, projecting selectively to a blend, locating shared structures, projecting backward to inputs, recruiting new structure to the inputs or the blend, and running various operations in the blend itself” (Fauconnier and Turner 44). The “emergent structure” of the blend is dynamic, defined by “composition, completion, and elaboration” (48, 89). To illustrate how composition, completion, and elaboration 276 joshua doležal function in cognitive blending, Fauconnier and Turner pose a riddle adapted from Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation:

A Buddhist Monk begins at dawn one day walking up a mountain, reaches the top at sunset, meditates at the top for several days until one dawn when he begins to walk back to the foot of the mountain, which he reaches at sunset. Make no assumptions about his starting or stopping or about his pace during the trips. Riddle: Is there a place on the path that the monk occupies at the same hour of the day on the two separate journeys? (39)

To solve this riddle, we must imagine the monk ascending and descending the mountain on a single day, walking to meet himself. Fauconnier and Turner write, “The imaginative conception of the monk’s meeting himself blends the journey to the summit and the journey back down, and it has the emergent structure of an ‘encounter,’ which is not an aspect of the separate journeys” (40). Because we need this emergent structure— this imagined encounter— to solve the riddle, we cannot reason our way through it without the creative process of blending. Emergent structure for the Buddhist monk scenario is composed by imagining two simultaneously walking monks who are, in fact, the same person. The scenario gains completion when we imagine the two monks beginning their journeys at the same time from the base and summit of the mountain. With the scenario complete the blend becomes dynamic, and we can elaborate the blended space by imagining the monk meeting himself on the mountainside. Fauconnier and Turner describe the cognitive result:

As we run the blend, the links to the inputs are constantly maintained, so that all these “sameness” connections across spaces seem to pop out automatically, yielding a ﬂash of comprehension. . . . But for this ﬂash to occur, counterpart links must be unconsciously maintained even as they change dynamically across four mental spaces. . . . But this “geometric” 277 Re(con)ceiving Experience

knowledge of correlations among time, position of the monk, and location on the path in the different spaces is completely unconscious. What comes into consciousness is the ﬂash of comprehension. And it seems magical precisely because the elaborate imaginative work is all unconscious. (44)

Blending theory clarifies the fundamentally creative structure of thought, which renders even more miraculous the elastic perception required for reading Cather’s fiction, where sensory inputs and blended spaces are manifold. I will return to the implications of conceptual blending for reading Cather’s fiction, particularly in sympathy with her démeublé aesthetic, but first I must consider how blending theory illuminates Thea Kronborg’s experience in Panther Canyon, where her creative energies are unleashed.

CREATIVE AWAKENING IN PANTHER CANYON

Feminist readings of The Song of the Lark have firmly established the relationship between Thea’s artistic voice and her body with special attention to the sexual aesthetics of Panther Canyon, where Thea finds freedom from the oppressive social and psychological forces that have prevented her from emerging fully as an artist. As Sharon O’Brien notes, “Thea’s birth as an artist, like Cath- er’s, takes place in a landscape that resembles the female body” (410). Debra Cumberland explains that once Thea escapes the tu- telage of Madison Bowers, her clinical voice instructor in Chicago, she discovers that “an artistry not grounded in her physical and emotional self is harmful to her as a woman, and as a singer” (59). Susan Rosowski similarly describes Thea’s ability to “take into herself others’ desires and convert them into song” (68). O’Brien explains that Thea’s creative power is both metaphorical, her physical voice like a womb that blends “biological with artistic gifts, unconscious, inborn endowment with technique and discipline” (173), and literally rooted in the material world, in sensory experience. These and other feminist readings of Thea’s development as an art- 278 joshua doležal ist show how physical experience sparks the dynamic function of the imagination in its receptive and active modes. Blending theory extends feminist readings by illuminating the relationship between Thea’s artistic awakening and the transformation of her thought structures by physical experience in Panther Canyon. Whereas previous readings of Thea’s awakening have emphasized “a mode of creativity marked by receptivity rather than self-assertion” (O’Brien 415), noting the role that silence plays in her physical and emotional liberation (Cumberland 69) or her sense of vibrating with experience like the “familiar Aeolian harp” (Rosowski 70), Thea’s existential rebirth in Panther Canyon shows a more forceful assertion of imagination, one that is enabled first by purging the cognitive structures that have suppressed her full creative potential and subsequently by composing, completing, and elaborating more powerful blends of sensation and thought. When she leaves Chicago for a vacation in Arizona, accepting Fred Ottenburg’s invitation to stay at his father’s ranch near Pan- ther Canyon, Thea believes she has wasted her creative power. “Probably she would teach music in little country towns all her life,” she reflects. “Failure was not so tragic as she would have supposed; she was tired enough not to care” (326). Whereas our understanding of the riddle of the Buddhist monk requires just two inputs— the monk ascending the mountain and the monk descending the mountain—Thea’s conception of herself is a selec- tive blend of many inputs. Her cognitive structures at this point in her life are semi- tragic blends of sensation and imagination, metaphorical interpretations of physical memories of Moonstone and of people associated with that place whose ambitions or potential have all been frustrated. While Howard Archie awakens Thea to the world beyond Moonstone, he is trapped in a bitter marriage. Thea experiences music viscerally while singing with Span- ish Johnny and studying with Wunsch, though their artistic desires are self-destructive. Ray Kennedy, who introduces Thea to the desert landscape in Colorado and tells her tales of cliff dwellings, is a failed writer who sums up his attempt at recording impressions of 279 Re(con)ceiving Experience the Grand Canyon as “Escaping steam!” (129). Thea’s visit to Pan- ther Canyon purges these influences: “The old, fretted lines which marked one off, which defined her,—made her Thea Kronborg, Bowers’s accompanist, a soprano with a faulty middle voice,— were all erased” (326). With her conceptual blend wiped clean, she begins reimagining it: first through sense- memories, and finally through composition, completion, and elaboration of a new artistic self. Thea’s awakening carries her back to childhood impressions, “the earliest sources of gladness that she could remember” (326). Once, traveling back to Moonstone from Chicago, she thought of the desert landscape as “an honest country” filled with a “new song in the blue air which had never been sung in the world before . . . like the light of the desert at noon, or the smell of the sagebrush after rain” (243). Thea’s former sense of the desert as a touchstone for creative energy returns as she basks in the solitude of the canyon. As David Hill explains in his examination of identity formation in My Ántonia, memories are constructions, not recollections: “Even the most vividly remembered sensations are not retrievals of stored pictures or sounds. Memories are non- representational in character; that is, they are cues to present performance rather than stored pictures, sounds, or smells” (111). While this is a period of receptivity, when Thea absorbs sensations in the desert, it is also a period of active imagination. The memories she retrieves harmo- nize with new sensory inputs that will later be selectively blended to re- create her identity as a performer:

Here she could lie for half a day undistracted, holding pleasant and incomplete conceptions in her mind—almost in her hands. They were scarcely clear enough to be called ideas. They had something to do with fragrance and color and sound, but almost nothing to do with words. . . . [A] song would go through her head all morning, as a spring keeps welling up, and it was like a pleasant sensation indeﬁnitely prolonged. It was much more like a sensation than like an idea, or an act of 280 joshua doležal

remembering. Music had never come to her in that sensuous form before. (330)

Notably, music has come to other people through Thea in this sensuous form before the scene in Panther Canyon. While Thea sings with Spanish Johnny during one of her trips back to Moon- stone, her listeners are overcome with excitement. Even the elderly Kohlers, whom Thea visited when she studied with Wunsch, wake in the night and stand at their bedroom window murmuring “Horch!” (“Hark!”) when Thea’s voice, “like a fountain jet, shot up into the light” (261). Andor Harsanyi, her Chicago piano instructor, remarks to his wife that Thea’s singing is physical: “[W]hen she does get an idea, it fills her up to the eyes. She had my room so reek- ing of a song this afternoon that I could n’t stay there” (214). When Bowers, her voice instructor, overhears Thea singing to Fred’s ac- companiment, he notes that “there was something about his girl’s back that he had not noticed before: a very slight and yet very free motion, from the toes up. Her whole back seemed plastic, seemed to be moulding itself to the galloping rhythm of the song” (299– 300). Yet before arriving at Panther Canyon, Thea seems to have been unconscious of her sensuous expression of music. As Katie Owens- Murphy says of other protagonists in “modernist romance,” Thea’s holiday in the desert grants her “a kind of second innocence in which redemption becomes possible . . . even after the corrupt- ing ‘assault’ of experience” (59). Gaining consciousness of her body, of the materiality of music, is the first step toward creating the new blend, the new self, that will give her power as an artist. Blending begins with composition, coupling and projecting sensory inputs into imagined scenarios or metaphors. Cather writes that Thea’s “power to think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation. She could become a mere receptacle for heat, or become a color, like the bright lizards that darted about on the hot stones outside her door; or she could become a continuous repetition of sound, like the cicadas” (330). These simple inputs grow more fluid once Thea begins imagining the people who once lived 281 Re(con)ceiving Experience in the canyon. As she climbs from the river to the cliff dwellings, following the path the indigenous women used to gather water, Thea identifies with them intuitively: “She found herself trying to walk as they must have walked, with a feeling in her feet and knees and loins which she had never known before,— which must have come up to her out of the accustomed dust of that rocky trail. She could feel the weight of an Indian baby hanging to her back as she climbed” (332). As she lingers in the canyon,

It seemed to Thea that a certain understanding of those old people came up to her out of the rock shelf on which she lay; that certain feelings were transmitted to her. . . . They were not expressible in words, but seemed rather to translate themselves into attitudes of body, into degrees of muscular tension or relaxation; the naked strength of youth, sharp as the sun- shafts; the crouching timorousness of age, the sullenness of women who waited for their captors. (333)

Whereas Cather’s language emphasizes receptivity, these are Thea’s imagined connections to the ancient people, her re(con)ception of them. She moves fluidly between sensation and composition, imagining she is walking as an indigenous woman walked, then to completion, a more comprehensive “understanding” of the cliff dwellers projected across youth and age, male and female. Thea’s sense of herself as a creative participant in the ancient community allows her to elaborate the blend, constructing other scenarios from the ruins. While gazing at a crumbling watchtower where young men had once snared eagles, she imagines herself as a present witness: “Sometimes for a whole morning Thea could see the coppery breast and shoulders of an Indian youth there against the sky; see him throw the net, and watch the struggle with the eagle” (333). Her re(con)ception of this scene requires blending the ruined watchtower with her own sense- memories of youth and with her limited understanding of Native customs from Ray Kennedy’s explanation of indigenous history. Thea’s creative perception of the ruins extends her cognitive blend to an imag- 282 joshua doležal ined kinship with the cliff dwellers, which transforms her identity as a performing artist. Thea imagines that “[t]he Cliff Dwellers had lengthened her past,” giving her “older and higher obligations” (339). Thea’s identification with the ancient women remains central to her identity as an artist long after she has left Panther Can- yon, as she describes her improvisation in one performance years later as driven by “desperation,” the way “Indian babies swim when they’re thrown into the river” (486). The physical experience she has in Panther Canyon thus allows Thea to erase the old blend in which she imagined herself a failed artist, vibrating with desire yet unable to fully realize her potential, and replace it with a more powerful blend of sensations and an imagined metaphorical ancestry. As a result, she feels “united and strong,” with ideas that are “sharper and clearer” for having been simplified (337). Thea’s new blend allows her to experience two revelations, which have been conventionally understood as romantic epiphanies but might also be read as akin to the “flash of comprehension” evoked by the riddle of the Buddhist monk. Thea’s most famous revelation occurs during one of her morning baths:

The stream and the broken pottery: what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself,— life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose? The Indian women had held it in their jars. . . . In singing, one made a vessel of one’s throat and nostrils and held it on one’s breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals. (334– 35)

Thea’s sense of herself as a vessel and of art as a “sheath” for “shining, elusive” life is a complex elaboration of the blend she has re- imagined in Arizona. First, music comes to her in preconceptual, sensuous forms, as colors and heat and sound: essentially, as simple inputs. Thea discovers her voice physically, as “vitality; a lightness in the body and a driving power in the blood” (338). Perceiving art sensually allows her to blend the muscular experience of walking 283 Re(con)ceiving Experience the water path with a broader identification with the cliff dwellers, which she elaborates into an imagined ancestry. Living and thinking in this blended space leads her to the metaphorical revelation in the stream, sharpening and simplifying her sensory and conceptual experience. While Thea’s revelation in the stream is often understood in romantic terms that downplay its naturalistic elements, feminist readings of Thea’s awakening have emphasized the physical nature of her epiphanies, reinforcing the modernist reading suggested by blending theory. Rosowski reads Thea’s awakening as akin to Wordsworth’s sense of creative power as “a divinely granted intuitive force corresponding in the individual to the creative imagination of God in the universe” (66). Similarly, “a divine creative knowledge is granted to Thea. Ideas recorded upon her come together in a sudden revelation of her relation to art. She recognizes that as an artist she can intuit the abiding in the stream of life, and by holding it, can create universal truths” (66). In contrast, O’Brien notes that the physical space of the desert allowed Cather to “open the container that held her creative energies” (410), and Moseley extends this to Thea’s character, noting that her emergence as an artist requires comprehension of the “cyclical history of the canyon and of life itself” (220). Thea’s awakening might thus be understood in physical terms without diminishing the power of her revelation. She experiences what Hill styles the “synaptic sublime” (121), the symphonic swell of her imagination. Her subsequent success as an artist is also defined less by the expression of universal truths than by her talent for engaging a foundational human aptitude for imagination, which allows Thea to draw others into her personal blend. Thea’s creative consciousness from her epiphany in the desert stream onward might be understood as a recursive elaboration of her new self- conception as an artist who channels creative energy from nature and from within herself. Even though her epiphany might seem to unmask a “true self,” it is really the beginning of years of performance, years of sustaining the melody that her conscious- 284 joshua doležal ness composes in the desert. As Hill explains, “What we perceive to be our selfhood seems to be stable not because some entity ‘mind’ is constant, but because our bodies and our autobiographical memories provide a ‘continuity of reference’ that gives us a feeling of sta- bility even as we flow forward in repeated pulses of performed consciousness in which the end- state of one pulse is the beginning of the next” (119). Thea’s second revelation in Panther Canyon illustrates her ability to sustain her new understanding of artistic identity. During a period of restlessness, when “[e]verything seemed suddenly to take the form of a desire for action” (338), Fred breaks Thea’s solitude by returning to the ranch. His arrival threatens her new- found freedom, bringing back memories of the “old, fretted lines” that had formerly marked Thea as a failure and renewing the potential conflict between their relationship and her future as an artist. One afternoon, as Fred lies napping in one of the cliff dwellings, Thea resumes her receptive posture, gazing drowsily from the shadow of a rock house into the blue vault of sky, when an eagle flashes across her line of sight. She leaps to her feet, watching the bird soar through the canyon “steeped in light” like a living epiphany:

O eagle of eagles! Endeavour, achievement, desire, glorious striving of human art! From a cleft in the heart of the world she saluted it. . . . It had come all the way; when men lived in caves, it was there. A vanished race; but along the trails, in the stream, under the spreading cactus, there still glittered in the sun the bits of their frail clay vessels, fragments of their desire. (354; ellipsis in source)

Thea’s visceral response to the eagle merges with her earlier revelation in the stream as her thoughts cycle back to the pottery, the women who made the clay vessels, and the larger principle of channeling creative energy that underpins her new consciousness as a performer. Her instant and instinctual transformation of the eagle’s flight into metaphor reveals the sustaining power of Thea’s vision beyond her vacation in Panther Canyon. For the remainder of the novel, Thea is not fully herself when 285 Re(con)ceiving Experience she is not living in the blended space generated during her desert experience and then elaborated in her identity as a performing artist. Fred notes in the novel’s final section that Thea is incomplete without performance: “It was only under such excitement . . . that she was entirely illuminated, or wholly present. At other times there was something a little cold and empty, like a big room with no people in it. Even in her most genial moods there was a shadow of restlessness, as if she were waiting for something” (485). Years later, Thea explains to Archie and Fred that her ideas still come “[o]ut of the rocks, out of the dead people” (509). As an acclaimed artist, as “Kronborg,” her understanding of creativity is still fundamentally physical. Recalling her intuitive sympathy for the cliff dwellers, Thea reflects: “They taught me the inevitable hardness of human life. . . . And you can’t know it with your mind. You have to realize it in your body, somehow; deep. It’s an animal sort of feeling” (509). The material root of imagination is finally evident in Thea’s performance of Sieglinde, a zenith of artistic expression similar to her epiphany in the canyon stream:

That afternoon nothing new came to Thea Kronborg, no enlightenment, no inspiration. She merely came into full possession of things she had been reﬁning and perfecting for so long. Her inhibitions chanced to be fewer than usual, and within herself, she entered into the inheritance that she herself had laid up, into the fullness of the faith she had kept before she knew its name or its meaning. (525)

In this description of Thea’s artistic mastery, Cather anticipates one of the fundamental principles of contemporary cognitive science, that the creative mind is inseparable from the body. During Thea’s command performance, “her body was absolutely the instrument of her idea. Not for nothing had she kept it so severely, kept it filled with such energy and fire. All that deep- rooted vitality flowered in her voice, her face, in her very finger-tips. She felt like a tree bursting into bloom” (526). Blending theory illuminates not only artistic awakening and ex- 286 joshua doležal pression, as illustrated by Thea’s transformation, but also encounters with art. Thea’s gift as a singer, as Fred explains, is to “[simplify] a character down to the musical idea it’s built on, and [make] everything conform to that” (464). By doing so, she draws her audience into her cognitive blend. Like the imagined ancestry Thea associates with the ancient people in Panther Canyon, performance is not the expression of universal truth so much as a touchstone for the universal human aptitude for blending. Thea’s performances had brought her listeners rapture throughout her life, as illustrated by the earlier examples of how the Kohlers, Spanish Johnny, and others responded to her voice. As a mature artist she conscious- ly draws others deeper into the creative process of blending sensation and thought. Doctor Archie discovers the extent of Thea’s new powers while attending her performance of Lohengrin. After quieting his initial nervousness about seeing Thea again after so many years, “he found that he was sitting quietly in a darkened house, not listening to but dreaming upon a river of silver sound” (452). At first Archie struggles to reconcile Thea with the girl he had known in Moonstone, but he finally “ceased trying to make the woman before him fit into any of his cherished recollections. He took her, in so far as he could, for what she was then and there” (453). As Archie eases into the blended space of the performance, he experiences something similar to Thea’s rebirth in Panther Canyon. He “feel[s] the exhilaration of getting free from personalities, of being released from his own past as well as from Thea Kronborg’s. . . . Something old died in one, and out of it something new was born” (454). When he applauds along with the rest at the end of the performance, “it was the new and wonderful he applauded, not the old and dear” (454). Spanish Johnny responds similarly to Thea’s Sieglinde performance. After “praying and cursing under his breath” throughout the opera and “beating on the brass railing and shouting ‘Brava! Brava!’ until he was repressed by his neighbors,” Johnny waits for Thea on the street (526). Though she does not see him, he watches her climb into a taxi and then walks away “wearing a smile which 287 Re(con)ceiving Experience embraced all the stream of life that passed him and the lighted towers that rose in the limpid blue of the evening sky” (527). His smile, Cather concludes, is the “only commensurate answer” to the purpose of art (527). By echoing in Johnny’s imagination the metaphor Thea discovered while bathing in the canyon stream, Cather suggests that the audience, as well as the artist, must participate in the creative act of blending. The awakenings Archie, Fred, Johnny, and others experience during Thea’s performances typify Cather’s later explanation of artistic simplicity in “The Novel Démeublé.” The démeublé aesthetic, like Thea’s stage presence, cannot resonate without awakening the reader’s gift for blending: “Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there— that . . . is created. It is the inexpli- cable presence of the thing not named, of the over-tone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama” (50). Created by whom? Cather suggests that the novelist brings the reader to the threshold of epiphany, inviting her to enter the blended space of art. To be deeply moved is to re(con)ceive the blend, to make it personal, make it new. Art could not endure— would not be eternal— otherwise.

WORKS CITED

Bruhn, Mark. “Romanticism and the Cognitive Science of Imagination.” Studies in Romanticism 48 (2009): 543– 64. Print. Cather, Willa. Letter to Sigrid Undset. 25 Dec. 1943. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. 623– 24. Print. —. “The Novel Démeublé.” Not Under Forty. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. 43– 51. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. Coleridge, Samuel. Biographia Literaria. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1907. Print. Cumberland, Debra. “A Struggle for Breath: Contemporary Vocal Theory in Cather’s The Song of the Lark.” American Literary Realism 28.2 (1996): 59– 70. Print. 288 joshua doležal

Eysteinsson, Astradur. The Concept of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1990. Print. Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Print. Hill, David. “The Quotidian Sublime: Cognitive Perspectives on Identity- Form in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia.” Arizona Quarterly 61.3 (2005): 109– 27. Print. Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Print. Matz, Jesse. “The Novel.” Modernist Literature and Culture. Ed. David Bradshaw and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. 215– 26. Print. Moseley, Ann. “The Creative Ecology of Walnut Canyon: From the Sinagua to Thea Kronborg.” Cather Studies 5: Willa Cather’s Ecological Imagination. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003. 216– 36. Print. O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. Owens- Murphy, Katie. “Modernism and the Persistence of Romance.” Journal of Modern Literature 34.4 (2011): 48– 62. Print. Rosowski, Susan J. The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1986. Print. Sherman, Lucius Adelno. Analytics of Literature: An Objective Study of English Prose and Poetry. Boston: Ginn, 1893. Print. Stout, Janis. Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2000. Print. Urgo, Joseph. Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1995. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. 14 Women and Vessels in The Song of the Lark and Shadows on the Rock

ANGELA CONRAD

Many Cather scholars are drawn to the powerful figure of Thea in The Song of the Lark as she comes to know herself and become an artist during her time spent in Panther Canyon. In the canyon she contemplates the vessels of pottery left by the ancient cliff dwellers, connecting them in her imagination with art in their ability to capture and contain life. As she examines the shards of broken pottery and recognizes herself as a vessel for art, she links the traditional women’s labor of carrying water to the creativity and confidence of creating art. In this setting it would be difficult to associate her with the “weaker vessels” that women were thought to be since early Christian times. Surely a young Cather, loosed in her adventures in the Southwest in 1912, would have bris- tled at the very idea. And yet, years later she designed an adolescent woman figure, Cécile Auclair, of Shadows on the Rock, whose dependency on vessels— ships— arriving from France in her rough New World environment seems a perfect example of the delicate female for whom the appellation “weaker vessel” might be apt. But the vessels in her story are far sturdier than the fragile ancient pottery shards of Panther Canyon. In one case we see a strong woman with brittle, ancient pottery vessels, in the other a “weak” woman with battered but resolute seagoing vessels. Cather connects the two types of vessels through their shared purpose of containment and conveyance, but she links both types explicitly with women. In both cases, the woman is the vessel, and neither one is the weaker

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variety. With this approach, Cather was able to address the metaphorical implications of vessels for women, while making those women essential and strong containers of culture. First, we must examine how Cather understood the concept of “vessel,” as in container, as opposed to “vessel,” as in ship. Through- out her works Cather uses the word in both senses frequently. She had picked up the archaeological usage referring to pottery during her explorations of the Southwest, and later in her 1914 visit to the Museum of Natural History in New York with Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, who reported that Cather was fascinated with artistry of the ancient female potters (123). In 1912, the same year she was introduced to the cliff dwellings of Walnut Canyon, vessels, as in ships, were on the mind of the public as they considered the monumental tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic. Cather knew people who were lost in the infamous sinking (Letters 153). In 1915 she was called on to report as a journalist on “Wireless Boys Who Went Down with Their Ships,” recognizing the heroism of those who gave their lives for their vessels (10). Claude Wheeler from One of Ours travels on a ﬁlthy troopship: “The corridors of the vessels had the smell of death about them” (410). Seagoing vessels appear also in “Paul’s Case,” Alexander’s Bridge, and The Professor’s House. Pottery or ceramic vessels appear in My Ántonia, “The Sculptor’s Funeral,” and “A Wagner Matinée,” and a gourd vessel appears in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. The metaphorical use of the term stretches as far back as the New Testament. There its use is undoubtedly highly charged, and remains somewhat mysterious. In contemporary biblical translations, the word is used to refer to both containers and boats throughout the Old Testament, but it is in the letters of Peter and the Acts of the Apostles that its metaphorical use emerges. In Acts 9:15, Christ refers to the Apostle Paul as his “chosen vessel” to bear his name to the Gentiles. Later, Peter exhorts husbands to “dwell with” their wives, “giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). Though Peter seems to use the term “weaker” to suggest it as 291 Women and Vessels a reason to “give honour” to women, it is unclear even today exactly what the meaning of that phrase was in its time. Antonia Fras- er traces the earliest use of the term “weaker vessel” in English to “Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into English in 1526” (1). By the early modern period its use to refer to women’s infe- rior status was commonplace. In its later English usage the emphasis was surely on “weaker,” rather than “vessel.” At the Congress of Women at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in 1893, Sarah Eddy Palmer discoursed on whether, considering all the powerful women from Eve to the frontierswomen of our own nation, it was not time to put to rest the notion of women being weaker, physically or emotionally. Even in our own World Wide Web, one has only to type in the phrase “woman weaker vessel” to be enriched with a “Google-full” of explanations, mainly by Chris- tian clergy of various denominations, as to why that phrase is apt and, according to them, not negative. The Christian metaphor of the vessel involves believers making themselves into empty vessels into which God can pour spiritual life and belief. This vision of people as the receptacles of a greater power is not far removed from Thea’s revelation. However, Thea Kronborg cannot be envisioned as a weak vessel. During the days in which she recognizes herself as a receptacle, she has been spending time emptying herself of the chaos and “stupid faces” she had to tolerate in Chicago, and she has done so alone. She sees herself “out of the stream of meaningless activity and undirected effort” (329). Already emptied out, she becomes “a mere receptacle for heat” (330). In the dry desert, in the homes of ancient people who would later be named for their lack of water (Sinaguas), she perceives the air of the canyon as water. Referring to the swallows, she notes that “their world was the blue air- river between canyon walls. In that blue gulf the arrow- shaped birds swam all day long, with only occasional movement of the wings” (331). In this location Thea develops “intuitions about the women who had worn the path,” recognizing this space as one that was dependent on the labor of women (332). Critics have spotted the fe- 292 angela conrad male quality of the landscape in connection with the concave vessels. Noting the canyon and the caves and the vessels, Ellen Moers called it “the most thoroughly elaborated female landscape in literature” (258). The landscape corresponds to women not just in the crude notion of a series of curves and cavities. Instead, it is a series of intimate and nurturing spaces, like the “sunny cave” of Thea’s home bedroom in Moonstone, that allow for growth, cleansing, and self- birth. In the canyon, Thea learns about the ancient people’s religion, based on water, which was collected and supervised by the women, like priestesses in the goddess-centered religion. This appeals to Thea, whose name means “goddess,” and who sees a sharp division between the “stupid women” who “carried water for most of their lives” and the “cleverer ones” who made “vessels to hold it. Their pottery was the most direct appeal to water, the envelope and sheath of the precious element itself” (334). Sharon O’Brien explains how during her sojourn in the canyon, Willa Cather, too, “felt herself recipient of a mode of creativity marked by receptivity rather than self-assertion” (415). She was, according to Sergeant, interested in the ancient women who “under conditions of incredi- ble difficulty” had “made beautiful objects for daily use out of river- bottom clay” (O’Brien 415). Thus when Thea’s revelation about art hits her, it is closely tied to the idea of women and spirituality:

The stream and the broken pottery: what was art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself,—life hurrying past us and running away. . . . The Indian women had held it in their jars. In singing, one made a vessel of one’s throat and nostrils and held it on one’s breath, caught the stream in a scale of natural intervals. (334– 35)

Here again the water and air, the breath of the singer, are equated, and the elusive element that fills these vessels is also of a highly spiritual nature, like that of religious mystics. Yet religious mystics are in the power and possession of another being. It is not 293 Women and Vessels some distant male God who fills up Thea with the creative spark; she simply claims it. Perhaps her vessel is not really empty at all; the power and inspiration seems to have been with her since childhood. Indeed, as Susan J. Rosowski argues, Cather began with a typical male version of coming- of- age with the tomboyish Thea and then inverted it: “Cather began with the promise that young Thea Kronborg contains creativity within herself, and she then set her character on a quest to claim her own creativity. Metaphors of growth are female ones of gestation, birth and mothering” (63). It is her male piano teacher who tells her that every artist “makes himself born” (196). Far from waiting for a man to impregnate her, as would be consistent with medieval notions of women’s wombs as empty vessels waiting to be filled, she creates and fills her own vessel with spiritual power. The materials for Thea’s development were already inside her, and she needed only a sufficient gestation- al period to bring that power to the light. Thus in The Song of the Lark, Cather creates a woman who is a vessel, but neither an empty nor a weak one. Between The Song of the Lark and Shadows on the Rock, Cather writes many other female characters that could be described as vessels in some ways. Ántonia, from My Ántonia, could be said to carry Bohemian culture to the New World in her love of Bohemi- an food and their dried mushrooms (76). Mrs. Forrester in A Lost Lady becomes the vessel that serves as the repository for Neil’s notions of the pioneer aristocracy (161). Godfrey St. Peter’s wife and daughters in The Professor’s House are connected with pottery vessels through their association with Tom Outland, who bequeaths a precious southwestern pottery piece on them during their first acquaintance (118). It is when vessels become ships to her that the “weaker vessel” comes into play. Far away in colonial Quebec, another adolescent girl was waiting to be described by the pen of Willa Cather, to be shown to be a vessel capable of containing something powerful. In Shadows on the Rock, however, Cather seems initially to have created a much 294 angela conrad more conventional girl, Cécile Auclair, who might properly be described as a weaker vessel. The little French Canadian girl in Shad- ows has often failed to grasp the attention and loyalty from readers that Thea commands. The novel itself has been criticized as one focused on boring housekeeping, and James Woodress calls Cécile “insufferably pious” and “an intolerable prig” (430). So what can this prim and proper domestic girl show us in the way of women as powerful and self- confident vessels of art? For one thing, Cécile is connected with a different kind of vessel— one made for trans- portation of people and goods, one made to weather a storm at sea and loyally bear the culture of the Old World to the shores of the New. In her dedication to the preservation of her culture, Cécile can be said to contain the French culture, just as the vessels of the Southwest contained water, and thus prevented the cleverer women from having to carry load after load of water. Although people in seventeenth-century Quebec had no need to treasure water, the immigrant girl could find herself both a conveyance for culture and a storage tank for it in the midst of a harsh climate. Together with her mother, Cécile transports Old World food and domestic customs to the colonial outpost and maintains these customs after her mother has died. The outpost of the French culture that people like Cécile’s father had constructed on the rock above the river depended upon French ways and French food. Auclair considered his dinner “the thing that kept him a civilized man and a Frenchman” (23). Al- though he kept many fellow colonists alive with his remedies brought from France, Cécile became the person responsible for preserving “our way” after the death of her mother. On her deathbed, Madame Auclair tells Cécile:

After a while, when I am too ill to help you, you will perhaps ﬁnd it fatiguing to do all these things alone, over and over. But in time, you will come to love your duties, as I do. With- out order our lives would be disgusting, like those of the poor savages. At home, in France, we have learned to do all these 295 Women and Vessels

things in the best way, and we are conscientious, and that is why we are called the most civilized people in Europe and other nations envy us. (31– 32)

While some Europeans might not agree with this statement, it is clear Cather does. In 1895 she wrote that all the good things came from France— “chefs and salads, gowns and bonnets, dolls and music boxes, plays and players, scientists and inventors, sculptors and painters, novelists and poets”—and stated that if France were to be destroyed someday there would not “be much creative power of any sort left in the world” (World and Parish 1: 223). Although dinner could not be equated with scientists and sculptors, the Auclairs are clearly preserving culture. Ann Romines has pointed out the importance of Cécile as a container for French culture through her housekeeping efforts. She notes that Cécile is not one of Cather’s “extraordinary children” like Jim Burden and Thea Kronborg, but that in her embracing of housekeeping customs “she has been in many ways the perfect medium for the rules of French bourgeois order with which her dying mother imprinted her” (153). Romines also demonstrates the continuity between mother and daughter necessary to import these traditions. Cécile’s mother was part of this conveyance as she “provided for both her husband’s and child’s continuous partici- pation in French civilization . . . through her domestic indoctrina- tion of the girl” (155). The vessel moves from mother to daughter in the home. Cécile does uphold her mother’s wishes, and not just as it re- gards food preparation. She feels energized by the stories of the Christian martyrs in the Canadian wilderness. She venerates St. Anne and St. Geneviève (76– 78), getting in touch with the ancient spiritual women, much like Thea in Panther Canyon. These two saints were women of the Old World. French colonists conveyed the history of St. Anne, the mother of Mary, mother of Jesus, to Quebec and constructed a basilica for her along the St. Lawrence River east of Quebec City (Farmer 23). This shrine is the site of pil- 296 angela conrad grimages and holds a miraculous statue of the saint said to cure illness. St. Geneviève was an austere nun near Paris who protected the city from the siege of the Huns through her fasting and prayer (Farmer 200). In maintaining devotion to these saints, Cécile transports French culture and contains its miracles in the way ancient women in the Southwest contained the water of life. Likewise, Cécile converses with the nuns in the Ville- Marie and becomes fascinated by the anchoress living in her own city, Jeanne Le Ber, a woman who was thought to have vatic power resulting from her cloistering and devotion to the Church. With her belief in the miracles of the Church, Cécile is making a sort of music, as Cather describes it, or at least something she can pass on to others. Cather describes miracles as works of art that develop over time: “From being a shapeless longing, [the vague longing of the faithful] becomes a beautiful image; a dumb rapture becomes a melody that can be remembered and repeated; and the experience of a moment, which might have been a lost ecstasy, is made an actual possession and can be bequeathed to another” (160). Cecile does this same developing and shaping of her culture as she contains what was best about the French domestic ways. Moreover, this description echoes the description in Song of the Lark of the vessels, holding on to something that is getting away, even to the use of the musical metaphor. In Quebec this was the responsibility of the clever, spiritual women. With respect to the other type of vessel, sailing ships, Cécile can be said to represent the same sort of conveyance. Cécile herself crossed the ocean from France to the New World, bearing within her the seeds of the culture she is planting in Quebec. The novel begins with the departure of the ships, when “the French colony on this rock in the North would be entirely cut off from Europe, from the World” (7). When the ships return eight months later, Cécile responds as do all her fellow colonists, with the joy and relief of those who know the ships intimately from their own crossing:

The greater part of the citizens had made that voyage at least 297 Women and Vessels

once, and they knew what a North Atlantic crossing meant: little wooden boats matched against the immensity and bru- tality of the sea; the strength that came of ﬂesh and blood and goodwill, doing its utmost against cold, unspending eternity. The colonists loved the very shape of those old ships. (239)

A weak vessel could by no means withstand the battering of the North Atlantic. Moreover, these ships from France are not empty vessels; they contain what the colonists require to survive: “And tomorrow they would give out of their insides food, wine, cloth, medicines, tools, ﬁre-arms, prayer-books, vestments, altars for the missions, everything to comfort the body and the soul” (239–40). The ships provide for the colonists much that Cécile does for her friends and family; they provide those things necessary to a home and a culture: food, clothing, healing, and religion. Cather even ties this transference of culture from one land to another to the heroic journey of Aeneas from Virgil’s classic when she reviews the work of the nuns in bringing the faith to new lands:

Inferretque deos Latio. When an adventurer carries his gods with him into a remote and savage country, the colony he founds will, from the beginning, have graces, traditions, riches of the mind and spirit. Its history will shine with bright incidents, slight, perhaps, but precious, as in life itself, where the great matters are often as worthless as astronomical distances, and the triﬂes as dear as the heart’s blood. (116)

As in the Aeneid, the French nuns carry the hearth gods to the new land through the use of ships; however, in Cather’s story, wise women, not the male adventurers of Virgil’s tale, do this work. The nuns travel aboard these ships and, like Cécile, become the containers and the transporters of culture. Their sturdy adherence to the origin culture makes them powerful vessels of conveyance. The same society that claimed women were “weaker vessels” reduced the work of women— the creativity of cooking, garment making, and educating young children—to a category of drudg- 298 angela conrad ery known as “housekeeping.” Yet, as Romines and others have demonstrated, Cather believes domestic actions to be important and creative. Indeed, during her visit to the Harnois family on Île d’Orléans, Cécile sees what life looks like without any care given to food, shelter, clothing, or education. The food is greasy and foul, and the bed she is to share with the Harnois girls is so filthy that she is unable to sleep. She begins to cry and “thought a great deal about her mother, too, that night; how her mother had always made everything at home beautiful, just as here everything about cooking, eating, sleeping, living, seemed repulsive” (221). When she arrives home, she is delighted to get back to her “kind things” and begin her work at home again. There she reflects on her tools and their uses: “These coppers, big and little, these brooms and clouts and brushes, were tools; and with them one made, not shoes or cabinet- work, but life itself. One made a climate within a climate; one made the days,— the complexion, the special flavor, the special happiness of each day as it passed; one made life” (227). Cécile does not become an opera star, but she uses everyday vessels and daily work to transform mere existence into something more: life. Unlike many writers of her day, Cather respects and glorifies Cécile’s creativity. Could anything be more important than the making of life? Later on, Cather uses the language of mothering to capture what makes Cécile more than an empty or a weaker vessel. By the end of the novel, Cécile grows up and we are told that she has become a mother of four boys, “the Canadians of the future” (320). She has married Pierre Charron and lives in “the Upper Town”— the better part of the city (319). But her mother- work began long before this in the nurturing she gives to her father and childhood friend, Jacques. With her father, she steps into the role her mother left empty, cooking and cleaning and ordering the household. She be- friends Jacques when no one else, including her father, will accept him because his mother is a prostitute. Instead, Cécile determines “to bring him home with her, wash his face, and give him a piece of good bread to eat” (62). Her mothering does not stop at food and washing, though. When Jacques says a vulgar word, Cécile 299 Women and Vessels washes his mouth out with soap, trying to compensate for the cultural education he is not receiving at home (63). This use of mothering language and imagery in connection with women and vessels may signal Cather’s awareness of early modern beliefs about women’s part in the reproductive process. Although the notion of men as the “authors” of children was rooted in classical philosophy, later beliefs kept this alive. The “spermist” theory of preformationism promoted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries held that woman had little part in the creation of a new human being, that she was just the vessel of the man’s seed. Dutch scientist Nicolaas Hartsoeker observed sperm cells with a micro- scope and drew a picture of a tiny man, a homunculus, that was contained whole inside the sperm cell (Lawrence). Many people believed that once this seed was “planted” in the fertile ground of a woman’s womb, it grew into a baby with no contribution of the woman, apart from the vessel she held inside her abdomen (Pinto- Correia 212). While this theory was not current in Cather’s era,1 Cécile’s story takes place in the same period as Hartsoeker’s work, in a time in which the apothecary is the closest thing they have to a doctor. In that period, certainly, this idea was commonplace. All of the genetic responsibility for children, as well as the influence of mother’s nurture, was diminished in this sort of thinking. Like- wise, it led people to see the woman’s womb as nothing more than an empty vessel, a space for the man’s seed to grow. Cather, however, does not seem to subscribe to this theory. The ships from France are not empty vessels, and they can take on an additional female significance. Although the actual ships in the novel do not bear feminine names, as ships sometimes do, they serve as a lifeline, an umbilical cord, with mother France. The connection that is preserved with France comes through yet another type of vessel—a blood vessel—that connects the fetal colony with its mother country. The colonists’ description of the strength of the ships “that came out of flesh and blood and goodwill” indeed recalls bodily function (239). Moreover, the long winter months during which Cécile and Jacques await the arrival of the ships can 300 angela conrad

also be seen as a sort of gestation. The nesting Cécile does with her friend recalls the kind of preparation couples do for the arrival of a baby. Together, they assemble the Nativity scene before Christmas, preparing for the birth, and Cécile recounts the story of the “Kings and Shepherds” (128). Later, Jacques brings his little carved beaver to add to the scene, signaling how, as Madame Pommier explains, “Our Lord died for Canada as well as for the world over there” (131). Though the leaders of this community are men—the count, the bishop, and the apothecary— it is the women who uphold all the traditions— the nuns, the mothers and daughters of Quebec. When Cécile marries and has children with Pierre Charron, she unites her commitment to the culture of France to another generation by holding the Old World and the New in the vessel of her body, and bringing forth new lives, her children, who have been nurtured by her culture lovingly preserved, like the water of life in a jar. Women’s work, as it was styled in the early twentieth century, included domestic tasks that many people saw as rote, repetitive, and dull. These seemed appropriate for beings whose place was the home and who were basically receptacles, meant to receive the men into the home, to soothe their cares away, to cleanse and prepare them for their next efforts. They were meant to contain the seed of the men and to create nests for the offspring that would result. In this way, they could be said to be both empty vessels (when they were not pregnant) and weaker vessels, lacking the fortitude necessary for public life and struggles. They were seldom considered in connection to art and even less in connection with ships at sea. But in these two novels, Willa Cather shows another side to vessels and another side to women. In The Song of the Lark she shows how seemingly fragile pottery vessels can be like women engaged in the creativity of art: useful, clever, beautiful, and life- sustaining. Thea becomes a sort of earth- goddess with the power over water and air, through song. In Shadows on the Rock, Cather shows women to be like seagoing vessels, containing, transporting, and preserving a highly developed culture and giving it a new birth in a new land. What might have been laughed off as “housework” comes to 301 Women and Vessels be seen as the main force separating human beings from other animals, the preservation of culture. Here Cécile gives everyday objects cultural signiﬁcance and digniﬁes the creativity of the work women did and continue to do today. Naval vessels, earthen vessels, or blood vessels, the job of the vessel is to hold onto something and transport it through time and space. To Cather, these strong women- vessels held nothing less sacred than life itself.

NOTES

1. While there is no evidence that Cather was familiar with this theory, Pinto-Correia explains that its currency lasted throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and persisted in some scientiﬁc circles until the twentieth century.

WORKS CITED

Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. 1923. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Susan J. Rosowski, Charles W. Mignon, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997. Print. —. My Ántonia. 1918. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Charles W. Mignon, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1994. Print. —. One of Ours. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Richard C. Harris, Frederick M. Link, and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006. Print. —. The Professor’s House. 1925. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. James Woodress, Frederick M. Link, Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. —. Shadows on the Rock. 1931. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. John J. Murphy, David Stouck, and Frederick M. Link. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2005. Print. —. The Song of the Lark. 1915. Willa Cather Scholarly Edition. Ed. Ann Moseley and Kari A. Ronning. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2012. Print. —. “Wireless Boys Who Went Down with Their Ships.” Sunday Magazine 1 Aug. 1915: 10. Print. 302 angela conrad

—. The World and the Parish: Willa Cather’s Articles and Reviews, 1893– 1902. Ed. William M. Curtain. 2 vols. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. Print. Farmer, David. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. Fraser, Antonia. The Weaker Vessel. New York: Knopf, 1984. Print. Lawrence, Cera R. “Nicolaas Hartsoeker.” Embryo Project Encyclopedia. 26 Sept. 2008. Web. Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. Palmer, Sarah Eddy. “Is Woman the Weaker Vessel?” The Congress of Women: Held in the Woman’s Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA. 1893. Ed. Mary Cavanaugh Oldham Eagle. Chicago: Monarch Book Company, 1894. 432– 34. Print. Pinto- Correia, Clara. The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and Preformation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Print. Romines, Ann. The Home Plot: Women, Writing and Domestic Ritual. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1992. Print. Rosowski, Susan J. “Writing against Silences: Female Adolescent Development in the Novels of Willa Cather.” Studies in the Novel 21 (1989): 60– 77. Print. Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley. Willa Cather: A Memoir. 1953. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1963. Print. Woodress, James. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print. Epilogue The Difference That Letters Make: A Meditation on The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

ANDREW JEWELL AND JANIS STOUT

Anyone who works on Cather knows what a difference it makes to have or not to have the letters. Years of difficult access and the need to paraphrase, or to read only in someone else’s paraphrases, approximate at best, fastened our eyes toward a hoped-for future when the letters themselves, or at least some of them, would be readily accessible in print. Even so, the question posed here— What difference do letters make?— seems worth thinking about, both in a general way and in ways that pertain speciﬁcally to The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. In The Art of Literary Biography, John Batchelor writes this about the importance of biography to literary study: “We read the work. Then we read the biography. Then we read the work again and we see more” (9). If we go to a writer’s own letters instead of someone else’s biography of that writer, the principle that Batchelor enun- ciates becomes even more sharply true. Our primary purpose remains the works themselves, but having letters available to consult enables us to read the works with more understanding. Everyone knows that’s true in a general way, but we hope to show some spe- ciﬁc ways in which it is true for Cather. In addition to their value for their own sake, of course, literary works are also read for the access they afford to great and interesting minds. And for that pur-

303 304 andrew jewell and janis stout pose too, letters make a huge difference. It isn’t that novels and stories and poems don’t provide entrée into a writer’s mind; they do, and in ways that letters or diaries or whatever do not. But letters are more direct. Even if the writers of letters sometimes shade the truth a bit, letters provide a more naked access to the human mind that is generating the novels, stories, or poems. So we can see right off two main categories of ways in which letters make a difference: first, we read the letters and when we read the works again we see more in them; and second, we read the letters and we come more closely, more directly, in touch with the author and how she thinks. It is a distinction worth making, because one may be more important to some readers and the other more important to others. But they’re both true. Nevertheless, we have heard, since the release of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, a few voices expressing deep objections to the publication of personal writings that Cather herself explicitly asked not to be published. We received our first piece of hate mail; one reviewer referred to the logic for publication that we outlined in the introduction as “self- serving”; and writers of anonymous comments on several media websites made clear, sometimes with the vitriol that Internet anonymity encourages, that they were dis- gusted we would so brazenly ignore Cather’s wishes. One of those commenting on the London Guardian’s site hurled an especially delicious insult by calling us “cheeky blighters.” Several reporters and readers have asked us if we felt guilty for having decided to publish materials Cather didn’t want published. The answer is no. Neither of us has even the slightest sense of guilt or remorse, not the slightest worry that we made a mistake in deciding to produce this volume of letters. We are very happy to have been able to bring these letters to the general reading public, who we believe will find them interesting and illuminating, and to scholars, who we know will find them useful. Precisely why Cather forbade the publication of her letters remains something of a mystery, but the concerns and contexts that 305 Epilogue led to her decision, as expressed in her Last Will and Testament, no longer obtain. It was good that her wishes were respected for many decades and that she was empowered, through her will and the efforts of her first two literary executors, to control, for the most part, the public status of her personal writings. But even Cather knew that the demands of the dead should not be heeded indefinitely. While unequivocal in its preferences, her will also recognizes its inability to govern the future, in that she left the decision of whether to enforce her directive as to publication of the letters to the “sole and uncontrolled discretion of [her] Executors and Trustees.” Thankfully, the current executor— the Willa Cather Trust, a partnership between the Willa Cather Foundation and the University of Nebraska Foundation, set up with the cooperation of Cather’s family— believes that its responsibility to care for her literary estate in the twenty- first century means bringing positive public attention to Cather and supporting accurate, informed scholarship on her life and work. The publication of Cather’s letters serves both of these goals. Yet our personal peace with defying Cather’s wishes is only partially due to the legal blessing of the Willa Cather Trust. The foundation of our comfort is a deeply held sense that these letters are remarkable texts that deserve to be a part of the canon of Cather studies and American literary history more broadly. They are in- sightful, entertaining, emotional, revealing, and often thrilling to read. They resurrect Cather’s vibrant personality and shake off the image of the distant, remote, obscure, and somewhat crabby author that so many have previously assumed her to have been. Read- ing the range of the letters she wrote across the decades of her life, one begins to realize how that decision to ban publication, made in 1943 when her mind was clouded by illness, grief, and despair at the world at war, has muddied her biographical legacy. The availability of the letters to a wider public will make considerable difference in the future’s understanding of Cather. 306 andrew jewell and janis stout

JANIS STOUT: My first experience of working with a writer’s letters came about as a result of my being invited (in 1989 or thereabouts) to write an intellectual biography of Katherine Anne Porter for a Uni- versity Press of Virginia series called Minds of the New South. Un- til that time, and largely because of personal circumstances that prevented my traveling for research purposes, I had solely done close reading of published texts, nothing that involved archival materials. But in order to produce a study defined as an intellectual biography, I obviously had to get behind Porter’s publications into the extensive archival record of her life and her thinking. Fortu- nately, most of her letters were in one place. Except for a modest- sized though very valuable group of letters to Josephine Herbst at the Beinecke Library at Yale, I was able to use the resources of only a single archive, at the University of Maryland. During the early 1990s, when I was writing Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times, I made a number of trips to College Park, where for days I spent every hour from the library’s opening time in the morning to its closing in the afternoon transcribing, at first by pencil and only later by computer, what struck me as the most important or most interesting passages from the enormous holdings of letters there. It was impossible to transcribe Porter’s letters in their entire- ty. There were too many, and my travel time was still too limited. But in addition to the excerpted passages I brought away, the experience taught me the value of letters. I knew I was getting to know Katherine Anne Porter when I could read a letter and tell when she was lying. When the University Press of Virginia asked me to undertake a similar book on Willa Cather, it was again obvious that I would need to draw on letters. But how? This project presented a very different set of problems. With Porter there were so many letters that I couldn’t even consider transcribing them in full, only bits and pieces. With Cather there was the problem of how to find letters to transcribe. I knew, of course, that it wasn’t true she had burned 307 Epilogue all her letters. Both James Woodress’s Willa Cather: A Literary Life and Sharon O’Brien’s Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice had been published by that time, and both cited letters, as did, for that matter, Mildred Bennett in her 1951 The World of Willa Cather. Woodress and O’Brien were my starting places for finding letters. But surely there were more! And indeed there were. I can only wish I had kept a record of how I found others, but I essentially followed every hint and pointer that came my way and looked for collections of the letters of people she wrote to. Sometimes I sent letters of inquiry— the written equivalent of “cold calls”— to places I happened to think of that seemed even the least bit likely. And some of those inquiries brought replies saying yes, we have two or three, or whatever, letters. Some libraries were glad to send me photocopies of their holdings (for a price, but less than the cost of travel). Some still insisted a researcher had to transcribe with pencil on paper. Some disapproved of transcription in any fashion. But for the most part I traveled to archives and copied down every letter word-for- word electronically. My guess is that I am the first Cather scholar to have the benefit of doing so. Both Woodress’s and O’Brien’s books, for example, were published before widespread use of portable com- puters. Because of this tool, we live in a time of great opportunity for archival research.1 In all these ways, and by keying into my computer even those letters I received in hard copy, I built up my searchable file to the 1,817 letters shown in the Calendar of the Let- ters of Willa Cather. Toward the end of my work on Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World, the press raised the possibility of my doing a Collected Let- ters. Of course, I had to explain that legal restrictions made that impossible. Instead, at the suggestion of a colleague at Texas A&M, John McDermott, I undertook the Calendar. It was our late colleague Susan J. Rosowski who said she believed that in the wake of the Calendar, letters would start coming out of the woodwork. And she was right. 308 andrew jewell and janis stout

ANDREW JEWELL: The number of known letters has expanded considerably since the publication of Janis’s Calendar of Letters in 2002. At that time there were a little over eighteen hundred known letters; now the number is over three thousand. The bulk of these “new” letters have become available through donations by the Cather family and are found at the University of Nebraska– Lincoln. Other important collections not known in 2002 are the Knopf-Cather correspondence at the Barbara Dobkin Foundation in New York and the collections at Drew University. It was this proliferation of new materials that inspired Janis and me to start working together on the letters. At first this meant col- laborating on the expanded, digital edition of the Calendar found on the Willa Cather Archive website. But it wasn’t too long after that project got going that we made an agreement to coedit a collection of the letters, if the legal way ever became clear. We knew, given his advancing age, that Charles Cather, Willa Cather’s nephew, would not remain the executor of Willa Cather’s literary estate for many more years, and we believed the eventual change in executorship might provide the changes in the legal landscape that would be necessary in order to produce a volume of letters. From the beginning, Janis and I had a shared vision of the kind of publication we desired: a book, first, not a solely digital publication; a one-volume Selected Letters that would be designed for a general readership but would also be useful to and reliable for scholars; and a chronological presentation of whole letters, not excerpts arranged thematically. We knew we would need to create an editorial apparatus that would guide readers through these complex documents, but agreed that we did not want Cather’s own voice to be overwhelmed by explanatory material. We wanted readers to be able to focus on the unobstructed personal voice of the letters, with little consciousness of the “editing.”2 By the time the legal permission was obtained we were well along in our preparations. Soon we had a contract with Knopf, and we cleared our calendars so as to dedicate our time to producing 309 Epilogue the book. We started working on it full time right after we left the International Cather Seminar in Northampton, Massachusetts, in June 2011, and delivered it to Knopf in February 2012. Again, though, this does not mean we created the book in just six or seven months. Janis had been gathering transcriptions of letters for nearly twenty years, and we had been engaged with the letters together, in one way or another, for several of those years. By the time we started actually constructing the volume we had a solid foundation on which to build. That said, our process began in 2011 with reading all of the letters again, every one we could find. The experience of reading through roughly three thousand letters in chronological order, so that they essentially told a story, was a memorable one in many ways. It took several weeks, and I realized, personally, that my mood was responding to Cather’s as I read. When she was in the joyous thrall of new ideas and confidence, I responded with similar elation; when she was mired in sickness and depression, my days also felt dark. I hope, frankly, that others can have a sense of this experience when reading our selections in the book. We determined an organizational structure of twelve chronological sections and began making our choices. Janis had actually entered into our collaboration with a tentative selection already made, but I also made my own selections independently as I read. We then resolved discrepancies through discussion. All of this was done by email and file- sharing, often using the “track changes” feature of Microsoft Word. The selection was an iterative process: once the choices were initially made for a section, we would continue to pass that section back and forth, removing letters and adding others. Mostly, however, we removed, because we were struggling to meet the word limit set for us by Knopf. Every cut hurt. Our colleague Ann Romines helped a good deal at this stage by providing us a link to a review by Deborah Solomon in the New York Times of a volume of letters exchanged by Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe. Solomon complained that the bulk of the volume crushed the value of their correspondence and somehow minimized the significance of the documents. In short, in the view 310 andrew jewell and janis stout of Solomon, the volume suffered from having too little selection and too many selections. We have no judgment to make on that score, not having looked at the book ourselves, but the reviewer’s critique emboldened our sense that most readers would welcome a judicious selection. I had to believe that however much the cuts hurt, they would make the book stronger. After making our selection, we drafted headnotes, identified full names of people and works referenced in the letters, wrote intersti- tial notes, and created other apparatus for each section. This stage of the work, which involved engaging with the content of each letter, was a great pleasure, and I believe we were able to represent hundreds of hours of research quietly and succinctly in humble bracketed identifications. We can’t claim to have unraveled every mystery, of course. Soon after I received my first copy of the book, my wife, Becca, began reading it and, after getting through the first letter in the book with its reference to Grandma Boak’s inability to walk, asked, “What happened to her grandma’s leg?” “I don’t know,” I replied. “You don’t know?” “No,” I said, “that’s why we don’t have a note about it.” “But I thought as your wife I would get bonus an- notations,” she protested. I provided what I could.

It isn’t easy, at this point, to identify letters that have made the most signiﬁcant differences in our own thinking about Willa Cather. We’ve been looking at them for so long now that it’s hard to remember the changes of mind that occurred along the way. But we will each mention a few.

JANIS STOUT: One “Aha!” moment that I remember very clearly came a long time ago, when I first read Cather’s letters to Dorothy Canfield Fisher. We are all familiar with Cather’s statement in the preface to Not Under Forty about the world’s having broken in two in 1922 or thereabouts. She made that statement in 1936. But a precursor of it appears in a letter to Canfield Fisher written fourteen years earlier, 311 Epilogue probably on 17 June 1922— that is, in the year she later singled out as the world’s breaking point: “We knew one world and how we both felt about it. We now find ourselves in quite another” (Letters 319). When I keyed that into my computer, I inserted in brackets and bold type, “[wow! note this! and in 1922!]” To me, it made a difference to know that Cather had thought about her sense of a rupture in historic time long before she wrote her famous sentence in the preface to Not Under Forty, and in fact in the very year she later said the break happened. So “1922 or thereabouts” wasn’t just a casual date she picked out of the air in retrospect. Another letter that made a big difference to me came to light at Texas Woman’s University in Denton when I was invited to give a lecture there. I had not expected twu to have any Cather materials and had never inquired. But when I was given a tour of the library during my visit, there, on a table in a quiet work area where the librarian had laid it out for me to see, was a letter from Cather to her mother. Cather’s relationship with her family generally used to be presented in rather idyllic terms. In an essay published in 1990 titled “A Dutiful Daughter: Willa Cather and Her Parents,” for example, James Woodress presented her not only as being dutiful and loving but as having had “a really happy childhood.” Though he acknowledged that “her relations with her mother were sometimes difficult,” he also implied that such difficulties were confined to the universally troubled adolescent years. In later years, he wrote, Cath- er “accepted willingly her family obligations,” and her relationship with her parents was a “happy” one. Well, maybe not. I had already seen a letter Cather wrote to Dorothy Canfield Fisher in May 1903 (a letter that is not among those we selected for the volume) in which Cather said, “You are a wonder- worker! Your letter to mother brought me the first one that I have had from her for two years that I could even think of reading through. It was almost without anger or resentment. I begin to think that a peaceable adjustment of things may still be possible.” That in itself was enough to call Woodress’s characterization into question. And then, on that library desk at Texas Woman’s University, I saw the 312 andrew jewell and janis stout letter dated 2 March, probably 1925, some twenty-two years later than the one to Canfield Fisher. “My Dearest Mother,” she began. “Now what can I possibly have done to upset you so?” (Letters 367). It appears that Cather thought her mother was jealous of attentions she had shown her aunt Sar- ah Andrews, Virginia Cather’s sister, or Sarah Andrews’s daughter Bess Seymour, Willa’s cousin, as she denies having “sent them anything but a book,” an “old wadded dressing gown [that] was in rags,” and “some paper flowers for a valentine.” She then explains why she hasn’t written to her mother recently, before turning to what appears to have been the main issue— or rather, issues:

As for making trouble between you and father, I’ve certainly not tried to do that. Really, it’s very unjust to accuse me of it. You must know, Mother, without my telling you, that all that newspaper publicity about Margie3 was harder on me than on any of the rest of you, and it was needless. If you hadn’t been so foolish about never letting anyone see her, there would have been no “mystery.” But that is past and gone. I wasn’t angry about it. I thought you had been unwise, and the result of your mistaken judgement made a good deal of ugly talk about me. But I never felt in the least angry toward you, and I took my medicine and kept quiet about it. I wouldn’t speak of it now, if you didn’t come at me so. How foolish, Mother, for us to quarrel! I can’t quarrel, because I have not a particle of hard feeling. I couldn’t be angry with you now if I tried. I think one of the consolations of growing older is that one comes to understand one’s parents better. I am too much like you in many ways to criticise you; I sometimes get impatient, just as I lose patience with myself, but I have never felt cross toward you, even for a moment, for years and years. I think the last time was about poor Mrs. Garber [Lyra Garber, the model for Marian Forrester in A Lost Lady]; and you see now, don’t you, that I understood her better than you thought I did, and that though I admired certain things, I was never taken in by her. 313 Epilogue

Clearly, the friction between them had been of long standing. “Now you and I have been growing closer together for many years, don’t let us spoil it. If I have done anything amiss, I am eager to make it right.” And she starts that effort by writing, “I love you very tenderly and am happy in your company,” and closing, “With my dearest love to you, dear mother.” The most obvious difference this letter makes is to show us, beyond doubt, that all was not sweetness and light in the Cather family. But what difference does that make? Is it only a retelling of gossip? I think not. I think it shows us how deeply rooted were the hints of tension that crop up now and then in Cather’s works— say, in “Old Mrs. Harris.” It shows us, not for the ﬁrst time, how very human and complex Cather was. It shows us, too— and again, this is not a new idea, but with the letters as evidence it is newly vivid— that we must not accept easy readings of her books that glide over the buried tensions or contradictions. Evidence of conﬂict within the Cather family extends, in fact, into letters written in her later years in which she expresses more than just passing vexation with some of her brothers and sisters. She tells Roscoe at one point that he is the only one left of all her family who gives a damn about her writing (Letters 588). Maybe this wasn’t literally true. Maybe it was only her depression speaking, a depression perhaps feeding on bits of inconsiderateness here and there. But that’s something else her letters show us: that she did indeed struggle with bouts of depression.

ANDREW JEWELL:

My struggle to identify specific letters that make a difference arises not from a lack of such moments in letters, but from an abundance. There are many moments like that; I run into them over and over. What has made the greatest difference to me is the totality of Cather’s voice, the strong presence of her personality in the letters in general. In demonstration, I would like to look once again at some of 314 andrew jewell and janis stout the most familiar of Cather’s letters, those she wrote to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant in 1912 during her trip to the Southwest. Most readers will know the outlines of the story, but it may be helpful to have a brief recap. In April 1912 Cather left the East Coast on a leave of absence from her job at McClure’s that was meant to last only a few months. She took a train west to visit her brother Douglass, who worked for the Santa Fe Railway in Winslow, Arizona. The trip came on the heels of the publication of Cather’s first novel, Alexander’s Bridge, which had come out only a few months before, and more immediately on the heels of her writing of “The Bohemi- an Girl,” a long short story published in McClure’s in August 1912. While in Arizona and New Mexico, Cather stayed with her brother and got to know some of his associates, including the brakeman Tooker and the “tipsy London cockney” who would later inspire characters in her fiction. She also explored the country, seeing Wal- nut Canyon, near Flagstaff, and met a man named Julio who seems to have entranced her for a time. Much has been made of this trip to the Southwest, and with good reason. Woodress uses it as the prologue for his entire biography, claiming that “the successful magazine executive who left Pittsburgh that April morning returned the novelist that we know” (4). Cather herself made similar claims. In “My First Novels [There Were Two]” she wrote, “The longer I stayed in a country I really did care about, and among people who were a part of the country, the more unnecessary and superficial a book like Alexander’s Bridge seemed to me. I did no writing down there, but I recovered from the conventional editorial point of view” (On Writing 92). When reading the letters written during this trip, one senses an enthusiasm and growing confidence, an immediate experience that would, over time, be interpreted as transformative. The transformation of Thea Kronborg in Panther Canyon, in The Song of the Lark, written only a couple of years afterward, undoubtedly rein- forced this understanding of the episode in Cather’s life by others, and perhaps by herself. In the letters actually written at the 315 Epilogue time, however, Cather details no psychological shift, no epiphany that would alter her creative life. Instead, the letters document the tremendous fun she was having. On 21 May 1912, for example, she wrote this to Sergeant from the Grand Canyon:

For the first two weeks nothing happened to me. Then things began to happen so fast that I’ve had no time to write letters and I wanted to write to you too much to send postcards. I wrote you about the trip with the Priest over to his Indian missions? The[n] came Julio—pronounce Hulio, please— and he came and came, too beautiful to be true and so different from anyone else in the world. He is the handsome one who sings; from Vera Cruz; knows such wonderful Mexican and Spanish songs: But there, if I began on Julio you would have to like me very much to be patient, and I don’t wish to put you to any such test as yet. But he is wonder- ful! . . . I meet my brother in Flagstaff Friday to find some Cliff Dwellers along the Little Colorado. Then I shall be in Winslow a few days, for I have to go to a Mexican dance I’ve been asked to; and then if I can really sever Julio’s strong Egyptian fetters, I am going to Albuquerque with my brother and from there trail about over pretty much all of New Mexico. Write to me at Winslow, please, the faithful Tooker will forward all mail. But will you go to Mexico with me some day? My brother and Julio have told me of such splendid places to go as soon as the fighting is over— buried cities and Aztec ruins and gold mines— perfect Arabian Nights stories. Julio knows one such lovely story about an Aztec Cleopatra, and it is called “The Forty Lovers of the Queen” and I am going to write it when I can go to the place where it happened. There are some very sharply cut figures in it, not at all the type-figures. Prescott has a dim account of it, I remember, but Julio’s version is much more alive. He’s never read anything but the prayer-book, so he has no stale ideas— 316 andrew jewell and janis stout

not many ideas at all, indeed, but a good many fancies and feelings, and a grace of expression that simply catches you up. It’s like hearing a new language spoken, because he speaks so directly. He will drive any number of miles to see ﬂowers or running water, but Cliff Dwellers bore him awfully. “Why,” he says raising his brows, “do you care for Los Muertos? We are living. . . . No me importa. They die so long ago. Pobreci- tos! (poor fellows).” Well, I broke into Julio after all! I was afraid I would, and that’s the real reason I have not written before. Next to “travel” letters, I hate to get letters that rave about the beauty of untutored youths of Latin extraction. People always do one to death with such letters when they go to Italy. But Julio is not soft and sunny. He’s indifferent and opaque and has the long strong upper lip that is so conspicuous in the Aztec sculpture, and somber eyes with lots of old trouble in them, and his skin is the pale, bright yellow of very old gold and old races. I really think I must get him to New York. He’d make an easy living as an artist’s model. They’d ﬁght for him. Pardon! W.S.C. (Letters 157– 59)

Among the letters Cather wrote to Sergeant in 1912 there are several that bubble over like this with the pleasure of her vacation and its discoveries. Some have suggested that the tone of these letters is remarkable or even unique in her correspondence. O’Brien writes, for example, “Among the hundreds of letters I have read, there are none as exuberant and lighthearted as those she wrote to Sergeant about [Julio]” (413). Well, maybe. But in my experience of editing the letters, I have encountered other letters that seem akin to the 1912 letters to Ser- geant. The other letters written from the West that same year don’t have the same exuberance—letters to Mariel Gere, S. S. McClure, and Annie Adams Fields from the same trip are full of the pleasure of travel but lack the playful tone and make absolutely no mention of Julio. Instead, what these letters to Sergeant in 1912 remind me 317 Epilogue of are other letters to Sergeant. I believe that Cather’s friendship with Sergeant elicited distinctive notes of sarcasm, irony, and teas- ing ridicule. I think the two must have liked to make each other laugh. Between 1910 and 1922 Cather wrote many letters to Sergeant that make a point of humorously (and mostly good-naturedly) mocking people, including Progressive Era reformers (“I cant chat comfortably with people who are panting for the destruction of anything. Would that she could forget it all and begin to be touched by the amusing traits of human nature again!”— 4 June 1911, Letters 139); Douglass Cather’s roommates Tooker and the “tipsy London cockney” (“with the best will in the world, one tires of freaks”— 26 April 1912, Letters 154– 55); Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick (“you are not flat enough for Ellery. He doesn’t know but your laugh may be dangerous”— 12 September 1912, Let- ters 167); Virginians (“You will have a more satisfactory note from me when I’ve got away from the romantic ‘Southern’ attitude, and all the oppressively budding and lonely ‘gills’— the male of the species is almost extinct hereabouts, and so cowed and house- broken that he can do nothing but carry wraps and dance and touch his hat”— 12 September 1913, Letters 180); Annie Adams Fields (“Mrs. Fields writes of the last naked woman—they are all alike—on the McClure cover, ‘But Oh, this undesirable cover! Undesirable! Noth- ing has pleased me so much for years! . . . Can’t you hear her say it ‘undesirable’!— 19 November 1913, Letters 184–85); Olive Fremstad (“While I was in Fremstad’s camp we did things every mortal minute except when we were asleep, and even then I dreamed hard. She fished as if she had no other means of getting food; cleaned all the fish, swam like a walrus, rowed, tramped, cooked, watered her garden . . . it was the grandest show of human rigor and grace I’ve ever watched. I feel as if I’d lived for a long while with the wife of the Dying Gladiator in her husky prime, in deep German forests”— 23 June 1914, Letters 192–93); and herself, as the author of April Twilights (“I really was very young and had never been— anywhere. But, even for a Cliff Dweller, it was pretty bad. I seem 318 andrew jewell and janis stout

to remember one that began ‘Stark as a Burne-Jones vision of despair!’ I hope you appreciated that fully!”— 2 June 1912, Letters 159). Though Cather made jokes with other correspondents as well, the letters to Sergeant in the 1910s demonstrate that they shared an appreciation for playfulness and a sometimes biting humor. Cather might refer to the same pleasurable experiences—like her joy in spending time with Olive Fremstad— in letters to others as well, but in writing to Sergeant she often does it with jokey, ironic de- tachment. The letters to Sergeant as a group are distinctive in the corpus of Cather’s correspondence. How does this quality of their relationship affect our reading of the Julio letters? Although O’Brien acknowledges a “double consciousness” in them, suggesting that Cather writes both like “an adolescent girl rhapsodizing about her ﬁrst love” and as “a thirty- eight-year- old woman looking a little wryly and ironically at her infatuation” (411), I think it is possible to read these descriptions of Julio as a sustained bit of play.4 Though I believe Julio was a real man Cather was acquainted with in 1912, I do think her descriptions of him to Sergeant betray a self-consciousness that she was creating a character, or even a type: a beautiful “untutored youth of Latin extraction.” The language she uses to describe him is comfortably detached from lowly human reality. He is “Antinous come to earth again” (12 May 1912, Letters 156), “without beginning and without end” and “like all the things in the Naples museum” (15 June 1912, Letters 162). That is, Cather turns Julio into an exotic, spiritual creature, the embodiment of a false idea of another culture. It is possible that this fantastical characterization of Julio emerges solely from Cather’s limited perspective as a middle- class white woman vacationing in Arizona. But the fact that these character- izations appear solely in letters to Sergeant, letters that are performances for another writer as well as jocular exchanges with a friend, suggests that they are willfully and playfully exaggerated. The inclusion of what appears to be Cather’s English translation of “Julio’s serenade,” called “Serenata Mejicana” in the 15 June 1912 letter to Sergeant (Letters 162–63), adds to the sense that something 319 Epilogue is not altogether straightforward in her presentation. The rhymed English lyrics were “clumsy,” Cather wrote, and she wished she could give Sergeant “Julio’s serenade in the Spanish, with the stars and the desert and the dead Indian cities on the mesa behind it.” She then gives a very Catherian, romantic verse:

The ﬂowers of day are dead— Come thou to me! The rose of night instead Shall bloom for thee. Stars by day entombed In darkness wake; The rose of night has bloomed— Beloved, take!

It seems to me that the scene Cather paints here for Sergeant— the beautiful Julio singing a song in Spanish in the open desert, Cath- er hearing the song and transforming it into an English poem— could not possibly be true. Not only does the romantic setting seem too right, too staged, there is little indication anywhere that Cather knew Spanish sufficiently well to make a translation.

The letters to Sergeant, then, make a tremendous difference to our reading of other Cather letters and perhaps even our reading of the ﬁction, especially The Song of the Lark, which was inspired by episodes related in the letters. That is because even if we doubt the verity of their details, they communicate an emotional truth about Cather’s experience. Part of that experience is with Julio in the desert, but part of it is also the relationship with Ser- geant, the person she chose to tell about Julio. Among the many letters that make a difference in other ways, we might think for a moment about the one known letter to Edith Lewis. Why do we have only one letter and one postcard to her? What happened to the rest?—because there must have been more. There had to be. One can only guess, of course, as we currently do not know and may never know. But our knowledge of just the one 320 andrew jewell and janis stout letter to Edith, plus a short passage from one that mentions her, makes a great difference. On Sunday, 4 October 1936, at about 4:30 p.m., according to her heading, Cather wrote from the Shattuck Inn at Jaffrey, New Hampshire, a letter that opens, “My Darling Edith.” It is a breath- taking salutation, especially coming to us as it does after years of guesswork that positioned Edith Lewis as more or less a lackey for Cather. The letter continues:

I am sitting in your room, looking out on the woods you know so well. So far everything delights me. I am ashamed of my appetite for food, and as for sleep—I had forgotten that sleeping can be an active and very strong physical pleasure. It can! It has been for all of three nights. I wake up now and then, saturated with the pleasure of breathing clear mountain air (not cold, just chill air) of being up high with all the woods below me sleeping, too, in still white moonlight. It’s a grand feeling. One hour from now, out of your window, I shall see a sight unparalleled— Jupiter and Venus both shining in the golden- rosy sky and both in the West; she not very far above the horizon, and he about mid- way between the zenith and the silvery lady planet. From 5:30 to 6:30 they are of a superb splendor— deepening in color every second, in a still-daylight- sky guilt- less of other stars, the moon not up and the sun gone down behind Gap- mountain; those two alone in the whole vault of heaven. It lasts so about an hour (did last night). Then the Lady, so silvery still, slips down into the clear rose colored glow to be near the departed sun, and imperial Jupiter hangs there alone. He goes down about 8:30. Surely it reminds one of Dante’s “eternal wheels”. I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures. If they are not, then we are the only wonderful things— because we can wonder. 321 Epilogue

She then shifts to the small practicalities of life: “I have worn my white silk suit almost constantly with no white hat, which is very awkward” and pays tribute to Lewis’s careful help— “Everything you packed carried wonderfully— not a wrinkle”— before closing: “Lovingly, W” (Letters 519– 21). It might be said that this bit about the packing shows that Lewis really was just a practical convenience, after all, a kind of devoted friend who provided useful as- sistance. But when we listen to this letter as a whole, we can’t say that. Besides, people who love each other help each other out in a variety of ways—not as acts of servitude but of love. In the context of this very tender letter, we can see that was so when Lewis helped Cather pack. The entire question of Edith Lewis’s role in Cather’s life extends far beyond our discussion here, but perhaps we can pursue it just a bit further. We realize that students of Cather’s biography have thought about the complication of her relationship with Lewis not just in itself but in combination with her long and very great love for Isabelle McClung Hambourg. How did she juggle the two relationships? A letter that makes a great deal of difference in our thinking about that question is one from the Drew University collection, written to Earl and Achsah Barlow Brewster on 21 Febru- ary 1923. Two paragraphs from this long letter bring much to the discussion:

I will sail for France about the ﬁrst of April. Ah how lovely it will be if I can meet you in Paris! That seems about too good to happen in this pesky world. I beg you both to write often to Edith while I am gone. I must tell you a secret that is a little difficult to tell: Edith does not like the Hambourgs at all—never has. They irritate her, rub her the wrong way; Isabelle even more than Jan [Hambourg, Isabelle’s husband]. I think it’s been hard for her to face that they were seeing you this winter when she was not. We are like that about the people we love best sometimes, we have a kind of loving jeal- ousy about them. It has always been difficult about the Ham- 322 andrew jewell and janis stout

bourgs, because they are old and dear friends of mine, and yet they do darken the scene for Edith whenever they appear— put rancours in the vessel of her peace, as Macbeth said. I think the way that likes and dislikes interweave is the most disheartening thing about life anyway. It’s nothing Edith can help; their personalities simply hurt her. She feels that their attitude toward her is rather patronizing, but there I feel sure she is mistaken. I hope Edith can see a great deal of you if you are in Amer- ica this summer. Your being here will make up to her for my absence. As you know, she does not care for a great many people, and for them she cares very much. This has been a hard winter for her— her family has made such heavy demands upon her and she has not been very well. Before a great while I am going to get her away from all these hard and wearing things. (Letters 336– 37)

This one letter provides insights into the complex dynamic among these three closely knit people that we glean nowhere else. One of the main things it shows us is the care Cather took in trying to accommodate Lewis’s feelings and make life easier for her with respect to the tensions of an emotional tangle that really defied not just our understanding but Cather’s own. Cather’s letters are perhaps the best articulations she left of her emotional tangles and how they influenced her as a writer. A letter she wrote in 1938 shortly after the deaths of her brother Douglass and Isabelle Hambourg typifies this profound quality of the letters. It reveals the deep emotional vulnerability she would never really overcome. Like so many of Cather’s letters, it privileges the emotional moment over reasoned, balanced consideration of the facts. But as she suggests in the letter, that privileging of emotion may be what draws us to her as readers. On 6 November 1938, from the Shattuck Inn, she wrote to her brother Roscoe:

I am up here alone at this hotel in the woods where I have 323 Epilogue

done most of my best work and where the proprietors are so kind to me. I finished “Antonia” here, finished “A Lost Lady” and began the “Archbishop”. The best part of all the better books was written here. It was Isabelle who first brought me here. You cannot imagine what her death means to me. It came just four months after Douglass’s death, before I had got my nerves steady again. No other living person cared as much about my work, through thirty- eight years, as she did.

And then she abruptly shifts from the intensity of her grieving for Douglass and Isabelle to her intensity of feeling in itself:

As for me, I have cared too much, about people and places— cared too hard. It made me, as a writer. But it will break me in the end. I feel as if I couldn’t go another step. People say I have a “classic style”. A few of them know it’s the heat under the simple words that counts. I early learned that if you loved your theme enough you could be as mild as a May morning and still make other people care. . . . It’s the one thing that simple really caring for an old Margie, an old cat, an old anything. I never cultivated it, from the age of twenty on I did all I could to repress it, and that effort of mind did, after years, give me a fairly good “style”—style being merely the writer, no the person himself; what he was born with and what he has done for himself. Isabelle watched me every step of the way. But the source of supply seems to be getting low. I work a little every day (1 1/2 hrs.) to save my reason, to escape from myself. But the sentences don’t come sharp and clear as they used to— the pictures are a little blurred. (Letters 561).

This idea of caring, of emotional investment in life, reveals its cen- trality to her whole artistic project as we read this letter. We might have inferred it from any number of passages in her books, but here she makes it clear. The word “care” in fact appears remarkably often in the letters, early and late. She seems to have pondered the idea of “caring” about things as a wellspring of her work, and “taking care” 324 andrew jewell and janis stout as a method in her work, for a long time, and here in this amazing letter to Roscoe that long presence of the idea of caring comes to fruition as the key to it all. Perhaps more than any other, this letter makes all the difference in our understanding of Willa Cather.

NOTES

1. Andrew Jewell agrees and adds, “We do live in a time of great opportunity compared to the past, but also, maybe, compared to the future. Where will scholars ﬁnd the letters of writers who are coming of age today? Will emails and tweets and Facebook posts survive and overwhelm scholars with so much material that nothing will seem particularly important? Or will all of these digital remnants be lost or trapped on the private servers of corporations? We simply don’t know yet, though in opti- mistic moments one can hope that the large body of concerned librarians and scholars will ensure we have access and the tools to make meaning from that access.” 2. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather will be followed with a fully digital Complete Letters of Willa Cather that will feature an enhanced editorial apparatus. Publication of this complete edition will begin on the Willa Cath- er Archive (cather.unl.edu) in January 2018. 3. Cather’s reference to “publicity about Margie” pertains to rumors in the local Red Cloud newspaper in the fall of 1924 that the Cathers were hiding Marjorie Anderson, a woman who had come to Nebraska with them from Virginia and worked in their home. The rumors emerged from Marjorie’s unwillingness to venture outside the house for fear of the return of her former husband, a man named O’Leary, who had deserted her soon after their marriage. 4. Jewell: I’m very inﬂuenced in my understanding here by Melissa Homestead’s suggestion that one should be wary of taking the Julio descriptions too literally. Much of what I have to say emerged from conversa- tions she and I had about this and details she pointed out to me.

WORKS CITED

Batchelor, John. The Art of Literary Biography. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1995. Print. Bennett, Mildred R. The World of Willa Cather. 1951. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1961. Print. 325 Epilogue

Cather, Willa. A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Janis Stout. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Print. —. Letter to Dorothy Canﬁeld Fisher. [Probably 15– 20 May 1903.] Special Collections. Bailey/Howe Library, U of Vermont, Burlington. —. “My First Novels [There Were Two].” 1931. Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art. 1949. Intro. Stephen Tennant. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. 91– 97. Print. —. Not Under Forty. 1936. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. Print. —. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather. Ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout. New York: Knopf, 2013. Print. O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. Solomon, Deborah. “O’Keeffe and Stieglitz: Intimacy at a Distance” Rev. of My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume I, 1915– 1933. Ed. Sarah Greenough. New York Times 12 Aug. 2011. Web. Stout, Janis P. Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995. Print. —. Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2000. Print. Woodress, James. “A Dutiful Daughter: Willa Cather and Her Parents.” Willa Cather: Family, Community, and History. Ed. John J. Murphy. Provo: Brigham Young U Humanities Publications Center, 1990. 19– 31. Print. —. Willa Cather: A Literary Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1987. Print.

CONTRIBUTORS

Timothy W. Bintrim is associate professor of English and environmental studies at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania. He has published on Cather’s work as a journalist, youth editor, and illustrator; on dandies, sneak thieves, and suicide in “Paul’s Case”; and on her friends Ethelbert Nevin, Isabelle McClung, and George Gerwig, among others. Currently writing a monograph on Cather and Pittsburgh, he will codirect the Six- teenth International Cather Seminar there in June 2017. Angela Conrad is professor of English and chair of the Di- vision of Humanities at Bloomﬁeld College. She holds a PhD from Drew University in English literature. In 1998 she was program director of the “Willa Cather in New York” International Colloqui- um. Conrad is author of The Wayward Nun of Amherst: Emily Dick- inson and Medieval Mystical Women (2000). She served for ﬁve years as a trustee of the New Jersey Humanities Council. Her more recent publications include “Blessed Damsels, Lost Ladies and Cath- er’s Real Women” in Willa Cather and Aestheticism (2012). Joshua Doležal is professor of English at Central College. His scholarship has appeared in Medical Humanities, Literature and Medicine, Ethics and the Environment, and Cather Studies. He is the author of a memoir, Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Be- longing (2014), and poems and essays in Kenyon Review, Shenando- ah, Hudson Review, Utne Reader, Fourth Genre, and other literary magazines. Charmion Gustke is assistant professor of English at Bel- mont University, where she teaches courses in writing, literature,

327 328 contributors

and culture. She was awarded a James Woodress Grant from the University of Nebraska in 2012, during which time she began to investigate Cather’s later work in the context of the Great Depres- sion. Her research examines the material, economic, and feminist trajectories in Cather’s life and in her writing. She is currently working on a project analyzing Obscure Destinies alongside photographs taken by Dorothea Lange during the New Deal period. Richard C. Harris is the John J. McMullen Professor of Hu- manities and assistant dean at Webb Institute. He has published extensively on Cather in such venues as Cather Studies, Studies in American Fiction, the Journal of Narrative Theory, the Midwest Re- view, and the Willa Cather Newsletter and Review. He was the historical editor for the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition of One of Ours (2006) and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Foundation. James A. Jaap is senior instructor in English specializing in Pittsburgh literature and history at the Greater Allegheny campus of Pennsylvania State University. In 2013 he was awarded a James Woodress Fellowship, and his article on Cather and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens appeared in the Spring 2016 edition of the Willa Cather Newsletter and Review. He and his family live in the East End of Pittsburgh, not far from where Cather resided when she ﬁrst arrived in the city in 1896. He is codirecting the Cather International Seminar in Pittsburgh in June 2017. Andrew Jewell is professor in the University Libraries, Uni- versity of Nebraska– Lincoln, and director of the Willa Cather Ar- chive (cather.unl.edu). Andy has published several essays on Cather and other American writers, scholarly editing, and digital humanities. He is coeditor of the books The American Literature Scholar in the Digital Age (2011) and The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013), and is coeditor of the forthcoming digital scholarly edition, The Complete Letters of Willa Cather. Since 2008, Andy has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Foundation. 329 contributors

Mark J. Madigan is professor of English at Nazareth Col- lege in Rochester, New York. He was the historical editor of Youth and the Bright Medusa in the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition (2009) and editor of three volumes by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. In addition to his work on Cather and Fisher, he has published numerous articles on such other American writers as Charles W. Chesnutt, Nella Larsen, and Richard Wright. Madigan has been a Fulbright Scholar in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a Fulbright Specialist in Zadar, Croatia. Michelle E. Moore is professor of English at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where she teaches courses on Amer- ican and European modern literatures and film. Her scholarship has appeared in Cather Studies, the Faulkner Journal, and Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s “Daisy Miller” and “The Turn of the Screw.” Ann Moseley is a William L. Mayo Professor and professor of literature and languages emerita at Texas a&m University– Commerce and the historical editor for the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition of The Song of the Lark. Her most recent articles on Cather have appeared in Teaching the Works of Willa Cather (2009), Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark (2010), Willa Cather: A Writer’s Worlds (2010), and Willa Cather and the Nineteenth Century (2015). Coedi- tor of the present volume and codirector of the 2013 International Cather Seminar, Moseley has also coauthored three composition textbooks, one of which, Interactions: A Thematic Reader (2012), is in its ninth edition. John J. Murphy is professor of English emeritus, Brigham Young University, and author of “My Ántonia”: The Road Home (1989) and many major essays on Cather and other American writers. He serves on the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Foun- dation. Murphy is coeditor of two Cather Studies collections (2010, 2017) and volume editor and coeditor, respectively, of the Willa Cather Scholarly Editions of Death Comes for the Archbishop (1999) and Shadows on the Rock (2005). In 1981 he directed the first Inter- 330 contributors

national Cather Seminar, and subsequently he codirected the 2007 and 2013 seminars as well as the Rome Cather Symposium in 2014. He has conducted courses and lectured on Cather in several Euro- pean countries, China, and Taiwan. He and his wife, Sally, presently live in the Boston area. Joseph C. Murphy is associate professor and chair of the English department at Fu Jen Catholic University. His essays on Cather have appeared in Cather Studies, the Willa Cather Newsletter and Review, Wagner and Literature: New Directions (special issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies), and the collections Violence, the Arts, and Willa Cather (2007) and Willa Cather and Aestheticism (2012). His other publications include articles on Benjamin Frank- lin, Walt Whitman, Flannery O’Connor, and Cormac McCarthy. He now contributes the annual review of Cather criticism for American Literary Scholarship. David Porter was Tisch Family Professor of Liberal Arts at Skidmore College, where he was president from 1987 to 1999. Over the course of a long and distinguished career, he taught as well at Carleton, Princeton, Williams, and Indiana. A classicist and musician by training, he began working on Willa Cather and Virginia Woolf in 2000. His On the Divide: The Many Lives of Willa Cather was published in 2008, and the next year he and Lucy Marks coauthored Seeking Life Whole: Willa Cather and the Brewsters. Porter was historical editor of the most recent volume in the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition, Lucy Gayheart (2015). He died in March 2016. Diane Prenatt is professor of English at Marian University, where she teaches American and European literature. She has published essays in two previous volumes of Cather Studies (2010, 2011) and in the Willa Cather Newsletter and Review. She is now at work on a biography of Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant and recently published an essay on Sergeant’s World War I memoir Shadow- Shapes in Studies in the Humanities. 331 contributors

Steven B. Shively is associate professor of English at Utah State University, where he teaches courses in English education, American literature and culture, and mythology. He serves on the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Foundation and regularly presents papers at Cather conferences, primarily on the topics of religion, culture, and pedagogy. He is coeditor of Teaching the Works of Willa Cather (2009) and is an issue editor of the Willa Cather Newsletter and Review. He has also published essays on the Har- lem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen and the folklorist Benjamin Botkin. Janis Stout is professor emerita of English and dean of fac- ulties/associate provost emerita at Texas a&m University. She has published extensively on Cather as well as other American and British writers. Her three most recent books are Picturing a Differ- ent West: Vision, Illustration, and the Tradition of Cather and Austin (2007), South by Southwest: Katherine Anne Porter and the Burden of Texas History (2013), and, coedited with Andrew Jewell, The Selected Letters of Willa Cather (2013). Robert Thacker is Charles A. Dana Professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where Frederic Remington was born and is buried. Among his books are Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives: A Biography (2005, revised 2011) and a recent gathering of his critical articles on the No- bel Laureate, Reading Alice Munro, 1973–2013 (2016). He has published numerous articles on Cather, codirected three International Cather Seminars, and coedited three volumes of Cather Studies. A member of the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Founda- tion, he is historical editor of the Poems volume forthcoming in the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition and wrote the annual review of Cather studies for American Literary Scholarship from 2008 to 2014.

INDEX

Abbott, Charles D., 105, 110n4 American Progress (Gast), 56 Abiquiú nm, 145– 46 America’s Wonderland (Buel), 57 Académie Julian, 133 Amsterdam, 69 Acocella, Joan, 218 Anasazi, 5, 8– 9, 84–85. See also Indi- The Act of Creation (Koestler), an cultures; Pueblo peoples 276– 77 Anchises, 67, 110n8 Aeneid (Virgil), 9– 11, 297 “The Ancient People”: and Franz Aix- les- Bains, 224n9 Boas, 242; human history in, Albuquerque nm, 265, 315 262– 65; modernism in, 231, Aldington, Richard, 217 239– 41, 245; sense of place in, Alexander, Bartley, 93 255– 56, 260– 62. See also Indian Alexander’s Bridge (Cather), xiii, 93, cultures; The Song of the Lark 223n3, 238– 40, 290, 314 (Cather) “Alexandra” (Cather), 151 Anderson, Lyra. See Garber, Lyra Alice in Wonderland (Carroll): Anderson, Marjorie, 312, 324n3 advertising campaign featuring, Anderson, Mrs., 47 44, 55–59; copies of, 43, 60n1; Anderson, Nancy K., 115 “Friends of Childhood” section Anderson, Swan Augustus, 185n1 in, 45, 51, 54; illustrations of, Andrews, Sarah, 312 47, 54; inﬂuence of, 43–44, 60; Annesley & Company, 124– 25 review of, 44, 59; tea party in, 54, Apollonian polarity, 233– 37, 246– 58; threats to existence in, 48–49 48, 248n3 Allegheny City pa, 190– 93, 197, 204 April Twilights and Other Poems All Soul’s Day, 205, 209n3 (Cather), xiii– xv, 93, 109n3, Allston, Washington, 2 317– 18 American culture: Frederic Rem- archaeology, 256– 58, 261– 67, 290 ington’s representation of, 119, Archie, Howard: characteristics of, 120; and My Ántonia, 72, 77, 79, 49, 231, 236; and rabbits, 51– 54; 81– 86; playing Indian in, 85; on railroad, 56– 57; and Thea and Song of Hiawatha, 64– 70 Kronborg, 46, 233, 278, 286 American Magazine of Art, 135 Argentina, 173– 74

333 334 index

Argonne Forest, 205 artists: development of, 255– 56, Aristotle, 274 272– 73; identity of, 284, 285; Arizona: Cather conference in, inspiration of, 150– 52; methods xvii, 209n2; Ernest Blumen- of, 253– 55; prototype of, 193. See schein in, 133; as novel setting, also art 4, 5, 59, 256, 278, 282; primitive ARTnews, 117– 18 people in, 242; Willa Cather The Art of Literary Biography in, 268, 273, 314– 19. See also (Batchelor), 303 Southwest Artonne, André, 221 Arles, 254 Art Students League, 114 Armed Services Edition, 66 Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, Armitt, Lucie, 52 193, 205 Armory Show, 137 Athens, Greece, 265 Armstrong, L. O., 69 Atlantic Monthly, 317 Arnold, Matthew, 34 Auclair, Cécile: creativity of, 298; art: dedication to, 233, 235– 37; and epiphany of, 11– 15; as vessel, 289, epiphanies, 4– 11, 14, 161, 237, 293– 97 240– 41, 245, 255– 56, 263, 281– 82, Auden, W. H., xiii, 120 285– 86; of Ernest Blumen- Auerbach, Mr., 156, 162, 167n18 schein, 132– 39; of Frederick Auerbach, Nina, 48, 52– 55 Demmler, 193– 94, 197, 203– 5, Augusta (in Professor’s House), 36 209n2; of Frederic Remington, Auld, Mrs. William, 95 114– 17; Hiawatha in, 68, 71, 73; Auld, William Thomas, 38 of Howard Pyle, 93– 95; and Austin, Mary, 134, 206 imagination, 116– 17, 273, 274, Avignon, xvii, 31, 265 278– 84, 286; as inspiration Ayrshire, Kitty, 153 for novel, 139– 40; intuition in, 238; and modernism, 2– 3, Babcock, Barbara A., 263– 64 137–38, 230– 31, 233– 34, 239– 40, Baker, Bruce P., 37 246– 47, 248n3; of primitive Baldini, Gabriele, 225n10 people, 242– 44; and religion, Baptists, 19, 20, 38. See also religion 19– 21, 33– 36; titles of, 57; in Barbara Dobkin Foundation, 308 travel literature, 56; value of, Barbizon school, 7, 117 122, 123, 125– 28, 136, 153, 177, 184; Barnes, Tom, 248n2, 249n5 vessels for, 289, 292, 296, 300; Bartlett, Alice Hunt, xiv and youth, 108. See also artists; Batchelor, John, 303 music; pottery Bates, John Mallory, 38 Arthur, King, 99, 102 Baudelaire, Charles- Pierre, 229 Arthurs, Stanley, 109n2 Bauer, Harold, 231– 32 335 index

Baum, Vicki, 224n8 Near Taos, 138; Sangre de Cristo Baxter, Richard, 34 Mountains, 141, 144– 46; style of, Bear Tepee, 87 136– 39, 146– 47; in Taos, 133– 34 Beatrice ne, 38 Blumenschein, Mary Greene, 132, Beckford, William, 222 134 Beecher, George, 39, 40n1 Boak, Grandma, 310 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 154, Boas, Franz, 231, 241– 44, 248n2, 166n10 249n5 Beethoven: H`is Spiritual Develop- Boas, Mrs., 242, 249n5 ment (Sullivan), 151, 154, 166n10 The Bohemian Girl, 160– 61 Belgium, 193, 203 “The Bohemian Girl” (Cather), 314 Bennett, Mildred, 36– 37, 132, 307 Bohemians, xii, xviii, 40n4, 69, 72, Benson, Frank W., 197, 203 85, 97– 98, 293 Bergson, Alexandra, 67 Borges, Jorge Luis, 222 Bergson, Henri, xii, 231, 237– 41, Boston ma, 96, 118, 190, 193, 194, 197 245– 47 Boston Globe, 209n3 Bergson and American Culture Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2– 3 (Quirk), 239 Boston Tea Party, 85 Berlin- Hotel ’43 (Baum), 224n8 Bowdoin College, 66 Berninghaus, Oscar, 147n1 Bower, Eden, 121– 22, 125– 27, 136, 153 Bible, 6– 9, 20– 23, 26– 28, 34, 36, 70, Bowers, Madison, 151, 236, 239, 280 290– 91. See also Christianity; Boy Scouts, 69 religion Bradford pa, 210n7 Biltmer, Henry, 242, 256, 263 Brandywine School, 109n2 Biographia Literaria (Coleridge), Bread Loaf, 175 274 Breton, Jules, 5, 118 birds, 79 Brewster, Earl and Achsah, 95, Birdseye, Nellie, xv 321– 22 The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche), “The Broken Wagon Wheel” (Blu- 232, 233, 246– 47, 248n2 menschein), 133 The Black Hat (Demmler), 204 Brooklyn Museum, 127 Blake, Roddy, 8, 84– 85 Brown, E. K., 37– 38, 40n1, 215 blending theory, 273– 77, 280– 86 Brown Palace Hotel, 183 “Blue Eyes on the Platte,” 154 Bruhn, Mark, 273– 74 Blue Mesa, 84– 85 Bryan, William Jennings, 28 Blumenschein, Ernest L.: inﬂu- Bryn Mawr College, 266, 267 ence of, xviii, 135– 47; The Lake, “Buccaneers and Marooners of the 137, 141– 42; life and work of, Spanish Main” (Pyle), 106 132– 34, 146, 147n3; Mountains Buel, J. W., 57 336 index

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 173– 74 Carnegie Institute of Technology, “The Building of the Ship” (Long- 188– 90, 193, 200– 201, 205– 9, fellow), 67 210n6 Burden, Jim: as autobiographical Carnegie Library (Pittsburgh), persona, xii; epiphany of, 6– 8, 248n2, 249n5 10; on landscape, 254; mem- Carnegie Mellon University, 204 ories of, 81– 84; and picture- Carnegie Tech War Verse, 206 writing, 75– 77, 79, 80; playing Carroll, Lewis, 43, 49, 54. See also Indian by, 84– 86; and removal Alice in Wonderland (Carroll) of Indians, 27; and spirit pres- Carson, Kit, 146 ences, 86– 87; westward journey Cartier, Jacques, 11 of, 113– 14, 116 Cather, Charles (father), 27, 38, 100, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 136 154, 164, 312 Burlington Railroad, 98 Cather, Charles (nephew), 308 Burnham, Douglass, 99, 105, 107 Cather, Douglass, xiii, 93, 98, 107, Burroughs, Louise Guerber, 154, 314, 315, 317, 321– 22 166n4, 166n8 Cather, Elsie, 38 Buxton, Ethel Shreiner, 204 Cather, Irma Wells, 201, 202 Bynner, Witter, 97, 200, 206, 207 Cather, Jack: career of, 201– 3, Byrne, Kathleen, 190, 210n4, 248n2 210n7; marriage of, 201– 3, 202; Byron, Lord, 167n14 as prototype, 193, 200– 201; teachers of, 200, 210n6 cadets, 172– 73 Cather, James, 43 A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather, Jessie, 95 Cather (Stout), 307, 308 Cather, Mary Virginia Boak, 38, 66, California, 164, 206 164, 170, 311– 13 Callander, Marilyn Berg, 248n2 Cather, Roscoe: childhood of, xiii, Canada, 115, 293– 97, 300, 301. See 93, 98, 107– 8; gifts for, 109n3, also Quebec 118; letters to, 103, 107– 8, 127, 201, Canadian Pacific Railway, 69 313, 321– 24 Canfield, Dorothy, 188, 207 Cather, Willa: autobiographical Canfield family, 38 elements of, 40n4, 118, 164– 65, Canfield Fisher, Dorothy, 310– 11 167n19, 188, 193; career of, 123, Canton ny, 114 146; childhood of, 22, 64, 65, 93– Caplan, Ron, 190, 204 99, 102, 107–9, 109n3, 117, 170, 311; Carel, Christine, 215– 16, 220– 22, creative control of, 215, 222– 23; 224n8 creative inspiration of, 150, 151, Carlyle, Thomas, 24– 26, 40n3 171, 177, 185n3, 248n3, 283, 292; as Carnegie Art Gallery, 204 editor, xvi, 108, 117, 172, 193, 231– 337 index

32; as English teacher, 190– 93; Chabanel, Noël, 13 epiphanies of, xii– xiii, xv, xvii, Chadds Ford pa, 109n2 14– 15, 272, 273, 283, 314– 15; hand Chamberlain- Kahn Act, 175 injury of, 103, 110n6, 209n1; as “A Chance Meeting” (Cather), journalist, 20, 22, 24– 25, 27– 32, 224n9 37, 290; letter sources, 306– 7; Charron, Pierre, 298, 300 letters published, 303–24; Chase County ks, 254– 55 letters to and from, xviii–xix, 19, Chavannes, Puvis de, 139– 40 22– 23, 37– 39, 40n2, 43, 49– 50, Chénetier, Marc, 214, 223 53–54, 59, 95, 97, 103, 107–8, 127, Chicago: comparison to Arles, 254; 128n1, 134, 138, 150, 154, 156, 164, as novel setting, 4– 5, 156– 60, 166n4, 166n9, 170, 174, 193, 200, 162, 163; Thea Kronborg in, 48, 201, 203, 206, 209n1, 215–16, 218, 57, 230, 236, 239, 256, 259, 260, 220–23, 223n3, 224n6, 249n5, 291; World’s Columbian Expo- 265, 267, 268, 272; observation sition in, 291 and memory of, 197; personality Chicago and Northwest Railway of, 313– 18; personal problems Company, 56 of, 35, 37, 39, 154– 56, 164, 176– 77, childhood: of Frederic Remington, 184, 186n7, 200– 201, 313, 321– 23; 114; and Howard Pyle, 93–99, pseudonym of, 110n7; reading 102, 106– 9; in My Ántonia, 82, habits of, 43, 231– 32, 248n2; 85, 87; in One of Ours, 110n8; re- studies of, xviii– xix; worldview ligion in, 22; in Song of the Lark, of, 36– 39, 40n1, 323– 24; writing 46– 47, 49– 55, 59– 60, 230, 240, 245, style of, xii, xiv– xvi, xviii, 22– 25, 264, 279, 286. See also Cather, 27– 31, 60, 72, 80–81, 118, 127– 28, Willa: childhood of; youth 129n7, 139– 40, 146– 47, 156, 204, children’s literature, 93– 95 229, 248n3, 272, 323– 24; young Christianity, 25, 79, 263– 64, 290– 91, adulthood of, 22– 24 295– 96. See also Bible; religion Cather Southwick, Helen (niece), Christmas, 29, 31, 79, 300 21, 38 Chrysalis (Byrne and Snyder), 206 Cather Studies, xvii Church, Frederick E., 117 Catholic Church, 36, 37, 263. See churches, 29– 34, 36. See also also religion Grace Episcopal Church (Red Catlin, George, 114, 115, 116 Cloud); religion Caught in the Circle (Remington), Civil War, 134 118 Cleric, Gaston, 77, 80 Century, 132, 137– 38 cliff dwellings: artifacts from, 265, Cervantes, Miguel de, 214 290; in Professor’s House, 9; in Cezanne, Paul, 125 Song of the Lark, 5, 57– 59, 84, 338 index cliff dwellings cont( .) Conrad, Joseph, 132 236– 37, 243– 44, 256, 258– 59, 261– Cordova, Spain, 7 64, 278, 280– 85; travel literature Cornell University, 197 about, 57– 58. See also Indian Coronado, Francisco Vásquez de, cultures 7, 72 Cole, Thomas, 2 Cortissoz, Royal, 119– 20, 128n4 Coleridge- Taylor, Samuel, 68, 274, Cos Cob ct, 117 275 Craftsman, 119 Collier, John, 266 Crane, Stephen, 132 Collier’s, 114, 116 Creative Evolution (Bergson), Collins, Henry, 173– 74, 181 237– 38 color: and Death Comes for the Crete, 266 Archbishop, 139– 40, 145; Ernest The Crimson Letter (Shand- Tucci), Blumenschein’s use of, 134, 209n3 145; Frederic Remington’s Crouse, E. Irving, 147n1 experiments with, 127; in New Cuba, 116 Mexico landscape, 141– 43; of Currier & Ives, 76, 126 prostitution, 174 Curtin, William M., 43 Colorado: Ernest Blumenschein in, 133; as novel setting, 4, 8, 9, Dance at Taos (Blumenschein), 171– 72, 182, 278; prostitution in, 135– 36 171– 72, 182– 84 Daudet, Alphonse, 253, 254, 265 Columbia University, 241 “The Daughters of the Poor” “Coming, Aphrodite!” (Cather): (Turner), 172 artwork in, 132; and Ernest David (biblical figure), 34 Blumenschein, 135, 146; galleries Dayton oh, 132 in, 117; influence on, 121, 123, death: in My Ántonia, 81; theme 126– 27; Longfellow reference of, 97; Willa Cather on, 164; of in, 67; translation of, 225n10 young talent, 153, 155, 157, 159– “Coming, Eden Bower!,” 121, 123, 153 60, 162 Commission for Indian Affairs, 266 Death Comes for the Archbishop Commonweal, 19, 139 (Cather): artwork in, 132– 33; Complete Letters of Willa Cather, character development in, xix, 324n2 255; Christmas in, 31; culture Congregational Church, 33. See in, 268; influence on, 138– 47; also religion religion in, 19, 36, 37, 40n1, 263; Congress of Women, 291 style of, 3; translations of, 215– Connecticut, 117, 128, 217– 18 23, 224n5, 224n9; writing of, Connelly, Mark, 175 266– 67, 323 339 index

“A Death in the Desert” (Cather), Dodge, Mabel, 134 207 Dodgson, Charles, 52 “Dedicatory” (Cather), xiii, xiv, 93, domestic activity: and femininity, 108 46, 293, 297–98, 300–301; and Deep Map Country (Maher), 254– 55 sentimentality, 47; in Shadows deep maps, 254– 59, 265–67. See also on the Rock, 12– 15, 293– 95, 297, landscapes 298, 300 Delamain, Maurice, 220 Don Fernando de Taos. See Taos nm Delay, Helen, 110n7 Dos Passos, John, 217 Deloria, Philip, 85 “Double Birthday” (Cather), 154– Demmler, Frederick A., 195, 198; 57, 166n9, 190 appearance of, 194–97; career Downum, Christian E., xvii of, 203; death of, 193, 205; poetry Drew University, 308, 321– 22 about, 204–5, 208–9; as proto- Duchene, Father, 8– 9, 263, 266 type, 190, 193–97; in war, 203–6 Dunn, Harvey, 109n2 Demmler, Oscar, 190, 193, 209n2 Dunton, Herbert W., 134, 147nn1– 2 Demmler, Wilhemina Augusta, Dürer, Albrecht, 101 193, 209n2 Duse, Eleonora, 32– 33 Demmler, William, 190 Dvořák, Antonín, 5, 68, 159, 230 Demmler, William Edward, 197 Democratic Party, 28 economy: and art, 177; of Forrest- de Musset, Alfred, 223n1 ers, 172– 73, 176; and panic of de Negri, Gino, 216– 17 1893, 171, 185n1; women’s role in, Denton tx, 311– 12 170– 71, 174, 178– 85. See also sex/ Denver co, 171, 182– 83 gender system Denver Times, 58, 262– 63 Edgerton, Giles. See Roberts, Mary Depp, Johnny, 106 Fanton Deprez, Bérengère, 217 Éditions Stock, 215, 217, 220, 221, “Despite the Dullness of Light” 224n9 (Blumenschein), 134 Ehrlich, Gretel, 3 Deutsch, Otto Erich, 167n13 Eiseley, Loren, 257 Devil’s Tower, 87 “An Elder Brother to the Cliff- “The Diamond Mine” (Cather), 153 Dwellers” (Prudden), 57– 58 Dionysian polarity: idea of, 232; in “Elegy Written in a Country Song of the Lark, 233– 37, 246– 48; Churchyard” (Gray), 75 and Willa Cather’s style, 248n3 Elijah in the Desert (Allston), 2 disappearance: of Indians, 74, 79; Eliot, George, 108 in My Ántonia, 77, 79– 84; of Eliot, T. S., xv, 200, 238 West, 115 Ellinger, Frank, 175– 76, 181– 83 340 index

El Palacio, 138 2– 12; publication of, xiv– xv, Emerald, Nell, 179, 182– 83 121; religion in, 19, 27, 32, 36– 37, The Emigrants (Remington), 124– 25 39– 40, 40n1, 264; sense of loss “The Enchanted Bluff” (Cather), in, 59– 60, 152– 65, 176– 78; style xiii, 93, 98 of Willa Cather’s, 8, 36– 37, 140, The End of the Day (Remington), 272; suffering and death in, 97; 116 transformative experiences in, Engelhardt family, 190 3– 4, 14– 15, 255, 273, 286; trans- Engels, Friedrich, 178 lations of, 214– 15, 223nn2– 3; England, 101, 174– 75, 201, 203 Willa Cather’s goal in, 122– 23 enthusiasm, 30, 35, 68 Fields, Annie Adams (Mrs. James Episcopal Church, 20, 21, 33, 37– 39, T.), 197, 316 40n1. See also religion “A Fight in One Round” (Wil- “Eric Hermannson’s Soul” (Cath- liams), 134 er), 19, 21, 37 “figure.” See picture– text interac- “The Errand” (Cather), 223n1 tion “Escapism” (Cather), 167n19 Fischer, Mike, 72 Evening in the Desert, Navajoes Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 164, 214, (Remington), 116 223n3 Every Week, 134 Fisher, Lily, 47– 48 “Excelsior” (Longfellow), 67 Fisher- Wirth, Ann, 38, 59 Eysteinsson, Astradur, 272 Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 33 Flagstaffaz , xvii, 242, 314, 315 Fairbanks, Douglas, 106 Flaubert, Gustave, 220 Faith (Powers), 2 “Flavia and Her Artists” (Cather), family: and modernism, 20; 43 problems of Cather, 39, 311– 13; Fleckenstein, Kristie S., 259– 60 women’s role in, 298– 300 Fletcher, Angus, 72 Fantin- Latour, Henri, 134, 135 Flynn, Errol, 106 Fauconnier, Gilles, 275– 77 Focus, 166n9 Faulkner, William, 238, 255 “Die Forelle,” 160 Fauve, 268 Forrester, Captain: attitudes feminism, 283 toward women, 171, 173, 177– 78, Ferdinand, Archduke, 203 180– 81; decline of, 176; home of, fiction: artwork in, 132; characters 179– 80 in, 188, 193, 293, 314; criticism Forrester, Marian: appearance of, of realist, 258; by Howard Pyle, 175– 76, 180– 82; as commodity, 102– 7; inspirations for, xvii, 171– 73, 178– 80, 182; home of, 66– 67, 99, 146; locations of, 179– 80; losses of, 177– 78; proto- 341 index

type for, 170, 312; as vessel, 293; and fugitive gleam, 163; inspira- on wealth, 184 tion of, 161, 167n16; similarities Foster, John Burt, 233, 246 to Willa Cather, 164– 65; walk Franc, Aunt, 174, 200, 203 on icy roads, 152, 166n4 France: art in, 125, 126– 27; culture gender codes: in Alice illustrations, of, 12– 13, 293– 97, 300, 301; 56; in childhood, 59; in Lost Elizabeth Sergeant in, 207, 265, Lady, 171– 75; in My Ántonia, 266; ﬁction in, 264; Frederick 85– 86; in Song of the Lark, 44, Demmler in, 205; vessels from, 55; of Victorians, 46, 55, 56. See 299– 300; Willa Cather in, xvii, also men; sex/gender system; 216, 223, 253– 55, 265 women France, Anatole, 265 Gensmer, Kristin A., 183– 84 Franklin- Grout, Caroline, 220, Geoghegan, Harold, 210n6 224n9 The Georgics (Virgil), 6, 7, 77, 80 Fraser, Antonia, 291 Gere, Mariel, 43, 316 fraternal organizations, 85– 86 Gere family, 38 Freeman, Sylvanus Dwelley, 201 Gerhardt, David, 153 Freemasons, 85 German, Hannah, 223n2 Fremstad, Olive, 317 German language, 214. See also “French Galleries,” 117, 126– 27 language French language, 214– 20, 222, Germany: Franz Boas in, 241; 223n3, 225n10. See also language Frederick Demmler in, 203; Frick, Grace, 217 medieval stories in, 103; Thea Friedman, Susan Stanford, 267 Kronborg in, 151, 162, 166n3, 233, Frontenac, Count, 14 262, 265; translation published Frost, Robert, xvi, 214 in, 218 Fuchs, Otto, 75– 76, 81, 82, 85 Giorcelli, Cristina, 140 Funda, Evelyn, 248 Giordani, Igino, 216, 224n5 girls, 51– 52. See also women Garber, Lyra: control of economy, Giulio Einaudi Editore (publish- 185; obituary of, 151, 177; as pro- er), 225n10 totype, 151, 170, 185n1; reference Gluck, Christoph, 159, 235 to, 312 Goetzmann, William H., 115 Garber’s Grove, 98 Gogröf- Voorhees, Andrea, 233 Gardener, Mr., 85 The Golden Legend (Longfellow), Garnet, Cressida, 153 66, 67 Gast, John, 56 Goldman, Emma, 174 Gayheart, Lucy: comparison to Goldman, Hetty, 267 Thea Kronborg, 149, 152, 155– 62; “A Gold Slipper” (Cather), 153 342 index

Goliath, 34 spiration, 151, 231, 236, 247; and Gone Primitive (Torgovnick), 264 Thea Kronborg’s savagery, 244; Gordon, Harry, 152, 160, 163, 167n18 on Thea Kronborg’s singing, Gorman, Michael, 72 280 Grace Episcopal Church (Red Hartley, Marsden, 10 Cloud), 20, 37– 39. See also Hartsoeker, Nicolaas, 299 churches Hartwell, Lyon, 2, 134– 35 Grand Canyon, 268, 279, 315 Harvard University, 97, 200, 206, “The Grave” (Longfellow), 67– 68 209n3, 220 graves, xi– xii, 73– 74, 82– 84 Haskell, Barbara, 10 Graves, Emerson, 196 Hassam, Childe, 117, 118, 127 Gray, Thomas, 75 Hassrick, Peter H., 116, 141– 42 Great Lakes region, 69 Hathi Trust, 209n3 Greece, 265, 267 Haussmann, William August, 248n2 Greek culture, 233– 36 Hayeck, Robin, 51 Green, Charles H., 57 Heat- Moon, William Least, 254– 56 Greensburg pa, 209n2 Hedger, Don: and Longfellow’s Greenslet, Ferris, 49– 50, 134, 150, verse, 67; prototype for, 132, 135– 215, 221– 22, 223n3 38, 146, 147n3; story of, 121– 27 Greenwich Village, 69 Heine, Heinrich, xv, 150, 214, 223n1 Gregg, Josiah, 114, 116 Helen Cather Southwick Collec- Guardian, 304 tion, 109n3 Guerber, Louise, 154, 166n8 Hellas Regained (Price), 209n3 Guiney, Louise Imogen, 128n1 Hemingway, Ernest, 69 Henderson, Alice Corbin, 206 “Had You But Smothered that Hendrick, Burton J., 241– 42 Devouring Flame” (de Musset), Herbert, Niel: and commodiﬁca- 223n1 tion of women, 171, 175, 176, 181; Hambourg, Isabelle McClung, on Mrs. Forrester’s decorum, 210n6, 216, 248n2, 321– 22 180, 182; name of, 248n2; and Hard Punishments (Cather), 110n6 sense of loss, 177 Harnois household, 13– 14, 298 Herbst, Josephine, 306 Harper and Brothers, 102, 106 The Hesperian, 40n3, 193, 271 Harper’s, 57– 58, 96, 99, 101– 2, 106, Hiawatha’s Departure (Currier & 117, 132, 207, 266 Ives), 76 Harris, Richard C., xiii Hill, David, 279, 283– 84 Harsanyi, Andor: inﬂuence of, 5, Hills, Laura, 223n3 156, 239, 245; and “Die Lorelei,” Hindemith, Paul, 149– 50 159; and Thea Kronborg’s in- Hobbes, Thomas, 274 343 index

Home Monthly, 43, 93– 95, 102, 108– of, 74, 79, 83, 86, 115; Elizabeth 9, 110n7, 214 Sergeant’s activism for, 266; Homestead, Melissa, 324n4 Franz Boas on, 242–43; imagi- Hood, Robin, 99 nation of, 280–82, 285, 286; and Hôpital Général, 224n7 My Ántonia, 72, 76– 77, 84– 88; Hotel Berlin ’43 (Baum), 224n8 picture-writing in, 72–81; and Hôtel Royal Danieli, 216, 224n4 Song of Hiawatha, 68– 70, 74; Houghton Mifflin, 121, 167n11, 184 water carriers in, 263–64, 291–92; House of Mirrors, 183 Willa Cather’s interest in, 315–16. Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (Pyle), See also Anasazi; “The Ancient 106 People”; cliff dwellings; Pueblo Howard Pyle School of Illustra- peoples; Sinagua tion, 109n2 Indian Defense Association, 266 Hoyt, Colgate, 55 “Indian Passion Plays.” See The Hudson Park, 69 Song of Hiawatha (Longfellow): Hudson River school, 7, 9 performances of Huneker, James, 233 Ingleneuk, 118 Huntsman What Quarry? (Millay), Interlinear to Cabeza de Vaca xvi (Long), 208 Hutchinson, Eileen, 193, 209n2 International Willa Cather Semi- nar, xvii, 209n2, 309 If He Can Make Her So (Caplan), In the Remington Moment (Tatum), 190 119 immigrants: American identity of, Irigaray, Luce, 180, 182 70, 72; in Buenos Aires, 173; as Iroquois Confederacy, 68 carriers of culture, 294, 296– 97; Irving, Washington, 114, 116 effect on Indians, 115; Elizabeth Isaiah, 7, 9 Sergeant on, 267; as literary Isle of Orleans, 13 subject, 136, 255; in My Ántonia, An Italian Autumn (Cole), 2 80– 84, 86; on Nebraska prairie, Italian language, 215– 17, 219– 22, 97– 98, 113– 14; skull sizes of, 241– 224n5, 225n10. See also language 42; and Song of Hiawatha, 68 Italy, 3, 6– 7, 107– 8, 166n5, 216, 217, Immortal Youth (Price), 194, 209n3, 254, 267 210n4 Ives, Burton, 125– 26, 128, 136 Improved Order of Red Men, 85 “Indian Camp” (Hemingway), 69 Jack- a- Boy, 27 Indian cultures: and art, 119, 132, Jackson, Virginia, 67 135–37, 139, 237, 242–44; and deep Jaffrey nh, 320– 22 maps, 255, 256; disappearance Jake (in My Ántonia), 75– 76 344 index

James, Alexander, 203 kingdom of art, 29, 32, 33, 34 James, Henry, 70, 203 Knoedler, Michael, 117 Japanese aesthetics, 3 Knoedler Gallery, 116– 19, 126, 128n2 Jefferson, Joseph, 33 Knopf, Alfred A.: and Cather Jeremiah, 34 letters, 308– 9; Howard Pyle The Jesuit Relations, 11 with, 102; publication of April Jesus, 26– 27, 32, 34– 35. See also Twilights, xiii; publication of religion Franz Schubert’s letters, 159; Jewell, Andrew, xviii– xix, 209n2, publication of Lost Lady, 171, 308– 10, 313– 24, 324n1, 324n4 184; and translations, 216, 217, Jewett, Sarah Orne, 224n6 218, 220; Willa Cather with, 103, Joan of Arc, 101 121, 123 Johns, Louise, 193 Knopf, Blanche, 156 Johnson, Mark, 275 Koestler, Arthur, 276– 77 Jones, Will Owen, 24– 25 Kohler family, 50, 280, 286 Jones, W. T., 238 Koss, Juliet, 246 Joseph and His Brothers (Mann), 21 Kot, Paula, 58– 59 Joyce, James, xv, 3 “Kronborg,” 231, 245– 46. See also “The Joy of Nellie Dean” (Cather), The Song of the Lark (Cather) 137 Kronborg, Anna, 47 Julio, 267– 68, 314– 16, 318– 19, 324n4 Kronborg, Thea: body of, 280– 83, Juschereau, Mother, 13 285; comparison to Lucy Gay- heart, 149, 152, 155– 60; creativity Kane, Paul, 115 of, 278, 281– 83, 285, 286, 293; Kansas, 254– 55 epiphany of, xvii, 4– 5, 14, 54– 55, Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of 160– 62, 237, 239– 41, 244– 45, 253, the Times (Stout), 306 255– 56, 258– 61, 263, 264, 273, Katz, Jonathan Ned, 209n3 281– 86, 314; and Indian cul- Keeble, Glendinning, 53– 54 tures, 84, 242– 44, 264– 65, 268; Keeler, Clinton, 139– 40 inspiration of, 151– 52, 166n3, 231; Kendall Oil, 210n7 as queen, 45– 46; similarities to Kennedy, Ray: characteristics Willa Cather, 164– 65, 167n19, of, 49, 231; in hole, 48– 49; 230; threats to existence of, inﬂuence of, 161, 236, 278– 79; 48– 51; as vessel, 289, 291; vitality and Longfellow’s verse, 67; of, 232– 33, 237, 239, 241, 245– 47, perception of Thea Kronborg, 282, 285; wholeness of, 230– 31, 45– 46; on primitive people, 236– 37, 241, 244– 48, 255– 56, 260, 242, 244, 281 282, 285; youth and innocence Kincaid, James R., 47, 59 of, 43– 44, 49– 50, 59– 60, 155– 56 345 index

The Lake (Blumenschein), 137, “The Legend of Fray Baltazar” 139– 43 (Cather), 3 Lamy, Archbishop of Santa Fe, Lehan, Richard, 229– 30, 232, 238, 139, 221 246 Lander wy, 118 Letters and Notes on the Manners, Landi, Ann, 117– 18 Customs, and Conditions of Landry (accompanist in Song of the the North American Indians Lark), 151, 166n3 (Catlin), 115 landscapes: in Death Comes for the Lettres de mon moulin (Daudet), 253 Archbishop, 142– 45; and epipha- Levenson, Michael, 229, 247 nies, 2– 11, 245, 273, 278– 80, 283– Lewis, Edith: and Blumenscheins, 85; of Ernest Blumenschein, 132, 134; on Death Comes for the 132, 136– 37, 140– 42, 146– 47; Archbishop, 267; and Ham- female connotations in, 292; bourgs, 321– 22; letters to, 154, by Frederic Remington, 116, 118, 319– 21; on Lost Lady, 171– 72; on 120, 128n4; humans in, 257– 62, Provençal landscape, 253; travel 267– 68; in My Ántonia, 77– 79, to Europe, 216; on Willa Cath- 82– 84, 87– 88, 97, 113– 14, 254; er’s personal problems, 164– 65 of Nebraska prairie, 98– 99; in Lewis, Eva, 183 translations, 215, 218– 21. See also Lewis and Clark, 114, 116 deep maps; Southwest; water; Liddell, Alice, 52 West, American “Life of Jesse James” book, 113, 116, Langtry, Professor, 36 121, 128n1 language: of Howard Pyle, 102; in light: in art, 6– 7, 9– 10, 134, 140– 42, My Ántonia, 81– 82; and picture- 145– 47; in Death Comes for the writing, 72, 74, 79, 80; Song of Archbishop, 142– 43, 145; in Lucy Hiawatha in, 70; of Willa Cath- Gayheart, 163– 64; symbolism of, er’s works, 214– 15, 223nn2– 3. See 6, 15. See also sun also French language; German Lily (White Queen’s daughter), language; Italian language; 47– 48 Spanish language Lincoln ne, 28, 33, 38, 93 Larsen, Lars, 47 Lingard, Lena, 80 The Last March (Remington), 116 Litany for All Souls (Price), 209n3 Latour, Jean, 31– 32, 37, 142– 43, 145, Llona, Victor, 223n3 146, 255, 263 Lohengrin, 160, 286 Laval, Bishop, 12– 13 London, 69, 174– 75, 203, 304 Lawrence, D. H., 207, 217, 219 London, Jack, 132 Le Ber, Jeanne, 13, 296 “London Roses” (Cather), 174– 75, Lee, Hermione, 98, 132 184 346 index

Long, Alice Knoblauch, 189, 192, Macmillan (publisher), 248n2 205, 206– 7 Madigan, Mark, 126, 188 Long, Anton V., 189, 190 magic circle, 74– 78, 80 Long, Haniel, 191; friendship with Maguire, Henry N., 55 Frederick Demmler, 203– 4, Maher, Susan Naramore, 254– 55, 208– 9; letter to, 209n1; in 257 New Mexico, 189– 90, 206– 8; Mahler, Gustav, 150 opposition to war, 204, 205; Maine, 10, 220– 22 portrait of, 203– 5; as prototype, Manabozho, 68 189, 196; at Tech, 200; tribute to Man Corn (Turner and Turner), 9 conscripted students, 205– 6 Manet, Édouard, 134, 135 Longanesi (publisher), 225n10 Manganaro, Marc, 242– 44 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth: Manifest Destiny, 69– 70 essay about, xiii; influence of, Mann, Thomas, 21, 217 66– 67, 75– 76, 79, 83– 84; picture- Mansfield, Katherine, 153 writing of, 64, 72– 81 Mansfield, Richard II, 206 Longfellow- Hawthorne class, 66 March, John, 188– 90, 193 “Die Lorelei,” 159 March Hare, 54 Los Angeles ca, 206 Margie (in “Treasure of Far Is- A Lost Lady (Cather): characters in, land”), 99, 105, 107, 110n8 179, 248n2, 312; place names in, Market St. (Denver), 183 185n2; prostitution in, 171– 75, “Marooned” (Pyle), 106 184– 85; sex/gender system in, Marpole, Jake, 81, 113 178– 79; vessels in, 293; writing marriage, 174, 179 of, 39, 151, 170– 71, 175– 77, 184, Martinez, Father, 145 185n3, 323 Marx, Karl, 178, 180 Lucy Gayheart (Cather): epiphany Masters, Edgar Lee, xvi, 209n1 in, 160– 62; essay in scholarly Maurier, Daphne du, 217 edition of, 165n1; heroine’s Mayer, Fred, 197 journey in, 149– 52, 155, 156– 60, McClure, S. S., xiv– xv, 96, 129n7, 162– 65; influences on, 152– 56, 316 166n8, 167n13 McClure’s: cover of, 317; Ernest Luhan, Tony, 134 Blumenschein in, 134; on Franz Lupack, Alan and Barbara Tepa, Boas, 241– 42; Howard Pyle at, 110n5 95; illustrations for, 132; pros- “Lyons” (Blumenschein), 134 titution article in, 172, 185n5; Willa Cather at, xvi, 57, 96, 108, Machebeuf, Father, 221 117, 118, 121, 172, 207, 314 MacKell, Jan, 183 McDermott, John, 307 347 index

McGregor, Scott, 204 Millington, Richard H., xv, xvi, McNally, Michael, 69 14– 15, 241– 42 McPhee, John, 257 The Mill on the Floss (Eliot), 108 McWayne, Dorli Demmler, 209n2 The Mind of Primitive Man (Boas), Medusa series, 217 242, 249n5 Melba, Nellie, 33 mining, 172, 184 Mémoires (Rouvroy), 11 Missouri River, 115 Mémoires d’Hadrien (Yourcenar), Mistral, Frederic, 138 217 Mockford, James, 160, 167n12 men: commodification of women, modernism: definition of, 229– 30; 178– 82; control of economy, foundations of, 238– 40, 246, 184, 185; Howard Pyle’s appeal 274; in Song of the Lark, 233– 34, to, 106; primitive, 267– 68; role 237, 240– 41, 245– 47, 264, 283 in community, 300; in Song modernists: Ernest Blumenschein of the Lark, 49– 52; symbolism as, 132– 33, 136– 39, 143, 145– 47; of, 74, 293, 299. See also gender and Frederic Remington, 118, codes; sex/gender system 122, 125; Haniel Long as, 208; Mencken, H. L., 123, 231 influences on, 1– 3, 8; Richard Mérimée, Prosper, 219, 223 Wagner as, 246; Willa Cather Merleau- Ponty, Maurice, 262 as, xii, xvi, xviii, 1, 3, 14– 15, 20, 37, Merrill, Flora, 185n3 60, 67– 68, 122, 140, 230, 233, 234, The Merry Adventures of Robin 237– 38, 241, 247, 272 Hood (Pyle), 99– 101 Moers, Ellen, 245, 292 Mesa Verde co, 8, 9, 57– 59, 262– 63 Mohawk Indians, 68 metaphors: and cognition, 275, Mondadori (publisher), 217 280, 283, 286; of eagle, 284; for Monet, Claude, 134 mothering, 298– 300; vessels as, Montana, 114 290– 91, 293, 296, 299– 300; for moon, 236 women, 290, 293 Moonlight, Wolf (Remington), 122, Metcalf, Willard, 118, 127 124, 125, 127 Methodists, 19. See also religion Moonstone: symbolism of, 44, 46– Mexico, 315 55, 57, 58, 292; Thea Kronborg’s Michaelis, David, 95– 96 thoughts about, 236, 239, 278, Michigan, 69, 73 279 Middle Ages, 99, 102– 3, 105, 110n5, Moore, F. E., 69 246 Morris, Clara, 33 Middleton, Fred, 209n3 Morris, William, 101 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, xvi La mort et l’archêveque, 220, 221 Millet, Jean- François, 7 Moseley, Ann, 43 348 index

Moses, 26 97, 113– 14, 254; picture- writing Mountains Near Taos (Blumen- in, 64, 75– 81; playing Indian schein), 138, 139, 143– 44 in, 84– 88; religion in, 19; and Mount Desert Island me, 220 removal of Indians, 72; style Mount Katahdin, 10 of, xv, 3, 129n7; themes of, 66, Mud House, 207, 266 68; translations of, 215, 221– 22, Murakami, Haruki, 3 223n3, 225nn10– 11; travel scene Murphy, John J.: on customs of in, 113– 14, 116, 128n1; vessels in, brotherhood, 146; on Death 290, 293; writing of, 323 Comes for the Archbishop, 215; My Mortal Enemy (Cather), xv, 31, on epiphanies, xii– xiii, xviii; 153– 54, 225n10 on religious writing, 36; on Myra (in My Mortal Enemy), xv “Trout,” 167n17; on Willa Cath- er’s conﬁrmation, 38; on Willa “The Namesake” (Cather), 2, 132, Cather’s inﬂuences, 110n6 134– 35 Musée de Luxemborg, 135 “Narrative without Accent” (Kee- Museum Epiphany III (Prosperi), ler), 139– 40 2– 3 Nathan, George, 123 Museum of Fine Arts School (Bos- The Nation, 77, 84, 266 ton), 197, 203 The National Stockman and Farmer, Museum of Natural History (New 43 York), 290 naturalism, 229– 30, 272 museums, 2– 3, 5, 14, 15, 57 nature. See landscapes music: in churches, 33– 34, 36; and Nebraska: Coronado in, 7; gov- Ernest Blumenschein, 133; in ernor’s wife in, 177; as novel Lucy Gayheart, 149, 160; and setting, 8, 80, 83, 97, 113, 170– 71, modernism, 234– 36, 241, 246– 182; place names in, 27–28; prai- 47; in Red Cloud, 98; in Song rie pioneering in, 113– 14, 129n7; of the Lark, 46, 50, 149, 159, 231, reclusive woman in, 324n3; 235– 37, 240, 256, 259, 260, 273, Willa Cather’s life in, 93, 100, 278– 80, 292; stories about, 153– 108– 9, 253 58, 160. See also art Nebraska State Journal, 24– 27 My Ántonia (Cather): burial “Nebraska: The End of the First in, xi– xii; characters in, xiii; Cycle” (Cather), 47, 266 Christmas in, 31; epiphany “Neighbour Rosicky” (Cather), 31 in, 6– 9; footnotes in, 224n7; Nevin, Ethelbert, 153 identity formation in, 279; New, Clarence Herbert, 110n7 inspiration for, xviii; land- New France, 11 scapes in, 77– 79, 82– 84, 87– 88, New Haven ct, 217– 18 349 index

New Mexico: Elizabeth Sergeant’s “The Novel Démeublé” (Cather), article about, 266; Ernest 238–39, 245, 258, 272, 286 Blumenschein in, 133; land- novels. See fiction scapes of, 10, 139– 45; Longs in, Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii 189– 90, 206– 8; Willa Cather in, (Rogers), 2 206, 273, 314, 315. See also Pecos pueblo; Southwest Oakley, Violet, 109n2 New Republic, 207 Ober, Frank, 103 New World Symphony, 68, 230 O’Brien, Sharon: on Cather letters, New York City: Cather letters in, 267, 307, 316, 318; on landscape, 308; Ernest Blumenschein in, 261, 264, 283; on Willa Cather in 133; Franz Boas in, 241; Frederic Walnut Canyon, 292; on Willa Remington in, 116; Howard Pyle Cather’s childhood, 59; on Wil- in, 96; meeting with translator la Cather’s confirmation, 38 in, 217– 18; in My Ántonia, 86; as “Of Modern Poetry” (Stevens), novel setting, 121, 126, 127, 136, xii– xiii, 1– 2 151, 156–58, 162; prostitution in, Ogden, Constance, 181 172, 174, 185n5, 186n6; Song of Ogdensburg ny, 114 Hiawatha in, 69; Willa Cather Ohio, 132, 133 in, 114, 117, 118, 128n3, 193, 206, 290 Ojibway Indians, 68, 69, 72– 73, 79 New Yorker, 35 O’Keeffe, 309– 10 New York Times, 309– 10 Okey, Thomas, 110n6 Nicene Creed, 21 “Old Mrs. Harris” (Cather), 313 Nietzsche, Friedrich: on Apollo- olla maidens, 263– 64. See also nian and Dionysian polarities, Indian cultures 232– 37, 246– 48; influence of, Omaha ne, 23, 28 231– 32, 248n2; on Superman, Omaha Evening World- Herald, 28 231– 33; on tragic myth, 246– 47 One of Ours (Cather): award for, “no- man’s- land,” 105 xiv; culture in, 268; Longfellow North Africa, 264 reference in, 67; musician in, Northampton ma, 309 153; religion in, 19, 37; reviews Northeast Harbor me, 221– 22 of, 95; ship in, 67, 110n8, 290; Northern Arizona University, xvii style of, 80– 81; writing of, 39 Northern Pacific Railroad, 44, O Pioneers! (Cather), xiv, xvii, xviii, 55– 59 67, 151, 223n3 Notre- Dame- des- Victoires church, Orfeo, 159 224n7 Orpheus, 235 Not Under Forty (Cather), 35, 38, Osborne, Evelyn, 188 224n9, 310– 11 Otte, Fred, 193 350 index

Ottenburg, Fred: in Arizona, 5; Paris, 125, 127, 133, 135, 139, 203, 296 on avoiding holes, 49; crude Parker, Gilbert, 109n3 remark by, 51; in Pullman Parkman, Francis, 11, 114 Building, 58; on rabbit, 53, Parrish, Maxﬁeld, 95, 118 54; relationship with Thea Pater, Walter, 229, 230 Kronborg, 261– 62, 284; and “Paul’s Case” (Cather), 19, 290 Thea Kronborg’s artistic Pavel and Peter (in My Ántonia), development, 256; and Thea 81– 82 Kronborg’s inspiration, 150, 159; Payot (publisher), 223n3 on Thea Kronborg’s perfor- Pearson, Mike, 257– 59 mances, 247, 280, 285, 286; on Peattie, Elia, 28 Thea Kronborg’s savagery, 244, Pecos pueblo, 219, 224n7. See also 264– 65, 268; and Thea Kron- New Mexico borg’s vitality, 233, 237 Pellan, Françoise, 219– 20 Otto of the Silver Hand (Pyle), 95, Penitente Brotherhood, 145– 46 100, 101– 3, 105 Pennell, Joseph, 101 Outing, 117 Pepper and Salt, or Seasoning for Outland, Tom: epiphany of, 8– 11, Young Folk (Pyle), 95, 99 255; and Haniel Long, 207– 8; Peters, Ivy, 171, 172–73, 177, 180, playing Indian by, 84– 85; 181 prototypes for, 188– 90, 193–200, Pete’s Shanty (Remington), 116 203, 204, 208–9; and vessels, Petoskey mi, 69 293 Philadelphia pa, 139 The Outlier (Remington), 127 Philistia, 29, 34– 35, 40n4 Owens- Murphy, Katie, 280 Phillips, Bert, 133 The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche “The Painting of Tomorrow” show, (Mencken), 231 137 picture– text interaction: in My Palestinian women, 264 Ántonia, 85– 88; in Song of Palmer, Sarah Eddy, 291 Hiawatha, 64, 72– 81, 83; in Song Panthéon, 139 of the Lark, 57 Panther Canyon: as novel setting, Pilgrim’s Progress (Bunyan), 22 5; occupants of, 84, 242; Pinto- Correia, Clara, 301n1 symbolism of, 44, 54, 59, 235, Pintor, Jole Jannelli Pinna, 225n10 245, 261, 292; Thea Kronborg’s Pioneer Memorial Newsletter, 206 awakening in, 161, 162, 230, 233, pirates, 102– 7, 104, 110n7 236– 37, 239, 245, 253, 255– 56, “Pirates Used to Do That to Their 258– 60, 264, 273, 278– 84, 286, Captains Now and Then” 291, 314 (Pyle), 101 351 index

Pittsburgh pa: Ernest Blumen- “The Prodigies” (Cather), 43 schein in, 132; Frederick “The Professor’s Commencement” Demmler in, 190, 194, 196– 97, (Cather), 196 203– 6; Haniel Long in, 206– 8; The Professor’s House (Cather): prototypes in, 188– 89, 196, 200; art and religion in, 19, 35– 36, Willa Cather in, 193– 94, 197, 40; character development in, 200, 209n2, 214, 248n2, 314 255; culture in, 268; epiphany Pittsburgh Courier, 223n1 in, 8–11; Longfellow reference Pittsburgh Leader, 231– 32 in, 67–68; playing Indian in, Pittsburgh Memoranda, 208, 209n1 84– 85; prototypes in, 189– 90, Plains Indians, 87 200, 207– 8; separation and loss Platte, 166n5 in, 153–54; style of, 3; vessels plow, 6– 7, 9, 64, 77– 80 in, 290 “The Poet Has His Portrait Paint- “The Proﬁle” (Cather), 188, 207 ed” (Long), 204–5 Prosperi, Warren, xviii, 2– 3 Poetry, 206 prostitution: article about, 172, poetry: of Haniel Long, 204– 5, 173, 185nn4– 5; in Buenos Aires, 208– 9; of Henry Wadsworth 173– 74; in Denver, 182– 83; in Longfellow, 67– 68; of Howard Lost Lady, 170– 71, 182– 83; risks Pyle, 99; landscapes in, 6– 11; of, 175– 76, 183– 84; in Shadows tribute to conscripted students, on the Rock, 298; Willa Cather 206; Willa Cather’s engage- on, 174– 75, 186n6 ment with, xii– xvi, 109n3, Protestantism, 37 174– 75, 271. See also The Song of Provence, 253– 55, 265 Hiawatha (Longfellow) Prudden, Mitchell, 57– 58 Pommeroy, Judge, 175– 76, 181 Psalms, 9 “Poor Marty” (Cather), xiv Pueblo peoples, xvii, 135, 244, 263– Porter, Joseph T., 115 64, 266. See also Anasazi; Indian Porter, Katherine Anne, 306 cultures Portland or, 66 Pullman, George, 58 pottery, 289, 290, 293. See also art Pyle, Howard: biography of, 105, Pound, Ezra, xvi 110n4; illustrations by, 93– 96, Powers, Hiram, 2 99, 100, 101– 2, 104, 105, 109n2; “Prairie Spring” (Cather), xiv, xviii inﬂuence of, 93– 97, 99, 102, 106– PrairyErth (a deep map) (Heat- 9, 109n2; inscription to, 94, 95, Moon), 254– 56 97– 99, 102; and pirates, 102– 7; Presbyterians, 19. See also religion style of, 102, 105, 106; success of, Price, Lucien, 194, 196, 197, 199, 204, 99– 101; Willa Cather’s connec- 205, 209n3 tions to, xiii, xviii 352 index

Quebec, 11– 15, 293– 97, 300. See also Remington, Frederic Sackrider: Canada art of, 68, 115– 20, 127– 28; career Quinones, Ricardo J., 229 of, 123– 24; death of, 119– 20; Quirk, Tom, xii, 1, 239, 240 experimentation of, 119– 20, 123– 24, 127; frustrations of, Radcliffe College, 267 118– 19; on Howard Pyle, 101; railroad: commerce on, 171; in Lost inﬂuence of, xviii, 114– 16, 117– 21, Lady, 170, 171, 185n1; in Lucy 123– 24, 128n1; Moonlight Wolf, Gayheart, 157; in My Ántonia, 122; nostalgia of, 115, 116 81, 85– 87; in Nebraska, 98; and reproductive theory, 299, 301n1 Song of Hiawatha, 69; and Song Republican River, xiii, 6 of the Lark, 44, 48, 55– 59 Reynolds, Guy, 165n1 Rappard, Anton Ridder van, 101 Das Rheingold, 150, 151, 246 realism, 238– 39, 258, 272, 274 Rhine River, 159 re(con)ception, 273. See also blend- Rhone Valley, 265 ing theory Ricoeur, Paul, 34– 35 red (color), 174 Riker, Martin, 2 Red Cloud ne: church in, 20, 38, Ring, 159 39; Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant Der Ring des Nibelungen, 246– 47 in, xviii; Mrs. Forrester proto- Roberts, Mary Fanton, 119 type in, 177, 185n1; newspapers Rogers, Jeannie, 179, 183 in, 27–28, 324n3; as novel Rogers, Randolph, 2 setting, 6, 170, 171; railroad in, romanticism: and blending theory, 98; Willa Cather’s life in, 43, 273–74, 282, 283; of Henri Berg- 93, 117 son, 238; and modernism, 229– Red Cloud Chief, 23 31, 233; of Willa Cather, 272 Red Cloud Republican, 22, 27, 28, Romines, Ann, 46, 295, 298 40n2 Ronning, Kari A., 10, 165n1, 201 religion: and art, 19– 21, 33– 36; The Rose of Paradise (Pyle), 106 of immigrants, 70, 295– 97; in Rosicky, Anton, 27 Indian cultures, 135– 36, 292; in Rosowski, Susan J., 81, 176– 77, 283, newspapers, 27– 32; in Professor’s 293, 307 House, 9, 10; in Shadows on the Rouvroy, Louis de, 11 Rock, 12, 14; in Song of the Lark, Rubin, Gayle, 178– 79 263– 64, 292– 93. See also Bap- Rubin, J. Florence, 220 tists; Bible; Catholic Church; Rubinstein, Anton, 23 Christianity; churches; Episco- pal Church; Jesus; Methodists; Saint- Augustin, Catherine de, 13, 14 Presbyterians Saint- Gaudens, Augustus, 68, 71, 73 353 index

Saint’s Rest (Baxter), 34 The Seats of the Mighty (Parker), Salvation Army, 29– 32 109n3 Sandburg, Carl, 209n1 Sebastian, Clement: death of, 157, Sandtown boys, 98 160; fugitive gleam of, 162; pia- Sandy Point, 107– 8 nist for, 156, 158, 167n12; singing San Francisco ca, 108 of Schubert, 159– 60, 167n14 Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Sedgwick, Ellery, 317 143– 44 Seibel, George, 214, 231 Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Blu- The Selected Letters of Willa Cather menschein), 139, 141 (Jewell and Stout): descrip- Santa Fe nm, 139, 189– 90, 206– 8 tion of, xviii– xix, 303– 24; “The Santa Fe Group,” 207– 8 digital access to, 324n2; Eileen Santa Fe New Mexican, 133 Hutchinson on, 209n2; on Jack Santa Fe Railway, 314 Cather’s teacher, 210n6; on Santayana, George, 34, 224n4 Lucy Gayheart, 157 Sapphira and the Slave Girl (Cath- The Sentinel (Remington), 116 er), 224n7, 290 Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley: and Sappho (Story), 2 archaeology, 265– 67, 290; on Sargent, John Singer, 2, 203 artistic inspiration, 150, 292; Sarton, May, 189 letters to, xviii, 59, 138, 200, Saturday Review of Literature, 207–8 223n3, 265, 267, 268, 314– 19; on Scalero, Alessandra, 215– 17, 219– 22 primitive men, 268; in South- “Scandal” (Cather), 153 west, 207, 266 Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 72– 74 sex/gender system, 178– 85. See also School of American Research, 266 economy; gender codes; men; Schoonover, Frank, 109n2 women Schubert, Franz: illness of, 165; Seymour, Bess, 312 inﬂuence of, xviii, 162, 167n19; Shades of Hiawatha (Trachtenberg), letters of, 167n13; music of, 159– 68 60, 163– 64 Shadows on the Rock (Cather): Schubert: 200 Songs (Kagen), 167n18 Christmas in, 31; culture in, 268; Schwartz, Sanford, 229 epiphany in, 11–15; footnote science, cognitive, 271– 75, 285, 286 on, 224n7; religion in, 19, 36, Scott, Sascha, 136 37, 40n1; translation of, 216–17, Scribner’s Monthly, 55, 99, 119– 20, 225n10; vessels in, 289, 293–301 128n4 Shakespeare, William, 1 “The Sculptor’s Funeral” (Cather), “Shakespeare and Hamlet” (Cath- 290 er), 26– 27 Sea’thl, Chief, 87– 88 Shand- Tucci, Douglass, 209n3 354 index

Shanks, Michael, 257– 58 160–62, 237, 239–41, 244–45, 273; Sharp, Joseph Henry, 147n1, 259 heroine’s journey in, 149– 52, Shattuck Inn, 320– 22 156–60, 162–65, 167n19; human Sherman, Lucius, 271 history in, 263–65; Longfellow Sherwood, Carrie Miner, 188 reference in, 67; modernism in, Shimerda, Ántonia, 79– 82, 85– 87 229, 234, 239– 40, 245, 248; play- Shimerda, Mr.: burial of, xi– xii, ing Indian in, 84; as prelude to 82– 84; as immigrant, 68; lan- Lucy Gayheart, 152– 56; railroad guage of, 81– 82; spirit of, 86– 87; in, 44, 48, 55–57; religion in, 19, suicide of, 77, 79– 80, 82 37; ritual in, 262– 63; romantic ships: in One of Ours, 67, 110n8, attraction in, 51– 52; sense of 290; as vessels, 289, 290, 293, place in, 255, 259– 60; sentimen- 296– 97, 299– 300 tality in, 47–48, 231; shifting Sierra Nevadas, 165n2 sands and currents in, 166n5; Silks, Mattie, 183 study of, xviii; style of, xv, 293; Sinagua, 242– 45. See also Indian title of, 57; tragic elements in, cultures 246–47; vessels in, 289–93, 296, Skaggs, Merrill Maguire, 180, 185n2 300; writing of, 200, 248n2, 253, Skinner, Asa, 19 314. See also “Kronborg”; “The Slote, Bernice, 22, 34, 60, 248n3 Ancient People” Smart Set, 123, 128n6 Song of the Lark (painting), 5, 57, 118 Smethport pa, 201 “A Son of the Celestial” (Cather), 70 Smith, Jessie Willcox, 95, 109n2 South America, 173– 74 Snyder, Richard, 190, 210n4, 248n2 Southwest: Ernest Blumenschein social class, 178, 180, 295, 298 in, 135– 37, 139; influence of, The Soldier’s Progress, 206, 208– 9 xvii– xviii, 132, 142, 146, 147n2, Solomon, Deborah, 309– 10 264, 266, 296; as novel set- The Song of Hiawatha (Longfel- ting, 208; playing Indian in, low): influence of, xiii, 64– 70; 84; primitive people in, 242, performances of, 64, 69, 70; 262– 64; in Song of the Lark, 5, picture- writing in, 64, 72– 81, 231, 256; in translations, 215– 16, 83; and playing Indian, 86, 87; 218– 23, 224n6; Willa Cather translations of, 70 in, 253, 254, 255, 265, 289, 290, The Song of the Lark (Cather): ad- 314– 17; as Wonderland, 44. See vertising for, 167n11; Alice novels also Arizona; landscapes; New in, 43– 60; art and youth in, 108, Mexico; West, American 118; autobiographical elements Spanish- American War, 72, 116 of, 319; clothing in, 47, 51, 54; Spanish Johnny: characteristics of, epiphany in, xvii, 4– 5, 14, 54– 55, 49, 50, 235; influence on Thea 355 index

Kronborg, 278, 280; response to verse, 67– 68; prototype for, 188– music, 286– 87 89, 194– 96, 204, 208– 9; ritual Spanish language: Julio’s serenade of, 263; view of Sierra Nevadas, in, 318– 19; in translations, 218– 165n2 23, 224n6. See also language St. Peter, Kathleen, 197 The Spanish Student (Longfellow), St. Peter, Lillian, 189, 200, 293 67 “Strangler’s Row,” 183 Sparrow, Jack, 106 “Street in a Packingtown (Chica- Spoon River Anthology (Masters), go)” (Cather), xiv xvi St. Tammany’s Society, 85 Stanﬁeld, Charlotte, 249n5 A Studio in the Batignolles (Fantin- Stanley, Edwin James, 55 Latour), 134 St. Anne, 295– 96 Sturges, Frederick, 183 Stevens, Wallace, xii– xiii, 1– 5 Sullivan, J. W. N., 151, 154, 166n10 Stevens, Widow, 85 sun, 163, 236, 237, 245. See also Stevenson, Robert Louis, 105 light St. Geneviève, 295– 96 Surette, Leon, 233 St. Genevieve frescoes, 139– 40 Sweet Water, 171, 181– 82, 185n2 Stieglitz, Alfred, 309– 10 Stix, Yaltah Menuhin, 220 Tammany Hall, 172, 174, 185n5, St. Lawrence River, 118, 295– 96 186n6 St. Louis mo, 183 Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi, 2 St. Nicholas, 99, 101 Taos nm: in Death Comes for the Story, William Wetmore, 2 Archbishop, 143– 44; Ernest The Story of Avignon (Okey), 110n6 Blumenschein in, 133, 139, 143; Stout, Janis: on American West, Willa Cather in, 206 128n1; on autobiographical Taos Society of Artists, 133– 35, 138, characters, 40n4; and Cather 147nn1– 2 letters, xviii– xix, 39, 306, 308– 13; Tarbell, Edmund, 197, 203 on gender differences, 56; on Tatum, Stephen, 119 “Life of Jesse James” book, 113; Tauchnitz (publisher), 218 on Thea Kronborg, 53; on Willa Tellamentez, Johnny, 231 Cather’s style, 37; on words and Ten, The, 118, 197 images, 57 Tenniel, John, 47, 54, 56 Stowell, Helen, 40n2 Tesuque Valley, 207, 266 Stowell, Louise, 22– 23 Texas a&m University, 307 St. Peter, Godfrey: on art and Texas Woman’s University, 311– 12 religion, 19, 35– 36; and human Theatre/Archaeology (Pearson and history, 258; and Longfellow’s Shanks), 257 356 index

These Two Were Here (Vermorcken), The Troll Garden (Cather), 94, 95, 210n6 97– 99, 102, 188 Thiesinger, Marguerite, 154– 55, 157, “Trout,” 162, 167n17 165, 166n10 Tulliver, Tom and Maggie, 108– 9 “Three- Day Blow” (Hemingway), Turner, Christy and Jacqueline, 9 69 Turner, George Kibbe, 172, 173, “The Three Holy Kings” (Heine), 185nn4– 5 214 Turner, Mark, 275– 77 Through the Looking Glass (Carroll), Twachtman, John, 117 44– 45, 47– 48, 60, 60n1 Twain, Mark, 101 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche), 231, 232, 248n2 Ulysses (Joyce), xv Tille, Alexander, 248n2 “Uncle Valentine” (Cather), 153 The Time Regulation Institute (Tan- “Under the Paciﬁc” (New), 110n7 pinar), 2 Undset, Sigrid, 272 Titanic, 290 University of California, Los Ange- Tolstoy, Leo, 204 les, 190, 209n1 “Tom Outland’s Story” (Cather), University of Maryland, 306 3, 11, 263 University of Nebraska– Lincoln: Tooker (brakeman), 314, 315, 317 Jack Cather at, 200, 201; letters Torgovnick, Marianna, 264, 268 at, 308; and publication of Trachtenberg, Alan, 68– 70, 72, 74 letters, 305; seminar by, xvii; “The Traffic in Women” (Gold- Willa Cather at, 6, 24, 29, 40n3, man), 174 43, 193, 271 translations, 214– 23, 223n2, 224n7 University Press of Virginia, 306 travel: in My Ántonia, 113; and Song Urgo, Joseph, 57 of Hiawatha, 69; and Song of the U.S. government, 28, 175 Lark, 44, 54– 59; of Willa Cather, U.S. military, 72 114, 314– 17 Treasure Island (Stevenson), 105 van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 118 “The Treasure of Far Island” (Cath- van Gogh, Theo, 101 er): and Alice in Wonderland, van Gogh, Vincent, 101– 2 43; childhood in, 93, 98, 106– 7; “Vanishing Race” (Wanamaker), 68 lead character’s name in, 110n8; Vatican Library, 216, 224n5 references to Howard Pyle in, Velásquez, Diego, 1 97, 99, 105 Venice, Italy, 107– 8, 166n5, 216 Trinidad (in Death Comes for the Vermont, 175 Archbishop), 145– 46 Vermorcken, Elizabeth, 200, 210n6 tripper incidents, 151, 154 Victorians, xii, 46, 52– 56 357 index

Virgil, 6– 11, 77, 80, 297 Willa Cather in, 114, 316; Willa Virginia: Jim Burden in, 113; Cather’s writing about, 116, reclusive woman from, 324n3; 121, 127, 128n1; as Wonderland, residents of, 317; Willa Cather 44, 55– 59. See also landscapes; from, 97, 100, 253 Southwest Westmoreland Museum of Ameri- Wagner, Richard: inﬂuence of, 231, can Art, 209n2, 210n4 233, 247; modernism of, 246– Weston, Katherine, 38 47; Rhine River in operas of, Wetherell, Dick, 9 159; Die Walküre, 151– 53, 160 Wheeler, Claude, 80, 81, 110n8, 203, Wagner- Martin, Linda, 245 290 “A Wagner Matinée” (Cather), 290 Wheeler, Mrs., 67 Wah Hoo, 193 “When We Two Parted” (Byron), Waiting in the Moonlight (Reming- 167n14 ton), 116 The White Country (Remington), Die Walküre: connotations of, 153, 120, 128n4 160; Thea Kronborg’s perfor- “The White Mulberry Tree” (Cath- mance of, 151– 52, 246, 247, 285, er), 150, 151 286 White Queen, 45– 48 Walnut Canyon: excursions to, White Rabbit, 49– 53 xvii, 290, 314; occupants of, Whitman, Walt, xv 242– 45 Willa Cather: A Literary Life Washington dc, 64 (Woodress), 307 Washington Square, 118, 121, 126, Willa Cather and Aestheticism (Wat- 267 son and Moseley), 229– 30 The Waste Land (Eliot), xv “Willa Cather and Pierre Puvis de water: symbolism of, 161, 245, 263– Chavannes” (Giorcelli), 140 64, 300; vessels for, 242, 282, Willa Cather Archive (website), xix, 289, 291– 92. See also landscapes 223n2, 308 The Waves (Woolf), 217– 20 Willa Cather Foundation, xvii, Webster County Argus, 223n3 109n3, 189, 305 Weisz, Irene Miner, 108 Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice Weldon, Brother, 19 (O’Brien), 307 Wellington, Ella, 183 Willa Cather: The Writer and Her Wells, Irma. See Cather, Irma Wells World (Stout), 307 West, American: Frederic Reming- Willa Cather Trust, 305 ton’s representation of, 114– 17, Williams, Michael, 134 119, 120; gender codes in, 171– 75; “The Willing Muse” (Cather), 137 in My Ántonia, 81, 86, 113– 14; Wilmington de, 96 358 index

Winslow az, xvii, 314, 315 The World and the Parish (Cather), Die Winterreise, 160, 163– 64, 165 43 Wirth, Eileen M., 28– 29 The World of Willa Cather (Ben- Wister, Owen, 128n1 nett), 307 women: as archaeologists, 267; World’s Columbian Exposition, commodification of, 171– 72, 291 178, 183–85; creativity of, 289; World War I: Elizabeth Sergeant in, as mothers, 298– 99; in news- 207; and Frederick Demmler, papers, 28– 29; reverence of, 193, 203–6; Jack Cather in, 201, 295– 96; sexuality of, 170–71, 210n7; and My Ántonia, 72; in 175– 76, 261–62; symbolism of, One of Ours, 80, 153 74, 289–301; travel of, 56–57; as Wounded Knee, 72 water carriers, 263–64, 291– Wunsch, Professor: characteristics 92; work of, 12–15, 46, 47, 289, of, 49– 51, 235– 36; influence of, 291– 92, 294– 301. See also gender 4, 230– 31; reading of poem, 150; codes; girls; sex/gender system and Thea Kronborg’s awaken- The Wonder Clock (Pyle), 95, 99 ing, 278 Wonderland: of childhood, 98– 99; Wyeth, N. C., 95– 96, 109n2, 118 escape from, 46– 50, 52; impossi- Wylie, William Wallace, 55– 56 ble things in, 45, 53; meaning of Wyoming, 118, 124, 210n7 word, 44, 55– 57; return to, 54– 55, 57– 60 Yale University, 114, 217, 306 Wood, Jack, 183 Yeats, William Butler, xiii, 120 Wood, James, 35 Yeiser, Jim, 108 Woodland Theatre, 69 Yellowstone, 55– 56 Woodress, James: on Alice in Won- Young, Iris Marion, 262 derland, 43; on Cather letters, Yourcenar, Marguerite: criticism 267, 307; on Cécile Auclair, of, 215– 16, 218–20; qualifications 293; on Professor’s House, 36; on of, 222; translation by, 215, 217– Song of the Lark, 51; on Virgil’s 18, 223, 224n9 influence, 10; on Willa Cather’s youth: death of, 153, 155, 166n10; personal life, 35, 38, 40n1, 132, stories about, 156, 157– 58. See 176, 186n7, 197, 311, 314 also childhood Woolf, Virginia, 217– 20 Youth and the Bright Medusa (Cath- Woollcott, Alexander, 66 er), 123 Wordsworth, William, 283 Yung Le Ho, 70