Copyright © 1996 by the Willa Cather Pioneer ISSN 0197-663X Memodal and Educational Foundation Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter The Willa Cather Society 326 N. Webster Street VOLUME XXXX, No. 2 Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970 Summer/Fall, 1996 Telephone (402) 746-2653 "Willow Shade," Virginia, home of Willa Cather (1874-83). -- Photo Courtesy of David T. Parry Destinations and Admonitions: Virginia Seminar Plans for Willa Cather’s Obscure Destinies June 21-28, 1997 Joseph R. Urgo Plans are taking shape for the Seventh Internation- Bryant College al Willa Cather Seminar, to be held in Winchester, Virginia, June 21-28, 1997. The Seminar topic is But certainty generally is~illusion, "Willa Cather’s Southern Connections," and seminar and repose is not the destiny of man. presentations and discussions will focus on the impor- -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., tance of Southern culture and issues throughout The Path of the Law(1897) Cather’s career, on her complex connections to South- Obscure Destinies (1932) stands in opposition to ern writing and writers such as William Faulkner, the universal application of experience, or to the Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Ellen Glasgow and transference of experience into admonition. Conclu- others. The intricate and troubling racial dynamics of sions that seem irrefutable in one of the text’s three Cather’s fiction, especially Sapphira and the Slave Girl, narratives are inapplicable, even absurd, if transferred wil! be a major topic, as will the important issues of to another of the stories. In the introductory paragraph childhood and continuity raised by Cather’s early years to the last of the three narratives, Cather writes, "we in Virginia. And, as always, other issues of ongoing like to think that there are certain unalterable realities," interest to Cather scholars, teachers, and readers will but such certainties have no real existence, not even be a part of the week’s program as well, and a variety "somewhere at the bottom of things" (193). Cather’s of theoretical perspectives will be represented. trilogy suggests that what is true in one context or true A varied group of international scholars will form to one particular destiny has obscure reference to the seminar faculty. Familiar figures in Cather (Continued on page 31) (Continued on page 30) - 29 - VIRGINIA SEMINARPLANS John Jacobs (Continued) Department of English Shenandoah University scholarship such as Susan Rosowski, Bruce Baker, Winchester, VA 22601 John Murphy, and Merrill Maguire Skaggs, newer e-mail [email protected] scholars such as Joe Urgo and Ann Fisher-Wirth, and the indispensable directors of the 1995 Quebec Ann Romines Seminar, Robert Thacker and Michael Peterman, will Department of English all be in Winchester, as well as Cather’s most recent George Washington University biographer, Cynthia Griffin Wolff. In addition, critics of Washington, DC 20052 Southern writing and culture will join the faculty, e-mail [email protected] including Noel Polk, widely honored scholar of twen- tieth-century Southern writing, especially that of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, and Patricia Yaeger, author of Honey-Mad Women and a forthcoming book on Southern women writers. The faculty will be joined by additional speakers, including John Vlatch, scholar of Southern folklore and author of Back of the Big House: The World the Slaves Made, Phyllis Palmer, feminist historian of Southern women’s work and of U.S. race relations in the twentieth century, and a panel of Washington- area African Americanists, led by Marilyn Mobley, who will discuss African American contexts for Sapphira. The seminar will be based on the park-like campus of Shenandoah University, and partici- pants will be lodged in a comfortable adjacent motel. This location will facilitate explorations of the landscape, architecture and culture in which Cather spent her formative early child- Shenandoah University, site of the 19971nternational Seminar. Motel hood years. Susan and David Parry, owners where seminarians will be quartered is at lower right. Across the parking of Willow Shade, Cather’s childhood home, lot to the left is Henkel Hall, where most meetings will be held. have invited us to visit this handsome, evoca- tive house and are organizing a Virginia "country tour" and picnic that will take us to many sites that were important to Cather’s work and life. We will visit local Shenandoah University landmarks, talk with local historians and meet some of Hosting the large contingent of Cathers who still live in the Winchester area. Lucia Woods Lindley will talk with us international Willa Cather about photographing Virginia Cather sites, andwe will Seminar be introduced to local quilting traditions, Blue Ridge from Winchester Star, Monday, April 1, 1996 folklore and Virginia gospel music m all of which are pertinent especially to Sapphira. Additionally, the By Cynthia Cather seminar group will spend a day in Washington, D.C. based at George Washington University (where Cather’s cousin was a member of the faculty) discuss- The Seventh International Willa Cather Seminar ing Cather’s Washington connections, which are will be held next year at Shenandoah University in especially evident in The Professor’s House and Winchester. Sapphira, and exploring local art museums. Cather was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and A call for seminar papers will be issued soon. In Virginia native. She died in April 1947. Her childhood the meantime, if you have questions or suggestions, or home, Willow Shade on U.S. 50 West near Gore, has if you would like to discuss possible paper topics, been restored by a Washington, D.C., couple. Her please contact one of the seminar’s co-directors, John birthplace is on the same road. Jacobs (site director) or Ann Romines (program The seminar, scheduled for June 21-28, 1997, will director), at the addresses below. And remember to focus on Cather’s Southern roots, Ann Romines, an save the week of June 21-28 for the Seventh Interna- American literature professor at George Washington tional Cather Seminar. It promises to be a memorable University in Washington, D.C., and program director week! for the event, said Tuesday. - 30 - Co-sponsors of the seminar are the Willa Cather DESTINATIONS AND ADMONITIONS Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation in Red (Continued) Cloud, Nebraska, and the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. another. Early in her career, Cather forecast the More than 100 Cather scholars and fans from central dilemma of her text: "We are always taking across the United States and around the world are temporary tendencies of humanity and regarding them expected to attend. Some events will be free and as final. But the final tendencies .and destiny are in the open to the public. The community will be involved as keeping of a greater hand than ours" (The World and much as possible. the Parish, 269). Lived experience amounts to an ’q’his series has been going on since the eady accumulation of temporary tendencies, and the q uest 1980s and is usually held every two or three years in for repose amounts to nothing more than (again, from places associated with Cather’s career," Romines said. the opening of ’q’wo Friends") a return "to something ’~Ve’ve never been to Winchester before, and we’re ¯ . known before," something understood as true very excited about coming." because it is familiar, ’~ivid memories, which in some Past seminars have been held in Nebraska; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Quebec City, Quebec. unaccountable and very personal way give us cour- ’q’hose places were settings in some of Cather’s age." Truths that are very personal a_re usually consid- most famous works," said Romines, an accomplished ered very true, but it does not necessarily follow that such truths are transferable, or communicable. In this Cather scholar. ’~/e tend to think of her as a Western sense, truth, in Cather’s trilogy, may be nothing more writer, but she had strong Southern connections. That tends to be forgotten." than the veracity of one’s own beliefs. Born in 1873 near Gore, Cather moved with her Obscure Destinies contains three discrete narra- family at age 9 to Red Cloud. She only made a few tives, and each narrative closes with the name of a trips back to Virginia. But Cather did return to her particular city and date: "Neighbour Rosicky~’ (New Frederick County birthplace to write her last novel, York 1928); "Old Mrs. Harris" (New Brunswick 1931); Sapphira and the Slave Girl, which tells the story of a ’q’wo Friends" (Pasadena 1931). In common practice, female plantation owner in the 1850s who suspects her such place and temporal designation is meant to husband, a miller, is having an affair with a mulatto indicate where and when the preceding narrative was girl. The plantation mistress’ daughter, an abolitionist, written. "New York 1928" thus marks the narrative of helps the slave girl escape to Canada, tearing apart the final days in the life of a Nebraska farmer; "New the family. The family reunites when one of Sapphira’s Brunswick 1931" marks the site of writing about the granddaughters dies. After the Civil War, the slave girl Tennessee family who moved to Colorado and then returns home and a 5-year-old girl is among her didn’t do so well; "Pasadena 1931" signals the narra- greeters. That child is Cather. tive origins of the story about the memory of two "1 think it’s very telling that her last novel is set in friends who had a falling out. Of course, New York, Virginia," Romines said. "It shows the place she came New Brunswick, and Pasadena are all places where from was on her mind throughout her life." Willa Cather lived, travelled to, and wrote.