Willa Cather and the Swedes

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Fall 1984 Willa Cather And The Swedes Mona Pers University College at Vasteras Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Pers, Mona, "Willa Cather And The Swedes" (1984). Great Plains Quarterly. 1756. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1756 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. WILLA CATHER AND THE SWEDES MONAPERS Willa Cather's immigrant characters, almost a able exaggeration when in 1921 she maintained literary anomaly at the time she created them, that "now all Miss Cather's books have been earned her widespread critical and popular ac translated into the Scandinavian," the Swedish claim, not least in the Scandinavian countries, a translations of 0 Pioneers! and The Song of market she was already eager to explore at the the Lark whetted the Scandinavian appetite beginning of her literary career. Sweden, the for more Cather. As the 1920s drew to a close, first Scandinavian country to "discover" her her reputation grew slowly but steadily. Her books, issued more translations of Cather fic friend George Seibel was probably guilty of tion than any other European country. In considerably less exaggeration than was Eva fact, Sweden was ten years ahead of any other Mahoney when he recalled "mentioning her Scandinavian country in publishing the transla name in the Gyldendal Boghandel in Copen tion of a Cather novel (see table). This article hagen, and being received almost like an am will investigate the publication and reception of bassador from an Empress."l Willa Cather's books in Sweden, compare that Willa Cather was introduced to the Scandi treatment with Cather translations in other navian reading public by the Swede August Scandinavian countries, and also compare Brunius, one of the most influential critics of Cather's reception in Sweden with that of some the time. He wrote a full-page introduction to of her best-known American contemporaries. her work in a prestigious Swedish weekly in Although Eva Mahoney of the Sunday 1918, a year before the first translation appeared (Omaha) World-Herald was guilty of consider- on the Swedish market. Later critics and liter ary historians have given Brunius credit for causing Sweden to be the first foreign country Mona Pers, professor of English at University to publish a Cather novel in translation.2 College at Vaster3s, Sweden, has been a con tributor to American Literary Scholarship since It is not surprising that Brunius's article 1982. Her publications include Willa Cather's should have stirred a Swedish publisher into Children (1975). action. It argues persuasively for Willa Cather's artistic distinction as well as for her rare ability [GPQ4 (Fall 1984): 213-19.] to depict Swedish characters "with real insight 213 214 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1984 SCANDINAVIAN TRANSLATIONS OF BOOKS BY WILLA CATHERa Year of Publication Original Title Sweden Norway Denmark Finland o Pioneers!b 1919 1943 1948 The Song of the Lark 1920 A Lost Lady 1924 The Professor's House 1927 1929 1950 Lucy Gayheart 1936 1936 1945 Death Comes for the Archbishop 1938 1940 1934 1956 My Antonia 1939 1954 1931 1940 1961 1963 Shadows on the Rock 1940 1939 Sapphira and the Slave Girl 1941 1941 The old Beauty and Others 1950c aphyllis Martin Hutchinson lists most of these items in her article, "The Writings of Willa Cather," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 60 (June 1956): 267-68. I have added some items and corrected a few dates, which are italicized here. bThe fIrst Swedish title of 0 Pioneers!, Hell banbrytare, caused Cather to comment in a letter to Ferris Greenslet (18 October 1919) on its seemingly profane title. Bassett Digby, foreign correspondent in Oslo for the Chicago Daily News, mistook it to be Hell, Pioneer! o c"Romansen" ("A Singer's Romance"), translated by Gun Arestad, was the short story of the week in Femina, 15 December 1963. It is the last Cather text to have been translated into Swedish. and art as Swedes, viewed with a calm sym Brunius told the Swedish readers what Willa pathetic eye by an artist who knows them and Cather had known for some time. A letter she takes an interest in them. The case is so rare wrote to Ferris Greenslet at Houghton Mifflin for us that it merits close study." The Swedish testifies to her early interest in the Swedish characters that Brunius, like most other Swed mHket.3 Even though she doubted that the ish critics, deemed closest to a mythical Swedish venture would be financially rewarding, it prototype are women, notably the strong and would give her a great deal of personal satisfac enterprising farm woman Alexandra Bergson in tion to have her novels translated and published o Pioneers! and her artistic counterpart, the in Scandinavia. An attack on the Scandinavian opera singer Thea Kronborg in The Song of the market was very much on her mind, and she Lark. Brunius ends his article by declaring that asked for Greenslet's help to establish contact "Willa Sibert Cather deserves to be read by with the "right" people. She was apprehensive Swedes not only because she has written about about approaching Swedish-Americans, because Swedes, but just as much because she is an artist they all had their own irons in the fire. Scandi who has something important to tell us." navian immigrants wrote profusely and were WILLA CATHER AND THE SWEDES 215 eager to have their work published in the old pressed great satisfaction with both transla country. Nevertheless, according to Cather's tions.8 letter to Greenslet, it was two Swedish women Like 0 Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark living in America who had initially drawn her evoked positive though limited critical response attention to Scandinavia as a potential market.4 in Sweden. The author was again commended In their estimate the chances were good for for her truthful rendering of Swedish char Swedish and perhaps Norwegian translations acters and her dignified, epic style of writing. of 0 Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. One columnist expressed his gratitude that In his answer of 18 December to this letter, "this distinguished artist, one of America's Greenslet conceded that, as far as her books greatest contemporary authors," should have were concerned, the Scandinavian countries chosen Swedish women for protagonists in her were still virgin fields. When 0 Pioneers! was two foremost novels, assuring his readers that released in Sweden three years later, the reviews Willa Cather deserved a much larger audience in the largest national papers were favorable, than she had hitherto attracted in the Scandina but the attention the novel attracted was vian countries.9 limited in scope. In the main the critics echoed While The Song of the Lark was translated Brunius's praise of Willa Cather as a knowledge only into Swedish in Scandinavia, in the United able, skillful, and warmly sympathetic inter States the second serial rights of the novel were preter of the Swedish immigrant's personality sold to a weekly Danish-language newspaper in and situation, comparing her artistic treatment the Middle West in 1931. In 1944 Greenslet of the immigrant favorably with that of Scandi asked Cather if he could give its publishers per navian immigrant writers of her own and earlier mission to print the novel again, this time in generations.5 When the novel was reissued in English, because the language of the publica 1948, in time for the Swedish Pioneer Centen tion was being changed from Danish to Eng nial, the Swedish reviewers agreed that, although lish.10 Though Cather was probably right in by then there had been numerous imitators of suspecting that the Scandinavian immigrant it in American farm fiction, the novel had lost writers were wary of promoting her books in none of its freshness. their old countries, the Scandinavian settle In order to explore the Scandinavian market ments of the Midwest obviously welcomed for The Song of the Lark, Cather had suggested them. As early as 1918, the editor Oliver in her letter of 15 December 1916 to Greenslet Linder, a Swedish immigrant of wide renown, that he contact Carl Hambro, a well-known stated his belief that Cather was the only Amer Norwegian writer and critic then living in Prince ican author to have drawn upon Swedish ton, who she claimed had translated her article Americans as material. "In 0 Pioneers!, as well on Olive Fremstad.6 Cather thought it might be as The Song of the Lark, the chief characters a good idea to hint that the character of Thea are Swedish immigrants and their sons and Kronborg had been modeled after Fremstad, daughters, who are pictured with truth to life but in a later letter she begged Greenslet and without overdrawing," he noted.ll not to encourage such rumors and asked Ruben Berg's Moderna Amerikaner, the first him to refrain from making any statements Swedish critical study of American literature, about the matter. 7 Nothing came of a Nor was published in 1925. Willa Cather was one of wegian translation, but the novel was pub five authors singled out to represent the Amer lished in Swedish. Although some critics had ican literary scene, the others being Edgar Lee attacked the Swedish translation of 0 Pioneers! Masters, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, as at times obtuse and too slavishly close to the and Theodore Dreiser.

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