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Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial X,,, and Edunational Foundation C Ou0 Fall Newsletter- 1968 Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial x,,, and Edunational Foundation c ou0, TO PROVIDE FOR WILLA CATHER A LIVING MEMORIAL TO PERPETUATE AN INTEREST THROUGHOUT THE WORLD I’N THE WORK OF WILLA CATHER: Scholarship awards were given at the annual meeting of the Nebraska Teachers of English in Lincoln, Oct. 12, By special permission of Victor P. Hess, we reprint his 1968, for the best essay on Willa Cather’s work. Ed- article published just before our spring conference, ward R. Johnson of East High, Lincoln, won first prize 1968. The article appeared in Mr. Hess’ "From a Book- of $150.00, for his essay "Evil, Vision, and Artistic Pur- man’s Notebook" in the Sunday Omaha World-Herald ity: The Existential Implications of Willa Cather." Magazine of April 14, 1968: Nancy Busing of Fairbury High School won second Next Saturday, all literary roads in Nebraska will lead place, $75.00, with her essay, "Willa Cather’s Special to Red Cloud. There, Catherians will gather for the an- nual spring conference of the Willa Cather Pioneer Love." Mildred R. Bennett, president of WCPM, made Memorial and Educational Foundation. the presentations. It will be, I suppose, a routine meeting, except that You readers have contributed the money for this nothing connected with perpetuating the work and mem- scholarship gift. We have not had the essay contest for ory of that wonderful woman could really be routine. No other feature of our state--not even our famous several years, however, this year with the cooperation steaks! -- counts for more than the fact that a slim girl of the Nebraska Council of Teachers of English and par- who grew into a stoutish spinster once lived and worked ticularly of Esther Montgomery, Ned Hedges and Esther in Red Cloud. In the books she wrote she fixed forever the essence of the pioneer-immigrant experience on the Hereon, we ran a successful contest. Great Plains. The Nebraska Council recommends that we omit the Readers everywhere in the world are aware of Red Cloud contest in 1969 and that the Nebraska Council appoint and Webster County and Nebraska because that gentle a committee to work with us in setting up a national woman flowered in our soil. Wflla~d Thorp, a professor of literature at Princeton, contest to be carried on in 197C, with directions going and an authority in these matters, not long ago ranked out in the fall of 1969. The extra year will give time America’s three prime literary villages. for the MEMORIAL to build up funds. Also, interested At the top of his list he put Concord, Mass., because Thoreau and Emerson lived and worked there. Second persons can write us their suggestsions on the 1970 he placed Hannibal, Mo., because Mark Twain lived and contest. worked there. And third he ranked Red Cloud, because it The winning essay follows: was the cradle of "O Pioneers!," "The Song of the Lark" Evil, Vision, and Artistic Purity: and "My ~utonia," to name only the foundation on which The Existential Implications of Willa Cather Willa Cather’s splendid reputation was built. by Edward R, Johnson It is true, of course, that by 1913, when "0 Pioneers!" "The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to appeared, Miss Cather already had moved to the East, but account, because the artist is of all men the most individual; those who her own spirit and the heart and soul of her work, remain- were not have been long forgotten. The condition every art requires ed in Red Cloud. is not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the infusion of foreign matter, considerations and purposes, That is the key to Red Cloud’s importance in the Amer- which have nothing lo do with spontaneous invention,’~Willa ican literary cosmos. Perhaps characteristically, Red Cather, ON WRITING. Cloud’s uniqueness is probably more appreciated by read- Existentialism, like Christianity, is a way of looking at ers as far away as New Delhi than it is here in Nebraska. things; consequently, it is likely to be seen in unlikely I find this a pity simply because the under-appreciation places--in Willa Cather, for example. Existentialism, of any glowing asset is a pity. Here, after all, is a living like Christianity, has come to be more than merely a var- organism, this town, that shaped the work of a genius. iety of belief: it is a style of living. ~Vith this in mind, it As long as there are Americans who read, Willa Cather’s it not quite so surprising that Cather should have existen- novels will be read. And the fa~er we get from the tial qualities. There are many interesting parallels of experience she mirrored, the more precious it becomes. viewpoint and technique that might be drawn between the But literary shrines do not just happen, they are nur- general existentialist literary approach and the specific at- tured. They need some one who can see that an inheri- tack of Wilia Cather. tance is in danger and who has the intelligence and spirit The "general existentialist position" does not exist any to act while there yet is time. more than does a "general Christian approach." But there In Red Cloud’s case it was Mrs. Mildred R. Bennett. She are cer~in values which are emphasized in existentialist it was who alerted her fellow townsmen to the richness of literature and which give it a unique flavor. Briefly, these their legacy, and they responded notably. Today, in Red are: Man imposes value on things, and things have value Cloud, you can visit the Cather home, now restored and only insofar as they relate to the individual (a sort of furnished as it was in "The Song of the Lark". Too, the emotional Berkeleyism); experiences are qualitatively in- railroad depot mentioned in so many of Miss Cather’s lines distinguishable, hence life is best measured in terms of is preserved as is the Roman Catholic Church in which quantity of experience, in variety and extremes. The lat- the endlessly memorable Annie Pavelka (my A~ntonia) was ter generates a "literature of situations" in which em- married. Finally, there is the bank building which now phasis is placed upon event rather than upon character. houses the Cather museum in which you can see Cather First, however, it is necessary to consider the individual memorabilia. and his world. What is enchanting about Red Cloud, as it is about Con- Existentialism deals with the suddenly cognizant indi- cord and Hannibal, is that it is a living memorial, not a vidual; Willa Cather deals with the artist; from the prac- restoration in the Williamsburg sense though, mind you, tical viewpoint, there is litt]e distinction. "Where Camus I do not fault Williamsburg or any other restoration. They or Sartre write about philosophical postal clerks, Cather have their p]ace and it is important. Nothing so reminds portrays sensitive, artistic farmers; in all instances, the Americans of their past as physical evidences of it. appearance is gainsaid by the inner vision. For the ex- Nor is Red Cloud’s preservation of the places and things istential "outsider," life is meaningless; for the pioneer that mark Willa Cather’s residence and work there, the (Continued on page 2) (continued on page 3) TO PROVIDE A MEMORIAL .... (Con’t from page ~) circled by the setting sun impresses the reader as more homesteader, life is hard--these two negative conditions than merely a situation -- it is an independent experience, sometimes meet, as in MY KNTONIA: Mr. Shimerda kills not dependent upon the rest of the book. The examples in himself because he is suddenly struck to the core by the Cather’s other stories and novels of this sort of thing are incongruity of his life: the warm, pleasant home of the numerous. All of these suggest the "literature of situa- Burdens on the one hand, and his own miserable hole on tions" approach in which the event is stressed -- in which the other; the sense of emptyhandedness, of irony, of something "just happens" and the reader is left to react to "absurdity," overtake him, and he resigns his life. It is it. Another example of this sort of thing, though not so more than merely a case of a depressed artist. Shimerda intense, is the sunflower story in MY ~NTONIA: kills himself because he cannot escape the pointlessness The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those of his and his family’s suffering; he is made dramatically days, and I could choose my own way over the grass uplands trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followed the sun- aware of his own limitations. Something similar is detect- flower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers were intro- ed in the whole business of using immigrants as charac- duced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of the ters. The immigrant is the perfect "stranger," or "out- persecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wilder- sider": he is the individual thrown into a strange, often ness to find a place to worship God in their own way, the members of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sun- absurd world: he becomes self-conscious of his actions, flower seed as they went. The next summer, when the tong trains which is almost to say, existentially aware of himself, of of wagons came through with all the women and children, they had his uniqueness.
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