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O Pioneers!



It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather.

I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself.

Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogized in newspapers across the country.

Nebraska had gained statehood in 1867, shortly after the Civil War.  It had been a flashpoint before the war when the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 split the western territory in two, resulting in a bloody border war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions.  John Brown came to Kansas in support of anti-slavery settlers.  This was the prelude to the Civil War.

Andrew Johnson attempted to block Nebraska statehood because it had become heavily Republican.  He favored the redemption of the Southern Democratic states first, but Congress managed to force the issue of statehood on him before his end of term.  Much of the same sentiments that had fueled the Civil War remained in Washington.


Cather chose to tell the tale of the pioneers, those who took advantage of the Homestead Act to form a new life on the prairie. For the most part, these were deeply religious people, Lutheran and Catholic, who originally came from Germany and other central European countries, like Willa's parents.   Many of these early homes were made of sod as there were few other materials at hand. Eventually, these pioneering settlers were able to build more substantial homes and establish towns like Red Cloud.  They also celebrated the first Arbor Day in 1872, an attempt to break the monotony of the plains.

For some Nebraska is a state of mind, which Alexander Payne captured in his latest movie.  I think this is the way most people picture the state, although the film starts out in Montana and works its way East.  You do get breaks in the prairie landscape like Chimney Rock and Chadron State Park.  You can even come across big horn rams.  It's not all cattle and corn fields.

I imagine Truman Capote would be happy to know there is a Willa Cather Foundation and that her childhood home in Red Cloud is a national historic site.  Hard to say how she would feel.  She had settled in New York, with her long time companion Edith Lewis,  when Capote came across her on a cold winter day in 1942.





Comments

  1. oops - for some reason my post disappeared

    Will try again:



    Thanks for posting this about Willa Cather. I put the following book on my wish list but forgot and you reminded me of it:


    http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Friendship-Yaltah-Menuhin-Cather/dp/1879395460


    The Menuhin siblings referred to her as "Auntie". In my earlier years I was kinda in love with Yaltah:


    http://www.yaltahmenuhin.com/images/Yaltah_1960's_2.jpg


    A true beauty with great talent. Beloved by many people.


    As for Cather's views on Native Americans (and others), at first those views were rather unflattering:


    https://esirc.emporia.edu/bitstream/handle/123456789/896/Swinehart%20Vol%2025%20Num%202.pdf?sequence=1


    But those views changed as she traveled and grew as a person and scholar.

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  2. Thanks for the links, trip, will read them.

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  3. YW!

    I well remember how Cather was so popular in the college campuses during the late 60s/early 70s.

    The Menuhin siblings were presented in a PBS documentary and concert way back then. Doggone it - tried but could not find a copy of that video. You Tube has a bunch of videos of Yehudi performing on stage with Hephzibah and, of course, with Ravi Shankar. Interestingly, the two older Menuhin siblings believed Yaltah was the most talented of the three.

    Fascinating family, indeed!

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  4. Yaltah performs:


    http://khedgecock.podomatic.com/entry/2014-09-11T23_00_00-07_00

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcQsdduio4Y





    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was inspired to play an old audio/video of Miss Yaltah:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Osh7937VM

      Beethoven's Waldstein or Sonata 21 in C. In the crescendo there appeared to be elements which influenced the music of my favorite composer LM Gottschalk. I tried but could not find any videos of her performing Gottschalk nor could I find any writings from her about him.

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  5. Willa Cather quotes:

    http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/willa_cather.html



    Cather cut her hair short and traveled anonymously in her youth:

    http://www.sparksummit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/youngwilla.jpg




    I bet you did not know that Cather knew her football:


    "The Fear That Walks By Noonday."


    http://cather.unl.edu/0019.html


    The story is apropos for the Halloween season. I find the dialog to be very modern even though the story is from the 1800s.

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  6. Great pic of young Willa. I bet she read her share of George Eliot?

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  7. Right you are, again:

    http://cather.unl.edu/reading.bibl_author_Eliot,_Geo.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just started reading via audio book 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 (1925). In this book, once again Cather is concerned about class, social stratification, world view, and modernist transition with WW I as background. It was written in the same time frame as 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐆𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐛𝐲 which raised similar themes but from the viewpoint of higher social classes.

    When I first heard of Cather and did some minor readings of her stuff about 50+ years ago, it was evident back then that her popularity emerged because of the feminist leanings of her books. Noticeably absent (so far as I have read) feminism does not appear to be a theme in this book. Perhaps that is why it was never among her most popular works. Interestingly, the book has become somewhat popular in the modern era because there is a suggestion of what the LGBQ community calls "queerdom" in it. It is said that the protagonist is troubled by a possible sexual conflict with a couple of young male characters, notably with deceased war hero Tom. The conflict is strictly a mental one. I will have to read on further to see how this develops in the book.

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    Replies
    1. It's been a long time since I read Cather and wasn't familiar at all with this title. Interesting period in literature with so many great writers capturing a tumultuous era from a number of angles. I was really absorbed in that era at one time. The interesting part about Cather is that she was quite the cosmopolitan but is best known for her Nebraska books.

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  9. I've also read the short story "Paul's Case", and the books 𝐌𝐲 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐚 and 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐛𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐩. I understand that she was not all that popular during her lifetime because she seemed to have right wing leanings in those days. However, the critics found great merit in her works and she got much praise for those writings.

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    Replies
    1. I figured it was because she wrote openly about her homosexuality.

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