Posted on 12/07/2023 3:19:46 PM PST by Borges
Of all the angels and ghosts one might imagine to be hovering over the communities of Tribland in 2023, Willa Cather is hard to top in name recognition and enduring cultural influence.
Perhaps you feel her presence as you travel the red brick main street in downtown Red Cloud, passing by the historic opera house where she gave her high school valedictory address in 1890.
Likewise, you may sense Cather standing behind you when you visit the historic farmstead near Bladen where Annie Pavelka — prototype for the title character in Cather’s 1918 novel “My Ántonia” — raised her large family, peering at the cellar opening Cather describes so memorably in her prose. Or you may imagine yourself to be in her company when you walk across the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie south of Red Cloud, 612 acres of native sod unbroken since Cather arrived in the region with her family when she was 9.
Certainly you will feel yourself awash in Cather’s life and times if you visit her childhood home on Red Cloud’s Cedar Street, climbing to the bedroom that was her sanctuary as she grew into a young woman, her dreams growing right along with her.
After Cather moved away from Red Cloud, she went on to fame and fortune as a journalist, literary critic and author. But many of her most memorable novels and short stories are patterned on small prairie towns just like the one in which she grew up — the town she revisited so many times through the course of her fascinating life, which involved wide travels and brought professional accolades including a Pulitzer Prize.
Cather died in New York City in 1947. In the years since then — and thanks in large part to the vision of Mildred R. Bennett, who led the establishment of the Willa Cather Foundation in 1955 — thousands upon thousands of visitors have followed Cather to Red Cloud, eager to see the real-life places she wrote about and compare the scenes to those her writings conjured in their mind’s eye.
Literary scholars, historians, Cather fans and the merely curious have made Red Cloud and the surrounding area — “Catherland” — a destination. Their support has led to additional preservation and development that continues today through the National Willa Cather Center, seeking to uplift the writer’s memory, preserve the places she never forgot, and keep the work that has immortalized her in front of readers the world over.
As a writer, Cather may not be every reader’s cup of tea. Some may be put off that in certain ways Cather portrays our part of the world as a place to escape. Others may find her relentless pursuit of artistic ideals to be unrelatable or condescending toward “the rest of us.”
At the same time, it would be difficult as a born-and-raised Triblander to read Cather’s description of the landscapes she encountered here as a young girl and not to feel one’s pulse quicken a little. She captures the vastness and timelessness and mystery of this land in a way that’s unmatched, and that continues to compel readers to come here and share her experience.
Today —150 years after her birth on a Virginia farm on Dec. 7, 1873; 140 years after she moved with her family to rural Webster County in 1883; and 100 years after she brought home her Pulitzer Prize in 1923 — Willa Cather’s words continue to paint pictures of our history and tap the marrow of the American experience.
Cather clearly didn’t enjoy everything about life in a small prairie town like Red Cloud, or on “The Divide” between the Republican and Little Blue rivers. But her writing reflects the strength, resolve and complexity of many of our forebears — and the tales she tells are part of the story of humanity, worth saving and reading and teaching to new generations for another century-and-a-half and beyond.
Happy birthday, Miss Cather. You may no longer be with us, but you are all around us — and we are richer for the words you left behind.
“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
— from “My Ántonia”
Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop” is a fine novel.
My mother was born and raised in Iowa City Iowa. Willa Cather was my mother’s favorite author
Great writer.
Nope.
Just finished a re read of it last week. It is a very rich in color and texture work. fine indeed.
My Grandma was a My Antonia. All 14 of her children probably read My Antonia. My mom wasn’t a reader of too many books, but she read that one.
Oh BTW Willa Cather it seems was a lesbo
Cather is my favorite writer of great fiction. She taught English for a short time in a Pittsburgh, Pa. school. “Paul’s Case,” a jewel of a short story, was inspired by that experience. I love “My Antonia,” “O Pioneers,” “A Lost Lady,” “Lucy Gayheart,” and many more. If you haven’t read her descriptions of the plains and the pioneers’ life there, you’ve missed the opportunity to learn about your country. Wonderful writer!
As a Midwesterner, I read her prairie works to do just that. I also like “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” and “Shadows on the Rock.” I enjoy colonial history/historical fiction. I read “Archbishop” again right after I finished it.
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