Willa Cather’s “The Enchanted Bluff”

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Not only is Willa Cather’s short story “The Enchanted Bluff” my favorite Cather story that I’ve read so far, it is a contender for favorite story this year.  She describes the river and landscape around Sandtown, Nebraska with vintage Cather detail and gives depth to the surroundings with the adventures and dreams of boyhood.

A group of local boys of varying ages spend their summers together camping and swimming along the river.  The boys are named by the unnamed narrator; however, there seemed to be so many of them that I couldn’t keep them straight in my mind.  This, though, only served to enhance the innocence of the times.

When one of the boys tells of an “Enchanted Bluff” in New Mexico where a tribe of cave-dwellers lived and how nobody had ever been able to climb to the top, an enduring dream is planted in their minds.  A dream that gets talked over and about from year to year.  Varying methods of how to get to the top take up their summer conversations.  Twenty years later, the narrator reveals that none of them had yet made it to New Mexico; however, some of the boys now had boys of their own and they were now drawn into the dream.

I enjoy the fact that the title has the word “Enchanted” in it.  Throughout the story, there is no magic, no fantasy-but yet the moments and conversations of the boys seem enchanted, magical in their own right.

An aspect of this story reminded me very much of Ray Bradbury’s autobiographical novel, Dandelion Wine.  In his novel, boyhood and summer go hand in hand just as in Cather’s story.  While Bradbury’s novel has what most of us would consider magic and fantasy,  I have to give Cather credit for creating her own world of enchantment with the landscapes of Nebraska and New Mexico and dreams shared by boyhood friends.

“When I Knew Stephen Crane”

I have found it difficult to write about single essays.  I end up simply wanting to say “read this”.  However, at online-literature.com (which is where I found the pictures below), I found an enlightening essay written in 1900 (Stephen Crane died in 1900 at the age of 29) by Willa Cather about her previous interaction with Crane.  I believe she was writing for a newspaper in Lincoln, Nebraska, when he showed up in town waiting on money to be wired to him.  He stayed around town for a few weeks and she got to know him a little.

He was disheveled and extremely skinny.  It seemed he had already written The Red Badge of Courage but had not yet really taken the literary world by storm.  At the time that Cather met him, he was 24.  She had the sense he knew he would not be living a long time.

For anyone interested in artists interacting with other artists, especially ones that are no longer living, this essay is a gem.  My favorite passage described what she thought was the purpose of their relationship:

Men will sometimes reveal themselves to children, or to people whom they think never to see again, more completely than they ever do to their confreres. From the wise we hold back alike our folly and our wisdom, and for the recipients of our deeper confidences we seldom select our equals. The soul has no message for the friends with whom we dine every week. It is silenced by custom and convention, and we play only in the shallows. It selects its listeners willfully, and seemingly delights to waste its best upon the chance wayfarer who meets us in the highway at a fated hour. There are moments too, when the tides run high or very low, when self-revelation is necessary to every man, if it be only to his valet or his gardener. At such a moment, I was with Mr. Crane.

But I won’t continue explaining the essay, I’ll simply say “read this”!

Willa Cather’s “The Bohemian Girl”

Finally – the Willa Cather story I’ve been looking for!  A number of years ago, I read and enjoyed several of her novels:  My Antonia, Shadows on the Rock, Death Comes For the Archbishop.  The short stories I’ve read up until now have left me a little flat – perhaps some interesting situations, but as a reader I felt I was only seeing the surface.

With “The Bohemian Girl”, the reader gets much surface – beautiful, panoramic surface.  Underneath the surface; however, an even more beautiful history and puzzling conflict gets brought to vivid life.

The Erikson family live in Nebraska at the turn of the twentieth century.  Of Scandinavian descent, Mr. Erikson, a preacher, has died.  Mrs. Erikson drives one of the first automobiles in the community.  The Erikson family, including eight sons, exemplify what I would call the “Protestant Work Ethic”.  They have literally put the horse to the plow, farming land to make money to buy more land – and becoming wildly successful doing this.

The Vavrika family, from Bohemia (western Czech Republic, today), owns a saloon in the community.  While successful in his own right, Joe Vavrika takes time out to enjoy himself with music, art, storytelling and friendship.  This love of life and free spirit gets passed down to his daughter, Clara, the title character.

As one might guess, one of the Erikson boys is considered a “black sheep”.  After being gone for about a dozen years, Nils returns to find Clara married to his older brother, Olaf.  Seeing this as a marriage of convenience, Nils gets reacquainted with Clara.  Talking of his travels, Nils gets Clara to see the huge difference between herself and her husband – hoping for some benefit to himself.

I found the underlying conflict between the Eriksons and the Vavrikas both puzzling and enlightening.  The conflict did not revolve around who was rich and who was poor.  While the Eriksons had their way of pursuing the American dream, the Vavrikas had a different way of pursing it.  From my understanding of the story, I don’t see either family as financial failures.    Yet, they seem to live with each other with grudges, animosity and mutual distrust – because they are different?

Even as another free spirit, Nils reveals that he has a mind for business, just not the family business.  I found the resolution to the tension imminent in Clara’s situation surprisingly satisfying.

From a forward in my Cather collection, I discovered that this story eventually weaved its way into becoming one of Cather’s better known novels, O, Pioneers!.

“A Death In The Desert” by Willa Cather

“Pardon me, madam, but I see that you have mistaken me for Adriance Hilgarde. I am his brother…”

Willa Cather’s “A Death in the Desert” struck me as unusual.  I’m finding her short stories difficult to write about, but I’m giving it a try anyway.  Everett Hilgarde physically resembles his brother, Adriance, who has been successful in the field of music.  Everywhere Everett goes people stare at him thinking he is Adriance.  As Everett travels through Wyoming he runs into Katherine Gaylord – who, as one might expect, at first mistakes him for Adriance.  Katherine had once been Adriance’s pupil in Europe.  Given the title of the story, I’m not giving much away in saying that Katherine is dying.  Katherine realizes who Everett is (or rather who he is not) and Everett makes an unplanned extended stay in Wyoming – reminiscing with Katherine about their time in Europe with Adriance.

The odd aspect of this story lies in the feelings that Everett has for his brother.  While one might think that Everett would be extremely jealous of Adriance, he seems to consider his lesser stature in life as “just the way it is”.  He depicts Adriance as someone who is somewhat selfish but not unexpectedly so – almost as though a great musician could not help but be selfish.

Adriance does not make an appearance in the story; however, when Everett writes to him about Katherine’s situation, Adriance mails his latest musical composition to Katherine.  This strikes me as a somewhat selfish act but it again seems to make sense – the selfishness of an artist – neither Katherine nor Everett are taken aback by it.

Like the last Cather short story I read, I think this one warrants some extended thinking.

“The Marriage of Phaedra” by Willa Cather

I drew the Ace of Diamonds this week which corresponds to the short story “The Marriage of Phaedra” by Willa Cather.  While this isn’t the first of Cather’s work that I’ve read, it’s the first short story.

The Marriage of Phaedra is the title of an unfinished painting by the deceased Hugh Treffinger, a London artist.  A man known simply as MacMaster arrives in London to conduct research for a book about Treffinger.  He maintains an amicable relationship with a man named James, the caretaker of Treffinger’s work and studio.  His relationship with Lady Ellen Treffinger, the artist’s widow, is a little more strained.

The story unravels the less than perfect marriage between Hugh and Ellen Treffinger as well as the relationship between James and Hugh.  It seems that James had a significantly higher appreciation for Treffinger’s art than the artist’s wife did.  Ultimately, Lady Ellen sells the studio including the unfinished painting.

The story reads more like a newspaper article.  While stories don’t have to pack an emotional wallop in order to be good, this story seems to intentionally lack emotion.  James’ attempt to stop Lady Ellen from selling the unfinished painting could be considered somewhat touching.  Something in the story keeps me thinking about it.  The fact that an artist’s work can become so treasured by some intrigued me.  This also happens to be the third story in a row in my Deal Me In Short Story project that has something to do with art (sculpture or painting).  Interesting.