Bohemia (Bôhmen) and Moravia (Mähren, in German) became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1526 under the Habsburgs (correctly spelled with a "b", NOT a "p") whose reign ended after World War I.

Different ethnic groups were forcibly united willy nilly under the Habsburg umbrella at one time or another, depending on who won which of the innumerable regional, territorial wars, and whose territory was given away or traded. Not all the diverse ethnic groups coexisted happily, certainly not in Bohemia, the heartland of the (now) Czech republic.

There was a fierce national movement by the Czechs against the Germans in 1848. Discrimination continued. The visionary Thomas Masaryk fought for a popular Czech state against the Habsburg dynasty even as World War I still raged. A hoped-for union with Austria AFTER the war did not come to pass.

(*) Instead, the powers that be decided to create a new state : Czechoslovakia. After almost a century, that union was found to be no longer workable or viable. We now have the Czech republic, ably led by Vaclac Havel, and a separate Slovakia.

Now for the Sudeten Germans, located in the western and northern rims of then Czechoslovakia : they numbered about 3 1/2 million people at the end of WW I. Their hoped-for reunion with Austria had NOT come about after WW I, the discontent and discrimination increased. Clearly, the Sudeten Germans were ripe for the take. They fell for Hitler's lure and promises lock stock and barrel and "opted" for him. They were triumphantly and illegally "led back" into the bosom of the Reich in 1938 - and the world looked on, impassively.

The Czechs did not forget. Before World War even ended, and as soon as the rapacious Russians made significant forays into East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia, the Czechs expelled all the Sudeten Germans summarily within hours with what they could carry, and confiscated their property.

Most of them settled in Bavaria. Their offspring is there. The survivors want an official apology from the Czech government, and a decision about the property left behind (**) From the way things look now, it is doubtful that the issues will be resolved any time soon.

(**) Left-behind property is a major concern also in Germany when many East Germans fled to he west under somewhat similar circumstances befor eGerman unification in 1989. That is bound to keep a battalion of laywers busy for some time.

I realize this is of marginal interest for our upcoming discussion; still, I wanted to present the antecedents, as it were, for a better understanding of our book, and the people who came to Nebraska.

I have no idea when the meaning of "Bohemian" was broadened beyond identifying one's provenance and language to identify also "someone with pretended artistic or intellectual aspirations in disregard of conventional rules and behavior, and living a wandering, vagabond life = slightly shortened def. 6 and 7 of Random House dictionary.

To understand the people who came to Nebraka and perhaps their reason for coming, in addition to looking for new land, we may have to get into the Bohemian churches founded in this country.

The composers Smetana, Dvorak and Janacek, and the writer Jaroslav Hasek (author of The Good Soldier Schweik) were all Bohemians in this national sense. Bohemians by birthright, and all of them artists, it does not necessarily follow that they were Bohemians by nature, for Bohemia is also another, less clearly defined country: a country of the mind. This Bohemia in fact derives from misconceptions about the true Bohemia and, in the English-speaking world, such misconceptions go back as far as Shakespeare.

Bohemians in London NOT! Villon is the first remembered Bohemian poet. He had an uncomfortable life and an untidy death. Hunted from tavern to tavern, from place to place, stealing a goose there, killing a man here in a drunken brawl, and swinging from a gibbet in the end, he is a worthy example for the consideration of all young people who wish to follow literature or art without any money in their pockets. But even his fate would not deter them. Indeed, when I was setting out, I even wished to emulate him, and was so foolish as to write to an older friend that I wanted to be such another vagabond as Villon, and work and live in my own free way. The conceit of it, the idiocy - and yet, it is something to remember that you have once felt like that.

King of Bohemia

The French "Bohémiens" indicates the belief that they came from Bohemia, which is significant in that Bohemia has recently been the scene of anti-gypsy protests. The gypsies were told to go back to Spain, which is where Bohemians apparently think they came from.

The villlage of Lety in south Bohemia sent the first Czech pioneer to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1848. Thousands of families followed. I discovered this information in the State Archive of Trebon in 1992 while researching the 19th century exodus of Bohemian peasants. I saw Lety as the cradle of Czech emigration to the American Midwest. The reading-room director where I worked perceived Lety in a different light.

"There was a concentration camp there during the war," she told me. "It was a Gypsy camp. All the inmates died of typhus."

Of course we could always consult with someone at the Czech Consulate in New York. I did that once a while back, when I was in a quandary about ONE Czech phrase and its spelling. The Czech Republic had no diplomatic representation in Boston, but New York did. It took a while to get the number from Directory Assistance but I reached a nice young man who gave me the answer I was looking for in no time flat. The call was not that expensive either. In cases like this the proverbial horse's mouth would seem more reliable than speculation, IMHO.

O Pioneers (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Ántonia (1918).

In haste.

""Of course," he said, "I should have to do it in a direct way, and say a great deal about myself. It's through myself that I knew and felt her, and I've had no practice in any other form of presentation."
I told him that how he knew her and felt her was exactly what I most wanted to know about Antonia. He had had opportunities that I, as a girl who watched her come and go, had not."

"My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim's manuscript, substantially as he brought it to me."

When I read the question as to whose story this is I was about to burst out with my impression, but then I decided to contain myself because we are barely in to the introduction and have questions about it, its length, the narrator, and Jim.

But even though I am loath to commit myself so very early in a book, ANY book, I believe the narrator is WC herelf. The device she used by letting Jim tell the story is a device she learned from the Europeans, the Russians in particular. The fact that she cut the introduction by several pages in later years makes that appear likely.

As we go on reading at our own pace, the question of style will become clearer, I am sure. Back tomorrow.

Instead of writing a straightforward story of her growing-up years in Nebraska, Cather wrote fictional biography and mined her knowledge for all it was worth. She wrote the stories of people's lives; all the characters in her novels have real-life counterparts and are identifiable. Not all of them liked the way in which they saw themselves portrayed in her novels.

For my part, I will continue reading to get a clearer impression. Meantime I warmly recommend Death Comes for the Archbishop .

Cather herself first declared MA as her best work but later changed her mind and considered Death ... to be it.

Back tomorrow afternoon.

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GLUG Glug glug

We are drowning here in Austin!

However, in my literalness= a prerequisite for a linguist and translator, I am positively elated that Cather got the role of the INTERPRETER right. These days, no one bothers and no one really cares, sadly, about the distinction between "interpreter" (of the SPOKEN word) and "translator" (of the WRITTEN WORD). I thought this should be mentioned and understood by this special group.

= Österreich = Austria; "untertan" =- subject. <P{> The significance lies, of course, in the remarkable construction of the phrase with the common vowels. Sorry about the tangent. Thought it might help to explain the reign of the Habsburgs over remote, poor area, even then subject to ethnic strife.

The second paragraph of that link explains what I have tried to say, but obviously not doing a good job at it :

"Czech DIALECTS are generally divided into four major groups : Bohemian, Central Moravian (Hana), Eastern Moravian or Moravian Slovak, and Silesian (Lach) ---"

The operative words are "Czech dialects". Of course Bohemian was real enough, it was spoken, wasn't it ? But it was a dialect , not a universally recognized, autonomous language --- any more than Ukrainian, Belarussian or White Russian were independent languages. Of course they existed, and they had a perfect right to exist, but still -- they were dialects.

I won't embark on a tangent by elabaorating on the Silesian mentioned above - but I will tell you that 2 years ago my AAUW branch, talking about diversity, invited a Czech high school girl to be our guest. Her English was fine, her outlook modern. This was after Czechoslovakia, hammered together at the end of World War One - a union that never worked, had been separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I also asked her about the Czech president, a brilliant man, whom I had heard several years ago in a resort near Munich.

The Czech student agreed with me in my admiration for Vaclac Havel, but to the question of language (or dialect) between Czechs and Slovaks, she said that while the Czechs understood Slovakian (the Slovakian dialect, presumably), they themselves spoke Czech. Both the political AND the linguistic association was irrevocably severed.

WC's description of the wide-open, ever-present, untamed prairie in all seasons and at different hours of the day and night is magnificent. The land itself is, I believe, an important character in the story because it, after all, determines the destiny of the human characters. And some of those human characters are not fully drawn either : they appear, disappear, and/or reappear solely as needed in the story. Whose story is it ? Too early to be sure, I think.

I remembered what the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark colour. Her brown hair was curly and wild-looking.

 Rebellious Pavel is  described to us as an anarchist.  Isn't that an oxymoron?  A Russian anarchist!
With the description given I pictured the guy who was tall, lanky and big boned that portrayed the Rifleman on TV.  What the heck was his name?  Chuck Connors, I think.  Large hands, knotted knuckles, strong and gangly.
What's with this cough?  Are we about to witness a TB epidemic here?  (I've never read this story before and am on track, so if I hit the nail on the head I promise you I've not read ahead of schedule.)

Next, we meet "Curly Peter" who was "as fat as butter."  I've never heard that expression before and it tickled me.  I didn't understand why the neighbors laughed at him when he went home to milk his cow.  These folks were homesteaders who claimed and settled farmland.  Why did that seem so strange to anyone?   Did they even have CANNED mild in those days?  He proudly displayed his cow to the children as he told them how much more nutritious the milk was for his friend to ingest. In his country only rich people had cows.

Where, I wonder, did these dudes get blue gingham sheets for their "double" bed ?
 
 
 
&nb

The first part, indeed the entire Book One, describes an idyll. The chronicler is a retrospective adult, but the experiences are those of a young boy in a tangible environment of smells, warmth, light, food, clothes, plants. The use of objects is explained : grandfather's silver-rimmed eyeglasses for reading prayers, grandmother's hickory cane tipped with copper for killing rattlesnakes, Mrs. Shimerda's quilt to keep food warm.

The story of the Russians Pavel and Peter, ostracized after having thrown a bride and groom to the wolves, may have come to WC through oral history from immigrant Nebraskans. She is known to have freely used not only her memory but also things whe had done, seen or heard.

Here her use of the wolf story expands the reader'sperception of the immigrants. It also introduces the reader to Wick Cutter, the money lender, about whom we will read more later.

T have Jim accompany Mr. Shimerda and Antonia was a necessary device for the author - how else could there have been an eyewitness to what happened, and the report about the wolf story.

I tend to agree with Justin in that - despite the title - the book is not about Antonia, any more than it is about Jim, who is merely the narrator outlining what we may describe in modern terms as "the immigrant experience". We may see more clearly at the end of Book One.

yes, the wolf story followed the two men no matter where in Russia they went. Then : "It took them five years to save money enough to come to America. They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but they were always unfortunate. When Pavel's health grew so bad, they decided to try farming. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away. The Russians had such bad luck (*) that people were afraid of them and liked to put them out of (their) mind."

(*) bad luck in America, I take this to mean.

The reader is not told what precisely "such bad luck" consisted of, nor can it be assumed that the neighbors in Nebraska knew anything about the wolf story. As Jim reports, "We did not tell Pavel's secret to anyone, but guarded it jealously ---" (The secret of course was also Peter's, wasn't it ?)

A few days after unburdening himself of the gruesome secret, Pavel died and was buried in the Norwegian (nota bene) graveyard. Then Peter sold off whatever was left - to become "cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of Russians were employed."

There is something pathetic, touchingly final, even a trifle comic, to imagine Peter kissing the cow before she was led off by the new owner, and then crouching on the floor of the house, now stripped bare save for the melons that had been saved for the winter, and eating them one by one, their juice dripping into his beard. By the time Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek came to take him to the train, only heaps of rind were left.

Predictably, the loss of his two friends "had a depressing effect on Mr. Shimerda". That may have been an understatement.

Does it matter whose voice informs the reader ? WC managed to weave this tale into the story of My Antonia - and I still believe it was done to round off the overall picture of the diverse immigrants and their background (she does that with Fuchs too).

Mal, your point is well taken - of course people resort to desperate measures under desperate conditions, and have been known to do so. Cannibalism comes to mind.

P.S. If the townspeople had known, they would not have bought the pitiful small objects Peter was selling but turned away in horror. I maintain they did not know. P.P.S. There is so much more to cover in Book One, could we please let go of this and continue ?

Robert Pinsky was our Poet Laureate. A marvelous, inspiring man, he wrote a superb new verse translation of Dante's INFERNO in 1994. He called it THE INFERNO OF DANTE. The Italian text is on the left, the translation on the right. The illustrations by Michael Mazur are excellent.

He still reads poems occasionally on The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer.

In the Eastern Europe of my grandparents, people could turn into wolves. As a child I shivered with fear and anticipation as my grandmother talked in the wintertime, only in the winter, about these creatures; I imagined every rattle of a window was one of them trying to get in to bring cold and darkness into our home.

In my grandparents village, during a special season of the year villagers would dress as half-wolves and visit neighbors, dispensing wisdom and forceful discipline (in the form of thick sticks) to all.

Thus the wolves of "My Antonia" can be seen as social criticism, but for what? Perhaps Pavel and Peter threw out the traditional role of bride and groom while not killing anyone in a literal sense. If they loved each other this could be their crime. Or their crime could have been simply opting not to marry and to desert their society by emigrating. Antonia and Jim understand the romance of the story as children intuitively sense truths. Again, this is just a two-sided way of seeing the tale although it is true that human-wolves are a vivid and strong part of Eastern European culture.

As for the mushrooms and Mrs. S boasting of a potlatch giveaway -- in a giveaway one's wealth is measured by how much one gives away; how much one sacrifices. It is a way to equalize society and distribute goods among the people. Mushrooms are highly esteemed in the Eastern Europe of my grandparents and their giveaway by Mrs S more than matches Mrs. Burden's gifts. I remember in my grandmother's village, the mushroom hunters were women and all the women wore these white caps that looked like huge mushrooms, tall on the sides with the top billowing out like an edible mushroom cap over the stems. Funny to see especially since women also wore wide-striped stockings and colorful dresses half covered by embroidered white aprons. The hats were an indication however of the status of mushrooms.

Hope I've added something to this discussion. Wish I could participate more fully.

Marvelle

Pavel's message is complicated and aimed more at Peter than anyone I think. I don't agree with Pavel's bitterness at his fate but he was in agony and dying and thus subject to forgiveness. To enjoy Pavel's story as an intriguing, exciting tale and nothing more is fine. But the message is there if you know oral storytelling.

However, to dismiss the wolf attack and the stories of my grandmother as fairy tales or myths, means that the spirit and the teaching of the stories have been totally misunderstood. Cather was raised around that tradition of storytelling and she obviously understood it and could create in that tradition; just as she understood the 'fairy tales and myths' of Native Americans.

In oral storytelling the teller creates suspense, excitement, a plot, all to get the listener actively involved and open to the message, to make the listener think. The tales don't say 'thou shalt not....' or 'thou must do ...' but rather show by exciting example. (Show don't tell.) Getting the listener receptive to the message -- to consider it and either accept or reject it -- is of paramount importance. This is what Pavel was doing and it took no effort on his part beyond the effort of breathing.

We writers cannot explain the sophisticated techniques inherent in oral storytelling but more exposure to this type of story could be beneficial as well as enjoyable. The wolf attack is a rousing tale.

Marvelle

Have you ever stopped to consider what it is like for an adult to leave not just a state or region , but a country, a continent, indeed one's past and one's relatives, to start afresh, again in a new unknown country -- precisely like those Nebraska immigrants, and immigrants everywhere, and how hard that is ? Would you grant me that these people have every reason (and are entitled) to feel homesick too, and lonely and afraid as well, at least in the beginning ? How quickly do you think one can adjust to a new way of life ? Or how long does the process take ?

By contrast I find myself still grappling with the lack of structure in My Antonia, because structure - a framework - is what a reader can rightfully expect. The first jolt is the realization that, despite the possessive pronoun (my), this is not a love story in the conventional sense, and IF there is a happy end, it is qualified.

Book One is one unit, and once we get to the end of that, we may have an inkling, a better feeling, of where WC is going with the story - but there are surprises to come, none predictable.

Joan, it seems to me the entire story is circular, i.e. we begin at the end and return to the beginning, experience the events in between through narrators' eyes and come back to an end which may not even be an end.

Yet folklore exists and we have to reckon with it. Nefarious intentions have been attributed to "the big bad wolf" way back in The Brothers Grimm's Little Red Riding Hood. There is reason to think that similar legends are told elsewhere in the world about wolves and man's fear of them. As someone hear sagely said in ths folder, when the grisly was reintroduced into part of our west, the people living there were anything but enthusiastic.

We don't know WHY WC included the legend into My Antonia. For my part I continue to think (guess, really) that she did it to highlight the disconnected, bewildered immigrants in their new chosen environment, overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all (the red grass comes to mind !), clinging desperately to people of similar ethnic and linguistic background. They were not welcomed with open arms, that's for sure.

I would have some quibbles about equating Czech with Russian and a perfect mutual understanding of the two, but that is not the issue here. Both are Slacvic languages. There must be some common linguistic Denominators. Meanwhile, the legend exists.

People have asked where WC learned about it, i.e. what her source(s) were. Our So I turned to a good friend, the head reference librarian of our excellent public library, where they know everything about Seniornet.org hark hark . Here is my promised report.

A passionate reader and tireless researcher, the librarian came up with Willa Cather, A Literary Life (1989), by James Woodress . The author is a professor of English at the University of California at Davis. The book for waiting for me. On page 292 we find this passage -

<blockquote " --- This story is a folk tale that folklorists have collected from the oral tradition of Nebraska immigrants in the identical version that Cather uses. She no doubt heard the story from the farm people she knew. At the same time, her (her?) idea that she made up the story perhaps comes from having seen a well-known painting by Paul Powis depicting wolves attacking a sledge (,) or from a poem by Browning, "Ivan Ivanovitch", which tells a similar tale. Since Cather took a year-long course in Browning at the University of Nebraska, it seems reasonable to conclude that the remembered the poem."

Th libriarian could not find a poem by Browning by that title - lest it is included, she speculated, within the body of another poem. She was intrigued by our question and asked to be kept informed of our further discussion. Two new questions emerge: (1) the painting by Paul Powis, (2) the poem "Ivan Ivanovitch" by Browning. Perhaps the insuperable poetry experts in our midst, Andrea and Ginny, who are also inveterate researchers, as is Mal, could locate both (1) and (2).

I own a gravure of that Chasselat picture in which Napoleon called M. de Bausset, a prefect of the imperial palace, soon after the divorce announcement to carry his swooning wife to her quarters. Chasselat shows M. de Bausset kneeling before Napoleon with Josephine in his arms.

I think the importance is not actually the picture but the story behind the picture for it is well known that Napoleon told Josephine very early in their marriage that he would eventually divorce her since she was not able to bear him children and an heir. The story behind this picture might relate to Peter's statement that if he'd stayed in his country he would have married and had children and the animosity the dying Pavel directed towards Peter at the end. Or perhaps there is something in the picture for Antonia and Jim? Cather used a lot of art/paintings in her storytelling, not the actual images but the ideas and techniques of art. Cather is clever with her 'green vase and yellow orange' as Maryal quoted Cather who said that these "two things affect each other. Side by side, they produce a reaction which neither of them will produce alone."

By the end of "My Antonia" Cather will have produced a lot of side by side reactions.

Marvelle

"Willa Cather was brought up in the Baptist Church, but became a member of Grace Church in 1922. The altar rail was dedicated in memory of Willa's brother, Douglas, and Willa, herself, dedicated two of the stained glass windows - one to her mother and one to her father."

About funeral customs:

In ancient times, the body was buried under or next to the family home. As cities became larger disease could be a problem from close proximity of the dead to the living so graves were moved outside the city. It was Grandfather Burden who mentioned the crossroads which Mrs. S decided was okay: using Mrs. S' logic, a crossroads would keep the dead from being lonely but also confuse with its multiple directions -- the dead would not find its way back home to haunt the living.

In my culture during earlier times, a 3 day watch was kept to insure the soul departs. When the soul had ceased roving and could no longer pester the living, the body was buried on the fourth day. To prevent the spirit from returning the body was buried in a secluded spot.

There is a time discrepancy: the S family had a four-day (not a three-day) watch with a burial on the fifth after waiting for the coroner.

The custom of "touching" was followed at the funeral where the S. family touched the corpse. This comes from the ancient belief that when a murderer laid hands upon the body of his victim, the corpse would start to bleed again and the murderer would be caught. Each touching was closely watched. Do you think they believed they had to do this because of fear caused by the Jake-Otto argument? (I've always hated this custom especially as a child.)

Grave goods: I don't know if this custom was followed by the S family but it is a common one and that is laying grave goods with the corpse. Treasured personal possessions would be buried with the dead and no one, not even for a debt, could take that item. These possessions proclaimed the status of the dead in their travels to the other world. For Mr. S his treasure was the violin -- he really wasn't a farmer when all is said and done. Usually the item would be broken or damaged before being given to the dead so that it would be no good to anyone except the dead. (This was practical as it discouraged grave robbing.) Does anyone remember if Mr. S was buried with his violin?

Marvelle

It's interesting to note that Mal has her Maine customs and I have mine from Eastern Europe, yet they have similarities. With each generation these customs change, especially if transplanted to another country. In "My Antonia" the Bohemians have to adapt to a new land, new language, new customs, new people. Mr. S was terribly homesick and could not change.

My grandparents are from northern (former) Yugoslavia, bordering what is now Austria and Hungary. Once in America my grandparents were isolated in mountain mining camps with others from the same culture. That may be why many of the beliefs and customs survived -- not forgotten but adapted to the new environment.

Today's funeral customs are of older customs that have been changed to fit in, each in their own way. Some continuing but adapted customs? I think that the 'open casket' tradition is not a modern idea but an evolution of the touching and the once prevalent wake.

Marvelle

Joan, thanks for the link to the suicide-burial belefs. I knew I was putting myself out on a limb talking about the beliefs of my culture when I only had my personal experience. Now I know so much more. (But yikes! pinned down with a stake!)

When my grandparents came to America they were called Bohemians but that was a name given to many different cultures. The people identified themselves as being from a specific culture, even a certain village; rather than being Bohemian. Yet in Cather's book they seem to accept the label of Bohemian which confuses me. Do they call themselves Bohemian or do other people call them that? I don't remember.

A lot of suspicion and reaction revolved aroud Mr. S' death. WC is giving us an example of "us and them" bias.

We see American Jake's hostility come to the surface when he creates a murder scenario and, through wishful feelings, points the finger at Krajiek. He creates fiction and calls it fact. Its convenient to hate others, to blame them for your own troubles, to feel that at last I have the power over someone. Even though in reality, poor Jake does not have the power. He is a good man, just blind by choice in this one area.

We see Krajiek trembling, either from guilt or fear of 'the others'. He knows he could easily be the scapegoat. After all it is the native born Americans who have the power; who say "why don't you go back where you came from?", who speak the local language and who know the local customs. Krajiek knows how easily he could be blamed and he doesn't feel comfortable about his place in America, that much is obvious; he hasn't yet adapted. Did he murder Mr. S? WC didn't tell us or give us clues in the burial chapters.

We see Otto being protective towards Krajiek, perhaps due to their countries past ties. Otto's behavior is rather paternalistic -- because Austria was the ruling country and Otto was raised feeling superior, top dog in that country-relationship? Otto has adapted of sorts to America but he will always be a little bit of a stranger in a strange land so he feels empathy for Krajiek. Also, Otto wants to believe there is no wrong-doing by Krajiek since, however strained the politics, immigrants must stick together.

I don't think the coroner cared one way or the other, at least he didn't seem to do much beyond declaring Mr. S dead. Maybe he didn't care since this was a fight among the outsiders.

All speculation on my part and the characters' parts; whirls of suspicion and fear, and the S family caught between grief and fear.

Joan, I think your on to something with the Dives and the Napoleon-Josephine. Please tell all.

Marvelle

And Jake demonstrated his prejudice early on when he told Jim that you catch diseases from foreigners.

It was Jim I quoted as saying 'if you don't like it here why don't you go back where you came from?' -- this is such an old, old phrase passed from generation to generation it seems.

Love the woodcuts, they really suit the story! Thanks for the link on suicide. Many of the ancient Greek beliefs were incorporated into the Catholic Church and I'm sure other churces too. For one, you were given life by God and therefore your life belongs to Him; it isn't yours to take. It would be the height of pride to think otherwise. I don't agree with this belief but still feel uneasy with questions of suicide.

Marvelle

Jim wakes with a start and realizes instinctively that something must have happened. "I looked forward to any new crisis with delight.", he says, which shows the isolation of the homestead.

Jake and Otto are perceptive, each in his own way. Otto comments, "--- the women folks was shut up tight in their cave." CAVE !

I wonder why Mr. S. is referred to several time as an old man -- was he closer to grandfather's age than to that of his own wife ? What kind of union did they have ? The poor man slept in the barn with the oxen ! (We are not told where sons Ambrosh and Marek slept - not that it matters.) Much can be read between the lines and imagined, I think, and nothing would induce this reader to think of Mrs. S any more kindly. There is no doubt that Mr. S was profoundly dispirited and unable to fathom the different realities and his inability to meet them, for a farmer he was not.

There is a comical point in Jim's narrative, when Otto misunderstands grandmother's repeated exclamation, "I don't see how he could do it !", meaning how could he take is own life, and gives her the practical answer. Elsewhere she says, "He (Mr. S) might have thought of her (Antonia). He's left her alone in a hard world."

But why does grandmother get so excited and says, "See here, Jake Marpole, don't you go trying to add murder to suicide. We're deep enough in trouble." WE ? Why we ?

Jim's response to Mr. S's death is touching and significant. He imagines the old man's exhausted spirit resting quietly in the grandparents' kitchen, where he had been so comfortable, before finding his way back to his own country - via "Chicago, and then to Virginia, to Baltimore - and then to the great wintry ocean."

Only ONE date is mentioned later in the book. So I find myself puzzled what warfare Jelinek was referring to in Chapter XV, "By'n'by war-times come, when the Austrians fight us.", in view of the fact that the territory of Bohemia and Moravia was under the domain of the Habsburgs (Austrians) since 1526, unless there was a rebellion and related skirmished

I have no idea why WC inserted the Napoleonic reference and what its connection is to the story. It is known that Napoleon truly loved Josephine, who was older than he and had grown children, all his life and agonized over the divorce, which he believed necessary. He let nothing stand in his way toward power and glory. Both were short-lived.

After the divorce, he married Marie Louise of Austria and had some trouble to get the Church to sanctify the marriage. She did bear him a son, named the King of Rome - later the Duke of Reichstadt, who died young. That is definitely a different and, sadly, little known story.

Mal, would it be possible to give a source for quotations as those in your # 274 ? Thank you.

Thank you for checking up on the war situation. I have not had the time to do any checking myself until now.

You are correct, of course. The war mentioned briefly in MA was one of a number of successive regional wars/skirmishes beween Prussia and Austria, which more often than not involved the possession of eastern territories, like Silesia for example, that was bounced back and forth from the loser to the victor.

Königgrätz was a town in northern Bohemia where the Prussians defeated the Austrians decisively in 1866. The Czech name of the town is Hradec Králové .

I raised the question merely because Bohemia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, therefore Austrians and Bohemians would not fight each other but rather fought (together) against the Prussians. The distinction may not have been clear to WC (or Anton Jelinek).

Yes, the "we" is inclusive, an indication that grandmother and grandfather cared about the immigrants and were on their way to accepting them.

And yes, contrasts dominate the story from its very beginning, and the immensity of the land shapes those who tame and cultivate it. Not all can endure the hard life.

The story has no structure in the conventional sense, and that can be frustrating.

Regarding this book, I believe it is incumbent upon the reader to read each and every sentence with great care, more than once if necessay, and pay attention to all the details.

Now, that brings me back to Joan's earlier mention of the circles and how Jim was 'stirred' by the faint marking on the grass of a "great circle where the Indians used to ride".

Perhaps WC was giving us indelible markings and sights, such as the island of grass which was Mr. S's resting place. There are more markings to come.

Where are we exactly in the book? Since I'm afraid of going too far ahead in the book, I'll drop back a bit and mention couples. There are lots of examples in the book. All the couples that WC introduces relate to one another but the example of Napoleon & Josephine are explicitly a European couple and not transplanted elsewhere.

Napoleon said that of all the women he knew, he only loved Josephine but he only loved her "a little." (There are all kinds of links on the net for 'Napoleon loves.')

Napoleon built an empire and then felt the need for an heir to continue that empire in his name. He proposed to four different women, was turned down by all of them before he proposed to the older Josephine. Josephine's lover was getting tired of her and she needed more security in her life. Even though she knew she was past child-bearing years, she misled Napoleon in that area and they married after much negotiation. Not exactly a great passion for either of them. Napoleon went off to war while Josephine kept up her affair with her bored lover. Once Napoleon heard of the ongoing affair, he took a mistress. He divorced Josephine, only because she could not give him an heir, but he settled property and monies on her and they actually became friends.

What about another couple, the Mr & Mrs S? He lived a comfotable life in his mother's home in Bohemia. The future Mrs S was much younger then Mr S, and a servant girl in that house. He felt obligated to marry her, over his friends advice to just pay her off, so my assumption is that she'd become pregnant by him. Mr. S was honorable although not in love. Once they were married, Mr S' mother refused them the house and his former life seemed to dissipate.

Would Mrs S want to go to America because the class system in Bohemia would always treat her and her children as nothings? There would be no opportunity in Bohemia, no future. Mrs S thought of the future for her children, a common goal among immigrants. They didn't expect a better life for themselves, but hoped to give a better life to their children and their children's children.

Having lost his comfortable life, his friends, his beloved occupation in music -- Mr S was sad but was he also resentful?

Antonia was "my Antonia" to Mr. S just as she was to Jim. Does she represent the same thing, the same ideal, to both men? Mr. S envisioned Antonia as becoming educated and refined; as being the ideal of his old life in his old country -- his patria. He would not want her working in the fields on a hardscrabble farm yet his death quickened her steps in that direction. Perhaps there is where he was selfish in his death. How does Jim see her? I think it's too early in the book for me to hazard my guess.

Yet placed next to Mr S' death and funeral we have the bulls and the roaring impulse to continue life.

Marvelle

She is single-minded about doing a man's work, which leaves no time for school and leads to a cooling of the friendship with Jim, who dislikes the change in her. He says, "She ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often at the table and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached."

But she firmly tells him, "I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mother can't say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can work as much as him. School is all right for little boys.----" The course is set.

She is good at what she does, and does the work cheerfully; we can only hope (in vain, I'd wager) that the thoroughly pedestrian mother gave her some recognition once in a while instead of lavishing all her affection on surly Ambrosch. Mother and son were very much alike, both had an 'attitude', were crafty and dishonest, and deep down ungrateful for the help the community generously extended to them by bulding a new log house for them.

There is structure -- a loose one -- to "My Antonia" but the work is complex and interwoven with different life stories and images that comes together ultimately.

We see tiny pieces of the picture when we read, like scrutinizing intently a square inch of a wall mural. Its only when we come to the last page that we can step back and look at the entire painting with its rich patterns and the brush strokes are no longer splashes of layered colors but actual images.

I'm hoping that'll happen with "My Antonia". Even if someone doesn't find a structure, that doesn't matter so terribly if they enjoyed the read and feel enriched by it.

Back to the book --

Was Mrs S selfish? Was she wrong to sacifice her own comfort and her husband's for her chidren's future?

And Ambrosch, he is not someone I could ever like but he didn't run away despite being stuck with raw, unworked land and a mother, 2 young sisters, and a brother who could not help. He had Antonia to help but it was still a hard life. It would have been easy for him (and there are examples in the book) to escape to a footloose lifestyle. He was a mama's boy and spoiled because the entire family knew they would have to depend on him in the future -- immigrant families look to the eldest son for the future. Mr S was old and could make decisions but I don't think he was expected to do much hard labor. The responsibility came early to Ambrosh because Mr S, as dear and good as the man was, chose to leave his family.

Marvelle

About help at the Shimerdas, I know Marek does some farmwork but he's a hazard at plowing so his range of work is limited.

Marvelle

Couples are not limited to the legal union of husband and wife. I admire WC for advancing that idea. Couples are partners who are considered tied together as companions through life. Otto-Jake are such a couple which we'll see further developed. WC shows us multitudes of partners who form unions based on individual needs, desires, and goals. Some ties are stronger, some are more productive than others.

As an example of what isn't a couple: while an oak tree and a computer chip are two objects they are not bound as a couple. In this same way, good neighbors Grandfather Burden and Mr. Shimerda are not a couple but an excellent compare/constrast example. Unless we classify people into rings like Dante's Rings(circles) of Hell. Rings that begin with close couples, encircled by other rings of close neighbors, close communities, close countries. Naww, too much. For now, I'll stick to couples/partners as being more manageable.

I've finished reading up to the end of Book One, and I don't see Antonia as part of a couple -- not even in the future with Jim or in the past with her beloved father. Perhaps a pairing will come later.

Marvelle

Marvelle

Jake reports his k.o. of Ambrosch to the Justice of the Peace in Black Hawk the next day and pays his fine with a ten-dollar bill from grandfather. On that day Jake also sells a pig he has been fattening (simply to make a second ride into town unnecessary). The Shimerdas find out about it and insinuate, or actually believe, that Jake HAD to sell the pig to pay the fine. "This theory afforded the Shimerdas great satisfaction, apparently.", says Jim.

For weeks afterward, whenever the two "parties" met, Ántonia would chant an insulting rhyme at them -- definitely not among Antonia's finer moments. Still, who do the Shimerdas turn to when one of their horses takes sick at night ? Right. Thankfully, grandfather is more enlightened and forgiving, and all is resolved, almost.

Back later

"In the center of the town there were two rows of new brick (!)'store' buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the courthouse, and four (!) white churches." The Baptist Church is new and grandfather a deacon.

They moved in March, and by April they felt like town people = a short acclimatization. However, when winter comes, Jim sees the town in a less flattering light.

Yes, I think Jim is an idealist and in that sense a romantic, as Frances says, but he does not display all the characteristics attributed to a romantic.

I was willing to withhold further comments on the believability of Jim as the male narrator until later, but I find it impossible to do. For example, in Chapter IX it is clearly WC rather than Jim who gives a somewhat ironic picture of a typical small town anywhere , the pettiness and nosyness of the 'natives', and in fact a social commentary far beyond anything a boy Jim's age could possibly understand, let alone cogently describe. Only a mature person would it be able to do that.

to be continued

Even here, in traditionally cooler Massachusetts, the heat is infinitely worse than in previous summers. In the famous summer Eden of Cape Cod, a large group of overheated pilot whales beached themselves in Dennis in the early morning hours when few people were on the beach. Within hours the professional rescuers were joined by more than a thousand people. The courageous effort made the national news, as did the train derailment near Kensington, MD.

In my previous post I did not mean to digress or go too far afield. Actually, I prefer to stay with the book, the story itself, irrespective of who tells it, and keep my peace till the end. Still, it may be helpful to interpret some impressions as we go along.

Language plays a very important role in the story from beginning to end, not only as a requirement for cultural adaptation, but as a means of understanding, in short- communication.

Two minor characters in the story are deprived in that respect, one cannot speak, the other cannot see. The first is Ántonia's 'crazy' brother Marek who is web-fingered and retarded and can only make "his queer noises" for food and attention. Jim knows Marek wants "to bark like a dog or whinny like a horse" for him, but what will Marek's future be ?

The other is Samson, "born in the Far South, on the d'Arnault plantation, where the spirit if not the fact of slavery persisted. When he was three weeks old he had an illness which left him totally blind."

By age 6 the child escapes again and again, feels his way to the Big House and listens "in rapture" to Miss Nellie d'Arnault practicing the piano every morning. Music becomes Samson's salvation, the means for his survival, his "language". It alone could "piece him out and make a whole creature of him."

I agree, the portrait of the Harlings, especially Mrs. Harling, is much fuller, and more sympathetic, than that of other characters. The narrator obviously admired her.

As Mal mentioned earlier, the Harlings were based on the real-life Miner family.

Antonia's purpose is (for I believe this purpose is given to Antonia by WC) to show what loneliness can do to people and not to automatically judge others without considering the reasons for their behavior. Also as a thinking outloud process for herself to understand her father and why he left her and the family by killing himself.

In traditional oral storytelling fashion, she speaks indirectly through example and leaves it up to the listener to decide the point or moral. The listener would not be drawn into a personality discusson since they didn't know the tramp and would be able to see more clearly his desperate loneliness.

We already know Mr S as a likeable man and loving father who is lonely for his old life. He is lonely but not alone since he has his family. He cannot adapt to the new world America. He puts his unhappiness before the needs of his family -- including Antonia. Very few people are 100% saint or 100% demon. Mr. S was a good man, a grown man who by leaving his family through suicide did harm, he even had a selfish trait -- remember he spent all day at the Burdens following Christmas Eve, having left his family in the dirt hovel -- but we need to understand and forgive. Mr S' actions as signs of his despair as Antonia was trying to understand and forgive.

So what do we compare and contrast in the 2 suicides so far?

Mr. S was lonely but had his family while the tramp was totally alone. They both needed to be part of a community (Mr S at the Burdens without his family following Christmas Eve; the tramp as part of the threshing crew); following which they killed themselves. Did they kill themselves because they were sad that the community was temporary; or, my belief, they needed that contact to feel they'd be missed by the larger group. Yet Mr S had the small community of his family.

Mr S' suicide was in a semi-private space where someone would be sure to find him. The tramp's suicide was public after his half-hearted(?) private attempt failed. Was his more public because he had no family, no intimate community?

The contents of the tramp's pockets are symbolic of his alienation from society and the contrast between him and Mr. S. The tramp keeps that poem as a momento of happier times, of his early life when he felt loved and comforted and known. Mr S kept his violin but also had his Antonia and Yulka. The tramp had a pen knife to help him survive, palty in comparison to Mr. S' rifle. And he had a wishbone -- so symbolic of being alone, as without a companion he couldn't grasp one end of the wishbone and wish,he had no hope or future; Mr S had hope and future in his family if he could have recognized it.

Hard to say if the tramp was an alcoholic. Perhaps he wanted one good thing before he died; one physical sign of the 'good life'. Mr S got that with the Burdens.

Which was the sadder death? Both, but perhaps the better question is, which was the sadder life?

Antonia is reminded of her father that winter shelling walnuts in the cozy Harling kitchen and she reminds others about loneliness and desperation when one is outside. There is so much more here to comment but I'll leave that for you to do.

Marvelle

The Red Wheelbarrow

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
.

Marvelle

First he prayed in front of the religious figures on the tree (not the tree itself), perhaps asking for forgiveness since to Catholics suicide is a sin.

Then, the actual 'suicide note' is his formal goodbye to the Burdens before he trudges home to a dirt hovel of complaints and sullen silences (but yes, to the loving Antonia and Yulka as well). Mr S shakes everyone's hand -- that need to make social contact; he leans over Grandmother Burden's hand and murmurs "Good wo-man" -- a contrast to his wife; and he makes the sign of the cross over Jim -- a blessing to the kind, loving son he wished he had. This 'suicide note' of his shows us what is missing in his life.

As Maryal says: 'with a story, the meanings keep growing. There is not one but multiple meanings.' And that if you listen to enough good stories 'you acquire a kind of wisdom.'

I feel that is happening in the build-up of stories and images in "My Antonia." Jim comments that wintertime is when people look for color. Color means life and companionship. WC provides color to us, her listeners, as Antonia's stories are color for the Harlings and Jim and a contrast from the dark Shimerda home.

It was winter when Antonia told Jim that "after the long winter evenings on the prairie, with Ambrosch's sullen silences and her mother's complaints, the Harlings' house seemed...like Heaven."

Doesn't there seem to be a comparison going on between the Harlings' home and the Shimerdas'? Its as if Antonia is studying this home with Mrs. Harling as role model; she is setting to diverge from 'sullen silences and complaints' to a cozy home filled with children. Mrs. Harling honors her husband who has what he wants and his wife is able to run the household without discord. Mrs. Harling is definitely a role model for Antonia who has already shown herself to be a quick study and able to accomodate to different situations.

This all ties to suicides and the stories for I think Antonia is deciding how to make a good life, while having the image of her father's death in front of her. The tramp who waved at Antonia could be a final farewell from her father; an image that was a letting go of silent grief for Antonia.

Is Antonia making up the tramp suicide story? which is really a story within a story within a story. Antonia has a reputation as a fine storyteller. She knows to use symbols, to leave the meanings open, to engage the listener. I think if a story is heart-true then it is truth.

Marvelle

The plow at the end of Chapter 14 when the picnic is over is a lasting image. Jim writes:

The tone is elegiac. It reminds me of Antonia's last words at this picnic before the sun sets on the plow: when a girl mentions the explorer Coronado who "died in the wilderness, of a broken heart," Antonia says "More than him has done that" with the other girls agreeing. Many deaths are being remembered, taken by the wilderness.

The darkened plow in front of a setting sun also symbolizes an end to something great -- perhaps an end to youth; to the pioneering days when the plow tore through the land and brought forth bountiful harvests, and these days are now fading in importance with a maturing, more settled, more industrial nation. Even the end of the picnic lighted by the sun and dark plow can mean an end to the 'fabled' times.

Whatever the meaning, something is ending, conquered by the all-powerful sun towing time in its wake.

Marvelle

The circle in the snow is a reminder of the Plains Culture of the American Indian whose golden age is ended (by Coronado's symbolic sword which took many lives long after Coronado died); the sword is replaced by the plow, and the Plains Culture replaced by the beginning of the European settlement in the "wilderness."

The European settlement was a period of excitement, of feeling the possibilities expanding, but it too claimed many lives like Mr S. While that period is ending, as the sun sets behind the plow, perhaps something else takes it place.

Marvelle

Although it isn't part of the book the picture is so appropriate to Mrs. Harling, the hired girls, and the other women. The plant is an aspidistra of which I've always had at least one in my house no matter where I've lived. From Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary Unabridged:

This houseplant is also known as snake plant for its spiky leaves, and cast iron plant. It is extremely hardy and thrives on inattention, since it is no hothouse flower and survives well on its own resources. It is semi-succulent and stores water in its leaves. It can grow in the darker corners of a room. The roots produce lots of baby plants which cluster around the sides of the mother plant, eventually growing quite tall and sturdy. Altogether, the aspidistra is fertile and hardy.

Marvelle

Joan mentions Antonia's "A girl like me has got to take her good times when she can." Antonia is a farm girl, not pampered or from the city, and she knows she'll soon enough have responsibilities and hard work to occupy her time. Her education ended early when her father died so her options are limited.

A more well to do woman, or someone who married into the middle or upper classes, would expect servants to do the hard work, would have social outings and trips. The easy, good times will continue for such a woman even when she's past the bloom of youth. That will not be the life for Antonia and she knows it. She also knows that living within a family circle pleases her, rather than the perennially single career-girl life which Lena eventually follows.

I've enjoyed the comments on the dancing by Mal, Faith, and company. It seems Antonia takes pleasure in dancing with someone, she moves with the music while Lena never participates fully and is distant and outside the music. I think this says a lot about the direction they take in life -- one involved and one detached. Maybe because Antonia is more courageous?

Marvelle

I kept thinking of the adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer during the bedroom scene -- not sure why. It wasn't really dangerous after all. It would have been tragic if Antonia was there and not Jim. Like most women I've had experience with this situation and it is nothing to laugh over but put Jim in the bedroom with a surprised Wick and it is surreal and almost-funny. I couldn't quite laugh though knowing what could have happened with Antonia.

WC had Jim exchanging roles with Antonia when he stayed in that bedroom. Jim was shocked into recognition of the dangers that surround a woman 24/7. He misdirected that anger, turning it towards Antonia. Why? Was WC trying to show a 'blame the victim' psychology -- I'm sure women, who were subject to the blaming, were aware of this mentality in WC's day and throughout the ages. Just thinking outloud here and free associating and still trying to find my way.

Marvelle

Marvelle

Marvelle

Edith Lewis

Birth:
1882
Death:
1972



Companion and confidant of Willa Cather.





Burial:
Old Burying Ground
Jaffrey Center
Cheshire County
New Hampshire, USA

" 'Primus ego in patriam mecum . . . deducam Musas' "; 'for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country.' "

Book III brings Lena back into the story and into Jim's new life in Lincoln. She also brings news about Ántonia's engagement to Larry Donovan. Jim says, "I think I'd better go home and look after Ántonia.", to which Lena reacts with "frank amusement".

I find Lena a likable character. Underneath that cat-like languor and seductiveness there is strength and determination; she knows exactly what she wants. Her flirtation with Jim in Lincoln is subtle and uncommitted. She leads him on and holds him back at the same time.

It is no accident that Camille which makes them both cry so much is about seduction and renunciation. From a typically "supine" position on her couch "At last she sent me away with her soft, slow, renunciatory kiss".

Poor Jim is not allowed a love affair, the closest he comes may well have been that recurrent erotic dream about Lena. "I used to wish I could have this flattering dream about Ántonia, but I never did.", he writes. Nor was marital happiness his lot, as we learn early on.

The contrast between Lena and Ántonia could not be sharper : Lena has escaped the hard immigrant life, moved to the city, has become independent; emancipated in fact. Ántonia never wavers in her love of the soil and would never think of leaving.

through the stage performance. Quite an outlet for opera goers and quite an outlet for Lena and Jim, two of the most repressed people in "My Antonia".

Watching the play they can live it and cry through it but it is second hand experience. I can see why Lena would repress her emotions outside of casual playacting because of her particular and hard life but what caused Jim's repressed nature? I don't think is WC projecting unconsiously into Jim's character for she was too much the professional writer for that. She deliberately wrote Jim to be repressed emotionally so he stands for something (sorry Faith, there goes the symbolism again) or there's something in his experiences that I'm not seeing. Will have to think more on this.

Actually we are seeing a story within a story within a story. Kinda interesting.

Marvelle

I was charmed, I think that's the right word of this feeling of mine, with the story within a story that WC presented to us. There is Lena and Jim, then the play Camille, then the story of the leading actress, then the story of La Traviata, then WC standing behind the curtains and her conscious part in the story. Fascinating stuff to me and as Maryal and Joan have pointed out, it is the relationship of one to the other that enlarges the meanings (Mal's crazy quilt).

I like Lena and Jim despite their repressed feelings, not just for each other but for life in general. I can see myself in them up to a point. Lena playacts with any number of men but it isn't meant to be taken seriously, and Jim is an observer and has been all along. That even helps explain some of his anger against Antonia with the Wick incident where Jim was reluctantly forced to face an ugly part of life he would normally have avoided. I don't want to say more at this point for it may be too early in the story. I'll leave any further exposition about the play Camille and the reaction of L&J to our fearless leaders.

Marvelle

Actually, the story was NOT an instant "hit"; in fact WC complained that it "takes the critics two years" before they get to the essence of a story.

We know that WC wrote about travels, people and incidents from her own life. She had a teacher much like Jim's mentor. But what we are here to deciper, I suppose, is not the antecedents, nor the people on whom WC based the characters in Ántonia, but the real reason, ultimately the "spirit" of the book. We can always get to the biographical parallels later.

BTW, the preparations for the new book discussion here are complete. Taking Joan's and Maryal's permission for granted, let me mention only that the book is Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. The folder is open for review now and the discussion will begin on September first. It would be lovely if I could see you there when the time comes.

I believe that ANGLE OF REPOSE is an ideal follow-up to our discussion here because its focus is the boundless West; the mining efforts (as in Leadville !! mentioned here some time ago - by Betty, I think), and the gradual conquest of at least part of the desert at enormous cost.

I count on being more "with it" in this folder, which I love.

The emotions of her characters, even those with starring roles, are not necessarily the emotions of WC. With WC, from what I've seen in her other books such as "The Professor's House", the opposite is more likely to be true, that at least one of the major characters is used by WC to delineate societal issues, problems or weaknesses.

There is no passion for either Jim or Lena and that may be their tragedy as individuals. Instead, they avoid emotions and passions and playact (romance is a type of distanced, antiseptic passion) and garner their second-hand emotions from plays like Camille.

Jim is the puppet and WC is the puppeteer which are two very disparate roles. WC developed her writing skills long before "My Antonia." Jim is a character and not a fullblown imitation of WC. The professional writer has coolly given him both strengths and weaknesses.

What I'm saying is 'don't confuse the messenger with the message.'

Marvelle

I was going crazy at home when I couldn't even hold up a book and read. Now that has got to be one of the Circles in Dante's Hell. So I went back to work (in the legal field) and can do some things okay but not too great at walking or typing out messages like these (so please excuse typos when they occur). Physical therapy is necessary but definitely not fun and I'm never going to be as agile as I once was. I have a better understanding and empathy for people who are injured or disabled. I realize now how lucky I've been all these years and I appreciate life so much more.

I enjoyed your post, Mal, and agree with much of it. I think however that Jim and Lena needed the overacting, overly sentimental before they could release their emotions and crying at a stage play is so much safer for them than real life. That's part of what I think WC was intentionally showing.

Got to get back to work. Will try to post a more coherent post later tonight.

Marvelle

After reading Joan's post I realized that we had two different/similar scenes of dying from consumption -- Peter/Pavel, Camille/Armont (or whatever his name his) and watched by Jim/Lena. I think WC for one thing wanted us to see the understated but volatile emotions of Peter/Pavel, contrasted by the histrionics of Camille and it might have been her warning that Camille was too sentimental.

Marvelle

More than two decades later when Jim and Ántonia sit in the orchard, she says, "o, I never got down-hearted. Anton's a good man, and I loved (sic) (but why past tense ?) my children and always believed they would turn out well. I belong on a farm. I'm never loneseome here like I used to be in town. You remember what sad spells I used to have, when I didn't know what was the matter with me ?"

Lonesome ? Sad spells ? That's not what Jim reported ! Is there an inconsistency ?

Jim describes her in glowing terms and repeatedly mentions her color and "that look of deep-seated health and ardor." It takes him twenty years to finally go to see Ántonia again; "I kept putting it off until the next trip. I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it." What he finds is a "stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled. ---She was there, in the full vigor of her personality, battered but not diminished ---"

So then, what is the real significance of Antonia for Jim- and, for that matter, of Annie Pavelka for WC ? Faith said "Earth Mother", and I would agree with her. Still and all, I think WC gives us an idealized (ever so slightly sentimental) rendering of what was surely a very hard life -- with all those children. Cusak (a cousin of Anton Jelinek, we read) was a city man who had worked in Florida orange groves and learned grafting, a skill that came in handy on the farm.

Yes, the children. They don't start learning English until they go to school. Hmmm. Something else bothered me as well : In the cave, one of the older boys says, "Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don't have those --" He could have said "people around here don't have them --" why does he set himself and the family apart from Americans ? Why didn't the mother they adored make it clear to them that they were Americans by virtue of the fact of being born here ?

Moreover, Lena and Tiny are worthy heroines just as much as Tony, IMHO, even if they chose not to procreate - but then neither did WC herself. When WC began working on My Ántonia, she was in recovery from a deep disappointment: her good friend Isabelle McClung had gotten married and WC was devastated. In this respect, and from what we know of her general views of past vs. present, it is probable that Optima dies ... prima fugit expressed her own opinion.

By 1877, 100 years after declaring our independence, we had accumulated an impressive national library of poetry and prose, but Americans of an intellectual bent had little confidence in their own culture and measured themselves by European standards, usually disparagingly. Then came the 20th century, in which American literature--like the country's economy and its armed forces--dominated the world. But in the past quarter-century serious fiction in this country has lost energy, purpose and ambition. It remains diminished today, so this survey of the state of the art of American literature is of necessity sobering.

Still, for most of the past century and a quarter our best writers strove to give what they regarded as an honest and illuminating picture of their country. By 1870 there had been only a handful of noteworthy American novelists--Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, perhaps James Fenimore Cooper and Harriet Beecher Stowe--but in the early years of that decade Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Henry James published their first important fiction, and soon thereafter the floodgates opened: Dreiser (whose masterpiece, Sister Carrie, was published in the first year of the new century), Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, Harold Frederic, Sara Orne Jewett, Frank Norris, Jack London, Edith Wharton, Sherwood Anderson, Ellen Glasgow, Upton Sinclair, Willa Cather--all of a sudden we had an indisputably American literature, one that wrestled with many if not all aspects of American life and that spoke in what sought to be a distinctly American voice.



Now this literature was liberated, speaking in an American voice to American readers, exploding in every direction as writers struggled to describe the country to itself. Early in the 20th century, spurred by the muckrakers and the trustbusters, novelists mercilessly depicted the conditions in which many Americans labored and played no small role in the passage of federal legislation that sought to improve them; the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was almost directly attributable to Upton Sinclair's clumsy but passionate The Jungle. The West, a mystery to most Americans east of the Mississippi, came vividly to life in the fiction of Willa Cather and Jack London and, later, John Steinbeck and Wallace Stegner. While the aristocratic Henry James retreated to England, which he found more congenial than his native land, Edith Wharton made Manhattan society into the raw material for novels--most notably The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence--in which it was proved conclusively that the manners of society at any level contain stories about society as a whole.

Surely it is worth noting that it has been a half century since an American writer published a novel that indisputably deserves to be called great: The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow. It is one of only 11 American novels published in the life span of this newspaper that, in my judgment, warrant the same distinction: Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Wharton's The House of Mirth, Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!, Ellison's Invisible Man and Nabokov's Lolita.

People long to be told stories. The need is essential to human nature. The urge to satisfy it explains why we read bubblegum pop fiction as well as genre fiction both high and low, but also why we still read Shakespeare and Dickens, Cather and Faulkner. The pity is that so many writers who represent themselves as serious and worthy of respect now decline to take up the storytelling challenge. They are content to tell us about themselves, blissfully unaware of how uninteresting they are. Even when they do try to take on big subjects and themes--e.g., Jonathan Franzen in The Corrections, Richard Russo in Empire Falls, David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest--too often the self gets in the way of the ambition, and (less so in Russo's case) one is left with the feeling that what is taking place is a bravura performance , rather than an effort to tell a story that will help us see the world in a new light.

But the storytelling challenge isn't going away. Wolfe and Chabon saw it for what it was, accepted the dare, and got what all writers crave: readers. What we need now are more writers like that.

My paternal side is 100% Eastern European, very much so. My maternal grand grandmother was a Native American, Grace Barn Heart. She married a Scottish immigrant who was the stage coach driver on the line from Orovile, California through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and back again. They had three children and Grace's strong personality became too much and they separated following the death of their only son, each taking the daughter that most resembled them.

Grace was resourceful and she too went to the Yukon, first boarding her young daughter Pearl with a local Calif family. At the end of the season Grace missed the last boat out the Yukon and the waters froze over. She wasn't able to send word of her situation and the family, thinking she might be dead, eventually gave Pearl to an orphanage. The next Spring thaw came and Grace took the first ship out of Alaska and returned home and she turned the state upside down until she found Pearl. Alas Grace did not become wealthy mining in the Yukon and worked the rest of her life at various interesting jobs

For many years, Grace was a cook at lumber camps in the Sierras as well as mining her own claims. One time she and Pearl, with her baby in her arms (my mother), had to outrun a forest fire and took safety in a river while the fire leaped the bank, leaving them safe but wet in the river. Grace survived the settler culture better than her brothers who slid into depression with the loss of their land (no longer theirs according to the new settlers).

My grandmother Pearl was an independent cuss too, just like Grace. She spent her last days in Truckee where independent women are expected and admired.

My last image of Grace is of her in full sun, unfurling a black umbrella, and doing a little dance on the earth, bobbing that umbrella up and down, this way and that, as she moved -- always the individual.

Now about "My Antonia", I also think that Antonia was portrayed as the Earth Mother. And I don't feel sorry for Cuzak because he wanted an anchor to keep him from a life of wandering and aimlesness even though one always misses their first home. Remember how Cuzak told Jim that

So I think Cuzak was looking for roots and Antonia gave him that and he gave her a family, something she'd always wanted. She made sure it was a happy family. She always felt maternal towards Jim and even calls him a "boy". Jim certainly acts like a boy and he looks forward to playing with Cuzak and the Cuzak boys, of actually being one of the Cuzak boys.

Marvelle

Afterthought: Perhaps WC wanted to tell Antonia's story since they weren't being told in her time and the stories might be lost? Yet each of us can remember our families stories and as long as we tell them to our children, and our children tell theirs, on and on, the stories will never be forgotten.

I read and reread the last sentences of the story, and to me they express melancholy determinism : "-- what a little circle man's experience is. For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be."(perhaps not much ?)

And isn't anyone's past really "incommunicable" to anyone who has not shared it ?

We share a Pearl, Faith? It must have been a popular name. Reno is far away in the wintertime in the Sierras when Beckwurth Pass is near impassable (clumsy pun, sorry). I bet our Pearls did meet.

I just thought of another compare/contrast in the story, and there are so many, which is Cuzak and Mr. Shimerda. They both missed their homeland yet their actions/reactions -- to their current life, to America, to their family -- are so different. Cuzak made a life for himself in the present while Mr. Shimerda lived only in the past, and I wonder if that idyllic past ever existed except in his mind.

Marvelle

I had never thought of checking the web in search of other potential aficiondados. My goodness, what possibilities there are o the web !!

To be considered an oddball (on top of my European heritage) never bothered me but I did wince when I had an embarrassing experience recently at the Post Office where I had gone to have a letter weighed. The address was written with a fountain pen and became slightly blurred (but was still legible) because of some wet spot on the counter.

Though the clerk should have muttered some kind of an apology or smiled and shrugged, I was the one who apologized and said, "I was using a fountain pen." The young man looked at me censoriously over his glasses and said, with feeling, "I HATE those."

My immediate problem is ink, a very rare commodity these days. I used to bring it back from my annual trips to Europe in my carry-on. But I haven't been back for 4 1/2 long years and my supply is running very low. Do you know of an available, accessible source i this country ?

My apologies for veerig off the subject, to which I will return soon. Many thanks.

As a follow up on the situation where Mr. Shimerda's friends told him that he didn't have to marry the servant girl. This simple statement in "My Antonia" says a lot. First, Mr. Shimerda talked about the situation with friends, we know he expressed his unhappiness in Nebraska to everyone around him; he was a whiner in other words. Not good for an older man who should have learned how to control himself and to keep private feelings private.

I would think that Ambrosh is his son. The reason he didn't have to marry her is that she was of the lower class and he wasn't obliged socially to protect her honor. That would be the thinking at that time. Cuzak on the other hand is not a whiner; like Antonia he makes the best of life and enjoys what is available.

About Great-Grandmother Grace, she was Indian. She was a strong, independent woman and the best thing I remember is her funny dance to make me laugh. Personally, I was raised with stories of Eastern Europe which are a strong part of me. Later I studied Native American storytelling and found them quite similar to those of Eastern Europe. Also, quite similar -- in complexity, symbolism, the unsaid gaps (like the 'scene' with Shimerda and his friends), and leaving it to the listener to help complete the story -- to what WC has given us in "My Antonia".

Marvelle

Why did WC title the last Book "Cuzak's Boys" ? Why indeed !

At the end of chapter I Jim says, "It was no wonder her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founder of early races." Strong adulatory words. Gosh, I think Ántonia's daughters should have been given more than a passing glance --

WC did say at some point that she considered MA her best work, but she said the same later about "Death Comes for the Archbishop", a book I vastly preferred- as I've said before. I agree with Justin that MA is a "woman's book"; I am glad he was here with us and grateful for his input.

Mal, two New England writers were influential in WC's writing career, both keen observers of regional life : One was Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) from Maine, the other was Dorothy Canfield Fisher from Vermont, who was 3 years younger than WC and lived to 1958. Canfield Fisher must have been stunning and hauntingly beautiful, to judge from a picture in James Woodress biography of WC.

We know WC had difficulties with the introduction and several years later conceived a new version. She also had difficulties in using a male narrator, and that's where Sarah Orne Jewett came in (I mentioned her in an earlier post), who encouraged WC to forge ahead without undue concern about gender questions.

It was a good idea not to look at a biography first. Certain facts about her life have gradually come to light, and we know of her sexual ambiguity which is reflected in her writing. That may well be the reason why she has not portrayed a fully fleshed-out satisfactory heterosexual relationship. Be that as it may, in MA at least Jim's grandparents seem to have established a manageable modus vivendi .

But Jim's narrative is not entirely devoid of erotic overtones by any means, just look again at the picnic by the river and the evening at the Gardener hotel where Blind D'Arnault presided, and see how Jim descibed those alluring foreign girls - whether they were dancing, dressing, lying around, or ironing :

"their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the brightest wild roses, their gold hair moist with steam or the heat and curling in little damp spirals about their ears ---"

From the point of view of writing, it seemed to me that the last chapter with Jim's epiphany, or his coming home to himself at last, carried a rather heavy burden (Jim BURDEN) as compared to the LONG first chapters.

Also, few of the characters mentioned are fully developed : all we know for example about Yulka, Antonia's sister, is that she would not touch her dead father's forehead, and that some years later she showed Antonia's baby to the briefly returning Jim.

But WC presented the story to us with the elements and characters SHE thought essential. This has been an exhaustive, very enlightening discussion. We never cease to learn -- nor should we ! My gratitude to Joan and Maryal and all the participants.

Joan, here's wishing you a relaxing enjoyable vacation.

Maryal, I will most certainly follow through with Pentrace.com and especially the "ink source" - I am so very glad this came up- so totally unexpectedly, providentially, some might say. Not planning a trip to Switzerland any time soon, I thought, Oh my God, what will I when the inkpot is empty ? The question has been answered !

Many thanks again.

In "My Antonia" I think the major characters were three-dimensional and I tried to make the point with Mr. Shimerda. It's difficult to accept the negative aspects of a likable character. As Joan said he was a "weak, depressed, heartbroken man in a hopeless situation, yes, one who had high hopes for his daughter's future." Joan disagrees that he was a whiner. So I'll try to restate in a more acceptable manner -- one absolute last time -- what I feel about Mr. S who was indeed a good man. Mr. Shimerda let people know his unhappiness, even his children and neighbors. When his not-yet-wife was pregnant he discussed that situation with friends rather than keep it between himself and the woman. He loved Antonia and Yulka but he was unhappy and chose to kill himself and leave them to their future fate. He was a good, sweet man but he was weak and let everyone know his unhappiness. Based on these characteristics I would say that Mr S. was three-dimensional. I think his character development, the good and not-so-good, makes him more believable and likable than if he'd only been one-sided. It makes a reader more involved with a written character if they are believable.

I wonder if Jim was really meant to be believable? I see Jim as an observer and that's why he was indistinct as a man or an individual. Perhaps Jim was a stand-in for a writer who must blend in the background in order to observe? WC was criticizing herself as someone not wholly involved in life? In opposition to Antonia? Just some thoughts that became very pronounced when I read the Camille scene and contrasted it with Pavel's scene. Differences too in how stories can be narrated, simple but evocative like Pavel; overblown and operatic with Camille. Was WC giving us a lesson in the difference in realism versus the artificial. WC always gives me a lot to consider.

Marvelle

Others are Alexie Sherman, Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich. Two of my favorite Native American authors are Simon Ortiz, N. Scott Momaday. Some do have "Indian-sounding" names like Lucie Tapahonzo.

Marvelle

To tie the re-naming to the question of "what happened with immigrant assimilation?" I think WC portrayed how immigrants like Antonia can settle into life in the U.S. and still be able to retain important aspects of their original culture. Traude's husband knew that his name was everything -- it was his and it brought with it a culture and a history that cannot be denied.

Cultural diversity is a vital and rich part of the U.S. and it's intriguing that WC recognized that so many years ago with "My Antonia". My slant on this however, as Traude aleady knows, is that Native Americans have not made their circle in the grass and then departed from the land. They are still here, changing yet not changing like the immigrants. How lucky the U.S. is to have so many cultures!

(With everyone talking of fountain pens, I want to run out and get one.)

Marvelle

I intend to go over the bio again before I return it to the libr. If I find anything that may be of interest or pertinent to our discussion, may I leave it in this folder ?

Sentimental fool that I am, I always lament the end of a book discussion, but this time the parting is easier : there is a smooth transition from MA to Angle of Repose and a logical continuation of historical events. One is commensurate with and builds on the other.

Angle --- describes a simultaneous, in fact continuing phase of exploring the West. To wrest anything at all from the barren soil was one aspect. To extract minerals from impenetrable rocks was quite another. All efforts were worth it.

Joan, I wish you a wonderful vacation, a relaxing time and fun with loved ones. When you come back, all relaxed and not burdened immediately with work, would you please check our (now) upcoming discussion of Angle of Repose ? Added enticement : there IS a love story <g> ! Maryal, thank you very much for the link to the ink provider.

How about this train of thought :

MA is not a religious book but has religious feelings. It would be plausible, for example, to make Mr. Shimerda into the Fisher King of the Waste Land, Jim into the Questing Knight of the Grail, and the Cuzak home into the place of redemption.

I happen to think that all of this is far-fetched. I defer to Joan and Maryal.

About Joan's questions for "Archbishop" -- there are Native Americans in the story and there are tales but oral storytelling is not the structure. Instead the landscape is a major character and the lead character is the Archbishop. This book is a much more traditional novel than MA. I live in New Mexico, the setting for "Archbishop", and WC gives a perfect sense of place with the land forms and colors and architeture.

Back to WC's Jim -- I like Mal's idea of Jim as Peter Pan to Antonia's Wendy. Super! If this were a movie, would Jim have the lead or a bit part? Neither. Jim would be the camera and voiceover, like the unknown newsman in the movie "Citizen Kane". I don't think Jim was ever intended to be anything else than a writer/observer.

It's hard to say goodbye, the end, to this discussion (although I know I wouldn't have the stamina for longer disc.) Thanks to Maryal and Joan for their fine leadership. To fellow participants, thanks for your insight and for making this such an enjoyable visit. Traude, I have a copy of "Angle of Repose" but now I need to read it!

Marvelle