The Collected Works of Willa Cather E-Book

Willa Cather

• Herausgeber: PergamonMedia
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Highlights of World Literature
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 3448

Beschreibung

This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works - the Œuvre - of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook - 3790 pages easy-to-read and easy-to-navigate: • My Antonia • O Pioneers! • The Song of the Lark • One of Ours • My Ántonia • A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • The Troll Garden, and Selected Stories • Alexander's Bridge • Youth and the Bright Medusa • Peter On the Divide • Eric Hermannson’s Soul • The Sentimentality of William Tavener • The Namesake • The Enchanted Bluff • The Joy of Nelly Deane • The Bohemian Girl • Consequences • The Bookkeeper’s Wife • Ardessa • Her Boss • Part II: Reviews and Essays • • William Dean Howells • Edgar Allan Poe • • • Harold Frederic • Kate Chopin • • Frank Norris • When I Knew • On the Art of Fiction • On the Divide • Eric Hermannson's Soul • The Enchanted Bluff • The Bohemian Girl • • THE TROLL GARDEN • Flavia and Her Artists • The Sculptor's Funeral • "A Death in the Desert" • The Garden Lodge • The Marriage of Phaedra • A Wagner Matinee • Paul's Case etc.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

MY ANTONIA

INTRODUCTION

BOOK I. The Shimerdas

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

BOOK II. The Hired Girls

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

BOOK III. Lena Lingard

I

II

III

IV

BOOK IV. The Pioneer Woman's Story

I

II

III

IV

BOOK V. Cuzak's Boys

I

II

III

O PIONEERS!

by Willa Cather

PART I. The Wild Land

I

II

III

IV

V

PART II. Neighboring Fields

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

PART III. Winter Memories

I

II

PART IV. The White Mulberry Tree

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

PART V. Alexandra

I

II

III

A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays

CONTENTS

Part I Stories

PeterToC

On the DivideToC

Eric Hermannson’s SoulToC

I.

II.

III.

The Sentimentality of William TavenerToC

The NamesakeToC

The Enchanted BluffToC

The Joy of Nelly Deane

The Bohemian GirlToC

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

ConsequencesToC

The Bookkeeper’s WifeToC

ArdessaToC

Her BossToC

I

II

III

IV

Part II Reviews and Essays

Mark TwainToC

William Dean HowellsToC

Edgar Allan PoeToC

Walt WhitmanToC

Henry JamesToC

Harold FredericToC

Kate ChopinToC

Stephen CraneToC

Frank NorrisToC

An Heir Apparent.

When I Knew Stephen CraneToC

On the Art of FictionToC

One of Ours

Book One: On Lovely Creek

I.

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

IX

Book Two: Enid

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

Book Three; Sunrise on the Prairie

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XII

XIII

Book Four: The Voyage of the Anchises

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

Book Five: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On"

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

SONG OF THE LARK

By Willa Cather

(1915 edition)

PART I. FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

PART II. THE SONG OF THE LARK

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

PART III. STUPID FACES

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

PART IV. THE ANCIENT PEOPLE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

PART V. DR. ARCHIE'S VENTURE

I

II

III

IV

V

PART VI. KRONBORG

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

EPILOGUE

ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE

And THE BARREL ORGAN by Alfred Noyes

ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE by Willa Cather

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

EPILOGUE

THE TROLL GARDEN AND SELECTED STORIES

Contents

SELECTED STORIES

On the Divide

Eric Hermannson's Soul

The Enchanted Bluff

The Bohemian Girl

THE TROLL GARDEN

Flavia and Her Artists

The Sculptor's Funeral

"A Death in the Desert"

The Garden Lodge

The Marriage of Phaedra

A Wagner Matinee

Paul's Case

A Study in Temperament

YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA

WILLA CATHER

CONTENTS

COMING, APHRODITE!

THE DIAMOND MINE

A GOLD SLIPPER

SCANDAL

PAUL'S CASE

A WAGNER MATINÉE

THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL

"A DEATH IN THE DESERT"

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

The Diamond Mine

I

II

III

IV

 

 

 

MY ANTONIA

By Willa Cather

TO CARRIE AND IRENE MINER  In memory of affections old and true Optima dies... prima fugit VIRGIL

INTRODUCTION

LAST summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling companion James Quayle Burden—Jim Burden, as we still call him in the West. He and I are old friends—we grew up together in the same Nebraska town—and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one's childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.

Although Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and are old friends, I do not see much of him there. He is legal counsel for one of the great Western railways, and is sometimes away from his New York office for weeks together. That is one reason why we do not often meet. Another is that I do not like his wife.

When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his way in New York, his career was suddenly advanced by a brilliant marriage. Genevieve Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man. Her marriage with young Burden was the subject of sharp comment at the time. It was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney, and that she married this unknown man from the West out of bravado. She was a restless, headstrong girl, even then, who liked to astonish her friends. Later, when I knew her, she was always doing something unexpected. She gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters, produced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater, was arrested for picketing during a garment-makers' strike, etc. I am never able to believe that she has much feeling for the causes to which she lends her name and her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic, executive, but to me she seems unimpressionable and temperamentally incapable of enthusiasm. Her husband's quiet tastes irritate her, I think, and she finds it worth while to play the patroness to a group of young poets and painters of advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has her own fortune and lives her own life. For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden.

As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe enough to chill his naturally romantic and ardent disposition. This disposition, though it often made him seem very funny when he was a boy, has been one of the strongest elements in his success. He loves with a personal passion the great country through which his railway runs and branches. His faith in it and his knowledge of it have played an important part in its development. He is always able to raise capital for new enterprises in Wyoming or Montana, and has helped young men out there to do remarkable things in mines and timber and oil. If a young man with an idea can once get Jim Burden's attention, can manage to accompany him when he goes off into the wilds hunting for lost parks or exploring new canyons, then the money which means action is usually forthcoming. Jim is still able to lose himself in those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now, he meets new people and new enterprises with the impulsiveness by which his boyhood friends remember him. He never seems to me to grow older. His fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are those of a young man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as youthful as it is Western and American.

During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had known long ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to call up pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one's brain. I had lost sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her again after long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal to him, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy that friendship. His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.

"I can't see," he said impetuously, "why you have never written anything about Antonia."

I told him I had always felt that other people—he himself, for one knew her much better than I. I was ready, however, to make an agreement with him; I would set down on paper all that I remembered of Antonia if he would do the same. We might, in this way, get a picture of her.

He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him often announces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion took hold of him. "Maybe I will, maybe I will!" he declared. He stared out of the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyes had the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees. "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 little girl who watched her come and go, had not.

Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment one stormy winter afternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his fur overcoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him and tapped it with some pride as he stood warming his hands.

"I finished it last night—the thing about Antonia," he said. "Now, what about yours?"

I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes.

"Notes? I didn't make any." He drank his tea all at once and put down the cup. "I didn't arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what of herself and myself and other people Antonia's name recalls to me. I suppose it hasn't any form. It hasn't any title, either." He went into the next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face of the portfolio the word, "Antonia." He frowned at this a moment, then prefixed another word, making it "My Antonia." That seemed to satisfy him.

"Read it as soon as you can," he said, rising, "but don't let it influence your own story."

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

NOTE: The Bohemian name Antonia is strongly accented on the first syllable, like the English name Anthony, and the 'i' is, of course, given the sound of long 'e'. The name is pronounced An'-ton-ee-ah.

BOOK I. The Shimerdas

I

I FIRST HEARD OF Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the 'hands' on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going West to work for my grandfather. Jake's experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy with each stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offered him: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a 'Life of Jesse James,' which I remember as one of the most satisfactory books I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of a friendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to which we were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for our confidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had been almost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the names of distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttons were engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than an Egyptian obelisk.

Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from 'across the water' whose destination was the same as ours.

'They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is "We go Black Hawk, Nebraska." She's not much older than you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!'

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled down to 'Jesse James.' Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from foreigners.

I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.

I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long while when we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. We stumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were running about with lanterns. I couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; we were surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily after its long run. In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stood huddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. I knew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried a little tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. There was an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stood holding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother's skirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and began to talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it was positively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue.

Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: 'Hello, are you Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'm Otto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain't you scared to come so far west?'