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SOUTHWEST INDIAN ART IN WILLA CATHER'S FICTION
Abstract
While writing extensively about classical and European visual sources for Willa Cather's writing, critics generally have overlooked the importance of Indian art. Indian art and architecture became catalysts for change in each of Cather's Southwest novels: The Song of the Lark (1915), The Professor's House (1927), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Over time Cather's artistry approached Indian ideals as she increasingly synthesized and integrated Indian art into her fiction and emphasized art as human expression. In The Song of the Lark, Thea Kronborg discovers her artistic heritage among the potsherds and cliff-dwellings at Panther Canyon. Her awakening to art parallels the evolution of Indian art and echoes Indian myths and ceremonies. The silver and turquoise bracelet in the epigraph of The Professor's House becomes a metaphor for the Professor's life and the structure of the novel. The treasures of the Blue Mesa bring Outland and St. Peter to Indian values which transcend the temporal and material values of western culture. Each of Latour's encounters with Indian art in Death Comes for the Archbishop moves him closer to Indian life and consciousness. Indian art provides Latour with models for the survival of traditions. His Cathedral becomes his artistic and spiritual legacy for blending the Old World and the New. Cather's penchant for Indian art is similar to that of early twentieth-century visual artists' turn to primitive art. Like the avant-garde Cather found an expression of her romanticism and a model for her desire to experiment with form in primitive art. As Cather spent time in the Southwest and learned more about its culture, she changed her point of view about Indian art and her symbolic use of it. She came to stress the creativity of the artist and art as a symbol of life. Ultimately, Indian art provided Cather with a key to understanding the past and to preserving traditions for the future.
Subject Area
American literature
Recommended Citation
MIERENDORF, CONSTANCE C, "SOUTHWEST INDIAN ART IN WILLA CATHER'S FICTION" (1985). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8606967.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8606967