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from Part I - Contexts and critical issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
“Everything in Nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence.”
SantayanaMy interest in the comic Cather began with a question at a plenary session of an international seminar. “Does Willa Cather have any sense of humor at all?” After a long silence, someone gamely replied that she must have, though at the moment he couldn't think of an example. The question remained with me, initially alerting me to the one-liners in Cather's writing and eventually taking me to the most basic questions about her art and its relation to life. Art begins in feeling seeking form, Cather believed, anticipating the philosopher Susanne Langer's argument that feelings arise from premises about life that are so fundamental that they are structural. Does one celebrate the uniqueness of an individual asserting himself, or herself, against the world? If so, tragedy provides the form. Or does one celebrate life's continuities, blurring distinctions between the self and the not-self in order to do so? Such a feeling finds an outlet in comedy.
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