Willa Cather: Youth and the Bright Medusa, Pt. 3

Willa Cather
Youth and the Bright Medusa

These are the last two stories in the collection.



"The Sculptor's Funeral"

Prophets are not honored in their home towns and, so it seems, it is also true about sculptors.  Harvey Merrick, a highly respected award-winning sculptor, has died.  His body is  brought back from the East to the small town in Kansas where he was born and raised.  His coffin is accompanied by Steavens, one of  Merrick's students.  They are met at the station by a group of townspeople who take the coffin to the Merrick home.

Steavens is  shocked by Merrick's family, especially the mother.  However, the father utters what must be the understatement of the century:  "He was a good boy, Jim; always a good boy.  He was ez gentle ez a child, and the kindest of 'em all--only we didn't none of us ever understand him."

Later, Steavens joins the townspeople and is dismayed by the way they talk about Merrick.  He was a failure, a disappointment to them all, as they jokingly and gleefully and maliciously  recounted his life there as a child. He never paid attention to where he was, always daydreaming, he wasted his father's money on  book learning,  he drank too much,   One "mourner" commented, "'Where the old man made his mistake was in sending that boy East to school,' said Phelps, stroking his goatee and speaking in a deliberate, judicial tone.  'There was when he got his head full of nonsense.  What Harve needed, of all people, was a course in some first-class Kansas City  business college.'"

Yet, there is one there who speaks up for Merrick and utters his own critique of the town and its inhabitants.

"It's not for me to say why, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, a genius should ever have been called from this place of hatred and bitter waters; but I want this Boston man to know that the drivel he's been hearing here tonight is the only tribute any truly great man could have from such a lot of sick, side-tracked, burnt-dog, land-poor sharks as the here-present financiers of Sand City--upon which town may God have mercy!"


I think Marshall McKann, who appeared in Cather's "The Gold Slipper" would feel comfortable with these people.

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"A Death in the Desert"

I found this story, the last in the collection, to be the most complex tale, even though it is far from being the longest.  In Cather's "The Diamond Mine," the theme is the exploitation of the successful performer or artist by family, friends, and various parasites, as they selfishly use the performer to gain their own goals, be it psychological, emotional, or financial.  This story, "A Death in the Desert," tells the other side of the story, the way that some performers use, abuse, and finally abandon those who aid them as they strove to achieve their goals, be it for the art itself, fame, or financial rewards..  


Adriance  Hilgarde is a well-known composer and concert performer.  Everett is his younger brother who is cursed/blessed by his appearance: he resembles Adriance so closely that he can't go anywhere without being mistaken for him.

While stopping in Cheyenne, Wyoming on a business trip, Everette is mistaken for Adriance by Katharine, who becomes quite upset.   The next morning her brother comes to apologize, and it is at this point that Everette recognizes Katharine whom he hasn't seen in many years.  He had fallen in love with her when she was Adriance's student.  Adriance considered her to be the most talented of his pupils, and shortly afterwards, they left for a concert tour which eventually took them to Europe, and that was the last time he saw her.  Now, she was back, suffering from an incurable case of  consumption (TB).

Although he has finished the business that brought him to Wyoming, he stays because "No matter what his mission, east or west, by land or sea, he was sure to find himself employed in his brother's business, one of the tributary lives which helped to swell the shining current of Adriance Hilgarde's.  It was not the first time that his duty had been to comfort, as best he could, one of the broken things his brother's imperious speed had cast aside and forgotten.  He made no attempt to analyse the situation or to state it in exact terms; but he accepted it as a commission from his brother to help this woman to die. "

It isn't that Adriance is an evil or malicious person:  he is just so absorbed in himself that he never notices the way he uses those around him.  When Everett writes him about Katharine,  Adriance writes her a letter "full of confidences about his work, and delicate allusions to their old happy days of study and comradeship"  Everett thought that the "letter was consistently egotistical, and seemed to him even a trifle patronizing, yet it was just what she had wanted." 


 I wasn't sure until the very end as to who the protagonist was:  there are three for which some argument could be made.  The first, Everett Hilgarde,  is the point-of-view (POV) character, and, most often, the POV is the main character.  The second is Katharine Gaylord, and the title refers to her.  The third, Adriance Hilgarde, is the link that brings Everett and Katharine together, once in the past and now once again.  I would have to go with Adriance, even though he never appears, except through the memory of Everett and Katharine and that one letter. 

  In one sense, this is a variation of the popular plot referred to frequently as the eternal triangle (aka infernal triangle) in which A loves B, B loves C, and C loves A; only in this situation A loves B, B loves C, and C apparently loves C..

The story leaves some questions open:  what does Everett think about his role, going about comforting those injured by his brother?  What does he get out of it?  Why are people so willing to be used by Adriance, even though they get nothing out of it?  Or, do they?

It's a story to come back to again, perhaps after percolating deep down under for a year or so. 

Willa Cather: YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA, Pt. 2

Willa Cather
Youth and the Bright Medusa


The following are two more stories found in Cather's collection--Youth and the Bright Medusa



"Paul's Case"

The title provides a clue, for this story can be seen as perhaps a medical case or a psychological case or even a criminal case history.  Paul attempts to recreate himself with his lies about his parentage.  Perhaps he is a foundling, abandoned by rich and powerful parents for some reason.  He spends his time trying desperately to prove to all that he is superior to all: to his teachers, to his fellow students, to all about him.  His life is ruled by his desire to live life the way he thinks life should be lived, with every desire met. 

He steals money from his employer one Friday afternoon, knowing that his theft won't be discovered until Monday.  He leaves Pittsburgh for New York where he registers in at an expensive hotel and goes on a shopping spree for clothing.  He returns to the hotel, rests, and then changes into his new clothing.  It is now dinner time.

"When he reached the dining-room he sat down at a table near a window.  The flowers, the white linen, the many-coloured  wine glasses, the gay toilettes of the women, the low popping of corks, the undulating repetitions of the Blue Danube from the orchestra all flooded Paul's dream with bewildering radiance.  When the roseate tinge of his champagne was added--that cold, precious, bubbling stuff that creamed and foamed in his glass--Paul wondered that there were honest men in the world at all.  This was what all the world was fighting for, he reflected: this was what all the struggle was about.   .    .    .    .    .  He had no especial desire to know any of these people; all he demanded was the right to look on and conjecture, to watch the pageant.  The mere stage properties were all he contended for."


I must admit that I don't understand Paul, for it seems that he is satisfied just by being able to exist on the periphery of this bright, glittering world.  He does not appear to want to become an active part of it.  Just being able to sit there with the others seems to be sufficient for him.

This story fits the title for Paul is the youth and his dream is the bright and deadly Medusa.

One can surmise that there will not be a happy ending to this tale.

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"A Wagner Matinee"
 
A sad story wherein a well-meant gesture goes sadly wrong. 

One morning Clark received a letter from Nebraska.  His Aunt Georgiana had received a small inheritance and was coming to Boston for the settling of the estate.  He wondered what she would make of Boston after being gone for thirty years.  She had been a piano teacher when she met Harold Carpenter who wooed her and took her out to a Nebraska farm.  He himself had gone out there some years ago and worked for his uncle, so he knew what life on the Nebraska prairies was like.

Thinking to be kind, he purchased tickets for a matinee performance of the music of Wagner, but he wondered if perhaps he should forget about the concert.  Eventually he dismissed that thought and they went.   But. . .

"The first number was the Tannhauser overture.  When the horns drew out the first strain of the Pilgrim's chorus, Aunt Georgiana clutched [his] coat sleeve.  Then it was [he] first realized that this for her broke a silence of thirty years.  .  . . and [he] saw again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond whee I had learned to swim, its margin pitted with sun-dried cattle tracks; the rain gullied clay banks about the naked house.  .  ."   

And he now remembered that "(f)or thirty years [his] aunt had not been farther than fifty miles from the homestead."

While he lived with them she  taught him "scales  and exercises on the little parlour organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years during which she  had not so much as seen a musical instrument."  Once, when he had spent considerable time trying to learn a favorite piece, she told him  : "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken away from you."


She said little during the concert, but he often could see tears in her eyes.  When the performance was over, the audience filed out and the performers put their instruments away.  She still sat there quietly, unmoving.  Finally he spoke to her, and he realized just what he had done when she "burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly, 'I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!'  [He] understood.  For her, just outside the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs; the tall, unpainted house, with weather-curled boards, naked as a tower; the crook-backed ash seedlings where the dishcloths hung to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door."

John Keats once said:

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."
from  Endymion



But, what happens when that "thing of beauty" is lost or taken away?  What happens to that joy?

Willa Cather: YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA, Pt. 1

Willa Cather
Youth and the Bright Medusa
short stories

The title is a bit deceptive, for it isn't just about youth.  The eight short stories feature artists, or those who are closely connected in some way to artists,  in several of the arts.  The stories begin with those who are just beginning their careers in the arts while subsequent tales are of older artists until the end when the last couple of tales feature death, either of the artist or of someone closely connected to an artist.
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"Coming, Aphrodite!"

The two artists in this tale are Eden Bower and Don Hedger.  They are early in their careers, she a singer and he a painter, and they live on the same floor in an old apartment house.  Nature does as expected when two young and unattached people live next door.  However, all does not go smoothly for they have differing ideas and goals in mind.  As a singer, she courts her audience and, seeks to please them by giving them what they want.  She assumes that Don feels the same way and arranges appointments with a very popular painter and also an art broker who has been very successful in marketing the work of other artists.  His reaction is not what she expected.

 "'I know exactly what it's like,'  he said impatiently. 'A very good department-store conception of a studio.  It's one of the show places.'

'Well, it's gorgeous, and he said I could bring you to see him.  The boys tell me he's awfully kind about giving people a lift, and you might get something out of it.'

Hedger started up and pushed his canvas out of the way.   'What could I possibly get from Burton Ives?  He's almost the worst painter in the world; the stupidest, I mean.'"

Hedger then explains:  "'. . . I work to please nobody but myself.'

'You mean you cold make money and don't'?  That you don't try to get a public?'

'Exactly.  A public only wants what has been done over and over.  I'm painting for painters,--who haven't been born.'"



Two different worlds.  .  .

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"The Diamond Mine"

The diamond mine of the title is not a place, but a person.   The narrator of the tale tells us--

"Only a few days before, when I was lunching with some friends at Sherry's, I had seen Jerome Brown come in with several younger men, looking so pleased and prosperous that I exclaimed upon it.

'His affairs,'  some one explained, 'are looking up.  He's going to marry Cressida Garnet.  Nobody believed it at first, but since she confirms it he's getting all sorts of credit.  That woman's a damned diamond mine.'"


And Jerome Brown is not the only one who sees her that way.  Unfortunately her family agrees: "The truth was that all the Garnets, and particularly her two sisters, were consumed by an habitual, bilious, unenterprising envy of Cressy."

And now after Cressy had struggled for twenty years to achieve her preeminent position among singers ". . . they expected Cressida to make them equal sharers in the finer rewards of her struggle."

And, Cressida hadn't any better luck with her four husbands, either.

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"A Gold Slipper"

"Marshall McKann followed his wife and her friend Mrs. Post down the aisle and up the steps to the stage of the Carnegie Music Hall with an ill-concealed feeling of grievance.  Heaven knew he never went to concerts,  and to be mounted upon the stage in this fashion, as if he were a 'highbrow' from Sewickley, or some unfortunate with a musical wife, was ludicrous.  A man went to concerts when he was courting, while he was a junior partner.  When he became a person of substance he stopped this sort of nonsense."

This "sort of nonsense" happened to be a recital by Kitty Ayrshire.  Since all tickets had been sold, McKann had decided the concert was off and made reservations on the train for New York City.  Unfortunately for him, his wife's friend, a devoted admirer of Kitty Ayrshire, had found some available tickets on stage.   He was trapped, but he would still have time, if there were no encores, to make his train.

As he was so close to her on stage, Kitty Ayrshire noticed he was unhappy and once caught him "yawning  behind his hand."  She soon realized there was little she could do to please him.


As it turned out, there was only one encore because she also had to be in New York that night.   Of course, coincidences do happen in the real world, so it was inevitable that McKann discovered that he had to share a state-room with Kitty Ayrshire.

It was a strangest journey McKann had ever taken, for Kitty Ayrshire had noticed his displeasure during her performance and she wanted to know just what made him unhappy.  The ensuing conversation reveals that the McKanns of the world are insensitive to anything that goes beyond the practical and the profitable.  All the arts, including singing, happen to be just so much nonsense, a waste of time.  Since he has no appreciation for the "fluffy-ruffles people" and what they do, he assumes that those who claim to appreciate the arts, music for example, really know nothing about music and only claim to enjoy it because "it's the proper thing to do."  But, he is a "hard-headed business man" and has no interest in such nonsense.  And he maintained his opinion throughout their conversation.

But, he may not be as hard-headed as he thinks he is.

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"Scandal"

This story and "A Gold Slipper" are a bit unusual, for they both feature Kitty Ayrshire.  The other six have no characters in common.


Kitty has a protege, one whose career she is attempting to promote.   One day he comes to her and says he has a chance to perform at a house party for a rich businessman, but only if she will agree to accompany him. As it is an excellent opportunity to become known among the wealthy in NY, Kitty agrees, even though she normally does not perform at private parties.  When she arrives, she finds that the people treat her very familiarly, as if they are all well acquainted with her, though she knows none of them. As the performance and the evening progress, she begins to feel trapped, and she wonders if she even will be allowed to leave.  Finally, almost panic-stricken, she runs from the house and the strangely-acting company.

It is only some time later, that a friend tells her of a story from several years ago, that supposedly involved the business man and her.
  
This story is more about the way fans or admirers seem to believe they own in some way a performer or a celebrity.  Because of this sense of ownership, they feel they can use a performer or celebrity to enhance their own stature and position among others, even to the extent of stealing their identities.  They have no concern about the effect their behavior will have on their victims.


To be continued .  .  .