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    My Antonia (Diversion Classics)
    My Antonia (Diversion Classics)
    My Antonia (Diversion Classics)
    Ebook304 pages6 hours

    My Antonia (Diversion Classics)

    By Willa Cather

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Featuring an appendix of discussion questions, the Diversion Classics edition is ideal for use in book groups and classrooms.

    On his journey to Nebraska, Jim, a young orphan, meets a family of Bohemian immigrants, the Shimerdas. The novel traces the friendship between Jim and the Shimerdas' eldest daughter, Antonia, as they grow up, weathering difficult winters and family tragedy. MY ANTONIA is a seminal piece of American literature and a masterpiece of the American West.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiversion Books
    Release dateDec 15, 2015
    ISBN9781682302316
    My Antonia (Diversion Classics)
    Author

    Willa Cather

    Willa Cather (1873-1947) was born in Virginia and raised on the Nebraska prairie. She worked as a newspaper writer, teacher, and managing editor of McClure's magazine. In addition to My Ántonia, her books include O Pioneers! (1913) and The Professor's House. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours.

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    Reviews for My Antonia (Diversion Classics)

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    • 5/5
      Long ago, a grad school writing teacher recommended we read Willa Cather. It's taken me way too long to follow his advice.

      This is an exquisite novel about life on the frontier and the immigrant experience in America. But mainly about love, loss, innocence, the pain of growing up, and "how much people can mean to each other."

      The characters are passionate, beautifully drawn, yet consistently surprising. Cather's technique is indirect, or as she called it "unfurnished." What's left out is often more important than what's stated. The reader is left to interpret the meaning and importance of ambiguous actions and feelings.

      It used to said that the late 19th Century was the Golden Age of the Novel. But I think it was the first two decades of the 20th Century when the form reached its zenith. That's when Joyce, Lawrence, and Conrad were writing books with unprecedented technical brilliance and psychological depth. In her quiet, understated way, Willa Cather was doing the same.
    • 4/5
      My Antonia by Willa Cather was well recommended to me a number of times. The last book of Cather’s Prairie Trilogy, I read the first 2 books in order to make sense of the last. So it’s taken me a number of years to finally read this book about growing up on the farms and in a small Nebraska town during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The writing is simple and beautiful. the author’s love of the wide open spaces people by hardy Europeans shines in her every word. She has a wonderful ability to tell the stories of her characters in a comical yet compassionate way. We are in for more enjoyable adventures once Jim and his grandparents left the farm and moved to the city of Black Hawk. We quickly pass through his education and learn third hand what becomes of Antonia and others. It winds up rather quickly with a bit of sentimentality.
    • 5/5
      Wow. My first Willa Cather and I can't believe It's taken me so long. This was astonishing. Beautifully written with every open sky and blade of wind-blown grass innocently transcribed. The story feels familiar as Jim Burden is a prototypical Nick Carraway, condemned to observe, unable to effect change. I'm not the first to make the comparison and it appears that Fitzgerald judged his own work to be an inferior homage in some ways. Antonia is a tragic heroine, overflowing with life. are we supposed to be disappointed in her lack of success relative to Lena and Tiny, or, as I did, are we supposed to feel thrilled that she is married to a man who loves her and with whom she is bringing up 10 fabulous children? It doesn't matter much, I guess, but I am as captivated by Antonia as Jim.

      I look forward to reading more of Ms Cather.
    • 5/5
      It is a daunting task to find anything fresh to say about a book that is justifiably regarded as a classic, so I will keep this one fairly short. Willa Cather moved with her family from New England to rural Nebraska as a child, at a time when new farmland there was still being pioneered, so this tale of the state's development and specifically the experiences of the first generation immigrant farming families from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia that settled it, is inevitably coloured by her own experiences. She distances herself cleverly by making her narrator Jim Burden a man of her own age who for quite a large part of the book retains some distance from its heroine Ántonia, but who was also her childhood friend and neighbour.The story is beautifully paced and contains nothing superfluous. Cather's Nebraska is vividly realised and her attitudes to her characters and particularly those who fall foul of conventional moral judgments seem very modern for a book first published in 1918. For the most part she avoids sentimentality too, except perhaps a little in the final chapter, which seems forgiveable. It was also interesting to read a story that is so positive about immigration at a time when there is so much paranoia about it in popular political culture.
    • 4/5
      I managed to get through high school without reading Willa Cather. Someone recommended My Ántonia when I was looking for undramatic material suitable for reading before bedtime, and onto the wish list it went.Undramatic is an interesting label to apply to this book, which witnesses a suicide, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, several amputations and a murder-suicide. The tone is what makes the story drowsy and golden-hued — romantic doesn't even begin to cover it. It was indeed pleasant to read before falling asleep.This novel is a good counterpoint to House of Mirth because the two novels have some shared structure — you can sense Ántonia's "downfall" approaching her as soon as she moves to town, and the narrator is occasionally exasperatingly useless (both of which remind me of House of Mirth). Cather doesn't write straight-up tragedies, however — her characters have a remarkable amount of self-determination. What could have been a fatal flaw (e.g. Lena's warmheartedness to married men) becomes a colorful personality detail. I love that the entire farming community gossips about Ole Benson following Lena around and years later Lena casually dismisses their gossip with a description of her generosity of spirit ('There was never any harm in Ole,' she said once. 'People needn't have troubled themselves. He just liked to come over and sit on the draw-side and forget about his bad luck.' [p. 226]).
    • 4/5
      Classic about Nebraska in the 1800s.
    • 5/5
      "As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."


      This book is about the pioneer experience in Nebraska, particularly that of Eastern European immigrants, and is also the coming of age story of Jim Burden (narrator), and Ántonia. While the book is told from Jim's point of view, I felt more connected to Ántonia. Jim and Ántonia are friends from the moment they meet, and as the seasons and the landscape of Nebraska prairie change, so do Jim and Ántonia. They eventually take very different paths, but their friendship remains. Jim is a romantic, and very nostalgic about the past. Ántonia is the symbol of the past for him. I was wrapped up in his feelings of nostalgia, and longing for the past. As I was reading, I felt them too. I particularly loved his descriptions of the Nebraska prairie. 


      CAWPILE Rating:

      C- 9

      A- 10

      W- 10

      P- 6

      I- 9

      L- 10

      E- 10

      Avg= 9.1= ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

      #backtotheclassics (Classic from the Americas- includes the Caribbean)
      #mmdchallenge (a book published before you were born)
    • 4/5
      Reached back for a classic i had never read. A beautifully written book, with powerful descriptions of places, people and memories. An old-fashioned good read!
    • 5/5
      (This was read as part of my 2011 reading project, 100 Years, 100 Books, which commemorated RPL's 100th anniversary.)

      My friend Paula, a Nebraska native, has been after me to read this book for years and now I understand. I’d been spending nearly all of my reading time with early 20th century mysteries and, quite frankly, they’d become tedious. After forcing myself through The Red House by A.A. Milne, I really felt like I needed a change of pace. I had downloaded a whole bunch of free books to my Kindle for this reading project, and My Antonia just happened to be at the top of the list, so I casually opened it one night a week ago to see what it was all about.

      I found a beautiful, heartbreaking, luminous story that captivated me from the first page. Cather tells the story of Antonia Shimerda, a headstrong, handsome Bohemian girl whose family is transplanted to Black Hawk, Nebraska in the 19th century. Antonia’s story is told through the eyes of Jim Burden, an orphan who also arrives to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk on the same train as Antonia and her family. The two become fast friends whose lives twine around each other over the course of a lifetime.

      The interesting thing about this story that is so different from what I’ve been reading is that there really isn’t a storyline. This is a memoir, a re-telling of a bucolic if hard childhood on the prairie, coming of age in a small mid-western town, and adulthood not yet devoid of childhood innocence and affection between lifelong friends.

      I was reminded of two stories as I read this one – Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and the 2010 Newbery winner Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. The sod houses of Wilder’s early books are here, as is the red prairie grass, snakes, farms, and family devotion. The similarity to Manifest, Kansas is more in the characters drawn by Cather and Vanderpool than in the story. However, all three books share the same comforting, lovely tributes to the importance of family and friends.

      Cather’s characters, from Antonia and her regal but defeated father, to the foreign farm girls who go to town as “hired girls,” to Antonia’s husband and colorful tribe of children, to the narrator – Jim Burden himself – are finely drawn and developed with care and compassion. She captures the tender friendship between Antonia and Jim, which becomes the thread that twines through the entire story and ultimately makes it successful.

      A beautiful book that will stay with me for a long, long time.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful story. Beatifully written.
    • 4/5
      Supposedly a portrait of the Bohemian immigrant woman, Antonia, the story is told from the perspective of Jim Burden, who moves west to Nebraska on the same day and becomes her friend. This makes the story a little odd because the reader only gets glimpses of Antonia's life on the prairie while also following Jim's life.
    • 5/5
      This was simply a beautiful book to read. Willa Cather's tale of a young daughter of Bohemian immigrants on the Nebraska frontier is a delight from beginning to end. Antonia Shimerda's life is narrated by her friend Jim Burden. The story of her growth, travails and eventual success in becoming one with the land is one of the great frontier stories of America. Willa Cather captures the spirit of the land with wonderful descriptions of the landscape and life on the frontier; and its people by capturing of the emotions of the characters. It is similar in this aspect to Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth which I first read about the same time. Cather traversed this county in several of her books including this novel which is her masterpiece.
    • 4/5
      This novel reads like Laura Ingalls Wilder for grown-ups, mixing childhood nostalgia with scratching up a living in the early prairie years. It was all work at the time, but it came with its own rewards and encouraged friendliness among neighbours who needed to look out for one another when lacking most social services. It's also a good view into the immigrant experience, reminding all of us with European stock that we originally came from somewhere else and it's only a question of how far back. The novel is semi-autobiographical, featuring descriptions of the land filled with grace and style and drawn from Willa Cather's childhood memories. It was clearly a place she loved. It's a quiet novel plot-wise, but it goes a long way to extolling the virtues of unglamorous everyday lives. I've more than one LT member to thank for bringing this book to my attention. Filed among the comfort reads.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful!
    • 5/5
      What a gorgeous evocation of a very particular time and place. I am pretty disappointed in myself that I have never read Willa Cather, and I will be reading more.
    • 4/5
      My Antonia, Willa Cather, Reading a classic is a more civil, more genteel experience. Gone is the fear that on any page there will be unnecessary violent bloodshed, objectionable language, distasteful sexual innuendos, repulsive descriptions and convoluted plots, to name just a few. Also gone is the unexpected startling conclusion. Events progress in a very orderly fashion and while we might not anticipate the ending, we don’t expect astonishing finales. The story is told beautifully, in a direct manner, without the use of extraneous devices or artifice to inspire the reader, instead the emphasis is on the beauty and expression of the language used. Short by today’s standards, this book is less than 300 pages. It is written for a wide age range and is often a book assigned in school for those even as young as fifth or sixth grade. Because it is not written in the often hedonistic style of many of today’s novels, it is appropriate for young and old. The one drawback of the novel for me was that it seemed almost too simplistic, too passé, perhaps not interesting enough for today’s adult reader and might be more appropriate for younger readers, who are still a little naïve, so they can learn about and understand the evolution of our country and its people. Although the story being told is realistic, the reality today is so much more complicated, that the book may seem a bit out of touch without the benefit of analysis and discussion. In some ways we have indeed moved on, but overall, we sometimes seem to be standing in the same place, perhaps a little more sophisticated but by no means, less imperfect. At the tender age of 10, Jim Burden is orphaned and sent from his home in Virginia, to Nebraska, to live with his grandparents. There he meets Antonia, from Bohemia. Although she speaks no English and is four years his elder, a deep abiding friendship soon develops between them. The story is told by Jim Burdon, in the form of his memoir, but it basically is the story of Antonia through his eyes.Antonia is the embodiment of the strong, capable member of the pioneer family. The love of the land and its conquest motivates them. Although their lives are hard, they embrace it, bearing children, suffering hardships of climate, mortgages, ruined crops and failure and even, unfaithful spouses. Cather gives most of her immigrant female characters independent personalities at a time when the difference in class and station was highly evident and emphasized. The upper class women sat at home, perhaps doing their needlepoint. Exertion was considered unseemly. Yet, the farm girls worked the land or worked for families in town doing chores and performing menial labor. In reality they had more freedom of expression and freedom of choice to find their futures. For the sophisticated, refined woman, life consisted mainly of the hearth and home and proper decorum.The novel is easy to read. There are no extra words or confusing extraneous tangents. The reader will find the rather uncomplicated characters endearing with their homespun, earthy, personalities coupled with the real and touching experiences they endure at the turn of the 20th century. Although life was simpler than, immigrants and early pioneers suffered from the most of the same problems society faces today. The relationship of married partners, family members and friends is explored. Loyalty, ambition and greed, class distinction and prejudice, inequality for women, and even enduring hope and fulfillment of one’s dreams, are themes which are also visited in this book. This is a story of life, of survival, of accommodation to hardship. It is not exciting like the modern books of today, but it is beautiful literature about real people and their choices, how they lived and how they died, what they held important and what they held dear.
    • 5/5
      The narrator is Jim Burden - a prairie boy who moves to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He is telling the story of himself and his friendship with Antonia, an immigrant girl from Bohemia which stretches three decades although most of it takes place in childhood. The recollection involves several settler-families on the prairie and later on in the town of Lincoln. Nothing more needs to be told about this story. It's just marvelous, entertaining and exciting. Based on Cathers own experiences moving to Nebraska as a child. It is very realistic, one doesn't want to depart with these characters - Antonia is a fascinating character torn between her new hard life in Nebraska and her old home in Bohemia. A hot-tempered girl, a survivor, resourcefull and hard-working. But personally I bonded more with the narrator himself. Admired him in his many decisions and thoughts. There's so much truth in this story, so many real human emotions and experiences told with nuance and depth. Just read it. Or better: Listen to the wonderful audiobook read by Jeff Cummings. We reached the edge of the field, where our ways parted. I took her hands and held them against my breast, feeling once more how strong and warm and good they were, those brown hands, and remembering how many kind things they had done for me. I held them now a long while, over my heart. About us it was growing darker and darker, and I had to look hard to see her face, which I meant always to carry with me; the closest, realest face, under all the shadows of women’s faces, at the very bottom of my memory.
    • 4/5
      Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a classic, one of the “prairie tales” for which Cather is most famous. The 1918 novel relies heavily on the author’s personal recollection of migrating to a remote section of Nebraska farmland as a small child to tell the story of Jim Burden, a little boy who made that very trek. I decided to reread this one when I was offered a copy of Barbara Bedell’s new “eNotated” version by its publisher, Classics Unbound.What makes this edition of My Antonia different from the usual run of the mill e-book versions already out there, are the dozens of links built into the text that define obscure words and references, many of which were probably more meaningful and familiar to Cather’s readers when her books were originally published than they are today. There are also links to a bibliography, illustrations, photos, an author timeline, a brief history of Nebraska, and several theme explanations. Much of this is meaningful and easy to digest (especially the definitions) within the context of the story, and I found some of the pictures included in the Nebraska history to be particularly fascinating. Most of the material, however, is best explored after completing the novel if one is to feel the emotional impact of My Antonia. Ten-year-old Jim Burden arrives at the remote farm of his grandparents not at all prepared for the isolation in which he will spend the formative years of his life. Although he does not know it, a little girl, Antonia Shimerda, and her family share the last leg of the train ride with Jim and the young man accompanying him to Nebraska. The Shimerdas and the Burdens will come to know each well as Antonia becomes a key figure in Jim’s life, always there but, somehow, still always out of his reach.Just as surprising to me as the first time I read My Antonia, this is really Jim Burden’s story, not Antonia’s. Antonia may be the title character but she disappears for much of the time, and the book is really more about how she impacts Jim’s coming-of-age experience than it is about what happens to her during her own rather harsh life. Cather excels in making her reader feel the isolation and danger faced by those who had the courage to brave an environment like the one in the Nebraska of the second half of the nineteenth century. Those early settlers were lucky to survive, much less to thrive and improve their lot from season to season. But they had the spirit and desire necessary to create a better life for themselves and their children. Life on the Nebraska prairie was definitely hard, but it rewarded the hearty souls willing to test themselves there – if they managed to survive. Bottom line: My Antonia deserves its classic status, and it is as inspiring a piece of fiction today as when it was first published. The eNotated edition is a worthy one that will be particularly helpful to students but interesting to more casual readers, as well. I like the concept and look forward to other volumes from this publisher.Rated at: 4.0
    • 4/5
      "I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."
    • 3/5
      Very descriptive novel about life in Nebraska for an immigrant family. Mostly takes place on the farm. A look into two people's lives, together and apart.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful description of farm life in the Midwest and relationships forged during shared hardships. I especially enjoyed the passage where the narrator and Antonia remembered her father later on in the book- very beautiful!
    • 4/5
      It took me too many years to finally read this book. I had a different story in mind. This was wonderful. Strong women.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed My Antonia. I chose to read it because I purchased Read This!: Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores by Hans Weyandt and Ann Patchett and I'm using that book as guide toward things to read on my kindle. Currently reading the second book I chose using Read This!, On Canaan's Side by Sebastian Barry. Very entertaining.
    • 4/5
      Aside from hearing the title and the author's name I knew nothing of this book prior to picking it up the other day. I did so because a number of friends were reading the book together and knew I should get in on the action. I am glad I did.

      This was a wonderfully straightforward tale rendered beautifully by simple yet powerful language. It was the type of book that evoked sentimentality from me. For what though, I'm not really sure. As another reviewer (Mo) says, "i like the sense of nostalgia that permeates the book." Here is an example of that nostalgia that really struck me:

      As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass.

      A special thanks to all the FFs who's reading it right now. I'm glad I picked this one up.
    • 4/5
      This was a bit of a cheat because I already read this book. However, it was when I was 10. I figured I missed all of the subtle complexities of My Antonia but I didn't. I still feel the same way that I felt before.

      The narrator is a lawyer named Jim Burden who decides to write a book about his old friend Antonia Shimerda, who is originally from Bohemia, and his life in Nebraska. There are bumps in their friendship as their lives take very different paths.

      Jim is unlike all of the children his age and of his time. He is very thoughtful, reflective, and smart. He continues with his academics by going to college and establishing himself in New York City. Antonia, though very smart, gets swindled by man who promises to marry her but then deserts her and leaves her pregnant.

      Antonia, after moving to Oregon, moves back to Nebraska. A couple of years later, she meets Cuzak, another implant from Bohemia. They later married and have a whole bunch of children. Jim and Antonia meet about 20 years later. The friendship is still just as strong.

      I never believed Antonia made such an impact that she warrant a book written about her. She is a strong enough character. She never gave up even after her father's suicide or after being deserted. Antonia has a certain amount of endurance that was needed to survive those times or to survive life. However, I like the accuracy of the pioneer life and immigrants making their way in a new world. As an end note, I would never like Mrs. Shimerda.
    • 3/5
      She makes the Midwest seem exotic!
    • 4/5
      Bittersweet.

      Antonia is a bit reckless and completely likable. Her family is from Bohemia (I confess that I had to look up what region this is/was) and settles in a new country with few possessions but a strong work ethic. Every member of her family is strong and opinionated. Her mother is outspoken, bold and really rather funny.

      Cather focuses on the settlement of the Midwest and picks a strong set of characters to follow. The story is told from Jim's viewpoint and is based on his memories. There is a nice mixture of personalities and back stories to follow. Jim is a young boy when he first meets Antonia and her family, and despite the language barrier, he is immediately drawn in and they spend many of their days together. I loved this part of the book and enjoyed watching Antonia learn about the culture and language of her new home. She is innocent, lovely and a hard worker. It reminded me of those times in life that are so wonderful but go by really fast.

      Jim and Antonia over the years take very different paths which always seem to intersect. Ultimately I wanted to see them married and living happily ever after. They share memories and a very innocent time in their lives. I wanted to know them and be there too!

      I listened to the audiobook version by Patrick Lawlor which was very well done. This was my first Cather novel and I enjoyed it very much. My only criticism is that although it was written in a completely different era, some of the racist attitudes were a bit much.
    • 3/5
      This is the first book that I've read by Willa Cather and to be honest I was expecting an awful lot more. I really can't see why this book has attained its classic status: clearly a lot of people love it but I struggled to see the attraction and might not even have finished it (unusual for me) if it hadn't been so short. The description of the landscapes of the Nebraskan prairie in the first part of the novel was the only area where the book lived up to expectations, but this was completely overshadowed by the weak  characterisation and absence of any plot. The story revolves around a young orphan Jim Berden who, on his parents' death, is sent to live on his grandparents' farm in rural Nebraska. On the same train that brings Jim to Nebraska are also some Bohemian immigrants, the Shimedas, who have purchased the neighbouring farm. As the Shimedas struggle through their first winter, Jim develops a friendship with their daughter Antonia, only a couple of years older than him. Despite the title of [My Antonia] the book follows rather the course of Jim's life: but as he moves with his grandparents into the town of Black Rock and later into the city to pursue a college career, his interest in Antonia continues. Antonia is clearly meant to represent an archetypal pioneer woman struggling with hardship and yet holding her family together through thick and thin. Perhaps this was the problem for me: it is much more difficult to care about an archetype than a living and breathing human being and so I didn't feel at all bound up in the fate of Antonia, or in that of any of the other characters of the book for that matter. There is far too much telling rather than showing, with the reader routinely being brought up to date with each character's history in a few paragraphs, which increases the effect of everyone seeming rather distant and unreal. And there isn't much plot, just a young man's fairly uneventful journey into adulthood: I can cope without plot if the rest of the book makes up for it, but here it did not.I feel rather guilty giving such a low rating to such a highly regarded book, but in all honestly from a personal perspective I can't give it any more. So two and a half stars only.
    • 4/5
      This is a classical story that tells of an immigrant family of farmers who migrate to Nebraska to start a new life. On the train with the family is young Jim Burden who is going to Nebraska to live with his grandparents after his parents's death.Jim narrates the story and the family, the Shimerda's have extra difficulty because no one speaks their language. The only person who speaks in a similar language, takes advantage of them.Antonia is their teenage daughter and has the street sense to help the family in many situations. She and Jim form a relationship that lasts throughout the novel.The elements that help classify this as a classic include the descriptions of life in rural Nebraska, the difficulty of immigrants in a new land, the relationships with the neighbors and the farming community and family relationships. We also see the two teenagers, Jim and Antonia, and how Antonia overcomes various obstacles.This was my second reading of the story. The first when I was a teenager and reading it again as an adult brought a new light to the novel and added entertainment.
    • 5/5
      In his middle age, a man recalls his Nebraska childhood and youth and the friend who left her imprint on his life even after decades of separation. Orphaned Jim Burden, moving from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents, arrives in Nebraska on the same train as a Bohemian immigrant family. The oldest girl in the family, Ántonia, becomes Jim's closest companion as together they explore the vast prairies, so beautiful in summer and so inhospitable in winter. After several years, Jim's family moves to town, where throughout his teenage years Jim is drawn to the daughters of immigrant farmers who become live-in servants for the town families. Jim recognizes that the early hardships they've weathered and their hard work laid a foundation for their future prosperity.Set anywhere other than the Nebraska prairies, My Ántonia would have been a different book. With Midwestern roots on both sides of my family, I'm drawn to Cather's descriptions of the land. Jim tells us that he loved Ántonia, but what I sense most from his recollections is a kind of wistful envy. Jim had become what most would consider a very successful person – a wealthy East Coast lawyer – yet he seemed discontented with his life. Ántonia lived a much more circumscribed life, yet she had a zest for life that Jim lacked. Both literally and symbolically, I think Ántonia's life was more fruitful than Jim's, and I think her story is a fitting conclusion to Cather's Prairie trilogy.

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    My Antonia (Diversion Classics) - Willa Cather

    Copyright

    Diversion Books

    A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

    443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

    New York, NY 10016

    www.DiversionBooks.com

    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

    For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

    First Diversion Books edition December 2015

    ISBN: 978-1-68230-231-6

    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?’

    I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern-light. He might have stepped out of the pages of ‘Jesse James.’ He wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of his moustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked lively and ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ran across one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian’s. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platform in his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was a rather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us we had a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. He led us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were tied, and I saw the foreign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake got on the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottom of the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbled off into the empty darkness, and we followed them.

    I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and I soon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hard bed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land—slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.

    II

    I do not remember our arrival at my grandfather’s farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.

    ‘Had a good sleep, Jimmy?’ she asked briskly. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, ‘My, how you do look like your father!’ I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often have come to wake him like this when he overslept. ‘Here are your clean clothes,’ she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she talked. ‘But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there’s nobody about.’

    ‘Down to the kitchen’ struck me as curious; it was always ‘out in the kitchen’ at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help. ‘Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.’

    It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, ‘Grandmother, I’m afraid the cakes are burning!’ Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.

    She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.

    After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from work.

    While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat—he caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours. We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbours there.

    My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

    Grandfather’s eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and regular—so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

    As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.

    The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a ‘perfect gentleman,’ and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his ‘chaps’ and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design—roses, and true-lover’s knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels.

    Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word ‘Selah.’ ‘He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.’ I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.

    Early the next morning I ran out-of-doors to look about me. I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk—until you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbours lived in sod houses and dugouts—comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the western sky-line it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most

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