Willa Cather on Art
“Style is how you write, and you write well when you are interested. A writer’s own interest in the story is the essential thing. If there is a flash of warmth in him it is repeated in the reader. The emotion is bigger than style.
I don’t think there is anything in ideas. When a young writer tells me he has an idea for a story, he means he has had an emotion that he wants to pass on. An artist has an emotion, and the first thing that he wants to do with it is to find some form to put it in, a design. It reacts on him exactly as food makes a hungry person want to eat. It may tease him for years until he gets the right form from the emotion.”
After reading any of Mrs. Cather’s works, one will find nature in her works. Specifically the humbling landscapes west of the Missouri river, such as the plains of Nebraska, the Mesa Verde in New Mexico or the mountains of Colorado. To find out exactly what Mrs. Cather’s notion of art is, one must examine the events that influenced her as a poet and author.
Willa Cather was greatly influenced by America’s wild natural scenes. In her first 20 years, she grew up near a small city in Nebraska called Red Cloud. This city was surrounded by prairies and stood at the border of America’s wild frontier of the west and the progress and modernization from the east.
One would imagine this frontier town to be unsophisticated and rough, however, this was far from the case. Red Cloud was home not only to many European immigrants who worked the land, but also to many travelers who made their way from the East Coast to the West Coast and vise versa. The immigrants enriched the town a great deal, by bringing with them many forms of Art from Western Eur...
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...er focused on this aspect of the painting, finding the outside to be more interesting than the noble estate or person in the foreground. This is depicted in St. Peter’s office in the third floor of his old house. Amongst all the clutter and confusion, the window provides him and the reader with a glimpse of the lake. Here are two examples of his window paintings:
Mrs. Cather once quoted the elder Dumas, enunciating “To make a drama, a man needed one passion, and four walls.” Her novels embodied this statement throughout her writing career as a poet, author and journalist. Obviously Mrs. Cather had critics of her style, it was difficult for other authors of her time to classify what school of writing she belonged to and She herself stated that she wrote for another age. But as people look back, it seems quite clear she was part of the modernist movement.
Although often inspired by natural landmarks and places, crafted landscapes are separate from the land the pieces attempt to depict (Andrews 1). A piece of artwork is a vessel to judge how an artist or culture saw, felt and depicted nature. As of a result, citizens of similar cultures may depict similar themes in their work in a variety of different styles. Both Barret’s 1785/1819 Untitled (Landscape) and Lacroix’s 1763 A Shipwreck display distinct European attitudes towards nature while attempting to captivate the audience in a similar way.
When discussing the new science of politics laid out in the Federalist papers, it is imperative to understand that proponents of the Constitution had various reasons for writing these papers, not the least of which was convincing critics that a strong central government that would not oppress but actually protect individual freedoms as well as encouraging the state of New York to agree to ratify the Constitution.
As a believing Puritan, Dimmesdale saw himself as “predestined'; for damnation. Hawthorne explained how the poor man “kept silent by the very constitution of [his] nature.'; Dimmesdale wanted to be with Hester, but he was weak. Hawthorne spoke about Dimmesdale’s bloody scourge in his closet, and how he beat himself with it. Hawthorne seemed to suggest that Dimmesdale’s “real existence on [earth] was the anguish of his inmost soul.'; Chillingsworth was a leech of evil, and Dimmesdale was his host. Chillingsworth continuously tried to get a confession from Dimmesdale: “No-not to [you]-an earthly physician.'; Chillingsworth sin was by far the greatest, as Dimmesdale stated: “That old man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of the human heart.'; This being the “unpardonable sin.';
Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in Back Creek Valley , Virginia. She was named Wilella after her aunt on her fathers side of the family (Norris). Later in her life she would have her name changed to Willa. In 1883 at the age of nine Willa Cather traveled by train with her family from Black Creek Virginia to Red Cloud Nebraska. After arriving in Red Cloud the family moved to the country about sixteen miles from town. In the year 1884 one year after moving to Nebraska Cather moved into town to a house on third and cedar Street, which is still standing today. Cather said that she had trouble adjusting to life out on the prairie, but would soon come to adore it (Ahearn).
The Landscape with a Calm(figure B) by Nicolas Poussin from 1650-51 incorporates a realistic appearance through its gentle brushstrokes similar to natures simplicity in the oil on canvas artwork. Poussin’s objective is to depict the relationship of nature and man such as a transcendentalist; who accepts the ideas not as a religious belief but as a way of understanding life relationships.
In review, a collection of 85 articles and essays known as “The Federalist Papers,” which were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to promote, vote, and influence the ramifications of the United States Constitution. These famous articles made their way into different New York newspapers and Independent Journal between October of 1787 and May 1788. During these times, the 85 essays and articles played a significant and vital role with considerable influence in assisting the constitution in becoming law. Today, the Federalist Papers are still utilized as a source of an origin to interpret the United States Constitution.
Kauffmann, Bruce G. “James Madison: Godfather of the Constitution.” Archiving Early America. Web. 15 October 2011.
Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne emphasizes Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s downfall as a character, and what kinds of effects the guilt as a partner in adultery has on him.
One must remember that writing style is not something that just happens, but rather something that is developed. With the help of guides like Elements of Style, or books like Style Toward Clarity and Grace, one can begin to develop one.
...t Letter, Hawthorne contrasts the external effects that committing adultery, and the internal effects it has on Reverend Dimmesdale. Through his use of symbolism, Hawthorne explicates the theme that in order to receive relief and redemption from one’s sins, one must show public penance. In a Puritan context, this theme is especially important because sins were punished more heavily publicly than they are today, however public or private atonement for sins is still especially important to one’s soul. An untold sin will eat away at a person’s conscience, and he will suffer mentally and physically if he fails to make amends. A person that openly confesses will be more likely to receive forgiveness and forgive himself than one who fails acknowledge his err. One is better off being punished openly like Hester than one who lets his unacknowledged mistake devour his soul.
A guilty conscience can be one of the worst forms of punishment, because it relentlessly haunts the soul day and night, refusing to give up. This notion is explored in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter through the character of Arthur Dimmesdale, in order to show the effects of guilt. Not only does Dimmesdale’s guilty conscience destroy his mind and body, but also ultimately leads to his death. In order to illustrate the true torture inflicted upon Dimmesdale, Hawthorne uses the digression of his physical health to represent the effects of his guilt. As the novel continues, his health is seen plummeting downwards, until he ends up dying. Dimmesdale’s continuous physical deterioration ultimately parallels and symbolizes the effect of his guilty conscience manifesting inside of him.
How beauty is perceived and what beauty is defined as is a very controversial topic. Beauty is a reflection of one’s culture and perceptions. However, one’s idea of beauty may become contorted. This results in a misperception of what beauty really is. Society makes it out to be a perfect model or celebrity that no one can compare to. In order to understand why beauty is not a universal idea, one must know what beauty is, what each culture perceives as beauty, and the misperception society gives people. One’s idea of beauty should be based on his or her own cultural perceptions, reminding one that society, media, or any other source cannot define a universal idea of the art of beauty.
2: Later in the chapter, Hawthorne demonstrates that public confession liberates people from guilt. He illustrates the weakness that guilt brings by portraying Dimmesdale with “death-like” qualities and later stresses the strength that confession produces with imagery of Dimmesdale gaining strength through his revelation. In between these two phases, the author parallels Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s shame to establish the correlation between sin, weakness, and extreme shame. However, Hawthorne reveals that despite these consequences of sin, guilt be relieved through public confession.
The ideal of what beauty really is changes in our society from time to time. Everyone has their own opinion of what is beautiful. However the opinion that people mostly tend and heed to is that of the prominent and influential characters in today’s society. Those who claim to know what true beauty is and impel humanity to do and be what they want, as if people were their puppets. Television, magazines, and advertisements play an immense role in this. Playing with emotions and ridiculing those ‘not beautiful’ by pointing out the ideal facial structures or body types that one must have in order to be beautiful. Features of which can only be obtained by expensive, dangerous, and addicting procedures in an outpatient facility. Then some of the features they portray are impossible to obtain even with surgery because those looks are created through a computer. The look they claim is fictitious. It is all propaganda and spurious statements of which are only negative influences and lower women’s self-esteem to a critical point. The Dove Self Esteem Fund conducted a survey which concluded that “a girls self-esteem is more strongly related to how she views her own body shape and body weight, than how much she actually weighs,” this being influenced by all the advertisements and beauty articles.
Although it is fundamental to human nature to be attracted to physical beauty and this beauty deserves to be recognized, the extent to which we as a society value it and hold it accountable for success in life inaccurately leads us to believe beauty is the ultimate advantage in life. The aspiration to possess physical beauty today drives people, especially women, to go to extremes in the hope of finally being beautiful enough to satisfy the expectations of others, especially the media.