The first half is outstanding, but the second half is mediocre. Although Thea leaves Moonstone behind, it never leaves her.I have mixed feelings about this novel. When Thea has absorbed all that Moonstone has to offer her, she leaves to study music in first Chicago, then further afield. Her mother, Doctor Archie, piano teacher Professor Wunsch, and her great admirer Ray Kennedy provide nurture and guidance through her adolescent years. Thea is fortunate that several of the adults in her life recognize that she has a combination of raw talent and strength of will to do something great.
The Song of the Lark is the story of Thea Kronborg, a small town Colorado girl with a big dream of developing her natural musical talent into something extraordinary. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned book - full of wonderful characters and unashamed of its values. We went to Cather's childhood home in Red Cloud a couple of years ago, and the bedroom remains preserved as it is described in The Song of the Lark.Cather's characterization of Thea is unsentimental, recognizing the hardness that one must develop in order to achieve great artistry.
Cather herself grew up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, in similar circumstances, and much of Thea's childhood draws from Cather's - down to the description of the prized bedroom which she claimed for herself in her teens. Cather captures the life and landscape of growing up in a small Plains town vividly: the relationships among the siblings in a large family, the small town scrutiny of the preacher's daughter, the uneasy relationship between the "American" side and the "Mexican" side of the town, the central role the railroad played in the settling of the West, and most importantly the natural landscape, both of Colorado Plains and later of the Arizona cliff lands. Thea's journey is fascinating, but it is her surroundings (her kith and kin, if you will) that make the book so rich and resonant. Eventually she makes her way to Chicago to study piano, and her voice is discovered.
She is noticed by the town doctor, adored by a young railway man, provided with piano lessons by her mother, and driven to hard work and accomplishment by her piano teacher. The Song of the Lark, a kunstlerroman, chronicles the adolescence and growth into artistry of Thea Kronborg, the daughter of a Methodist minister in a small northern Colorado town who becomes a renowned opera diva.Thea, a middle child in a large Swedish family, seems destined for something larger, even as a young girl. Over the years I have randomly picked up other novels by Cather - Sapphira and the Slave Girl, O Pioneers!, Shadows on the Rock, Obscure Destinies, and the odd short story that has been anthologized in lit. I was first introduced to Willa Cather as a teenager when my mother urged me to read My Antonia.
0 kommentar(er)
