Name: The song of the lark
Rating: 3.571428571428572 (7 reviews)
ISBN: 0395345308

Willa Cather

The song of the lark

Edwin Lang

added April 10th, 2014 I was moved by many aspects of the book. I had watched the Ultimate Gift simultaneous with completing the Song of the Lark and reviewing it, and I thought how relevant this media (films and books) are to our spiritual growth and our life in the spirit. Thea reminded me of a homily I heard some time ago of an eagle hatching among chickens, and somehow it learned to fly and soar. It seemed a metaphor for what each of us are called to, and as Edna Ferber wrote in So Big, to not deny Beauty. The idea of that baby eagle longing to soar remained I guess somewhere in the depths of my subconscious and was vividly revived by Willa Cather’s tale. For a while I found Dr. Archie my favorite, especially as he remained for Thea a lifelong friend, and darned if I can find it, as Willa Cather had said of Ray Kennedy, he would never understand her the way she needed to be understood in order to become her dream: a romantic, a smart and respected man, who had not the courage to be an honest thinker. For Willa Cather, ideas, dreams, seem to matter. I think though she believed that anyone with a dream was vulnerable, that we can easily lose as Thea did for quite a while, that earliest source of gladness, that we face ‘the hostility of comfortable self-satisfied people toward any serious effort’, and most deadly for Thea, for any dreamer, when facing her failure that she found ‘failure not as tragic as she had supposed … (and besides she was) tired enough not to care’: Willa Cather devoted at least a chapter on this, describing a devastatingly low point in Thea’s journey, and I had the impression that it was an important point for Willa Cather, something she felt worthy of emphasis. There seem to be forces that include human malice or perhaps just cynicism that encourages one to give up, or not pursue a path or how dare you - the notion seemed almost unnecessarily stated as there seem to be a million reasons why we give up - it was one of the pivotal points in the story, and we sensed Thea’s chagrin and sheer loneliness. I found myself wondering whether true evil is not so much those who do very bad things, or those who refrain from doing good, but is instead found in those who with an unkind word or a disdainful roll of the eyes make life a trial, such a hell on earth for a time, who succeed in diminishing, perhaps extinguishing, one’s enthusiasm for an ideal, an idea, a vision, making thus the world, our country, our workplace a poorer place, ‘a stagnant moribund place lacking in any kind of vitality and hope’. I was troubled nonetheless by the exclusivity of Thea’s drive, her determination, a seeming ruthlessness about it that struck me as narcissistic, and even the possibility of her being so bothered me, of her being so absorbed by her ambition, her need for self-fulfillment, that she would claw her way to the pinnacle. I found myself thinking about this in the context of another book I read, So Big by Edna Ferber, wherein the heroine, with goals far less lofty, had nonetheless a similar impact on society at large. It’s funny because Ferber’s heroine, Selina, would likely have considered Thea’s voice, achievement and contribution one of the ‘beauties’ to be cherished and enjoyed, that Thea’s attainment of self-expression a key measure of a life’s success. Yet, I remained troubled: I didn’t want Thea to be a Frank Lloyd Wright, a genius at architecture but who seemed at the end of day, unkind, a cad. But Song of the Lark speaks, slowly, beautifully, to all of all, to our yearnings, our hopes, our mistakes and missteps, our despair, and makes us question – if only for a moment – who we are, what we are up to in our lives and loves, are we good enough. Living Thea’s life as Willa Cather has us do forces us to revisit our values and our commitment, how we deal with success and failure, and how we deal with the success and failure of others. Willa Cather has Thea wonder about art - Selina from So Big would likely echo the thought too: “what is any art but an effort to make a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself – life hurrying past us (like the stream in which she had been bathing) … too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”. We feel in Thea the loftiness of an idea lived, and experience too the cost of rising above the mediocre to her potential. What an epithet: Thea Kronborg, or far more simply a Selina DeJong, ‘has given much noble pleasure to the world that needs all it can get’. This was a book that I could befriend and that I did, and an author I could trust. What is said of all friends that we are lucky to have come our way: a gift from God. Edwin

The song of the lark

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