The Song of the Lark - Willa Cather

This year's Back to the Classics challenge has a category for books set in a place you've lived. Since I am the definition of a homebody, I needed to find a book set in Colorado as I have never lived anywhere else. Novels set in Colorado are not all that common, and I could only come up with ones that are not yet 50 years old - Centennial, The Shining, Kent Haruf's eastern plains stories, a variety of mysteries (cozy and otherwise), but no real classics. Fortunately, I learned that Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark is set in the north east corner of Colorado, and that sealed the deal.

I absolutely loved The Song of the Lark. It is the story of Thea Kronberg, one of many children of Swedish immigrants, who is blessed with not only tremendous musical talent but also a string of friends and mentors who enable her to reach her potential.

At first, Thea sets out to be a pianist, and studies dutifully and advances rapidly, but her real destiny is to become an opera diva who gravitates to Wagnerian roles.

Song of the Lark - painting by Jules Breton

There is so much to love about this book...let me count the ways.

1.  Heart stopping descriptions of Colorado--from the eastern plains to the Front Range, from the light in Denver in January, to the cool magic of the stars on the plains, to the arid beauty of the landscape, to the ever-present fringe of mountains on the horizon. This is from early in the book, when Thea as a young girl is traveling to Denver by train with her friend Ray Kennedy, who works on the railroad.

They were now about thirty miles from Denver, and the mountains looked very near. The great toothed wall behind which the sun had gone down now separated into four distinct ranges, one behind the other. They were a very pale blue, a color scarcely stronger than wood smoke, and the sunset had left bright streaks in the snow-filled gorges. In the clear, yellow-streaked sky the stars were coming out, flickering like newly lighted lamps, growing steadier and more golden as the sky darkened and the land beneath them fell into complete shadow. It was a cool, restful darkness that was not black or forbidding, but somehow open and free; the night of high plains where there is no moistness or mistiness in the atmosphere.

 2. Thea's collection of men friends who recognize her talent and unique drive to excel and open doors for her and teach her and coach her and love her. Dr Archie is such an interesting character and his story arc would make a fascinating novel in and of itself. Her first music teacher, Wunsch, is a deeply flawed person who cultivates Thea's taste and hones her work ethic. I loved her embracing of Spanish Johnny and her interactions with the Mexican population in her town. Her music teacher in Chicago, Harsanyi, and his wife were also marvelous, and I suspect based on a real person. And then there's sweet Ray Kennedy, who made Thea's dreams a reality--he gave all he had so that she could succeed. Finally, Fred Ottenberg was another original character, who defied stereotype to become a lasting pillar in Thea's pantheon of gods.

3. Thea's relationship with music and her respect for and acknowledgement of her talent. One of the things I love about Thea is that she is not coy about her abilities. She knows she is gifted, she knows she has to work hard to cultivate those gifts, but the music she plays and later sings is something that is connected to her innermost self, her soul, for lack of a better term. Last year, I passed up the opportunity to hear Wagner's Ring cycle, and now I am so wishing I had made the time for it as having seen the operas and not just having heard them would have enhanced the book so much.

One of Thea's first roles was a Rhine maiden in Wagner's Das Reingold. I picture Thea as the maiden on the right

4. Thea's mother - Thea has a cast of men who help and support and enrich her, but when it comes to her parents, her father fades into the background while her mother emerges as her first and best champion who was willing to acknowledge that Thea's gifts outstripped those of her other children. Not that Mrs. Kronberg loved Thea more than the others, but she accomodated Thea more. As with O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark is definitely a riff on the immigrant experience--seizing the brass ring when you have the chance.

5. The time Thea and Fred spend in Arizona in Panther Canyon, finding rejuvenation within the ancient cliff dwellings. I absolutely love the Southwest landscape and always feel the magic quality of the sandstone, endless blue skies, mesas, and thunderclouds. I have never read a novel before in which someone actually lives in these cave dwellings, but it stirred my own soul.

6. I've read that this book is the most autobiographical of Cather's stories, and she used it to explore the creative process, a topic that never ceases to fascinate me. I am inspired to read a bio of Cather and find out how much of Thea's story is her own--obviously, Thea's gifts were musical rather than literary, but Cather must have had a deep familiarity with music and opera to be able to write in such detail about Thea's training and the physical toll that performing took on her.

7. Cather's writing is such a pleasure to read. My battered paperback is pockmarked with earmarked pages as I turned down page after page that contained exquisite prose. Her writing contains deep insights into the life of an artist, the landscapes that shape personality and soul, and the bonds between people of all walks of life that enable the power and beauty of art to be born.

Absolute 5-star book, and another notch in my Back to the Classics challenge.