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The Song of the Lark de Willa Cather
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The Song of the Lark (original: 1915; edição: 1983)

de Willa Cather (Autor)

Séries: The Prairie Trilogy (2)

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1,980538,214 (3.88)345
Willa Cather's third novel, The Song of the Lark, depicts the growth of an artist, singer Thea Kronborg. In creating Thea's character, Cather was inspired by the Swedish-born immigrant and renowned Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad, although Thea's early life also has much in common with Cather's own.Set from 1885 to 1909, the novel traces Thea's long journey from her fictional hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, to her source of inspiration in the Southwest, and to New York and the Metropolitan Opera House. As she makes her own way in the world from an unlikely background, Thea d… (mais)
Membro:wandaly
Título:The Song of the Lark
Autores:Willa Cather (Autor)
Informação:Mariner Books (1983), Edition: Reprint, 464 pages
Coleções:Sua biblioteca
Avaliação:***
Etiquetas:classics, fiction

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The Song of the Lark de Willa Cather (1915)

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I loved much of this book, but was not infatuated with the latter stages, after Thea (the main character) achieves the success she'd so long sought. Thea can be heartlessly self-serving in pursuit of her dream, and one almost expects Cather to emphasize the tragic nature of the trade-offs she had to make, but Cather never really goes there. Yet there is something tragic about Thea, about Archie, and about the losses that each must endure. Meanwhile, Fred (Thea's suitor) is the weakest and most unreal character in the book. When the novel's brief epilogue takes us back to Moonstone, Colorado, the setting of the first half of the book, the reader feels refreshed and alive again, after the dreary scenes in New York parlors and opera houses. ( )
  rspenc56 | Mar 28, 2024 |
Published in 1915, this is a beautifully written novel about the life of Thea Kronberg, a feisty female protagonist who overcomes the social restrictions of the time and eventually makes her mark as an opera singer. It opens in the 1890s, when Thea is eleven years old. She is one of seven children born to a Scandinavian immigrant family in the small (fictional) town of Moonstone, Colorado. She learns piano and gives lessons. She eventually moves to Chicago to pursue vocal performance education.

This book is the second in the Great Plains trilogy (along with O Pioneers! and My Antonia), Willa Cather’s narratives of strong women in the American West, but it can easily be read as a standalone. One of Cather’s strengths is the ability to vividly depict the landscapes of the places Thea visits. It is an early example of relationships in which the men in the story admire the woman for her ambition and talents and help her achieve her goals. It has aged well. I can see why it is considered a classic. ( )
1 vote Castlelass | Nov 2, 2022 |
Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Somewhat autobiographical tale of a young girl who pursue her operatic talents, taking her from Colorado, to Chicago, and the to Europe and the Met. Good read." ( )
  MGADMJK | Oct 28, 2022 |
I fell in love with The Song of the Lark the first time I read it about twenty years ago. I was in my twenties and read it for a graduate seminar. As a budding feminist, I was captivated by the depiction of a young girl who has talent and passion and who pursues her dreams into adulthood, eventually achieving great success in her field. She didn't give it all up to get married or die tragically young. I admired how Cather slowed the action down to detail the influences in Thea's younger life, her hard work, and the sacrifices that she made for her art. My favorite part of the book remains Part IV: The Ancient People. I think it's one of the most beautiful and unusual pieces in American literature and I've often re-read that section just for the pleasure of it.

With this reading I was blown away by the character of the tramp. It's not that he commits suicide by drowning himself in the well and contaminating the town water supply with typhoid that captured my imagination, but the fact that he performs as a clown. As someone who used my high school math classes back in the early 80s as time to read the latest Stephen King novel, I can't believe I didn't pick up on the utter creepiness of the tramp as clown in my earlier reading. From the first scene where Thea watches him walk into town and can smell him from the safety of her porch, it's pretty unsettling. You know he's a bad omen. But then Thea catches his smell and covers her nose with her handkerchief: "A moment later she was sorry, for she knew that he had noticed it." The tramps notices her disgust, looks away, "and shuffled a little faster" past her house. In a horror novel, Thea would have been a marked woman. A few days later Thea sees him performing in front of one of the saloons: "his bony body grotesquely attired in a clown's suit, his face shaved and painted white,--the sweat trickling through the paint and washing it away,--and his eyes wild and feverish." Part of me feels compassion for the man, but I also hear horror music screeching in the background. Cather so gracefully creates a powerful, yet subtle aura of horror with this character. It makes me wish she would have tried her hand at the ghost story.
More interested than ever to see this.

Overall, however, I admit that it was hard for me to get through The Song of the Lark this time. Part of the problem was I started reading it in ebook format and that was just not a good fit for me with this novel. Once I switched over to a hard copy the reading went a bit better, but the book still wore me out at times. I'm still pondering whether that's due to the variety of literary styles and imagery Cather used or whether it boils down to the fact that I no longer admire the myth or archetype of the Great Artist who gives up their humanity for their art.

One of the big discussions that I recall from the seminar where I first encountered Thea, was whether or not Thea is selfish, and whether we'd even ask such a question if the story were about a man. From my twenty-something perspective, I did not think Thea was selfish. I thought her drive and self-discipline was admirable. I was excited by her commitment to her passion and figured her mom understood why Thea did not come home to visit when she was on her deathbed. And it's not like she's begging Dr. Archie and Ottenburg to flutter about like they do. With this reading I saw the older Thea not so much as selfish, but as heartless and cold.

In her preface to the Autograph Edition in 1937 Cather wrote that she was portraying one type of artist, the type whose "personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer." I was relieved to read this because it means that perhaps there are healthier and happier ways to be an artist. One doesn't have to end up a washed-up alcoholic like Wunsch, or be driven periodically insane by one's passion like Spanish Johnny, or live in emotional isolation like Thea. Or--shudder--end up completely mad like the clown. ( )
  Chris.Wolak | Oct 13, 2022 |
Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing--desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little.

Have you ever thought about true artists, like Vincent Van Gogh, who pay such a high price for their art? Men and women who have devoted half of their waking hours to the practice and perfection of their musical talents so that they can perform in an opera or become a concert pianist? Too often we think of this kind of achievement as innate talent, and of course some of it must be, but there are many talented and gifted people who never reach that level because they cannot or will not scale the wall.

In many ways, that is what this novel is about. Thea is a natural talent, and many around her recognize her abilities, but she cannot just step into the world she wants without a lot of sacrifice and loss. We trade things, always, to reach our dreams. I’m not sure Cather questions whether what Thea loses is worth the sacrifice, I think Cather thought it was, in fact, I think Cather thought of herself as being in Thea’s shoes, but I thought about whether it was worth it, and I would have said “no”.

I loved the first half of this novel, the part where Thea was a girl and trying to identify her talent and the thing that spurred her forward. I liked the quirky characters of Moonstone, the people of the country, Ray Johnson, the railroad worker who loves her from afar; Dr. Archie, who sees her as something too fine for the world she occupies; Professor Wunsch, her drunken piano teacher who discovers her talent and nurtures it; and Spanish Johnny, a Mexican musician who shares the music of the soul.

Cather is in her usual form with her writing. She can describe a scene and make you step into it.

Winter was long in coming that year. Throughout October the days were bathed in sunlight and the air was clear as crystal. The town kept its cheerful summer aspect, the desert glistened with light, the sand hills every day went through magical changes of color. The scarlet sage bloomed late in the front yards, the cottonwood leaves were bright gold long before they fell, and it was not until November that the green on the tamarisks began to cloud and fade. There was a flurry of snow about Thanksgiving, and then December came on warm and clear.

These were wonderful aspects of the book, but the second half let me down in some way that is hard to describe. I began to see Thea as rather selfish and self-centered. Although I don’t believe Cather meant her to be seen in this way, I saw her as using her friends and admirers as stepping-stones. She maintained friendships with them, and they all seemed happy to serve her as a talent fully beyond their reach, but it seemed she somehow felt entitled to anything they laid on her altar and owed them nothing in return. No doubt it was the extraordinary talent we were meant to see being worshiped, but I kept seeing Hollywood and someone who believed the talent itself made her “more” than others. I found her cold, and I wondered if she hadn’t lost that little girl somewhere along the way, even though Cather kept telling me she had not.

Finally, there is, at the heart of this book, a desire to make the reader understand and value art itself. Cather explains this to us again and again, almost too often, but I do think she nailed it here:

What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself,--life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?

For the most part, this book worked for me, but it was not quite as satisfying as [b:My Ántonia|17150|My Ántonia (Great Plains Trilogy, #3)|Willa Cather|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389151307l/17150._SY75_.jpg|575450]. It landed at 3.5 stars, but after some deliberation, I am rounding down.
( )
1 vote mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
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Doctor Howard Archie had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two travelling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone.
The Song of the Lark tells a tale familiar in frontier history, a tale of struggle and courage in which a determined protagonist forges a self equal to a wild and outsized land. (Introduction)
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Willa Cather's third novel, The Song of the Lark, depicts the growth of an artist, singer Thea Kronborg. In creating Thea's character, Cather was inspired by the Swedish-born immigrant and renowned Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad, although Thea's early life also has much in common with Cather's own.Set from 1885 to 1909, the novel traces Thea's long journey from her fictional hometown of Moonstone, Colorado, to her source of inspiration in the Southwest, and to New York and the Metropolitan Opera House. As she makes her own way in the world from an unlikely background, Thea d

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