Nietzsche In Willa Cather's Artists

Willa Cather, the American writer of the early 20th century, is famous for her writings about the spirit of pioneers. But for Cather, they are not just pioneers, but most important of all, artists, because "the pioneer women on the Divide possessed many of the traits of the artist - the drive, the perception, the energy, the creative force"6.The traits Cather defines as necessary to the creative process show that, for Cather, an "exuberant passion" is more important to genius than "supreme intellect" or "perfect form". ( Kingdom p.434 ) And it implies a deep appreciation of the many non-rational faculties that emanate from or are connected with the drives and passions of the body, and the darker and more unconscious layers of the soul. So according to Cather's broader perception about artists, pioneers are included in artists discussed in this paper, and what Cather emphasizes in artists are their non-rational qualities. Their affirmative attitude towards life is another striking characteristic in Cather's artists.In Cather's examinations of art and the artist, she has "a sometimes formulaic component and that in selecting the criteria by which the creative process might be judged she found the theories of Nietzsche both congenial and useful. "7This paper aims to convince that Nietzchean thoughts, mainly about the Dionysian, Apollonian and superman do influence Cather and her writing, and that the non-rational qualities and life-enjoying attitude in Cather's artists are exactly Nietzsche's Dionysian, the suppression of the Dionysian and the painful consequence of the process Nietzsche registers continue to be the subject of Cather's artistic concern. In fact, the celebration of the spirit of pioneers and that of music in Cather's works boils down to her enthusiastic embrace of the Dionysian. To my knowledge, no one else has ever elaborated on this theme and I believe in its validity. This idea of the Dionysian is far reaching in that it provides a new understanding of Cather's works, and tells the necessity for man, modern man in particular, to face truth and remain faithful to his own authentic self in this veiled world.Chapter one describes the influence of music, Wagnerian music in particular, on Cather and her works. Wagner was once highly praised by Nietzsche as the Dionysian artist and Nietzsche's influence on Cather is inevitable.The second chapter will introduce Nietzsche's most fundamental concept of the Dionysian and Apollonian (including its extreme form of Socratic reason), pointing out that 1) balance between them is the preposition of success in art and life, and that 2) in Nietzsche's later work the Dionysianstands for the synthesis of the contrast between the Dionysian and Apollonian, thus Dionysian becomes what Nietzsche called Oneness or Primordial Unity.Chapter three will explore Nietzsche's concept of Dionysian and Apollonian in Willa Cather's comments on music, art, artist, and its influence on Cather's writing.The fourth chapter tries to find out causes to Cather's plight artists, concluding that total absorption into either the Dionysian or the Apollonian world results in their destruction. Emphasis is put on the fact that Socratic reason and Christianity are the two major reasons causing the suppression of the Dionysian.The second chapter having shown the importance of wholeness, chapter five will demonstrate that Unity, or the Dionysian may lead, to success by reference of the example of Thea in The Song of the Lark, whose transformation is full of Nietzschean elements such as myth, cyclic time, sexual passion, all of which according to Nietzsche help to reach the state of the Dionysian.The sixth chapter will further explore the Dionysian which is more emphasized by Nietzsche, and point out that the Dionysian is also Nietzsche's Superman, and Cather's successful artists show such characters of Superman as open defiance, sense of earth, life-affirming attitude, and superior gifts.