(no subject)
So Death Comes for the Archbishop is neither a ghost story nor a murder mystery. It's a Willa Cather novel, which implies certain things: a bit of plot-meander, strong emotional relationships that go un- or under-stated, some lovely descriptions of the landscape. In this case not about Nebraska and the Plains, but about Santa Fe, in a barely-disguised history-novelization of the first bishop of the region, installed in 1848.
Because, yeah, the Church realized that when the US took over that region, things like communication with Europe would improve to such a radical degree that it was worth it to have a bishop in Santa Fe, rather than have the whole upper Rio Grande valley report to Durango many miles south. (Bishop Latour himself demonstrates such communication, by taking ship from the east directly to Corpus Christi, then overland to El Paso and northward. Still a dicey trip, but much shorter than crossing the desert.)
And here are corrupt Spanish priests in their little diocese-fiefdoms, some of them hard and some sybaritic and some hilarious, and with cool French aplomb the bishop commands them or persuades them or just waits for them to die. We get little inexplicit hints about the syncretism of the Pueblos, as he celebrates a mass in Acoma and another in Zuni, being always respectful of what his audience wants rather than imposing church doctrine from on high. There's a remarkable little sequence in which Latour and his Pecos guide take shelter from a snowstorm in a cave sacred to that Pueblo, and that uneasy side-by-side coexistence of the different religions. (Pecos was empty by then, only a few years since; Cather footnotes that she's aware of this, but provides a completely wrong explanation as to why.)
For 1927, it's a remarkably respectful novel. Cather wasn't even Catholic! Her priests celebrate masses for anybody who wants one (and not for those who don't), and regard several Indian characters respectfully! There's some off-the-page missionary work to places that have never seen a priest, namely Arizona, but even then it's presumed to be for the Mexicans who have migrated there over the generations, not like chasing down the galloping Apaches in hopes of being martyred by the savages. Actually the white miners of Denver come in for considerably more distaste, being willing to forego comforts both spiritual and physical in pursuit of gold. Anyway, there's some nonsense about Indians being closer to the earth and all that, but considering its year of publication, I was pleasantly surprised that they were differentiated by ethnic group, and showed to have different manners and traditions.
Did I mention that we started in 1848 and got to 1860? We did. Latour is reserved and strong, like a tower; his vicar Vaillant is... valiant, and a funny thing happens: you turn the page and it's 1888. Which is all well and good, but Cather explains how bad the roundup of the Najavos and their brief captivity at Bosque Redondo was in a parenthetical paragraph. No chapter to explore the conflict of wanting to intervene for a people in distress and needing not to piss off the American military? No hint that Latour might, you know, be buying Navajo children off the open market to keep them safe for their parents' eventual return? Cather calls Kit Carson "misguided" to be spearheading the campaign, but isn't his position ambiguous too? And after all that, when the Army admits the whole experiment's a failure, doesn't that deserve a chapter, as the Navajos come streaming home and reintegrate into their sacred lands? For that matter, hello? Civil War?
Cather skips over this, as she skips over the warfare that was the real reason Pecos declined. Truthfully, that's not the novel she's trying to write. Her main concern is in Latour and Vaillant, their friendship over the years, their differing responses to hardship. Latour thinks big -- that's why he's the bishop and later archbishop -- and builds Santa Fe's first cathedral; Vaillant is happiest in the field winning souls with his kindness. They love each other, and love the land as every Cather hero does, and she spends great amounts of time on the spiritual feelings that land inspires. It's a gentle novel, about the insides of people, and how a pair of French priests, by way of Ohio missionary work, devote themselves to a land and people they've never seen before and become a part of it. Which is lovely.
But, those wars. It's a little weird that she just skips over those wars. I'm sure church gardens are a wonderful thing to contemplate, but that's not all mission work is. Sometimes it's got to suck, surely, and that's as important to history as the good parts.
I have moved mostly over to Dreamwidth. Please comment there if you can.
Because, yeah, the Church realized that when the US took over that region, things like communication with Europe would improve to such a radical degree that it was worth it to have a bishop in Santa Fe, rather than have the whole upper Rio Grande valley report to Durango many miles south. (Bishop Latour himself demonstrates such communication, by taking ship from the east directly to Corpus Christi, then overland to El Paso and northward. Still a dicey trip, but much shorter than crossing the desert.)
And here are corrupt Spanish priests in their little diocese-fiefdoms, some of them hard and some sybaritic and some hilarious, and with cool French aplomb the bishop commands them or persuades them or just waits for them to die. We get little inexplicit hints about the syncretism of the Pueblos, as he celebrates a mass in Acoma and another in Zuni, being always respectful of what his audience wants rather than imposing church doctrine from on high. There's a remarkable little sequence in which Latour and his Pecos guide take shelter from a snowstorm in a cave sacred to that Pueblo, and that uneasy side-by-side coexistence of the different religions. (Pecos was empty by then, only a few years since; Cather footnotes that she's aware of this, but provides a completely wrong explanation as to why.)
For 1927, it's a remarkably respectful novel. Cather wasn't even Catholic! Her priests celebrate masses for anybody who wants one (and not for those who don't), and regard several Indian characters respectfully! There's some off-the-page missionary work to places that have never seen a priest, namely Arizona, but even then it's presumed to be for the Mexicans who have migrated there over the generations, not like chasing down the galloping Apaches in hopes of being martyred by the savages. Actually the white miners of Denver come in for considerably more distaste, being willing to forego comforts both spiritual and physical in pursuit of gold. Anyway, there's some nonsense about Indians being closer to the earth and all that, but considering its year of publication, I was pleasantly surprised that they were differentiated by ethnic group, and showed to have different manners and traditions.
Did I mention that we started in 1848 and got to 1860? We did. Latour is reserved and strong, like a tower; his vicar Vaillant is... valiant, and a funny thing happens: you turn the page and it's 1888. Which is all well and good, but Cather explains how bad the roundup of the Najavos and their brief captivity at Bosque Redondo was in a parenthetical paragraph. No chapter to explore the conflict of wanting to intervene for a people in distress and needing not to piss off the American military? No hint that Latour might, you know, be buying Navajo children off the open market to keep them safe for their parents' eventual return? Cather calls Kit Carson "misguided" to be spearheading the campaign, but isn't his position ambiguous too? And after all that, when the Army admits the whole experiment's a failure, doesn't that deserve a chapter, as the Navajos come streaming home and reintegrate into their sacred lands? For that matter, hello? Civil War?
Cather skips over this, as she skips over the warfare that was the real reason Pecos declined. Truthfully, that's not the novel she's trying to write. Her main concern is in Latour and Vaillant, their friendship over the years, their differing responses to hardship. Latour thinks big -- that's why he's the bishop and later archbishop -- and builds Santa Fe's first cathedral; Vaillant is happiest in the field winning souls with his kindness. They love each other, and love the land as every Cather hero does, and she spends great amounts of time on the spiritual feelings that land inspires. It's a gentle novel, about the insides of people, and how a pair of French priests, by way of Ohio missionary work, devote themselves to a land and people they've never seen before and become a part of it. Which is lovely.
But, those wars. It's a little weird that she just skips over those wars. I'm sure church gardens are a wonderful thing to contemplate, but that's not all mission work is. Sometimes it's got to suck, surely, and that's as important to history as the good parts.
I have moved mostly over to Dreamwidth. Please comment there if you can.