by Willa Cather
COMING, APHRODITE!
1 Coming, Aphrodite!: The title, for Smart Set magazine, was “Coming, Eden Bower!” See Bernice Slote’s appendix to Uncle Valentine and Other Stories, titled “Variants in ‘Coming, Eden Bower!’ and ‘Coming, Aphrodite!”’ (pp. 177-81). Sheryl L. Meyering offers a comprehensive summary of pertinent scholarship on this and all the stories included in this volume in her 1994 Reader’s Guide.Aphrodite: The goddess of love in Greek mythology.
2 stages: Horse-drawn buses.
3 Brevoort: A fashionable hotel in Greenwich Village, New York City.
4 “Don Quixote”: The novel Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616).
5 “The Golden Legend”: A moralistic poem (1872) based on the Faust story; the second part of a trilogy titled Christus: A Mystery by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).
6 Remington: Frederic Remington (1861-1909), a painter and sculptor of Western scenes and figures.
7 Prologue to Pagliacci: I Pagliacci (1892), an opera by Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1858-1919).
8 Puccini: Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), an immensely popular composer of operas.
9 Something . . . both of beauty: In Greek mythology, Actaeon saw the goddess Artemis bathing. As punishment for this intrusion on her privacy, she turned him into a stag. He was eventually attacked and killed by his own dogs.
10 Helianthine fire: Brilliant purifying fire of the sun.
11 Tammany man: A member of a corrupt controlling organization of New York City politicians.
12 Veronese’s: Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), a Venetian painter.
13 Garibaldi statue: Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), an Italian patriot.
14 C——: Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), the great master of Post-impressionism, spent his later years in Provence in relative seclusion and could well be the model for Hedger’s mentor here. Both painters spurn public success in favour of personal freedom of anonymity to express themselves.
15 Henner: Jean-Jacques Henner (1829-1905), a French painter of mythological and religious subjects.
16 Ouida: The pseudonym of Marie Louise de la Ramée (1839- 1908), a British author of sentimental romance novels.
17 “Sapho” and “Mademoiselle de Maupin”: French novels of illicit romances: Sapho (1884) by Alphonse Daudet and Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) by Théophile Gautier.
18 Coney Island: An amusement park in Brooklyn, by the ocean, for the general public. See John F. Kasson’s Amusing the Million for a discussion of this setting’s importance in turn-of-the-century America.
19 Coming, Aphrodite! . . . Paris: The opera Aphrodite by Camille Erlanger (1863-1919) was first produced by the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1906. Louise Wasserman suggests Eden Bower is loosely modeled on the figure of Mary Garden, the Scottish-American diva who played the title role (p. 38). Mary Garden discusses the controversial role at some length in her autobiography (pp. 97-99).
20 chef d’orchestre: Conductor (French).
21 Cerro de Pasco: A boomtown in the mining district of central Peru.
22 “Arrêtez, Alphonse. Attendez moi”: “Stop, Alphonse. Wait for me” (French).
23 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: New York, 1920.
THE DIAMOND MINE
1 meerschaum: White claylike mineral used for making tobacco pipes.
2 facial neuralgia: Severe sinus trouble.
3 auto da fé: Here the phrase means simply “punishment,” but it refers more literally to the brief ceremony following the sentencing of heretics by the Spanish Inquisition (established in the fifteenth century).
4 la sainte Asie: Possibly a reference to Jerusalem, which is often referred to in French as la Jérusalem sainte as a sign of respect.
5 He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one: Such comments persuade us that the narrator, Carrie, is anti-Semitic. The conclusion of the story, however, might complicate such simple judgments.
6 Cressida Garnet lives on Tenth Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, near Willa Cather’s Bank Street apartment.
7 “Trilby”: A novel (1894) by George du Maurier. Like Cressida, Trilby is a performer (a singer) heavily under the influence of her theatrical manager; in Trilby’s case, it is Svengali.
8 Penelope: The wife of Odysseus; she fends off many would-be suitors during his twenty-year absence in Homer’s Odyssey.
9 “Manon”: Jules Massenet (1842-1912) composed his opera Manon in 1884.
10 Šárka: An opera (1897) in Czech by Zdenĕk Fibich (1850- 1900) that is set in Bohemia in pagan times.
11 “Dans les ombres des fôrets tristes”: “In the shadows of the sorrowful forests” (French).
12 “Mais, certainement!”: “But, of course” (French).
13 “Des gâteaux . . . New York?”: “Such cakes . . . where can they be found in New York?” (French).
14 “Austrichienne? Je ne pense pas.”: “An Austrian woman? I think not” (French).
15 Bouchalka has little respect for the immensely successful Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924).
16 à deux: Intimate conversation, one-on-one (French).
17 “Couleur de gloire, couleur des reines!”: “Color of glory, queenly colour!” (French).
18 “de l’eau chaude!”: “hot water!” (French).
19 “Voilà, voilà, tonnerre!”: A rude expletive in French that loses all meaning in English: “There, there, thunder!”
20 Donna Anna: Lead soprano role in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787). Donna Anna is one of the many women betrayed by Don Juan.
21 oisiveté: Idleness, laziness (French).
22 méprise: Mistake (French).
23 farouche: Unapproachable, even rude (French).
24 “Pour des gâteaux”: “For some cakes” (French).
25 les colombes: Doves (French).
26 The luxury ocean liner Titanic, referred to later in this paragraph as a “sea monster,” sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912.
27 Traulich und Treu ... freut!: The Rhine Maidens, who have been robbed of their gold from the bottom of the Rhine River, sing this lament at the end of Das Rheingold, Richard Wagner’s opera of 1854 (performed 1869): “That which is of worth lies only in the deep; base and false is what is valued above.” Wagner’s text reads treulich (truly, faithfully), not traulich (familiar, intimate). See John March’s discussion of this discrepancy (pp. 807-8).
28 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: New York, 1916.
A GOLD SLIPPER
1 senescent: Growing old.
2 appetent: Uncontrolled, giving in to appetites or desires.
3 Mr. Worldly-Wiseman: One of Christian’s temptors on his journey to the Celestial City in the prose allegory Pilgrim’s Progress, Part I (1678), by John Bunyan (1628-1688).
4 In What Is Art? (1898), the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828- 1910) argues that art needs to be directed toward the common man, not created and valued for its effects on the privileged few.
5 Kitty Ayrshire compares herself to the adventuresome Balkis, Queen of Sheba, who visited King Solomon (tenth century B.C.).
6 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: Red Cloud, Nebraska, 1916.
SCANDAL
1 Trappist: A member of a reformed branch of the Roman Catholic Cistercian Order of monks that is noted for its strict rule of silence.
2 Gorky’s visit here: Maksim Gorky (1868-1936) is the pen name of Aleksey Peshkov, a Russian writer of drama and fiction. Gorky came to the United States soon after the failure of the 1905 revolution but stayed less than a year.
3 worry down: Run down, discover, find.
4 Waverly Place: In Greenwich Village, an area of New York City.
5 Old Testament characters: Jewish guests in the Stein house.
6 Gulliver among the giants: In Part II of Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) sends his main character to Brobdingnag, to record his feelings at being dwarfed by everyone around him.
7 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: Denver, Colorado, 1916.
PAUL’S CASE
1 belladonna: A plant of the poisonous nightshade family, with purple or green bell-shaped blossoms, whose roots and leaves yield atropine, used in a drug.
2 Soldiers’ Chorus from Faust: The opera Faust (1859) by Charles Gounod (1818-1893).
3 Raffaëlli’s gay studies: Jean-François Raffaëlli (1850-1924), a minor French painter (of Italian descent) of the Impressionist school who specialized in cityscapes of Paris.
4 Rico: Martin Rico (1835-1908), a Spanish landscape painter heavily influenced by the French Barbizon school of landscape painting, which sought a new directness of observation of nature.
5 Augustus Caesar and Venus of Milo: Copies of famous sculptures from the Roman and Hellenic periods respectively.
6 hauteur: Haughtiness (French).
7 Genius in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman: This reference is to Scheherazade’s stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sinbad in A Thousand and One Nights; her storytelling for 1,001 nights delayed her death sentence and eventually saved her life.
8 cash boys: Office clerks who delivered messages and ran errands for others.
9 a sleep and a forgetting: In “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1807), Part VII, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) describes birth with this phrase.
10 Martha: An opera (1847) by Baron Friedrich von Flotow (1812-1883).
11 Rigoletto: An opera (1851) by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).
12 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: Pittsburgh, 1904.
A WAGNER MATINÉE
1 Franz-Joseph-Land: Franz Josef Land, islands north of the Arctic Circle; part of Russia.
2 Green Mountains: In Vermont.
3 dug-out: Settlers on the Great Plains in the 1860s and 1870s created these cavelike dwellings in the absence of wood for cabins. Built into mounds of soil, these sod dwellings provided good insulation against the harsh winters.
4 Euryanthe: A romantic opera (1823) by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) about seduction and betrayal.
5 Huguenots: Les Huguenots (1836), an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864).
6 The Flying Dutchman: An opera (1841) by Richard Wagner (1813-1883).
7 the granite Rameses in a museum: Ramses (or Rameses) was the name shared by eleven kings of ancient Egypt.
8 Tannhäuser: An opera (1845) by Wagner.
9 Tristan and Isolde: An opera (1859, performed 1865) by Wagner.
10 silent upon her peak in Darien: A recasting of the last line of the sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats (1795-1821): “Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
11 “Prize Song”: Part of the finale to Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867).
12 chorus at Bayreuth: Wagner and his wife, Cosima, moved to this small Bavarian town in 1870 and opened a theater that produced his most famous works, Der Ring des Nibelungen.
13 Trovatore: Il Trovatore, an opera (1852) by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).
14 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: Pittsburgh, 1903.
THE SCULPTOR’S FUNERAL
1 G.A.R.: The Grand Army of the Republic—an organization for Union veterans of the Civil War.
2 palm leaf: Symbol of honors, particularly bestowed by the French. See James Woodress’s note in his edition of The Troll Garden, p. 125, as well as John March, p. 564.
3 “Rogers group”: Plaster cast of a popular sculpture by John Rogers (1829-1904). The very American subject depicts two characters from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).
4 smilax: A prickly vine; greenbrier.
5 clover-green Brussels: A carpet.
6 gallows: Suspenders.
7 looked upon the wine when it was red: The phraseology of the King James Version of the Bible offers a euphemism for alcoholic excess, to be avoided by the godly: “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder” —Proverbs 23 : 31-32.
8 dyspepsia: Indigestion.
9 Completion place/date added in 1937 edition: Pittsburgh, 1903.
“A DEATH IN THE DESERT”
1 “A Death in the Desert”: Title of a poem by Robert Browning (1812-1889), included in his collection Dramatis Personae (1864). The speaker is John of the Book of Revelation, awaiting his death.
2 Exposition at Chicago: World Columbian Exposition of 1892-93.
3 Proserpine: In Roman mythology, Proserpine is the daughter of Ceres and the wife of Pluto, god of the underworld. In the spring and summer she is on the earth, and the world blossoms in her presence. In fall and winter vegetation fades as she joins her husband in the underworld. Ryder, Thurin, and Meyering offer commentary on Cather’s use of the Proserpine (Persephone in Greek mythology) figure throughout her stories.
4 traditional Camille entrance: Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata (1853) is a retelling of Alexandre Dumas’s (fils) 1852 novel Camille. In both versions, the frail heroine slowly dies of consumption.
5 “Florentine Nights”: A fragment of a novel (1837) by the German Romanticist Heinrich Heine (1797-1856).
6 “and in the book we read no more that night”: These words from Dante’s The Divine Comedy (Inferno, 5.138) are one of several famous literary farewells echoed in this story.
7 “For ever and for ever, farewell”: Brutus parts with Cassius with these words in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (5.1.117-19).
PETER
1 Willa Cather’s first published story (1892), this tale is retold as a story-within-a-story in My Ántonia (1918).
2 the dreariest part of southwestern Nebraska: Cather grew up in Webster County and Red Cloud in this section of Nebraska.
3 Rachel played: The celebrated actress Elizabeth Félix (1820- 1858) used the name Mademoiselle Rachel in her years with the Comédie-Française.
4 Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a Hungarian concert pianist as well as a composer. He and his wife, the Comtesse d’Agoult, had three children, one of whom—Cosima—married Richard Wagner.
5 French woman . . . weeks: The actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844- 1923) toured with Victorien Sardou’s play Tosca after its great success in Paris in 1887.
6 “Pater noster, qui in coelum est”: Peter’s version of the Lord’s Prayer—“all the Latin he had ever known”—is Willa Cather’s own translation, not church Latin. As used in the Roman Catholic Church, the Latin prayer begins Pater noster, qui es in coelis. See Donald Sutherland’s discussion of this phrasing in his essay “Willa Cather: The Classical Voice.”
THE PROFILE
1 Second Empire: The reign of Napoleon III in France, 1852-71.
2 Triboulet, Quasimodo, Gwynplaine: Fictional characters with physical deformities, all drawn from the works of Victor Hugo (1802- 1885).
3 Huns and Iroquois: The Huns were a nomadic Central Asian people who gained control over much of central and Eastern Europe under Attila about A.D. 450. The Iroquois were an American Indian confederacy, originally of New York.
4 abattoir: Slaughterhouse (French).
5 Madame R—— and her great Semitic rival: Two figures of the stage in France. The celebrated actress Elizabeth Félix (1820-1858) used the name Mademoiselle Rachel in her years with the Comédie-Française; the second actress is Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923).
6 his stripes were healed: This phrasing echoes the rhythms of the King James Version of Isaiah 53 : 5, which foretells of the trials of the Messiah: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
7 the expiator of his mountain race: Continuing the allusion to Christ, Aaron Dunlap, the artist from West Virginia, is described as one who atones for the sins of others.
8 Olympe: A painting of a reclining nude by the French p
ainter Édouard Manet (1832-1883).