When I picked up My Antonia by Willa Cather I was not
expecting to finish it, let alone enjoy it. The book was published
first in 1918, close to ninety years ago and is set in the later part
of the nineteenth century- even earlier. Usually to identify with a
setting that far back in time and that too in the context of a culture
with which one is not familiar is not easy.
The book is set in Nebraska and the enduring theme is the manner in
which Bohemian and Norwegian migrants, particularly girls set about to
make their life and the innumerable hardships they went through as they
went about making their way there with little or no language, no roots
or friends, an uncertain welcome they faced. Antonia is one such is
girl and it is her story that is told through the narration of her
childhood friend Jim Burden. Jim is a friend and more and although the
under currents of romance are presented; the story of Jim Burden and
Antonia is one of pure, unalloyed and unselfish friendship and care; at
places so tender that one could be left wondering if such friendships
could occur more often outside the pages of books.
The book is not just about Antonia though. There are other older
characters who appear earlier on in the book like for instance Mr.
Shimerda, the uprooted father of Antonia, who came to the New Land
henpecked by his wife, but could never forget the friends of his
childhood with whom he played the fiddle at weddings and functions. Mr.
Shimerda represents the old order of people who immigrated with their
bodies but their souls stayed back in the old land they left. Mr.
Shimerda eventually committed suicide unable to make the adjustments
that his daughter would struggle to make and master.
Willa Cather not only etches beautiful characterizations in the many
people who walk in and out of the book, she I able to draw out masterly
portraits of the bleak Nebraska landscape and creates a hunting climate
of nostalgia, partings and the inevitable unsettledness of the
immigrant’s life.
Virgil’s phrase "Optima dies . prima fugit”, a phrase that
Jim Burden learns in college "The best days are the first to flee" is
the signature tune of Willa Cather’ book. A poignant story of immigrant
life in small town America at the turn of the nineteenth century would
be a good way to describe the book- except that it would incomplete….
This is also a story of friendships, determinations and of course the
human spirit – all battles that are some times won and often lost too.
As Willa Cather concludes, “We don’t lose people when they die or go away” or as Antonia would tell Jim Burden –““*Of
course it means you are going away from us for good, " "But that doesn’t
mean I’ll lose you. Look at my papa here; he’s been dead all these
years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never
goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The
older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him”.
My Antonia is
a great novel, a classic and reading it nearly ninety years reminds me
of its enduring relevance in twenty first century India . we live in
times when immigrants from within our land are viewed with so much
suspicion, never mind immigrants of other lands raises many questions
in the country and in the same breath protest if the US or the UK have
similar questions and suspicions and want to strengthen their own
border controls. The question of who is my neighbor whom I must love
and who is the stranger whom I must suspect isn’t going to be resolved
any time soon.