Death Comes for the Archbishop

Dec 06, 2012 Ben Winch rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anglo, american

Oh... my... God. This is beautiful. I'm only halfway through it but I don't care how it ends; every chapter is so complete in itself, every word such unmitigated pleasure that I would be stunned – absolutely floored – if Cather somehow fumbled the ball in the next 150 pages. This is it. The work of a writer with nothing to prove. A writer so humble, her words so transparent, that she seems to disappear behind the curtain of the text, her elegant shadow barely visible in its folds. At age twenty,...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Terence rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Terence by: Michael Dirda & GR Friends Elizabeth & Stephanie

Shelves: historical-fiction

Michael Dirda has an essay in Classics for Pleasure on Willa Cather that focuses on this book. That and the gentle prodding of two GR Friends convinced me to give this author another chance. I had been "traumatized" in a high school English class reading My Antonia and had never quite recovered. I don't blame my teacher. I wasn't forced to read the book except insofar as he gave us a list of "great American literature" and told us to choose a book and write a paper on it. As the crusader knight...more Michael Dirda has an essay in Classics for Pleasure on Willa Cather that focuses on this book. That and the gentle prodding of two GR Friends convinced me to give this author another chance. I had been "traumatized" in a high school English class reading My Antonia and had never quite recovered. I don't blame my teacher. I wasn't forced to read the book except insofar as he gave us a list of "great American literature" and told us to choose a book and write a paper on it. As the crusader knight in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" opines: "He chose poorly." My own life experiences at the time ill prepared me for what makes Cather an important writer; unfortunately, it was just another boring assignment best finished as soon as possible.

As you might deduce, I have much warmer feelings for Cather now than I did 20+ years ago. Though I'm not going to rush out and devour everything else she's written, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Death Comes for the Archbishop.

It's a loosely structured collection of anecdotes that chronicles the missionary activities of two French Catholic priests - Jean Latour (the "archbishop" of the title) and his close friend and vicar, Joseph Vaillant - in the newly established diocese of Santa Fe. The year is 1848, when the US has taken the territory from Mexico, and the spiritual condition of the region's priests and parishioners is deplorable. Over the next 40 years, the two men re-energize their congregation and are continually reaffirmed in their faith. Though friends, Fathers Latour and Vaillant couldn't be more different - both physically and mentally. Latour is aristocratic and often uncomfortable associating with his desperately poor and ignorant flock; Vaillant comes from peasant stock and enthusiastically throws himself into the ministry. Both men come to love deeply both the land and the people; a love returned by their charges.

While not a "slow" or "long" read (it's only 299 pages in my edition), I found it a "calming" read. Even in the most "active" parts such as "The Lonely Road to Mora," where Latour and Vaillant barely escape the murderous attentions of a scoundrel and rescue his abused Mexican wife, there's a quiet rhythm to the story that carries the reader along. This passage from "Eusabio" both reflects what I'm trying to convey and describes it (if one equates "Indians" with the book as a whole): ...Indians going to and fro on the long winding trails across the plain, or up into the Sandia mountains. They had all of them the same quiet way of moving, whether their pace was swift or slow, and the same unobtrusive demeanor... (p. 235).

There were several passages that particularly impressed me while I was reading. The first comes in "The Miser," where Cather takes the opportunity of the death of a parish priest to observe the sacral nature of traditional beliefs about death. And by "sacral" I don't mean anything specific to a particular religion but rather the idea that death is a moment when the soul made its entrance into the next world, passing in full consciousness through a lowly door to an unimaginable scene, rather than simply the moment when certain bodily organs ceased to function (p. 170).

Probably the most difficult part in reading this book was empathizing with Latour or Vaillant. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination religious - I fear I have lapsed far from my Catholic heritage - and getting into the heads and motivations of these characters could be difficult. For example, a cynic could easily read Vaillant's constant trolling for contributions as a crass effort to bilk the peasants of what little wealth they possessed. There were, however, passages that helped me. The one I have in mind is in "Auspice, Maria!": It was just this solitariness of love in which a priest's life could be like his Master's. It was not a solitude of atrophy, of negation, but of perpetual flowering. A life need not be cold, or devoid of grace in the worldly sense, if it were filled by Her who was all the graces... (p. 256). And then there's the final, deathbed scenes, including: More and more life seemed to him an experience of the Ego, in no sense the Ego itself.... The mistakes of his life seemed unimportant; accidents that had occurred en route... (p. 290).

Of course, no review of a Cather novel is complete without some mention of her powerful descriptive ability. I've been to New Mexico and I didn't see half of what she saw (alas). From the first few pages, Cather paints word-pictures that vividly put the reader into the scene: The Cardinal had an eccentric preference for beginning his dinner at this time in the late afternoon, when the vehemence of the sun suggested motion. The light was full of action and had a peculiar quality of climax - of splendid finish. It was both intense and soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied candlelight, an aura of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees, illuminating their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it warmed the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander blooms to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering over the damask and plate and crystal (p. 4).

There's another passage where Cather describes a sunrise illuminating snow-covered mountains but I neglected to mark it; you'll have to trust me that it's a glorious description.

A final thought: There's a powerful element of nostalgia and grief over lost traditions and the destruction of nature. Latour, in particular, recognizes the worthiness of civilization, after all his Church is a product of it and the cathedral he eventually erects, a symbol, but he rues the loss of simplicity and the natural rhythms along which life runs: Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charms of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests.... The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labor and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert (p. 275).(less)

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Dec 18, 2012 Eddie Watkins marked it as to-read

Shelves: dropped

I have heard there is a tremendously moving death scene near - as would be expected - the end of this book. Though I am of the firm conviction that one should live until one dies I cannot apply this principle, by analogy, to my own reading of this book. I doubt very seriously I can finish it. I am nearly 200 pages in and I still have no idea who Father Latour is. He is little more than a cypher on mule back who only slightly intrigues. All I know of him is that he will eventually die. It is poss...more

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Mar 16, 2011 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-missionary-position, palate-cleansers

Beautiful, scenic - my fave bits were the descriptions of the SW landscape and the hints that Cather gives us of how hard that life was for the two RC missionaries who head out to save the souls there. But what it didn't give me - which is what I like in my priestly books - is an intimate view of either their struggle with their faith or their devotion to it when challenged.

Cather teased me with the stuff that I wanted to know much more about -- the relocation and slaughter of the Navajos and th...more Beautiful, scenic - my fave bits were the descriptions of the SW landscape and the hints that Cather gives us of how hard that life was for the two RC missionaries who head out to save the souls there. But what it didn't give me - which is what I like in my priestly books - is an intimate view of either their struggle with their faith or their devotion to it when challenged.

Cather teased me with the stuff that I wanted to know much more about -- the relocation and slaughter of the Navajos and the Church's complicity in that. The tenuous balance between the vanishing Mexican and Indian cultures as the whites moved in.

I think I was looking for more character development and more plot than this was ever intended to have, so in the end, I had to settle for the loveliness of the descriptions of landscape, and the gently evolving relationship between Fr. Vaillant and Fr. Latour.

Cather describes beautifully the Indians' spiritual relationship to the land:

"But their conception of decoration did not extend to the landscape. They seemed to have none of the European's desire to "master" nature, to arrange and re-create. They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which they found themselves. This was not so much from indolence, the Bishop thought, as from an inherited caution and respect. It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as if the spirits of earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse. When they hunted, it was with the same discretion; an Indian hunt was never a slaughter. They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it."

Cather's level of environmental consciousness, there and elsewhere (the description of the setting of the Archbishop's cathedral was similarly evocative), and her understanding of the native American relationship to nature, seems so prescient (and so beautiful), writing from 1927.

What she didn't give me, what I wanted to see, was some level of consciousness and conflict among those whites - and the two priests in particular - that the colonization of the land and the souls there was wrong. Instead, she shows me the Archbishop on his deathbed, stating: "'I have lived to see two great wrongs righted; I have seen the end of black slavery, and I have seen the Navajos restored to their own country.'" I suppose this perspective, from a character whose vantage point is so close in time to the occurrences, is as much as can be hoped for in the way of a political statement.

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Jun 28, 2012 Angus rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-100-novels, modern-library-100, radcliffes-rival-100, reviewed-and-blogged

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

If books were buildings, this would be a cathedral

I first encountered Willa Cather back in college with her most anthologized short story, Paul’s Case. It’s about a young man’s frustration for people’s failure to understand him. Aside from that, I don’t remember much of the story, but I do recall how beautiful and dainty the writing is.

So when I read this novel, I was not tremendously shocked with its delicate beauty. I already have good expectations so there’s...more

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Mar 10, 2009 Lucy rated it 3 of 5 stars

One of my favorite things about keeping track and reviewing the books I've read is that doing so pushes me to read things out of my comfort zone. It makes me want to tackle the classics. Much more often than I used to, I pick up a work of non-fiction - a genre I used to happily skip over. In other words, I'm much more aware of what I read and a lot more choosy.

Death Comes For The Archbishop is a book I chose because it is a classic. Willa Catha's name was mentioned somewhere, and I gritted my te...more One of my favorite things about keeping track and reviewing the books I've read is that doing so pushes me to read things out of my comfort zone. It makes me want to tackle the classics. Much more often than I used to, I pick up a work of non-fiction - a genre I used to happily skip over. In other words, I'm much more aware of what I read and a lot more choosy.

Death Comes For The Archbishop is a book I chose because it is a classic. Willa Catha's name was mentioned somewhere, and I gritted my teeth in the knowledge that there was another famous author I'd never read. Call it pride, but I'm desperate to claim that I read literature and not just novels.

As much as I wish I could say that I loved it, I didn't. Truthfully, I thought this book was really quite boring. If I were to rank what I consider most important in terms of what I like in a book, I'd say characterization sits at the top, followed by the story's morale/scope, then plot and lastly prose. I think Willa Catha and I may be complete opposites because prose definitely ranks at the top of her list.

Her writing is beautiful- colorful. She describes a New Mexico that is perfectly vivid. I've seen those pinks and browns and peaches in her rocks and hills. I've driven past the absurdly continuous mountains. I've seen the sagebrush and cacti and old mission architecture. She nails it. But I needed more than a pretty setting to stay interested.

This book follows two Catholic priests from Europe who struggle to adapt and nurture the faith of their parishioners in a newly formed diocese in New Mexico. There is no plot, exactly, except the experiences, challenges and progression of age of both Bishop Jean Marie Latour and his faithful companion, Father Valliant. Neither characters are developed enough for me to commit to their life and their sacrifice. I appreciated the early setting and the descriptions of this rough new territory, but neither Bishop Latour nor Father Valliant managed to convert me.

I can see how someone with a love of the New Mexican landscape would love it, though.(less)

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Jul 07, 2008 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

80 pages in or so and now I feel the need to say a few words.

How does one write a western about missionaries in New Mexico? I think it's foolish to assume that the conventions of the western narrative would be applied in such a story. But if you were to mix some of the familiar tropes of the western (The purifier comes to settle the land and the wild lawless society, a narrative much like Shane... or High Planes Drifter) with a biblical theme, in this case the problem presented at the Pentecost...more 80 pages in or so and now I feel the need to say a few words.

How does one write a western about missionaries in New Mexico? I think it's foolish to assume that the conventions of the western narrative would be applied in such a story. But if you were to mix some of the familiar tropes of the western (The purifier comes to settle the land and the wild lawless society, a narrative much like Shane... or High Planes Drifter) with a biblical theme, in this case the problem presented at the Pentecost (I'm no religious scholar, that's just the first biblical narrative that this reminds me of) then a story starts to evolve and complicate.

This is a collection of episodes involving two FRENCH priests navigating the ever complicated world of the newly americanized New Mexico. The conflict is between nationalities and beliefs. The Mexican diocese doesn't want to loose their territory, the American settlers aren't in favor of the catholics which frightens the Mexican farmers. Priests have not married their daughters or baptized their children for years. And the Indians are always a looming heathen threat, that the Vatican would like to CONVERT them!!! Now the characters have four to five different language barriers that are easily bridged. But in the issue of CULTURE these groups have not had their Pentecostal moment as of yet. And slowly but surely the French priests must over come their dislike of dried meat and chili and meld with the culture in order to save those that have become godless. (I could be wrong about this the priest might just force American rapists and Indian raiders to eat crepes and drink grape brandy alike).

It's a fantastic problem, that has no real solution. I'm excited to see how it all works out. But there is a warning. This book is quite dry and slow (despite huge story elements covered in summery). I like it but I can see why people would not. Plus missionary work can sound very xenophobic and if you are not willing to check unbridled liberalism (in the defense of many cultures which I completely support) and except this as a document of it's time then don't bother.

One Hundred Pages latter I'm still enjoying this book despite my self. I should dislike the meandering structure. Also one of the hallmarks of drama is the change in the protagonist. Simply put the protagonist is presented with a problem, they choose to solve this problem, but to do so they must change who they are fundamentally. The drama comes from the change in the character. Sawyer in season one of Lost would not have jumped out of the helicopter, but Sawyer in season four would, drama = change = entertainment (or pleasure, some books aren't meant to be pleasurable but the act of reading them can be pleasurable). Latour and his Vicar have changed, they have embarrassed the Vatican's strict Catholicism (though they are learning to except the local culture which is subtly and beautifully done) the primary problems are presented to the minor characters and how they react to the priests bringing civilization (and, oddly enough for the Catholic church, modernism). Many of these problems are solved not so much by the actions of Latour and company, but through patience and time... it might as well be the hands of God. I've never read a book like this, that has broken so many aristotelian rules of the three act structure (if you look at the short stories with in the rules are followed... but loosely and without the change in the protagonists). One might say that it's a constant use of deus ex machina, but I'm telling you that it's totally fun to read anyway.

The reason is the craft in the prose. I'm not one to speak of excellent turns of phrase, or poetry, but this book reads real nice. "This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape... Looking out over the great plain spotted with mesas and glittering with rain sheets, the Bishop saw the distant mountains bright with sunlight. Again he thought that the first Creation morning might have looked like this, when the dry land was first drown up out of the deep, and all was confusion."

I highlight these two passages to show some clever use of description. Culturally, even in the Bible, the desert is described and representative of death and baroness. Punishment and redemption. Trials one has to go through. However I've never heard it described as god's unfinished business. And that, through the eyes of Latour is what he is trying to do, finish god's work. And Cather gives this information to the reader in sub text only. So smart, and so worth reading. Good stuff.

All done!!!

That was a great book. I don't have anything new to add to the what's above except the the drama between Latour and Joseph Vaillant was fantastic and heart breaking. I thought the final chapter was tried to cover far too much information in a small amount of time and due to the refection device of the narrative the drama was defused. I also thought that the memories were in the wrong order (the Vaillant story should have been last). Other than that I really liked this book. Good times.(less)

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Aug 02, 2007 Kay rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-lit, out-west, fiction, historical-fict

Essential reading for the New Mexico devotee. Cather's exquisitely rendered tale recounts the spiritual and moral concerns of the two central characters, a bishop and vicar, but it also paints a remarkable portrait of the New Mexican landscape and its people. There's an incredible stillness to her writing that isn't inert -- it's alive and almost luminescent. Some have likened her writing to the paintings of Georgia O'Keefe, and certainly there is a resemblance. Both women drew inspiration from...more

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Jun 23, 2007 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who loves the beauty of the southwest or is interested in the lives of early missionaries

Recommended by a tour guide in Santa Fe who said the descriptions of the people and place were dead on.

This is my first Willa Cather and I have high praise for her story-telling ability. This novel was odd - I did not have a strong liking for the characters but I was compelled to keep reading. This compulsion did not come from any great suspensful plot, instead the plot (if you could even call it that) was nothing more than the string of completely unrelated events that happen to a person during...more

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Elizabeth This is my first Willa Cather and I have high praise for her story-telling ability. This novel was odd - I did not have a strong liking for the charac...more
Jun 23, 2007 04:07pm

deleted user I'm two-thirds of the way through *Death Comes for the Archbishop* and I like your review, especially the last sentence, with its emphasis on place. I...more
Oct 19, 2008 10:15am

Dec 15, 2010 Dagny rated it 5 of 5 stars

As it happens some wonderful books have escaped our reading them. Years will go by, decades, meaningful as these books would have been at any time, they finally ignite for the first time in our minds. Death Comes for the Archbishop was written in the nineteen twenties, depicting characters and events in the latter half of previous century.The setting, except the prologue, is in New Mexico, a place I love and where I lived for five years (which is one reason I am dumbfounded by my not having read...more As it happens some wonderful books have escaped our reading them. Years will go by, decades, meaningful as these books would have been at any time, they finally ignite for the first time in our minds. Death Comes for the Archbishop was written in the nineteen twenties, depicting characters and events in the latter half of previous century.The setting, except the prologue, is in New Mexico, a place I love and where I lived for five years (which is one reason I am dumbfounded by my not having read this book earlier).

If we love something we feel proprietary; there is no fooling us as to its representation. Anything can be set in New Mexico, unless recognition impacts me I am unmoved. I had to read this book as slowly as only the best books I have read. I needed to linger with the writer, to adore the way she presented the loved object, to remember my New Mexico and to go farther, to imagine anew how things could have been. For that is what one does in New Mexico, the past is there still. The writer and I became one for the journey, or rather, we both become a Franciscan, the protagonist French Archbishop. When Death comes for him I parted from Cather too, knowing our bishop was so much happier, not just for having loved God, which he would have anywhere, but for having gotten to love New Mexico. The fictional hero, the writer and the reader live forever together in that love.

There is no New Mexico without its people. When Cather chose her emissary moulded on a real historical figure the alignment had to be his and his way of meeting the people. Therefore I can not see his conflict with the local, powerful and charismatic Hispanic church leaders as in any way disparaging them ( as I read someone complaining of); quite the contrary; Cather recognizes them while yielding to historical facts. The Navajo, the Pueblo people, they are observed in wonder. While there are some utter (white) villains the most conflicted character representation is that of Kit Carson, the scout, on the one hand an admirable friend, on the other a scourge of the Navajo people. The old Europeans, the new European-Americans, the old European- Americans, the old Americans; what a gathering in an extraordinary place through this book.

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Jan 26, 2013 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Through one man's story, Willa Cather fashions a thumbprint history of Santa Fé, New Mexico and its environs.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" takes place in the mid-19th Century, but hundreds of years'-worth of prior events are brought to life in the famed scribe's limped prose.

The short novel recounts the life of Father Jean Marie LaTour, a fictional (?) French Jesuit, woven into the fabric of New Mexican lore as he rubs soldiers with scout and Indian killer Kit Carson, jousts with the Cathol...more Through one man's story, Willa Cather fashions a thumbprint history of Santa Fé, New Mexico and its environs.

"Death Comes for the Archbishop" takes place in the mid-19th Century, but hundreds of years'-worth of prior events are brought to life in the famed scribe's limped prose.

The short novel recounts the life of Father Jean Marie LaTour, a fictional (?) French Jesuit, woven into the fabric of New Mexican lore as he rubs soldiers with scout and Indian killer Kit Carson, jousts with the Catholic poo-bah in Taos, Father Antonio Jose Martínez, and others peopling the time and region.

The title is a misnomer. The story is one of LaTour's entire missionary life, with memories of a youth in France thrown in for some Old World/New World contrast. His death comes only at the end, and without much surprise.

This yarn is episodic, and moves from the mid-1800s to the later ones in fits and starts, zig-zags, backs-and-forths, but for all that, has a sense of being at least mildly woven.

It is not a classic narrative that develops and reaches a climax. It is, simply, the life of a man moving among the notable and not so notable of old New Mexico, expending energy in his particular calling, gathering experience and enduring hardship until his own ending, unhappy as it is for us all.

highwayscribery took "Death Comes to the Archbishop" on a recent trip to New Mexico and it served, eighty-something years later, as a marvelous tour guide because the state's history is hammered into (and out of) its landscape and everywhere places or features detailed in Cather's book jump out at you.

Her descriptions of the land are dead-on. Early in the story, LaTour approaches his destination. The reader is with him:

"As the wagons went forward and the sun sank lower, a sweep of red carnelian-coloured hills lying at the foot of the mountains came into view; they curved like two arms about a depression in the plain; and in that depression was Santa Fé, at last! A thin wavering adobe town...green plaza...at one end of a church with two earthen towers that rose high above the flatness. The long main street began at the church, the town seemed to flow fro it like a stream from a spring."

A spring that flowed into the author's heart like manna and unto the bookish and adventurous alike, for decades after.
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May 30, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Death Comes For the Archbishop is a book that appears to be about almost nothing but is really about a lot.

The novel addresses the lives of two French missionary priests in the American southwest. They travel, establish churches, get a little older, part, meet, part again, and talk through the nuances of their faith and expanding roles in the Catholic church among Mexicans and Native Americans with wildly different perspectives of faith but respect for good men. I like how Cather avoids what can...more Death Comes For the Archbishop is a book that appears to be about almost nothing but is really about a lot.

The novel addresses the lives of two French missionary priests in the American southwest. They travel, establish churches, get a little older, part, meet, part again, and talk through the nuances of their faith and expanding roles in the Catholic church among Mexicans and Native Americans with wildly different perspectives of faith but respect for good men. I like how Cather avoids what can best be described as an event or conflict-based storyline; in other words, no great villain emerges for the missionaries to vanquish. No climactic battle scenes take place. My heart rate was never challenged. The two men form relationships with the new (to them) land’s natives and maneuver diocese politics. They exchange visions of how the church should exist in the territory. They become each other’s quiet support and exist with the type of friendship that, over many years, requires few words.

I think Cather slightly romanticizes some of the hardships; she’ll brush off a week traveling on a donkey’s back with a few picturesque sentences. You damn sure fucking well will not see me riding a donkey anywhere, and if I did, you better write more than a couple goddamn sentences about the trip. Anyway, I can live with that minimization because I think Cather’s going for less of a traditional description of missionaries’ travails (and to be fair, she does have the priests encounter a couple harrowing situations) and more of a serene meditation on how men of faith reflect upon their lives both on a day to day basis and at the end, when they know they’re facing their final hours. The novel’s final twenty pages are a beautiful tribute to a character who has lived his life the best he could, with grace and depth, and wonders where the time has gone. I don’t know if death is that easy. I doubt it. But I see at what Cather’s aiming, and hell, there’s nothing wrong with what she’s trying to do. She’s shooting for noble stars.

This book reminded me particularly of two other writers. First, and this is more place than style, is Cormac McCarthy, who writes brilliantly about similar terrain but, uh, definitely tackles the stories of the landscape in different ways. The second is Marilynne Robinson and her Gilead. I love Robinson’s book and would wager she’s a Cather fan because these two excellent novels share quite a bit between them.

Somebody told me Death Comes For the Archbishop is a Cather departure, but this is the only Cather book I’ve read, so I can’t speak on that level one way or the other. This novel was different than I expected: I guess I thought all Cather’s work involved intrepid frontier women or something and I stumble upon a book about two priests wandering around New Mexico. Whatever works. I liked the novel, really, and I imagine I’ll pick up another of her books eventually.

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Nov 04, 2008 Jukka added it

Shelves: cather-books

Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
November's Book Club Read

Just quotes:

"Where there is great love there are always miracles. One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a mom...more Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
November's Book Club Read

Just quotes:

"Where there is great love there are always miracles. One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always."

"Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!"

"The apple trees were in blossom, the cherry blooms had gone by. The air and the earth interpenetrated in the warm gusts of spring; the soil was full of sunlight, and the sunlight full of red dust. The air one breathed was saturated with earthy smells, and the grass under foot had a reflection of blue sky in it."

"When they left the rock or tree or sand dune that had sheltered them for the night, the Navajo was careful to obliterate every trace of their temporary occupation. He buried the embers of the fire and the remnants of food, unpiled any stones he had piled together, filled up the holes he had scooped in the sand. Since this was exactly Jacinto's procedure, Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air.

It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance. The Navajo hogans, among the sand and willows, were made of sand and willows. None of the pueblos would at that time admit glass windows into their dwellings. The reflection of the sun on the glazing was to them ugly and unnatural--even dangerous. Moreover, these Indians disliked novelty and change. They came and went by the old paths worn into the rock by the feet of their fathers, used the old natural stairway of stone to climb to their mesa towns, carried water from the old springs, even after white men had dug wells.

In the working of silver or drilling of turquoise the Indians had exhaustless patience; upon their blankets and belts and ceremonial robes they lavished their skill and pains. But their conception of decoration did not extend to the landscape. They seemed to have none of the European's desire to "master" nature, to arrange and re-create. They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which they found themselves. This was not so much from indolence, the Bishop thought, as from an inherited caution and respect. It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as if the spirits of earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse. When they hunted, it was with the same discretion; an Indian hunt was never a slaughter. They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it."

BTW: In reference to the last quote, showing a universalness of this concept, i recently came across a statement while listening to a BBC radio report about the Ainu people, the indigenous people of Hokkaido Island, in north Japan: "Only take from the earth what you really need."(less)

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Mar 14, 2008 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

My bias on this review is that I LOVE Willa Cather's writing. I always feel a bit nervous recommending her books because the story lines aren't usually too thrilling. But, man, can this woman paint a picture. I'm living in Southern Arizona right now and this book takes place in the desert of New Mexico in the 1800s. She described my scenery so well and so lovingly that I'm seeing where I'm living much better than before and I think that is rad.
The book is more a compilation of short stories than...more

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Jan 25, 2008 Cecile rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

My respect for the writing of Willa Cather only increases. Somehow this novel had passed me by. It is a pleasure to read a story so well-written and calm. It gives the impression of a series of limpid pools - quiet description of lives spent in devotion to an ideal, lovely descriptions of the landscape of the Southwest. The book should be viewed in the context of the social mores of the time - her view of native Americans and Mexicans is coloured by the time in which she lived and wrote. I remem...more

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May 24, 2008 Joyce added it

Re-read on the occasion of my first trip to Santa Fe.

I often compare _Death Comes for the Archbishop_ to a very "Eastern" novel like _The Great Gatsby_, which occurs within a short span of time and among people whose major characteristic is their complete lack of adult values. It's amazingly rare to write concretely about a lifetime of patient striving towards some accretive goal -- where the greatest "incidents" might be moments of inner doubt, minor misunderstandings within long enduring relat...more

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Jan 09, 2008 Erin Mallon rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 01, 2008 Celia rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone

Recommended to Celia by: nobody

I learned how the cathedral in Santa Fe came to be built, among many other things in the New Mexico of the mid 1800s. It was very satisfying to clomp across the desert with these guys, Father LaTour and his friend from seminary (in France) Father Vaillant.

Being from there, I craved reading about the beautiful places as I remember them from pre-casino days. Cather captures the land and people unspoiled by the church and other greedy white guys.

It's written in shortish episodes, which are of cours...more

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Jan 13, 2010 Linds rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1800-s, christianity, classic, inspirational, read-in-2010, southwest, western, latino-fic

This is the story about a plain, humble man that gently and moderately goes about his mission work to Mexicans and Navajos in the 1800's.

The good part of this book is the language. Willa Cather is a masterful writer. I lived in Arizona for seven years and she describes the landscape so accurately. I could feel the sights and smells. It was also refreshing to have a genuinely loving and humble priest character for once. The only other one I can think of is Father McCallahan from MASH.

The bad par...more

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Aug 12, 2008 booklady rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: any Christian

Shelves: 1990s, classic, biography, historical-fiction, religion

My favorite by Cather; read this aloud when we did our family Grand Circle trip, especially the part in New Mexico. Such a gentle, quiet story. I know that my children were not touched by it as I am/was, but I'm still glad they know about it. It is a fictionalized account of the real life of the first archbishop of the western territory, a simple, saintly man who lived his faith without fuss or fanfare. The book is actually soothing to read, but I think it takes a certain maturity to fully appre...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Death Comes for the Archbishop sprang from Willa Cather’s love for the land and cultures of the American Southwest. Published in 1927 to both praise and perplexity, it has since claimed for itself a major place in twentieth-century literature.

When Cather first visited the American Southwest in 1912, she found a new world to imagine and soon came to feel that "the story of the Catholic Church in [the Southwest] was the most interesting of all its stories." The narrative follows Bishop Jean Lato

...more

Death Comes for the Archbishop sprang from Willa Cather’s love for the land and cultures of the American Southwest. Published in 1927 to both praise and perplexity, it has since claimed for itself a major place in twentieth-century literature.

When Cather first visited the American Southwest in 1912, she found a new world to imagine and soon came to feel that "the story of the Catholic Church in [the Southwest] was the most interesting of all its stories." The narrative follows Bishop Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, friends since their childhood in France, as they organize the new Roman Catholic diocese of Santa Fe subsequent to the Mexican War. While seeking to revive the church and build a cathedral in the desert, the clerics, like their historical prototypes, Bishop Jean Lamy and Father Joseph Machebeuf, face religious corruption, natural adversity, and the loneliness of living in a strange and unforgiving land.

The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition presents groundbreaking research, establishing a new text that reflects Cather’s long and deep involvement with her story. The historical essay traces the artistic and spiritual development that led to its writing. The broad-ranging explanatory notes illuminate the elements of French, Mexican, Hispanic, and Native American cultures that meet in the course of the narrative; they also explain the part played by the land and its people—their history, religion, art, and languages. The textual essay and apparatus reveal Cather’s creative process and enable the reader to follow the complex history of the text.

From Library Journal

Nebraska pulls out all the stops for this superb scholarly edition of Cathers 1927 novel. This edition includes a newly restored text along with several historical essays and explanatory notes by several scholars. Academic libraries supporting hardcore American literature curricula will want this volume.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“A truly remarkable book . . . Soaked through and through with atmosphere . . . From the riches of her imagination and sympathy Miss Cather has distilled a very rare piece of literature. It stands out, from the very resistance it opposes to classification.”
—NEW YORK TIMES

“The most sensuous of writers, Willa Cather builds her imagined world as solidly as our five senses build the universe around us.”
—Rebecca West

“[Cather’s] descriptions of the Indian mesa towns on the rock are as beautiful, as unjudging, as lucid, as her descriptions of the Bishop’s cathedral. It is an art of ‘making,’ of clear depiction—of separate objects, whose whole effect works slowly and mysteriously in the reader, and cannot be summed up . . . Cather’s composed acceptance of mystery is a major, and rare, artistic achievement.”
—from the Introduction by A. S. Byatt

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Apr 29, 2013 Arlene rated it 3 of 5 stars

The setting for this novel was the desert Southwest, mostly New Mexico and Arizona of the 1850's, which, to the eyes of the new French Archbishop, was a totally foreign land in topography and culture. Willa Cather did a masterful job of painting pictures of the stark beauty of that land and its people for the reader to view just as the new Archbishop viewed it. "The desert, the mountains and mesas, were continually re-formed and re-colored by the cloud shadows. The whole country seemed fluid to...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Francis Gahren rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, fiction

Death Comes for the Archbishop sprang from Willa Cather's love for the land and cultures of the American Southwest. Published in 1927 to both praise and perplexity, it has since claimed for itself a major place in twentieth-century literature. The narrative follows Bishop Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, friends since their childhood in France, as they organize the new Roman Catholic diocese of Santa Fe subsequent to the Mexican War. While seeking to revive the church and build a cathedra...more Death Comes for the Archbishop sprang from Willa Cather's love for the land and cultures of the American Southwest. Published in 1927 to both praise and perplexity, it has since claimed for itself a major place in twentieth-century literature. The narrative follows Bishop Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant, friends since their childhood in France, as they organize the new Roman Catholic diocese of Santa Fe subsequent to the Mexican War. While seeking to revive the church and build a cathedral in the desert, the clerics, like their historical prototypes, Bishop Jean Laury and Father Joseph Machebeuf, face religious corruption, natural adversity, and the loneliness of living in a strange and unforgiving land.

The historical essay traces the artistic and spiritual development that led to its writing. The broad-ranging explanatory notes illuminate the elements of French, Mexican, Hispanic, and Native American cultures that meet in the course of the narrative, they also explain the part played by the land and its people - their history, religion, art, and languages.

Quotes from the book

“He often quoted to his students that passage from their Auvergnat, Pascal: that Man was lost and saved in a garden.” (p.267)

“He wished now that long ago he had the leisure to write them down, that he could have arrested their flight by throwing about them the light and elastic mesh of the French tongue.” (p.277)

“He continued to murmur, to move his hands a little, and Magdalena thought he was trying to ask for something, or to tell them something. But in reality the Bishop was not there at all; he was standing in a tip-tilted green field among his native mountains, and he was trying to give consolation to a young man (Father Joseph) who was being torn in two before his eyes by the desire to go and the necessity to stay. He was trying to forge a new Will in that devout and exhausted priest; and the time was short, for the diligence (cart) for Paris was already rumbling down the mountain gorge.” (p. 299)

Notes from the book

Jansenism was a branch of Catholic thought that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. Originating in the writings of the Flemish theologian Cornelius Otto Jansen, Jansenism formed a distinct movement within the Roman Catholic Church from the 16th to 18th centuries, but was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical (Wikipedia article).

Gregory XVI (mentioned in the beginning of the book) was pope between 1831-1846. Upon researching his life, I discovered that popes in the 18th and 19th centuries were often kidnapped and held (Pius VII by Napoleon), kings had “veto” power over their election (King Fernando VII of Spain, 1841), and other interesting facts. Gregory did not like technology (gas lamps, railways) because he foresaw that they would give rise to a middle class and hence reduce his monarchical power.
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Dec 08, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather (1927) #61

December 8, 2012

What a simply delightful book. So easy to read and understand, yet so packed full of passion, flavor and intense character development. I had no idea what this book was about and while the subject of missionaries in the southwest could have been a snoozer, Cather turns it into pure magic. The descriptions of landscape make you feel not only like you are there, but leave a residual aching beauty in your mind. For instance:

“The...more

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Dec 06, 2012 Joy H. marked it as to-read

Added 12/6/12

On 12/6/12, I posted the following at my GR book group:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nina wrote: "Speaking of reading older books; I am re-reading, "Death Comes to the Archbishop," for the third or fourth time. I have lost count but it's been a while now since I've once again delved into one of my all time favorite books. Joy, have you read it?"

Nina, I don't remember reading Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather, but I think I remember reading some of Cather's book...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Nancy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-classics

This is one of the most elegant, effortlessly engaging books I've experienced.

It doesn't require an interest in religion to appreciate;

It isn't necessary to want to explore the early Southwest through the author's eyes;

It is enough to simply read and let Cather's simple, beautiful prose wash over you and transport you---wherever it takes you, personally.

I really do believe this book has something in it that can appeal to any reader who seeks something in a book other than diversion. It is hard...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Carsten Thomsen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you.

This is not a novel of plot - which one finds out along the dusty way - it's more a chronicle of various events of two french catholic missionaries - which Willa Cather have based on two real life characters.

The story covers several decades beginning in 1851 when Father Latour reaches Santa Fe to become Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico. The task is daunting - trying to recover and rebuild their french version of the...more

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Jul 16, 2012 The Chestertonian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-lit

This was an odd book for me to really love because its main strength is not in unique characters, but in vivid scene painting. And plot? There really isn't one to speak of. But who needs plot when you can bring deserts and pueblos and caves and tamarisk trees to life the way Willa Cather can?

The story deals with two French Catholic missionary priests sent to an unknown diocese spreading out around Santa Fe, and with the Mexicans and Native Americans among whom they work. But interestingly, the m...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Kerri rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am sure I enjoyed this book more for having been to New Mexico only a year ago. Cather describes the landscape perfectly, especially the light and color.

“It was both intense and soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied candlelight, an aura of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees, illuminating their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it warmed the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander bloom to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering ov...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Libby rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is narrated in episodes from the lives of two French Missionaries, Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant. LaTour has been appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico, and has asked his friend and coworker, Vaillant to accompany him into this new territory.They are submersed in a new world unlike anything they have known and must learn the ways of people totally foreign to them.
The episodes tell of their hardships and joys, of the people they meet, such as Kit Carson and Manue...more This book is narrated in episodes from the lives of two French Missionaries, Father Jean Marie Latour and Father Joseph Vaillant. LaTour has been appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico, and has asked his friend and coworker, Vaillant to accompany him into this new territory.They are submersed in a new world unlike anything they have known and must learn the ways of people totally foreign to them.
The episodes tell of their hardships and joys, of the people they meet, such as Kit Carson and Manuelito, the famous Navajo chief. In places long ignored by the Church hierarchy, they find deep seated faith and great love, as well as lazy, venal clergy and hostile tribes. They are alternatively opposed and befriended by the populace and they learn that they must make adjustments as well as expecting their flock to do so. Over the years of their lives, they have success by increment, Latour becoming ArchBishop of New Mexico and Vaillant Bishop of Colorado. They are sustained by their faith in God, their love for each other and their deep sense of love for the Southwest. In fact, in a great way, this book is a love story. The old Spanish territories of the American Southwest are the great love interest in this book. Santa Fe, Taos, Canyon de Chelly, Shiprock: all are described in loving detail, especially in the ninth and last episode, where Latour lies dying. As his many friends and parishioners pray for him, they think his mind is going, but it is still sharp. merely occupied with the past and all its many events and places.

This book is completely unlike the type of literature I usually favor, but it captured me and would not let me go. I read it in one sitting and was sorry to finish it. If it had a flaw for me, it was the episodic structure. I always wanted more of the stories. I have heard people say that this story was wordy, but I did not find it so. The descriptions of the country were elaborate, but beautifully written and necessary to create the sense of place the book conveys. Obviously, the writing draws heavily on Cather's youth in the American West, and her love of the country permeates the book. Despite dealing with times that were often violent and events that were complex, this book was gentle and simple. I found it beautiful and moving and I hope you do, too.(less)

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