Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
I am trilled3 to think you cast a ballot for me, but why in the world for membership in the Philosophical Society4? Don't you know that I am the least philosophical person in the world? I cannot read five pages of Hegel5, no not five paragraphs, without tying my head up in cold water. Santayana6 and Bergson7 are the only philosophers I can read with pleasure - and perhaps that is only because they both write well. However, I thank you warmly for your vote, and if I am actually made a member of this dignified body, I shall try to cultivate my mind a little. At any rate, I shall have had the pleasure of hearing from you.
Always cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2026.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2026
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Vilhjalmur Stefansson 1
- Date letter was written
- March 22, 1934
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Vilhjalmur Stefansson papers (Mss-98), Dartmouth College, Rauner Special Collections Library, Hanover, NH
Individual Annotations
On 14 March 1934 Stefansson wrote Cather that he was nominating her for membership in the American Philosophical Society because the organization needed more women as members and needed more authors to balance the scientists.
The American Philosophical Society was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin to "promote useful knowledge." In the twentieth century, it continued this broad focus on scholarly knowledge, not philosophical study narrowly defined, as Cather assumed.
Person Annotations
Stefansson, Vilhjalmur (1879-1962). Canadian-American Arctic
explorer. Stefansson was born in Manitoba, Canada, to Icelandic
immigrant parents. In 1881 the family moved to North Dakota, and he received
a BA from the University of Iowa in 1903, then studied divinity and
anthropology at Harvard University without taking a degree. In 1906 he was
supposed to join the Anglo-American Polar Expedition as an ethnologist, but
unable to find the shipwrecked expedition party, he wintered with the Inuit
and learned their language and culture. My Life with the
Eskimo (1913) described this and subsequent expeditions to study
the culture of the indigenous people of the polar regions. He led the
Canadian Arctic Expedition, the subject of The Friendly
Arctic (1921). He left fieldwork in 1918 and moved to New York City
to write and lecture full time. He nominated Cather for membership in the
American Philosophical Society in 1924, and Cather invited him to dinner in
1936 when she and Edith Lewis were reading about Arctic exploration. In
1941, he married Evelyn Baird, and both joined the faculty of Dartmouth
College. He died in Hanover, NH.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831). German philosopher. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart, Germany, to Georg Ludwig and Magdalena Hegel. He is widely considered one of the most important figures in German Idealism, alongside philosophers such as Immanuel Kant. Some of his most influential works include Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Science of Logic (made up of three books published in 1812, 1813, and 1816), and Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817). In a 1934 letter to Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Cather expresses her strong aversion to Hegel’s work.
Santayana, George (1863-1952). Spanish American philosopher, author, and critic. George Santayana was born and spent the first eight years his life in Spain. His Spanish diplomat father and his mother, the Scottish-born widow of another Spanish diplomat, moved to Boston, MA, so that his mother could fulfill a promise to raise the children of her first marriage there. George’s father soon returned to Spain, but George stayed with his mother and half siblings and earned a BA (1886) and PhD (1889) from Harvard University, where he then taught Philosophy. He resigned in 1912 and spent the rest of his life in Europe. His one novel, The Last Puritan (1936), and his autobiography, Persons and Places (1944), were bestsellers in the U.S. He died in Italy. Cather read both his philosophical and literary works with interest, calling him a “favorite” (#1316).
Bergson, Henri-Louis (1859-1941). French philosopher. Born in Paris, France, Henri Bergson was the second of seven children born to his Polish father and English mother. After university, Bergson taught at various lycées outside of Paris until 1897 when he returned to his alma mater, École Normale Supérieure, as a professor of philosophy. In 1900 he joined the Collège de France, one of the country’s most prestigious academic institutions. In 1907 Bergson published what would become his most well-known book, L’Évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution). He retired from the Collège de France in 1914 and the following year he became the first Jewish person awarded membership to the Académie Française. Bergson won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. Cather greatly admired his work, calling him one of the only philosophers she could “read with pleasure” (#2026).
Place Annotations
