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 |
(The Key Book Publishers, Inc., Clarement, California.)
". . . young and inexperienced writers in this country3 have a bad habit of sending their books to me . . . I must admit it does not give me much pleasure . . . I glance at them, but very seldom read them. I opened your book4 without any very serious intention. I liked it at once. In the first few pages there was a real feeling for a kind of country, and that quality in writing always takes hold of me. I read every word of the book with the keenest interest and sympathy. It has the one literary quality which seems to me more important than any other, - sincerity. I cannot doubt that it is the story of an actual experience. It has made me realize the terribleness of the Russian revolution more vividly than anything else I have read. The fate of those good people of Khortiza5 is only too real to me . . . in a narrative like this, the best quality that language can have is to unobtrusive. You1 are never vague and you are never rhetorical. . . and you do not fall into vulgar usage . . . in the use of language, keep to your present simplicity and clearness. One might almost say that in language nothing is gold that glitters.
I am writing this letter myself, though I very seldom touch a typing machine, - because I want you to feel that it is sincere and personal . . .
Very cordially yours, Willa Cather. January 15, 1931.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3037.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3037
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Document is a partial transcription.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dirk Gora 1
- Date letter was written
- January 15, 1931
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Ellery Sedgwick Papers, 1898-1969 (Ms. N-854), Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA
Individual Annotations
Likely the Chortitza Colony, a Mennonite colony founded in 1789 in the area which now contains the city of Zaporizhia, Ukraine. The colonists were driven away, or fled, under Communist persecution in the early twentieth century.
Person Annotations
Navall, Deidrich D. (1887-1958). Ukrainian-American professor of
languages. The man who later called himself Deidrich Navall was
born Dietrich Neufeld in Zagradovka, a Mennonite settlement in South Russia
(now Kherson Oblast, Ukraine) and earned his doctorate at the University of
Jena. He and his wife, Lotte M., first emigrated to Canada before entering
the U.S. in 1923. Fluent in at least nine languages, Navall taught at
Bluffton College, Antioch College, the University of New Mexico, and Pomona
College. In 1937 Navall became one of the first faculty members of
Pepperdine College and headed its department of modern languages. Navall
also published at least one book, Russian Dance of
Death (1930), under the pseudonym Dirk Gora.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Russian Dance of Death (1930) by Dirk Gora
