Willa Cather中英对照生平介绍

Willa CatherWilla Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 –April 24, 1947) was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. Cather grew up in Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, then at the age of 33 she moved to New York, where she lived for the rest of her life.She was born Wilella Sibert Cather in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia(see Willa Cather Birthplace). Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather (d. 1928), whose family had lived on land in the valley for six generations. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak (d. 1931), a former school teacher. Within a year of Cather's birth, the family moved to Willow Shade, a Greek Revival-style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents.The Cathers moved to Nebraska in 1883, joining Charles' parents, when Willa was nine years old. Her father tried his hand at farming for eighteen months; then he moved the family into the town of Red Cloud, where he opened a real estate and insurance business, and the children attended school for the first time.Cather's time in the western state, still on thefrontier, was a deeply formative experience for her. She was intensely moved by the dramatic environment and weather, and the various cultures of the European-American, immigrant and Native American families in the area. Her town was named for the renowned Oglala Lakota chief. Mary Cather had six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. Cather was closest to her brothers, less close to her sisters whom, according to her biographer Hermione Lee, Cather "seems not to have liked very much."Cather had planned to major in science at the University of Nebraska –she hoped to become a medical doctor. After her essay on Thomas Carlyle was published in the Nebraska State Journal during her freshman year, she became a regular contributor to the Journal, changed her major, and graduated in 1894 with a B.A. in English.As a student at the University of Nebraska in the early 1890s, Cather sometimes used the masculine nickname "William" and wore masculine clothing. A photograph in the University of Nebraska archives depicts Cather dressed like a young man and with "her hair shingled, at a time when females wore their hair fashionably long."Throughout Cather's adult life, her most significant friendships were with women. These included her college friend Louise Pound; the Pittsburgh socialite Isabelle McClung, with whom Cather traveled to Europe; opera singer Olive Fremstad; pianist Yaltah Menuhin; and mostnotably, the editor Edith Lewis, with whom Cather lived the last 39 years of her life. Cather's sexual identity remains a point of contention among scholars. While many argue for Cather as a lesbian and interpret her work through a lens of queer theory, a highly vocal contingent of Cather scholars adamantly oppose such considerations.The scholar Janet Sharistanian has written, "Cather did not label herself a lesbian nor would she wish us to do so, and we do not know whether her relationships with women were sexual. In any case, it is anachronistic to assume that if Cather's historical context had been different, she would have chosen to write overtly about homoerotic love."Cather's relationship with Edith Lewis began in the early 1900s. The two women lived together in a series of apartments in New York City from 1908 until the writer's death in 1947. From 1913 to 1927, Cather and Lewis lived at No. 5 Bank Street in Greenwich Village. They moved when the apartment was scheduled for demolition during construction of the Seventh Avenue subway line. Cather selected Lewis as the literary trustee for her estate.Born into a Baptist family, in 1922 Cather joined the Episcopal Church. She had been attending local Episcopal services since her first year in New York in 1906.Beginning in 1922, Cather spent summers on Grand Manan Island, in New Brunswick, Canada. She bought a cottage in Whale Cove, on theBay of Fundy. It was the only house she ever owned. She stopped coming to Grand Manan Island when Canada entered WWII, since travel was more difficult and the island doctor had died, making her cancer more uncomfortable. She valued the seclusion of the island, and may have even preferred that she and her companions be the only inhabitants. Cather died on April 24, 1947 in New York City of a cerebral hemorrhage and was buried in the Old Burying Ground in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.A resolutely private person, Cather had destroyed many old drafts, personal papers, and letters. Her will restricted the ability of scholars to quote from those personal papers that remain.中文介绍薇拉•凯瑟（Willa Cather，1873年12月7日－1947年4月24日）是美国19世纪的著名作家，以"One of Ours"一书，于1923年得到普立兹奖，作品以擅长描写女性及美国早期移民的拓荒开垦生活而闻名（著作如《哦•拓荒者！》及《我的安东妮亚》)，为美国重要的乡土作者之一。