When Willa Cather's life began

 Willa Cather had a maxim: “Life began for me when I ceased to admire and began to remember.”

She liked what the Greeks called anamnesis, which she talked about as the memory of important things, matters of human heritage. 

One example is land. Cather wanted to see “nothing but land: not a country at all, but the materials from which countries are made.”

I do too. I’m interested in how we humans relate to the land and find our place in it, wherever we are. I suppose that’s why I like Cather’s work, especially her stories.

I hope to read one today. It’s her birthday. 

• Source: Dorothy Van Ghent, Willa Cather, which was part of the Minnesota Pamphlet Series published by the University of Minnesota. I found it in Seven American Women Writers of the Twentieth Century, edited by Maureen Howard; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.  The quotations are on pp. 93 and 96.