Death Comes for the Archbishop

In the canon of great American literature, Willa Cather's 1927 novel "Death Comes for the Archbishop" stands as a true masterpiece. Through the deceptively simple tale of a French Catholic priest sent to establish a diocese in the rugged territory of New Mexico, Cather weaves a profound meditation on faith, culture, and the human spirit. It is a novel that rewards multiple readings with its subtle characterizations, moral insight, and luminous prose.

The novel follows Father Jean Marie Latour as he travels from his native France to the American Southwest in 1851 to serve as the Apostolic Vicar for New Mexico. Accompanied by his friend and fellow priest Father Joseph Vaillant, Latour confronts a harsh and unfamiliar landscape peopled by Mexicans, Native Americans, and rough-hewn frontiersmen. Over the decades, Latour slowly builds his church and forges connections with his far-flung flock, learning to appreciate their foreign ways and finding beauty in the spare desert land.

At its heart, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" is a novel of encounters between cultures. Latour is a cultivated Frenchman steeped in European tradition, but he gradually opens himself to the ancient rituals and earthy piety of the Mexicans and Indians. Cather is especially fascinated by the Hopi, whose mesa villages and spiritual ceremonies Latour visits. A crucial scene involves Latour's mystical experience with a sacred snake, suggesting the mysteries of the Indians' religion. Remarkably free of condescension, Cather depicts the Southwest's cultures on their own terms.

Cather's prose style in the novel is justly celebrated for its clarity and precision. With a few well-chosen details, she can evoke a landscape, a room, or a face. Consider this description of the country through which Latour rides: "The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still⁠—and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world" Cather's language takes on a scriptural cadence, reflecting Latour's spiritual frame of mind.

Structurally, the novel is episodic, almost like a medieval saint's life or a string of parables. Latour's story spans decades, but Cather focuses on a few key incidents and interactions that gradually reveal his character. We see his practicality, his aesthetic sensibilities, his moments of doubt and transcendence. The novel's climactic scene, as the title suggests, is Latour's dignified confrontation with his own mortality, having fulfilled his mission in the desert.

Born in Virginia in 1873, Willa Cather moved with her family to the Nebraska prairie at age nine, an experience that shaped her literary imagination. After college and a few years working as a journalist and teacher, she dedicated herself to writing fiction, drawing inspiration from the pioneer history and landscapes of the American Midwest and Southwest. Her other major works include "O Pioneers!", "My Ántonia," and "The Song of the Lark." She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for "One of Ours."

While "Death Comes for the Archbishop" is sometimes faulted for a certain dramatic flatness, it is redeemed by the depth of its characterizations and the sheer beauty of its prose. Cather based her novel on the real-life figure of Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the first Archbishop of Santa Fe, but she transmuted his story into something timeless and mythic. The novel's feeling for the landscapes and peoples of the Southwest is unmatched in American literature.

Some intriguing details: Cather visited the Southwest in 1912 and was inspired to write about it after reading Lamy's biography. She considered the novel one of her best works and a personal favorite. The book's memorable line ("He was soon to have done with calendared time") was added at the suggestion of Cather's friend, the novelist Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

Nearly a century after its publication, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" remains a captivating work of art. In its finely etched portrait of a man of faith and its deep feeling for the Southwest, it discovers a timeless current of the human spirit. It is a novel to savor slowly, like a walk through the desert at sunset, until it yields its hard-won wisdom and beauty.