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Notes from Isador Hillyer, Part I

Notes from Isador Hillyer

John Ruskin ~ The Shepherd on the Rock ~ Romanticism and Ecology

Dear Reader:

Allow me to introduce myself:  I am the rarely encountered-on-the-street old man who has, by the work of both destiny and fated fortune, become the silent partner, manager, and advisor to my young friends and colleagues who are also the artists of Vista Lirica.   Many of my 88 years (I will be 90 years old on 1 April 2008, at 5:07 a.m. EST) have taken me from Manaus to Mindanao – and all points between, both in an easterly direction and a westerly one.  The trade that demanded such extensive travel – and by ‘demanded’, you can believe, dear reader, that I am not complaining – no, not in the slightest way -- was that of an antique jewelry importer/exporter.  Although I still get an erotic twinge when, out of the corner of my antique eyes, I see a perfectly tumbled piece of fiery Brazilian topaz gently pendulant upon a delicate gold chain or a multi-hued lapis lazuli, cut from Badakhshani mines, barely hidden as the beautiful long black locks of a tall Armenian woman might obscure such an earring of such magical mystery as her head turns, I have lain this trade to rest and settled down to attend in these current years to my first passion – music.  I was a good amateur violist and pianist in my youth in Rumania, and although I never ventured into the professional arena as a musician, I developed a fine-tuned ear and an aesthetic sense that has guided me throughout my life.

Throughout these extensive travels, I went to more concerts than, let’s say, if the most modern example of computer technology were directed to tally up the sum, that computer would most likely be short-circuited.  We all know how many calls to Verizon and AOL and Gateway and back and forth and back again it would take to fix that one!!!   The wasted and frustrating hours!!  The endless encounters via phone with defective parts from the Stepford Wives Factory!! The insipid musak one is forced to listen to!! The numbing effect all this has on what is left of ones senses!!

So let us just say ‘many’ indeed.  So, my friends, in these last nearly nine decades, I have seen rapid changes in the many cities and countrysides of this planet which I have had the privilege of exploring and the many changes in the world of art and music which reflect these dizzying changes.

As I am a most experienced traveler, I shall act as your guide to various places and times, some of which you may not find on modern maps.   There is Vienna in the 1820’s when this city was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the musical capital of the world – Schubert lived there then; New Mexico in the 1850’s when it didn’t yet have distinct borders.  We will take some short side trips to modern Iraq, where, in past millennia some fascinating advanced cultures lived -- the Sumerians who developed the first written language (cuneiforms), Assyrians, Babylonians, Alchadeans, the list goes on.  Another short trip will take us to the Black Forest of Germany in early 1800’s and also the 1970’s.  John Ruskin delivered some lectures in London 1864, when the sun never dared to set on the British Empire. John Ruskin was well aware of the whoosh of change around him when he compiled the work known as Sesame and Lilies.  Our journey begins then and there in London at one of Ruskin’s lectures:

 John Ruskin on Ecology in the 19th century 

James Smithgard ran into the lecture hall 15 minutes before John Ruskin, nervously straightening his brown cravat.  The hall was a brightly lit room, walls painted white and tall windows that approached the 18 foot ceiling.  Large leafy ferns on faux-Doric pedestals were placed with measured forethought in back of the lectern.

The young Smithgard, heir to his father’s coal mine fortune came to this event with an equivocal mind.  He was aware of John Ruskin’s writings -- more so the writings on spiritual matters than on his better known essays on art.  He also came to the lecture in spite of strong admonitions from his father who knew Ruskin and despised him utterly.  His father had repeated to him that afternoon that the march of progress was as natural as war and further that Ruskin wanted to march backwards and hack jewels off the Crown. Smithgard Sr. believed that the crown was one small step away from God Almighty and further that his own work was in line with divine order.  James’ father’s strong words always filled James with a sense of awe.  James always showed his ambitious and dutiful side and kept mute his troubles.  Two days ago he returned to London from Manchester where the proud and stout Smithgard Sr. had sent him to meet with the Board of Directors of the Smithgard Coal outside the grey, damp city in the north of England. 

The constant cough that plagued James in Manchester had dissipated somewhat since his arrival back in London.  He sat there trying not to remember the horror of the sight of black sputum which stained his Liège linen handkerchief only three days ago. What was insuppressible to his memory was his ironic expression “how divine’ upon looking at the handkerchief after the attack had subsided. How easily he dismissed the possibility of tuberculosis.  He wouldn’t allow for it.

In an instant, James’ eye darted to a new arrival to the hall:  an old classmate from his academy days – Jack W. Bouchois, whom he hadn’t seen in 12 years, tried to play the bon vivant: carnation in boutonnière and a smug, witchy, impishly self-assured smile.   James remembered his nickname in school ‘Jack-be-nimble’ for he was indeed a nimble and quick sketch artist – his deftness made him instantly popular in all circles.  But Bouchois lacked both the suavité needed to pass as a bon vivant, though he imagined himself to have had it, as well as the depth of character to become a true artist.   As an afterthought, James also remembered great laughter that Jack stirred up from time to time in him and his classmates.  However, he could not possibly imagine Bouchois would attend anything of a serious nature such as what was about to occur in this lecture hall. Then again, he realized that Bouchois would be equally surprised to see Smithgard Jr. there, at least until he realized that Jack W.’s thoughts would never extend in that direction.

John Ruskin entered the room. A hush instantly came over the audience of 75.  Ruskin’s eyes and nose presented a peregrine no-nonsense intensity.   James had forgotten that the tall and imposing Ruskin was a Scot, and much less prone to rounded euphemisms as his English countrymen often were.  Ruskin cleared his throat and began:

 “You have despised Nature; that is to say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery.  The French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of France; you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of the earth.  Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars.  I [mean] that the beautiful places of the world- Switzerland, Italy, South Germany and so on – are, indeed, the truest cathedrals – places to be reverent in, and so worship in, and that we only care to drive through them/ and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. “You have put a railroad bridge over the falls of Schaffhausen.  You have tunneled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell’s chapel; you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva; there is not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with bellowing fire; there is no particle left of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes into --  I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all the rive shore of Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in the earth, from the mere drift of soot-laden air from places many miles away -- nor any foreign city in which the spread of your presence is not marked among its fair old street and happy gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers’ shops; the Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a beer-garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again, with “shrieks of delight.”  When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccoughs of self-satisfaction.  I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss integers of Zurich expressing their Chris- tian thanks for the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the “tower of the vineyards,” and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till evening.  It is pitiful, to have dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, of mirth^.” ∞ 

James Smithgard ingested Ruskin’s words thoroughly, pondering his message for days until he felt faint.  A week later, James found in the latest edition of Urban Lampoon Bouchois’ caricature of Ruskin guzzling beer while skiing down the Matterhorn with howitzers replacing ski poles --  directly into a tree; all this alongside an article entitled ‘John Killjoy Ruskin on Progress’.

In this year of 2006 I can only imagine similar cynical responses as Bouchois’: I hear the jeers in my mind’s ear and the ‘is he kidding?’s that Ruskin’s words might elicit. 

I request of you now, my attentive reader, to suspend your modern psyches for a moment and imagine what an early 19^th century psyche might perceive and yes fear when, let’s say, in the undisturbed Schwarzwald, the rhythmic hammerings of new railroad tracks are first heard?  Like the deathly monotonous pulse of Chopin’s Funeral March at m.m. = 56 to the quarter note, did

 strike                     STRIKE                         strike                      STRIKE    

resound through the pristine forest 10, 11, 12 hours per diem.  Is this not the pulsating rhythm of assembly lines, coal mines and oil pumps for decades that follow? Chopin’s Funeral March from the Sonata in b-flat minor:  Is it not a funeral march for us all? 

Think also dear reader of how this same Black -- yet still hanging in there -- Forest was the subject of many environmental warnings in the 1970’s when the bark of the trees looked quite perceptibly paler and its foliage horrifyingly less verdant to the concerned people who lived and visited there – the stain of acid rain.  Tick tock tick tock

Tick tock tick tock:   I now ask you to jump forward to a more recent year, namely 2002, when Hans Blix was interviewed following the tireless search to find those evil and, as it turns out, non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the desert sands of Iraq – these sands that keep ancient and knowledge-resplendent remains of the Sumers and Assyrians warm and covered.  What an uncanny juxtaposition for one land:   the oil and the ancient mysteries buried under the same sand.  Mr. Blix proclaimed that it was ecology we should all be paying close attention to, and not the insane propaganda of the American oil barons who want to exploit the Earth and then stuff oil money in their already oily and otherwise vacant athletic supporters [Isador’s paraphrasing].   What a traitor, and what an incompetent, mealy-mouthed, apple-pie-allergic wimp Mr. Blix was made out to be at that time.  What an unbalanced jousting match multitudinous politicians and media mouths forged against this one reserved and well-spoken man – the lone voice of truth amid the cacophony of confusion and fear! 

And how, trusted reader and confidant to my outbursts, do you perceive Mr. Blix’ insight now?  If I were to have believed such media-ocre extemporanea, I would be Marie – not Isador -- of Rumania!+  

Taking a deep breath and long exhalation a state of relaxation is mine again.  Looking down to the right at the campari and soda I poured for myself I see further relief in my immediate future. I take a hearty swig.  Yes an alchemy of bitter liquid can quell an old man’s tempers – 2 bitters can even cancel each other out.

 Willa Cather’s view of New Mexico ~ Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock 

Ah, the word-image virtuoso, the wonderful American writer Willa Cather now comes to my reverent and venerable mind.  How she succinctly captures the polarity of the psyches of the Native Americans and Westerners.  The setting of Death Comes for the Archbishop excerpted here is the 1850’s at the beginning of the American annexation of New Mexico and the struggles toward mutual understanding between the newly organized vicarate and the Native Americans:

 “When they [Eusabio, the Navajo and Father Latour, the Western missionary] left the rock or tree or sand dune that had sheltered them for the night, the Navajo was careful to obliterate every trace of their temporary occupation.  He buried the embers of the fire and the remnants of food, unpiled any stones he had piled together, filled up the holes he had scooped in the sand.  Since this was exactly Eusabio’s procedure Father Latour the European missionary judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air.

“In the working of silver or drilling of turquoise the Indians had exhaustless patience; upon their blankets and belts and ceremonial robes they lavished their skill and pains.  But their conception of decoration did not extend to the landscape. They seemed to have none of the European’s desire to “master” nature, to arrange and re-create.  They spent their ingenuity in the other direction; in accommodating themselves to the scene in which they found themselves.  This was not so much from indolence, the Bishop {Father Latour] thought, as from an inherited caution and respect.  It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as if the spirits of earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse.  When they hunted, it was with the same direction; an Indian hunt was never a slaughter.  They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs.  The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.”***  

In this novel, we see these warm climes of the American Southwest, first through the eyes of Cather’s European missionaries:

“The difficulty was that the country in which he [Jean Latour] found himself was so featureless – or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly alike.  As far as he could see, on every side, the landscape was heaped up into monotonous red sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and very much the shape of haycocks.  One could not have believed that in the number of square miles a man is able to see with the eye there could be so many uniform red hills.” ***

For many 19^th c. European city dwellers, such as Franz Schubert (1797-1828), one could only visit the untamed landscapes of the American continent through reading and imagination.  How strong a contrast there is in the American desert and Vienna – the latter often damp and bone-chilling.  There was a reason why Johannes Brahms wore several layers of pants in his Viennese days.  I certainly did when I visited there. 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

I fall into the back cushion of my armchair, reach down once more for my campari and soda.   I swish the ice around, the ice taps staccatos against the glass and I take a sip and then allow my eyes to settle on various objects in the room, one at a time – the maroon Davenport with the Navajo blanket draped about it; the Bösendorfer piano, source of much happiness; the shelves above lined with Proust, Shakespeare, Sartre, Baudelaire, the list goes on.  On the table by the Davenport are a lamp and two books I placed there as touchstones – perfectly prismatic diamonds -- for a stream of thought that would be imminent and inevitable. The books: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Lebensansichten des Katers Murr [the Life Chronicles of Tom Cat Murr] and Die Fermate, 1/10  Tom Cat’s size.   But oh so rich:  Although I read these works some years ago, I remember them well.   Die Fermata:  Two friends gaze upon a landscape oil painting as they improvise fantasies based on its subject matter – as in cadenzas of outer movements of one piano concerto, these two gentlemen bring memory and fantasy to the landscape’s depth and beauty.

Taking a deeper quaff of the campari and soda, the realization of timeliness to take similar ‘bookend’ cadenzas of my thought is ripe. |

Eusabio is coming of age.  His jet black hair, keen eyes and supple athletic body brim with cunning and promise.  These qualities give the elders great pride.  He and the other young men of the tribe have gone through a rite of passage, one that each tribe member has undertaken for centuries – each new initiate ingests some peyote, carefully prepared by these watchful elders.  The peyote is dried an exact period of time and swallowed by the young men with the aid of some fresh spring water.  The young Eusabio and his fellow initiates are each asked to allow themselves, without resistance, the transformation that the peyote provides –and to remember the entire experience and then to report this to assigned elders.

Yellowfeather, the elder is awaiting Eusabio’s arrival in the cave, right at the foothills of the Rockies.  The proud young man enters into the cave.  He remembers not only the details of the experience but also the sensate memory of the heightened state.  Generally in his speech ‘Eusabio drops the article in speaking Spanish, just she does in speaking English; the customary omission, seems to be a matter of taste not ignorance.  In the Indian conception of language, such attachments were superfluous and unpleasing, perhaps.’***  In his recollection, Eusabio also drops superfluous pronouns.  A quiet presentation of active and passive forces, subject and object, without an interfering ‘I’ reflects the dreamlike state.

Yellowfeather nods to him, Eusabio begins his recounting:

“Night falls.  Full moon reflects on opening of cave- its dark ochre colored craggy surface now has shades of yellow where light hits.  Many stars in sky:  the leaders—great spirits.*** Young initiates step out of cave at different times, first one, then another, as each new spirit comes alive within us.   Am among last to emerge from cave.   Light dances around my head, stomach feels tight and queasy; this ill feeling soon passes.  Look at drawings on entrance of cave; one drawing that calls out to me.   Stick figure tribesman with single eye in the center of forehead. Had seen it before but this time a light like a beacon gleams out from single eye -- this light pierces vastness of space beyond any vision point.  Stared at it for some time and then set out to follow path of light.

“Hear a pitter patter beneath me – look down and see yellow thickly furred cat’s paws – mine.  Soon hear another pitter patter –raindrops almost a mimic of paw sounds.   Feel drops on my back –  drops bring a sense of indignity, look for shelter.

“Steal into the adobe of one of new foreigners.   A stone fireplace.  Yellow fur blends with earthen stone and orange fire.  Lie down right at edge of fire.  Body absorbs heat.  Heat comforts me.  Blood vibrates, whole being vibrates, trance state deepens, purrs emanate from inner being.   Hear Europeans talking, they know why cat is here – they don’t mind the imperious intruder.  Cat doesn’t immediately understand European discussion.   They read from a book – Hear the line ‘the cat will mew, the dog will have its day’   my ears perk up and become more pointed – words sound like way raindrops feel—insulting.  Cat mouth opens, my open lips expose all feline teeth, subtle hiss sprays out of mouth. Then roll over on furry side.

“Sunrise – red sun – cat steals out of the window into bright light.  Tall totem near European house – snakes and bears with panther head at crown of totem.  Snakes of totem uncurl and lift their heads, then hiss with long tongues stretched out, fangs protruded -- all sixteen snakes in unison.  Recoil my cat body and hiss back, mouth open, gums and pointed teeth glaring return snakes’ threat.  Snakes retreat.   Strange.    Lick right paw with coarse tongue, rub forehead by right ear with wet paw. 

“Totem bears are still, do not mind presence of cat.   Panther stares directly at cat, can see piercing light beams flash from eyes.   Panther smiles and nods, wants me to scurry up to top and nestle between panther ears.   Cat hunches on back legs.  Feel the strength of 1600 coiled snakes in back legs.   See trajectory of cat from base bear head to panther crown in a flash. Spring up to crown in same flash.  

“Am hungry.  See two Europeans walking below.  Cat wants to say, “White bipeds down there, bring fresh venison, corn and tobacco, schnell, toute suite”, -- heard these strange un-Navajo, un-Spanish words before from Europeans assuming superiority over Natives.  Do not even understand how bipeds feel superiority over keen-sensed cat.  In throat, feel only uvular vibration and hear no words, no schnells, no touts suite but b-r-r-r-o-w-l emitting from cat body.   The bipeds below don’t understand. No shamans around to perceive need of growling cat stomach.” 

At this point, Eusabio remembers fully, as a whole being recognition, the nobility of feline history – he knows that in Egypt and Atlantis Eusabio’s cat form would be understood and honored by its contemporary two-legged ones  He continues recounting this experience to Yellowfeather:

 “Feel protected and secure in panther’s presence.   Cat legs now dangle haplessly from all sides of panther head, fall asleep again.  Awaken again and look far into the distance – the red mesas, sun reflected in the sand – bright yellows, oranges, reds, mountains puce in background.  See from totem top the cave where Yellowfeather and Eusabio now talk. Never seen any place else in world, but know desert is most beautiful place in world.  Know this totem is highest point in settlement and where cat-Eusabio feels is cat-Eusabio’s place of self—cat-Eusabio’s Sanctuary”:  “From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals.  They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between.  This plain might once have been an enormous city, all the smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the public buildings left,--piles of architecture that were like mountains.  The shady soil of the plain had a light sprinkling of junipers, and was splotched with masses of blooming rabbit brush—that olive-coloured plant that grows in high waves like a tossing sea, at the season covered with a thatch of bloom, yellow as gorse, or orange like marigolds.”*** 

“Can see now from totem what Eusabio sees in mind’s eye always. Now feel beams of light emanating from my cat eyes. Dignity now restored.  Blood vibrations happen again, then whole body vibration, deep meditative state lasts until sundown as though tribal drummers are up and around on panther head with me assisting the trance-formation. 

“Now must find food.  Scurry down side of totem until paws touch just above totem snakes – then jump off side of totem, from 15 totem heads above ground – allow myself to fall,   Leg joints bend at impact on ground.   Am stunned for 2 seconds, and then am whisked away on fiery cat paws.

“White man walks nearby, starts to shrink and turns from pale to white, grows skinny pink tail.   Wait silent behind tree and pounce upon squeaky white man-mouse. . .”
 

Yellowfeather was listening attentively and now allows for a brief silence.   He runs his left hand through the dense whiskers on his chin, the gold ring on his thumb reflects the dim light fragments in the cave; this ring is a remnant cast away by American gold and silver prospectors who crossed the Southwest deserts and for Yellowfeather the ring remains a symbol of survival, devoid of any abstract value.  The elder’s hair is waist long and still maintains streaks of black among the time-honored grey mane.  His eyes are deep blue, proudly embellished with deep deep lines and wrinkles which surrounded them like ripples of an agate tossed into a pond.   Wampum of yellow and green beads adorn the breast of his deerskin garment, a belt made of turquoise inlaid in silver.  And in his presence, Eusabio senses the largesse of heart – the calm and strong center of this great and experienced elder:

“Good, good Eusabio”, he begins.  “Little star next to the evening star, what we call the guide.**  This is your star.  Many in tribe will seek advice owing to your clear sightedness.  Admirers will be plentiful.  You have a keen awareness of a young man with large and ancient spirit – this is your treasure. 

“You will walk among Europeans, but often in silence.   You already sense a powerful spiritual strength in you, a nascent part our people which foreigners cannot grasp if they do not let go of their ways.  It is your gifts that will seem like an indignity to you because it is not immediately perceived by those around you, especially those outside tribe.  This troubling feeling will require patience to overcome.  Know this spiritual strength but do not let foreigners know that you know.

“You will be a guide for them. They at first see only a guide because Eusabio knows Nature and this land so completely and Eusabio learns foreign languages like Kit Carson learns any terrain.  Young Eusabio, be on the look out for Cristobàl Carson – he will bring trouble to our people. 

“The Europeans will find out later what other great things they have learned from being in your presence.  Your manner is sleek, quiet and reserved; some of the spirit seeking white ones will derive knowledge only by walking beside you—they will begin to see world as though through your eyes.   Insist on walking beside them, never in back of them and always with a quiet dignity that is your essential nature.  Always strive to know source of lightbeam which made itself known to you in rite of passage.”

-- in Vienna.   Damp bone-chilling grey imbues the city. Franz Schubert is lying in bed.   He reaches for his spectacles on the night table and knocks them on the floor.  “My dear brother Ferdinand is so thoughtful to have placed a rug by my bed.  He knows how I knock these spectacles on the floor almost as if by ritual.   They won’t break when he is around to look after me.   How kind he is to let his sick brother live in his new house away from the Innerring of the city.”

He scrambles to pick up his specs, steadying his hand with palpable effort he grasps the quill laying on an oblong porcelain plate – a crackled pattern around a fortepiano -- next to the spot from which his spectacles fell.   He carefully dabs the quill with ink placed also on the table, and securing the paper on an oak board, writes:

“Dear Schober, I am ill. I have eaten and drunk nothing for eleven days, and am so tired and shaky that I can only get from the bed to the chair and back.  If I taste anything I bring it up again directly. In this distressing condition be so kind as to help me to some reading. Of Cooper's, I have read The Last of the Mohicans.  If you have anything else of his I entreat you to leave it with Frau von Bognor, at the coffee-house. My brother, who is conscientiousness itself, will bring it to me in the most conscientious way. Or anything else. - Your friend, Schubert.”

He places the letter to his friend on the table to let the ink dry before attempting to fold it.  Ferdinand enters the room:

 “How are you feeling today?” 

“No mind good brother, what do you have there?”

“Some correspondence that arrived when you were sleeping.”

“What correspondences?”

“Several notices for concerts, several bills, a letter from Schober and a letter from Anna Milder.   Shall I read them to you?”

Schubert smiles at the thought of finishing a letter to his friend whose letter in turn arrived today.  

“I will read Schober’s letter in a while.  What does Frau Milder have to say?   Please --not the entire letter – she can go on so.   The important parts – besides I know what this is about.  It is about Der Hirt auf dem Felsen – nicht wahr? 

 “Moment, let me see   Ah yes, here is something that catches my eye:  She requests a composition 'which can be sung in a variety of measures, so that several emotions can be represented'.”    |

Franz acknowledges his brothers heartfelt wit and continues: “The symbols in the two poems in Shepherd, which Anna took the trouble to weave together for this work, bring together a richness of images.   If the audience cannot figure out the depth of this language of images and my music, perhaps some lone, let’s say, Roumanian Jewish man in the future will.”

Hmmmmmmm   

|

Who would have thought that this Austrian music maker would have any connection to the indigenous natives of the Americas?  Shepherd on the Rock (1828) was the last of Schubert’s 620 plus songs; the Last of the Mohicans (1827) was among the last books Schubert read.  Let us now, fellow citizen of Earth, examine this misunderstood and often misinterpreted masterpiece, Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, and perhaps we shall uncover an intrinsic connection between the sensibilities of this Romantic composer from Austria and the Native American in Willa Cather’s novel.  

  continued in Notes from Isador Hillyer, Part II