My Mortal Enemy
by . New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1926. Large 12mo. viii+113 pp. Illustrated. $2.50.
My Mortal Enemy is a brilliant study of temperament. Nothing that Miss Cather has written — not even A Lost Lady — has more vitality; and nothing is more relentless.
In its technique this short novel, with the swift, straight flight of its narrative, and its inimitable economy of detail, is at the opposite pole from its predecessor, The Professor’s House. In its theme there is a likeness, but only a superficial one. The earlier novel shows a phase, a temporary dearth and disillusionment, in the life of a gentle and essentially reasonable nature capable of endurance and adjustment; My Mortal Enemy depicts, in its so small compass, the furious lifelong fight against disappointment of a fiery nature, gallant but not fine, clearsighted but not just, and scorning acceptance as low surrender.
The story tells how Myra Henshawe, an ardent spirit greedy for romance and beauty, wrecks her life by an inauspicious love; for she is a woman who cannot be happy in poverty, or just in unhappiness. Her passion for her young lover passes into a distaste for her gentle, unsuccessful, incorrigibly loyal husband, and later into a deep rancor. Her thwarted but indestructible romanticism finds its outlet in her attempt to wring from friendship and from art something nobler than the humdrum of every day — as in her faithful worship of the great Modjeska; and again in the impulse that makes her, in straits of poverty, keep hidden away a sum of money ‘for unearthly purposes.’ But one follows her story, though with an intensity of interest, yet with a qualified sympathy; for if she has an indomitable spirit, a pungent wit, and a rather capricious generosity, she has also coarseness, littleness, and malice.
Myra Henshawe will stand among the most powerful of Miss Cather’s creations. It is with great art that so few scenes are made to build up an effect of an entire life revealed, and again with great art that both the noble and the ugly elements of Mrs. Henshawe’s nature are represented as intensified by the sharper stress of her miserable last days; the purer flaming of her sense of beauty and the strong upwelling of her almost forgotten faith are shown, and no less clearly the implacable injustice and unforgiveness that are less the derangement of mortal illness than the natural result of her years of rancor. Subtlest of all is the tracing of the process by which this spirit at war with itself externalizes the battle and simplifies conflict into hatred.
My Mortal Enemy shows Miss Cather’s power at its most concentrated, and has passages of a clear, etched beauty. It is a fine piece of art, ‘bitter as gall, and passionate and wise.’
ETHEL WALLACE HAWKINS