SOURCE: Rosowski, Susan J. “The Troll Garden and the Dangers of Art.” In The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism, pp. 19–31. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Rosowski examines elements of temptation and salvation in The Troll Garden, and the ways these themes represent Cather's feelings about being an artist.

We must not look at Goblin men, We must not buy their fruits.(1) 

“In the kingdom of art there is no God, but one God, and his service so exacting that there are few men born of women who are strong enough to take the vows,” Willa Cather wrote in 1896.² Brave words, ringing with youthful fervor, yet articulating an ideal that Cather was to realize only after a long apprenticeship. For the same year that Cather spoke of the total commitment necessary to the artist, she moved to Pittsburgh, where she worked as editor of the...