Crane, Hart. (1899 - 1932).
L i f e
- a difficult life, uneasiness about his homosexuality, and uncontrollable alcoholism resulted in his suicide
W o r k
< influenced by the modernist French poets A. Rimbaud and S. Mallarmé
< himself claimed to be indebted to W. Whitman, E. Dickinson, and H. Melville
< also called ‘the Shelley of our age’: contrasted hope and love x scepticism and irony
- content: turned away from the instructional toward the associational
- form: used a compressed syntax, periphrases, and transferred epithets
- produced a poetry texture rich with music and light
White Buildings (1926):
- his 1st collection
The Bridge (1930):
- a sequence of poems, each in a different form: the 1st person monologue, the 2nd person colloquy, or the 3rd person description
- the title: from the monumental Brooklyn bridge
(a) = the symbol of the machine age
(b) = the symbolical span over the past, present, and future
- aspired to epic ambitions: constructed the present upon the past, not upon the East (Europe) x but: upon the West (the American frontier)
- includes political events (C. Columbus’s voyage), historical events (Pocahontas’s dance), aesthetic events (W. Irving’s "Rip Van Winkle", E. A. Poe, and W. Whitman), and personal events (his hoboism, subway, etc.)
Quote
"O Sleepless as the river under thee, / Vaulting the sea, the prairies dreaming sod, / Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend / As of the curveship lend a myth to God".
From The Bridge (1930).
Basics
(Photo: NY Times).
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Author
(Harold) Hart Crane. (1899 - 1932). American. -
Work
Poet. Author of The Bridge (1930). -
Genre
Modernism. Symbolism.
Literature
Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995.
Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Cunliffe, Marcus. The Literature of the United States. London: Penguin, 1991.
Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1994.
McQuade, Donald, gen.ed. The Harper American Literature. New York: Harper & Collins, 1996.
Ruland, Richard, Malcolm Bradbury. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
Vančura, Zdeněk, ed. Slovník spisovatelů: Spojené státy americké. Praha: Odeon, 1979.