71Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,—
men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some
few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.
Would to God these blessed calms would last.
—HERMANMELVILLE, Moby Dick(1851)In the winter of 1923, Hart Crane, a twenty-four-year-old poet living
in Cleveland, announced plans to write a long poem called The Bridge.It was
to be an epic, a “mystical synthesis of America.”^1 Crane had just completed
For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen,a poem which sought to infuse modern
Faustian culture (the term was Spengler’s, designating science and restless
searching) with love of beauty and religious devotion. Now, confirmed in his
commitment to visionary poetry and feeling “directly connected with
Whitman,” Crane prepared for an even greater effort: to compose the myth
of America. The poem would answer “the complete renunciation symbolized
in The Waste Land,”published the year before. Eliot had used London Bridge
as a passageway for the dead, on which “each man fixed his eyes before his
feet.” Crane replied by projecting his myth of affirmation upon Brooklyn
Bridge.
In the spring of 1923, Hart Crane left his father’s home in Cleveland,
and from then until his suicide in 1932, lived frequently in Brooklyn Heights,
ALAN TRACHTENBERGThe Shadow of a Myth
From Brooklyn Bridge: Fact and Symbol.© 1965 by Alan Trachtenberg.