INDIAN MYTHS AS THE BASIS OF HART CRANE’S MYTHMAKING

on the specific

For citation: Kolisnychenko, A., Kharytska, S. (2023).Indian Myths as The Basis of Hart Crane's Mythmaking.Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology, vol.2, issue 26/1, pp.88-103, DOI: 10.32342/2523-4463-2023-2-26/1-7   A. Kolisnychenko, S. Kharytska, 2023  H arold Hart Crane (1899−1932) is an American poet of the modernist period.He was a brawler, an outlaw, who did not get a systemic education, and was prone to suicide (up to 16 years old, had tried twice to commit suicide).Crane showed a predilection for homosexuality, alcohol, and drugs from a young age.However, all of these did not affect the seriousness of what he achieved in the realm of literature.The significance of his achievements was already understood by contemporaries, and Allen Tate recognized that.For him, Crane was "the archetype of the modern American poet" [Tate, 1959, pp. 225−237].
At the age of 18 Crane began publishing in periodicals in the United States and the United Kingdom.He was attracted to such reputable journals as Eliot's "Criterion", "Broom", "Poetry", "Little Review", and others.Crane did not write much for 32 years: a poetry collection "White Buildings" (1926), an epic poem "The Bridge" (1930), a series of scattered poetry, letters, and several essays.Despite the fact that nearly a century has passed, and today the "White Buildings" collection is included into the poetic canon of American literature, the literary studies of its composition and cycle structure have not subsided.Only recent research made by Ernest Smith has become convincing evidence of a poet's literary awareness, but not arbitrary, almost chaotic poems arrangement.Smith's study made it possible to emphasize more clearly the strategy of poetic structure and the completeness of "White Buildings" literary realization.
As a poet with a certain range of unique problems and original poetic techniques, Crane was finally formed in the early 1920s, when the breakup of tension relationship with his father caused his emotional and psychological trauma.It helped to understand both his human identity and aesthetic position.Today, the term ambivalence is most commonly used to refer to both of these statuses.We are going to leave out the complex aspects of Crane's private life, but should note that his poetics is formed on the boundary between tradition and innovative experiment, which can't be clearly classified.Because of this ambiguity, the poet received controversial comments from critics of the time.In the autumn of 1931, Max Forrester Eastman published an article "Poets Talking to Themselves" in "Harper's Bazaar".It was a rather harsh attack against the so-called "too clever" led by James Joyce and Crane, thus protesting against "the elitist" literature of the "high-ranking".Eastman mentioned a meeting with Hart Crane, who gave him to read one of his works; that poem began with a quote in Latin.Trying to understand it, Eastman asked for a translation, and Crane casually admitted that he did not know Latin.As a result, the critic ironically concluded: "After struggling a while with the English parts of it, I returned finally to the Latin as more communicative" [Eastman, 1935, p. 94].As it turned out, this was not the personal position of one reviewer, but the publication as a whole, as the head of the editorial board refused to print an article written by Anita Brenner in response to Crane's defense.
The relevance of the conducted research is determined by the need for a comprehensive study of the process of development and formation of the literature of American modernism.Hart Crane's works are recognized as the defining component due to his creation of the latest myth, the heart of which is the "myth of America", which formed the basis of the modernist interpretation of American identity.The analysis of the mythopoetics of Crane's works enabled a holistic understanding of his artistic universe, the clarification of ideological and aesthetic clusters and concepts characteristic of national (American) and world literature, which is inherent in the complex and heterogeneous system of modernism.
The purpose of the research is to identify and analyze the ancient mythologies used by Hart Crane to construct the future of America, which will be inspired by the new myth.This new myth, according to Crane, will emerge from the synthesis of all mythologies existing on the American continent, the achievements of all cultures whose peoples participated in the discovery and development of the New World, and the incredible success in the development of civilization that the Americans achieved.Crane's poetry space is homogeneous.Probably somewhat eclectic, but homogeneity is achieved by a purposeful orientation to the subordination of all components to the American idea, that is, Crane's space is a poetic melting pot.In accordance with the indicated homogeneity, we used the synergy of literary methods in conducting the research: biographical, which made it possible to follow the works from the initial idea to their creation; cultural-historical, due to which the characteristic features of the era of modernism are identified in the poet's works; comparative, which makes it possible to compare the elements of work of different poets (not only modernists, but also remotely distant literary periods); ritual-mythological, intended for direct analysis of the paradigm of Indian myths; historical-functional, which made it possible to identify the reception of Crane's works from total non-acceptance to the granting of program status; systemic-holistic, to which all the above-mentioned methods are subordinated, because it helps to highlight the main core (idea) of works (Crane's "myth to God"), to which all other images, motives, plots, etc. are subordinated.
Discussions about Crane's style continue to this day, but most researchers identify Crane's "special" or "abnormal" style [Reed, 1971].The set of his poetic techniques is called baroque, surreal, mosaic.Brian Reed in "Hart Crane: After His Lights" says that Crane was a typical modernist, according to his alienation, focusing on the word, high concentration of tropes, and lush rhetoric, etc. [Reed, 1971].Lengdon Hammer in "Hart Crane and Allen Tate: Janus-Faced Modernism" interprets Crane's poetry as an attempt to revive the high style of previous centuries [Hammer, 1993] and Gerard Titus-Gerard Titus-Carmel in "L`elancement: Eloge de Hart Crane" portrays him as the forerunner of a post-structuralist concept of a text who actualizes the importance of extra-structural, marginal, asocial elements capable of undermining the universal codes and structures [Titus-Carmel, 1998].
One of the original studies of Hart Crane's works of the 1980s is the research of Lindsay Stamm Shapiro.She interpreted Crane's poetry in parallels with the work of William Lescaze, the modernist architect best known for conceiving, in conjunction with George Howe, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building.It is considered one of the best-designed skyscrapers of the pre-World War II era of modern architecture [Zelazko, 2023].It was Lescaze who discovered the poetry of Rimbaud for Crane.The poetry emotional and intellectual impressed Hart Crane and he did not deny that influence on his own lyrics.Like Crane, Lescaze was fascinated and even imbued with the idea of the "myth of America", but both tried to strike a balance between European and national traditions.William Lescaze became for Crane a "bridge" between architecture and poetry, which embodied the technological dream of modernism in the so-called "skyscraper poetry" [Shapiro, 1984].This study is valuable in terms of positioning Crane as a modernist, especially as a modernist myth-maker.Paul Giles, a British researcher of American literature who positions Crane as "saw himself as a mythopoetic hero who could transmute the base metal of the America's industrial world into gold", elaborates on this topic [Giles, 1986, p. 208].Crane's myths interpretation was due, first and foremost, to the subjective views of the poet.He was certain that in order to build a new American life, a new myth should be constructed inseparably from tradition, from national roots.Secondly, contemporary artists were focused on intelligent, sophisticated, educated readers, so modified material was sufficient to achieve the goals.Third, satisfying the society's need for a new myth Crane's myth served as the basis for the further myth-making of new generations of poets.
American literature in the "Roaring Twenties" needed a new myth, a new epic for its traditions, its identity, and the actual affirmation of these traditions.Hart Crane was writing at a time when America, after World War I, had become one of the wealthiest countries, undergoing industrialization and urbanization.It is during these times that people begin to practice the "religion of consumption", the leading role was given to the material issues.Therefore, one of the defining features of American modernism is the search for a spiritual principle in a person.
In the novel "Ragtime", 1975, E.L. Doctorow, retrospectively comprehending the beginnings of national history, gives a striking characteristic of America at the beginning of the 20th century: "It is a nation of steam shovels, locomotives, airships, combustion engines, telephones and twenty-five-story buildings" [Doctorow, 2007, p. 74].Further, the list is supplemented -it is already a nation of airplanes, cars, electric engines, electric household appliances, and 100-story skyscrapers.Calvin Coolidge in one of his speeches in 1925 recognized that the main concern of the American people is business.An active business life made it possible for many people to realize the "American dream", and the higher education received by a large number of Americans led to the prosperity of the middle class.The car became a symbol of high social status, also the telephone, camera, radio receiver, typewriter, etc. were widely used.As S. Lewis noted in the novel "Babbitt", 1922, Americans admired these devices because they were modern and invented in the USA [Lewis, 2015].
Against the rapid economic development of the country, the intensive formation of the philosophy of consumerism, embodied in the marketing slogan of the 1920s "Buy now!", artists cre-ated a new myth of America, which was supposed to clarify the inner essence of the existence of American society.Hart Crane's "myth to God" occupies an important place in the system of the general myth of America, sacralizing its history, land, traditions, and man, asserting the chosenness and uniqueness of the country.
Waldo Frank said that an American of the 20th century is the loneliest person in the world: the world of his parents has already disappeared, and a new America has not yet been created [Frank, 1972].But in the industrialized world, in the way a person created skyscrapers, bridges and airplanes, H. Crane saw a new source of poetic inspiration.Crane marked the imagination as the main tool of the poet, and the function of poetry in the "Machine Age" is identical to its function in any other age, although poetry can absorb machineness [Crane, 1933, p. 177].Indeed, in many of the poet's works, deep emotional experiences and various machinery coexist side by side, that is, the poet constantly tried to show the unity of the spiritual and material, their coexistence in physical and spiritual space.Hart Crane often portrays the image of an urbanized city, and himself as a person born in it, as an integral part of the city and the bearer of its consciousness as an "urbanized poet".Crane wrote: "The city is a place of "brokenness", of drama; but when a certain development in this intensity is reached a new stage is created, or must be, arbitrarily, or there is a foreshortening, a loss and a premature disintegration of experience" [Crane, 1952, p. 138].The "drama of urbanization", the entry of a "little person" into the metropolis and the inevitable spiritual breakdown in the process of adaptation are evidence of the acquisition of new experience.This experience is the possibility of harmonious coexistence of two worlds -an urbanized city and a city of spiritual, mystical.At one time, even Walt Whitman called industrialization the Muse and admired the man who "is on land and sea everywhere, he colonizes the // Pacific, the archipelagoes, // With the steamship, the electric telegraph, the newspaper, the // wholesale engines of war, // With these and the world-spreading factories he interlinks all // geography, all lands" [Whitman, 2023].Hart Crane aptly depicted the same idea of the human community in the poem "The Hive", where the symbol of unity becomes the poet's heart-hive: "(Up the chasm-walls of my bleeding heart // Humanity pecks, claws, sobs and climbs" [Crane, 1933, p. 163]."Heart-hive" is a strange monstrous symbiosis of man and building, which is understood as the embodiment of hard work and unity.And on the other hand, here we have an original paraphrasing of Whitman's understanding of himself as an organic representative of the American community, who, empowered by it, has the honour to be its Poet. Poets were inspired by the traditions of previous generations, actively relying on their historical and cultural heritage.Waldo Frank saw America "as the final product of an ancient Middle European culture that has manifested itself throughout the history of the western world in various forms, creating a mighty religious structurein medieval times and an upsurge of artistic and scientific achievements during the European Renaissance" [Nilsen, 1979, p. 31].The most famous epic poems of modernism are Eliot's "The Waste Land", Pound's "Cantos" and Crane's "The Bridge", so it is not difficult to notice a number of similar themes and poetic techniques, symbols, etc. in them.Each of the poets actively involves various myths in his poem (Eliotancient, Egyptian, Indian; Pound -oriental, Chinese, ancient myths; Crane -Indian, ancient, Aztec).Each poem is based on a system of images that accumulates the entire human experience, realized in allusions, quotations, associations, paraphrases, and sometimes parodying the styles of different eras.In each poem, the motif of Dante's "Inferno" is found, in Pound and Crane it is a descent into Hades during the hero's initiation, and in Eliot, pictures of hell symbolize modern American life.These works differ in their emotional direction -Eliot shows that modern civilization will not escape destruction, because the waste land cannot give salvation; Pound seeks salvation for modern society by turning to the civilizations of the past, particularly the East; and Crane finds hope for the future, relying on the American traditions and the myths of indigenous people as the inevitable part of it.
Native American policy in the early 20th century in the United States was characterized by a continuation of assimilation efforts and further encroachment on Native American lands.The Dawes Act, also known as the Allotment Act, was passed in 1887 but had significant impacts in the early 20th century.The act aimed to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American society by dividing tribal lands into individual allotments.The surplus lands were then opened up for non-Native settlement.This policy led to the loss of millions of acres of Native American lands and the erosion of tribal sovereignty.The early 20th century saw the continuation and expansion of the boarding school system for Native American children.These schools were designed to forcibly assimilate Native American children into American culture, often resulting in the suppression of their Native languages, customs, and traditions.The goal was to "kill the Indian, save the man" by eradicating Native identity and culture.Despite the challenges, the early 20th century also witnessed the rise of Native American activism.Organizations like the Society of American Indians (SAI) advocated for Native American rights and pushed for reform in government policies.Native American leaders like Carlos Montezuma, Charles Eastman, and Gertrude Bonnin played crucial roles in raising awareness about Native American issues.
The poetry of the early 20th century in the USA often incorporated themes related to Native Americans, reflecting the continued fascination and interest in Native American cultures and traditions during that time.Many poets looked to Native American myths, stories, and folklore as sources of inspiration for their own work, and sought to explore the complexities of Native American experiences in the face of cultural oppression and forced assimilation.Poets such as Carl Sandburg and Langston Hughes incorporated Native American themes and imagery into their work as a means of challenging the dominant narratives surrounding Native American identity and history.For example, Sandburg's poem "Buffalo Dusk" portrays the extinction of the buffalo and the violence inflicted upon Native American communities from their own perspective, rather than the perspective of the dominant white culture.Hughes' poem "Indian Requiem" offers a lament for the loss of Native American cultures in the face of colonialism and spiritual displacement.Robinson Jeffers also drew from Native American culture as a way of exploring his own ideas about nature, spirituality, and identity.He often included Native American mythology in poems that celebrated the natural world.Overall, the use of Native American themes was a significant element in the early 20th century American poetry, reflecting a broader cultural interest in the legacy and traditions of Indigenous peoples in the United States.
For Hart Crane, who created the modernist myth of America, the main element of mythmaking was the myths of the indigenous peoples of America, the Indians."Crane associates the Native American with the spirit of the land itself and with a revitalized and expanded American awareness and identity" [Castro, 1991, p. 82].Native American mythology inspired many writers before Crane, especially Fenimore Cooper and Henry Longfellow.However, Crane is noticeably different from them: probably, it is worth talking not about figurative specifics, but about the functionality of Indian mythology in romantics and modernist poets.Their tasks -both ideological and aesthetic -were fundamentally different.Romantics -the formation of national literature, accentuation of what distinguishes Americans in comparison with Europeans.And also, the formation of what we today refer to as the foundational national mythologies.It was Cooper, who was among the founders of the national mythology of the frontier, among other things because of its identification with a specific landscape and aboriginal population.So, Cooper did not so much use Indian folklore or mythology as he formed a literary stereotype of an Indian, which today is perceived as a national myth, including the symbol of the Indian: or the treacherous Magua, a red-skinned man with a tomahawk who hunts for scalps, or the noble Uncas -the last of the Mohicans.Longfellow, as is known, set himself different tasks than Cooper.Longfellow actively used Indian mythology, creating the image of the Indian Achilles -Hiawatha.Hiawatha, an idealized romantic image of an Indian, formed according to tried-and-tested literary clichés, exists before the settlement of America by whites and is inferior to Christian missionaries.According to Longfellow, the Christian religion, not mythology, becomes dominant on American soil.Longfellow's poem, like Cooper's Indian pentalogy, is directed to the past.They explain the past with which their present was connected.Crane uses the facts of history, including ancient mythologies, to construct a future America that will be inspired by a new myth.This new myth, according to Crane, will emerge from the synthesis of all mythologies existing on the American continent, the achievements of all cultures whose peoples participated in the discovery and development of the New World, and the incredible success in the development of civilization that the Americans achieved.Crane devoted his life and work to this.Crane's version of Indian myths is a symbiosis of both North America and South America, including the Aztecs.This symbiosis can be explained by the variety of Indian myths that arose during numerous tribal migrations.Multiculturalism is especially felt in myths about the new and old homeland.Crane reinterprets the heri-tage of indigenous peoples in his own way, creating his own universal mythology.It is also important to note that for the poet an inseparable part of this mythology is the Christian component, which is also inherent in the myths of the Indians, but of a later, "reservation" period.For Hart Crane, Christianity and paganism existed inseparable from each other.In Mexico Hart Crane together with the young American archaeologist, Milton Rourke took part in a festival celebrating the ancient Aztec god of pulque (an alcoholic drink made from agave).He was struck by the combination of the sounds of an ancient Indian drum and Christian church bells, idols, and crosses.The conflict between the pagan and the Christian was supposed to be the subject of a verse drama, which Crane planned to write, but never wrote.Crane wanted to write about the interpenetration of ancient and modern cultures and the tragedy of this interpenetration.The poet believed that instead of renewing and transforming the spiritual heritage of the pagan world, the Spanish conquest led to the destruction of this heritage, resulting in the degradation of the local population.Although Crane never wrote the drama, the impressions of this festival formed the basis of his last great poem "The Broken Tower".Lesley Simpson, who was in Mexico at the time, recalls another incident that, in his opinion, influenced the creation of this poetry.At night, Crane suffering from insomnia went outside.Wandering in the park, he met an old Indian bell ringer who invited the poet to join him.When the artist began to ring the bells, "the sublimity of the scene and the thunder of' the bells woke in Hart one of those gusts of' joy of which only he was capable.He came striding up the hills afterwards in a sort of frenzy, refused his breakfast, and paced up and down the porch impatiently waiting for me to finish my coffee.Then he seized my arm and bore me off to the plaza, where we sat in the shadow of the Church, Hart the while pouring out a magnificent cascade of words [Crane, 1992, p. 23].It was a Hart Crane I had never known and an experience I shall never f'orget" [Irwin, 2011, p. 292].In "The Broken Tower", the tongues of the bells slowly swing these bells destroying them and then the whole tower.The sounds of this funeral bell, reminiscent of the cold sounds of hell, initiate the emergence of suicidal thoughts able to release the innermost creative forces to the outside ("And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes // My veins recall and add, revived and sure") [Crane, 1933, p. 136].The poet realizes that the tower that is being destroyed is his own tower created from the Word.Understanding that the Word is eternal, Crane sees the "resurrection" of the tower, despite the destruction of its physical shell: "and lifts love in its shower" [Crane, 1933, p. 136].In this way, Crane not only asserts the Word's dominance over destruction, but also perpetuates his creative legacy.
We trace the synthesis of pagan (mythological) and Christian in the poem "Garden Abstract".First, the poet composes a picture with Christian myths, turning to the origins of the Christian faith -the Garden of Eden, and "rereads" the biblical Book of Genesis.Crane depicts an apple tree, next to which is a woman, who allusively refers to Eve, because "the apple on its bough is her desire" [Crane, 1933, p. 70].Then a strange metamorphosis takes place -the woman transforms, merges with the tree, herself becomes the primeval tree, which knows no fear, has no memory or hopes, nothing, in fact, "beyond the grass and shadows at her feet" [Crane, 1933, p. 70].In the mythology of the South American Gran Chaco tribes, there is a myth about the emergence of people from the trunk of a tree.In an older version, it is indicated that breasts grow in trees to feed people with milk.In Crane's poem the "prisoner of the tree" (feminine, or a possible allusion to Myrrh, who also became a tree), thanks to the "inner sap" awakened in her by the wind (masculine), grows to the sky.The tree-woman takes strength ("sap") from the earth, from the primordial solid.In Indian myths, similar to the ancient Greek ones, the story about Uranus-Gaia, the Sky was seen as the Father who unites with Mother Earth, and therefore everything living in the world is born.In "Garden Abstract", everything is born by a tree.Crane transfers this well-known mythological motif to intimate feelings.Depicting the growth of a tree to the sky, he speaks of creative thought, the rise of creative imagination.In this way, he associates himself with the feminine (tree), because he also "gives birth" to human consciousness through his creations ("sap") -poetry, the inspiration for which is given by a loved one, probably a man (wind).Nevertheless, the artist also draws strength for creativity from the land that is from the traditions of the people who inhabit it.The metamorphosis of transformation into a tree is also found in Pound.His poem "The Tree" demonstrates the combination of two mythsabout Daphne, who escaped from Apollo, and Philemon and Baucydas, who escaped from the flood.That is for Ezra Pound a tree is a symbol of salvation, so the lyrical hero transforms into it: "I stood still and was a tree amid the wood, / Knowing the truth of things unseen before" [Pound, 2012, p. 366].In Crane's poem, it is also possible for Daphne / Myrrh to see through Eve, who "sees herself as a tree".Therefore, he creates a generalized, universal image of the progenitor, who is not enough of what the space of the Garden offers, to whom the apple as a symbol of forbidden knowledge beckons (Eve's / Myrrh's violation of the taboo).That is why it stretches higher and higher, beyond the limits defined by the Garden.And in this unrestrained desire, according to Crane, is the likely cause of the fall.
The poem "The Circumstance" is a direct allusion to the Aztec myth of Xochipilli, the god of flowers and poetry, whose life was supported by human blood.Perhaps this is because the god of the sun also performed the role of the god of war.Quite symbolically, Crane transfers the features of this bloody god to the god of art (like the ancient Greek Apollo is not only the patron of the arts but also a skilled archer, always ready to fight), thus pointing out to the reader the gravity of the poetic craft.To express such a double understanding of creativity, the author uses a sharp contrast: the god of poetry is washed in blood, but immortalized in the stone of "love", flowered.In this flowered stone, the poet sees the smile of death, which appears on the clown's face.Mystical metamorphoses take place in the mind of the narrator: the majestic deity is devalued, turning into a weak clown bathing in blood.At this stage of mythical transformations, the clown deity devours the sun, which once again speaks of the impermanence of the material, which so far dominates the spiritual.The key in poetry is time, eternity: "You could stop time", but "(Sus // Taining nothing in time" [Crane, 1933, p. 146].In the eternity, the author reproduces the repetition of the same social processes that sooner or later every person encounters. Appealing to the past of the Indian civilization, Crane demonstrates the spiritual richness and ultimate balance of the Indian worldview and Indian history through the image of an Indian against the background of an autumn landscape in the poem "October-November".Even through "(gold and purple scintillate // On trees that seem dancing // In delirium" [Crane, 1933, p. 168], through the moon in "mad orange flare" the old man sees "Indian summer-sun / With crimson feathers" [Crane, 1933, p. 168].In this image of the sun, there was a response to the Indian tradition of wearing special insignia (in this poem -feathers), and an undeniable allusion to the bloody history of the conquest of the American Indians by the "pale-faced" (as indicated by the crimson, blood-like color).As a final symbol of pacification, the author depicts ripe grapes, which the Indian looks at with sadness.The symbolism of the vine has many interpretations, but in our opinion, Hart Crane turned to the Christian one.First of all, it is a symbol of fruitfulness, wealth, and, most importantly, truth: "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser" (John 15:1).That is, the old Indian saw the truth, so he calmly thinks against the background of the autumn landscape, which signals the fading of nature (and Indian traditions).In the Old Testament, the vine that Moses' messengers brought from the land of Canaan is the emblem of the Promised Land.Thus, the poet prophesies to Americans the role of the chosen people, and to Americathe chosen land.Another interesting grape symbol is found in a wrapped (flowered) with vines cross on sarcophagi in Christian burial places.The legend of the Life-giving Tree, from the wood of which the first cross was made, is associated with such a cross.This tree grew from the crown of Adam, which he wore before his death.Paradoxically, the vine for the wreath was brought by the son of Adam -Sif, tearing it from the tree of paradise, because of which he was expelled from the Garden of Eden.After Adam's burial, the wreath grew out of the ground, turning into a tree (vine), symbolizing salvation and rebirth.Therefore, Hart Crane foresees the resurrection of Indian traditions in a new society, in a new chosen country.
A significant part of Crane's poetry is appealed to the past of the Indians, precisely to the period of conquest by the American settlers and assimilation with them.The poem "Imperator Victus" tells about the emperor Manqu Inca Yupanki (Manco Inca Yupanqui), the leader of Indian rebellions against Europeans in South America.Hart Crane focuses on the most dramatic moment of the hero's life -his death at the hands of a European at a time when a peaceful resolution of the conflict was possible.But the main protagonist of poetry is a weapon that "speaks" simply, albeit not well.The continuation of this theme is the poem "The Sad Indian", whose hero, an Indian, is out of time, "does not count // Hours, days -and rarely sun and moon" [Crane, 1933, p. 145].According to M. Eliade, going beyond the boundaries of Time contributes most to the rapprochement of literature and mythology.Time in myth is always sacred, this is especially noticeable when new phenomena occur that are significant for the existence of society [Шубович, 1999].In such a mythical space-time an old Indian thoughtfully contemplates the cultural and historical heritage of his people, which remained only in a weak vision of shadows (including the shadows of his parents), which cannot be described in words, there are no such words in the language.The Indian suffers because everything has disappeared due to conquest, both by man and by machine.Again, the author touches on the topic of material and spirituality.The rhetorical question at the end of the poem about the flight of an airplane in the sky -"is it thus the eagles fly?" -carries disappointment with the consequences of the development of civilization.Note that for the Indians, the eagle is one of the most important mythological symbols, it is the embodiment of solar, heavenly and fiery forces.Even the eagle feather served as a mark of honor for the Indian.There are known cases when a horse was given for such a feather.The American Indians considered one of the key myths about the destroyer of nests, who received fire from an eagle on the promise of leaving the chicks alone.As we can see, it is in this myth that the eagle represents the power of fire and is the benefactor of man.Another myth tells of a struggle between an eagle and a serpent, where the eagle is a solar deity and the serpent is death, associated with the moon; that is, it is about a symbolic competition of life and death.
It is recognized that one of Hart Crane's most significant work is the poem "The Bridge", the idea and artistic realization of which is connected with the Brooklyn Bridge, a material and now the symbolic embodiment of the American national genius.Published in April 1930, the poem caused a great resonance among the creative elite of that time.Thus, Waldo Frank characterized this work as a well-thought-out example of myth-making, noting that the message of the poem will be fully appreciated not by contemporaries, but by posterity: "But when that time comes, the message of The Bridge will be taken fof granted; it will be too obvious, even as today it is too obscure, for general interest" [Crane, 1933, p. 23].In his fair opinion, Crane's myth differs from other myths (Homeric, biblical, etc.) by its "routine" symbol, which personifies the whole life of America, unites time and space, past and present.A. Tate called Crane one of the chosen ones to be the spokesman for the spiritual life of our time [Tate, 1936].
Richard Lewis proposed a rather original and productive reading of the work: for him, the bridge is important not so much as a real physical object, but as a procedural action, the laying of a bridge (bridging), when the creation of a poem gradually becomes a bridge to the reader, which penetrates culture by the power of the author's poetic vision [Lewis, 1967, p. 42].In our opinion, this approach to the consideration of the poem is quite reasonable, given Crane's intention to create a "mystical synthesis of America": "The initial impulses of 'our people' will have to be gathered up toward the climax of the bridge, a symbol of our constructive future, our unique identity, in which is included also our scientific hopes and achievements of the future" [Crane, 1933, p. 124].
"The Bridge" is a sacred history of America, where the Brooklyn Bridge appears as an embodiment of America.The bridge is both harp and an altar that requires a sacrifice.The symbolic prayer to the Bridge at the end of the Prologue is a request for help in finding the absolute, creating a new myth.Starting with the "Prologue", the author makes a kind of adjustments for the further perception of the poem.In our opinion, the leitmotif of this part is freedom, which is thoroughly imbued in the "Prologue".One of the purposeful symbols is the seagull.Seagull wings impaled on black spiers are an expression of freedom, but somewhat limited by modern progress.In South American myths, the seagull personified the spirit of freedom and indomitability.According to the myth, the seagull refused to surrender to the cormorant brothers and paid for it with his own life [Березкин, 1994].The seagull is the first indication of the pro-American orientation of the work, which is later confirmed by the indisputable American marker -the Statue of Liberty.
Already after the "Prologue" Crane begins to actively embody his vision of the history of America, he literally examines the physical body of the continent, which is represented by the Indian princess Pocahontas (as Crane notes [Crane, 1952, p. 241]).The chapter is called "Powhatan's Daughter" and is divided into 5 subsections ("Harbor at Dawn", "Van Winkle", "The River", "The Dance", and "Indiana")."Van Winkle" draws a parallel between the Spanish and Indian history of land conquest.The very first mentions of Claudio Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who conquered the Inca Empire, and Fernando Cortèz, who destroyed the Aztec civilization in Mexico, allude to the process of conquering the territory of the Indians.This is the purpose of the mention of Captain Smith.We have already mentioned above that a similar idea of destruction determined the content of the poem "The Broken Tower".In "The River" Hart Crane portrays a pack of traveling vagabonds reminiscing about their childhood.One of them says that he feels in the sounds of a snowstorm the cries and whimpers of Pocahontas, who appears in three guises showing the colors of the American flag: "snowsilvered, sumac-stained or smoky blue" [Crane, 1933, p. 15].This vagabond assumes the role of an American first settler, ready to answer her call, to impregnate her: "O Nights that brought me to her body bare!" [Crane, 1933, p. 15].In the howling of the "wing's long mane", he hears the cry of Indian children: "Dead echoes!But I knew her body there, // Time like a serpent down her shoulder, dark, // And space, an eaglet's wing, laid on her hair" [Crane, 1933, p. 16].In this part, Crane introduces images of totemic animals, the snake and the eagle.The next part -"The Dance" -begins with a description of the change of weather according to the seasons, depicting this transformation as a female one, in the final stage of which the woman dies.That is, Pocahontas is the land from which the bridge actually grows, removing the rice of the child, who embodies the gene pool of previous generations of America, stirred with the sap of the earth."Pocahontas, bride -// O Princess whose brown lap was virgin May" [Crane, 1933, p. 19].Man in a canoe "explores" the body in the spring bosom of nature (Pocahontas-land): "O Appalachian Spring!" [Crane, 1933, p. 20].Shadows can be seen among the mountains, from which smoke billows, and a cloud covers the sky like a blanket.
The European explorers who arrived in the Americas, such as Christopher Columbus, believed they were discovering new lands and peoples.This perception led to the notion of America as a "virgin" land waiting to be "fertilized" or colonized by the European powers.The metaphor of America as a female figure highlights the power dynamics and gendered assumptions prevalent during that period.The consequences of this perspective were significant.European powers claimed ownership and control over the lands they "discovered", often disregarding the rights and sovereignty of indigenous populations already living there.This led to the displacement, marginalization, and mistreatment of Native American communities.Today, the focus is on promoting a more inclusive and accurate understanding of history that recognizes the contributions and rights of indigenous peoples.
In American literature, the landscape has often been personified as a female figure, symbolizing various aspects of nature, identity, and the human experience.This literary device is known as the "feminization of landscape"."Shenandoah" is one of the vivid examples of such feminization.It is a well-known American folk song that has been widely recorded and performed by various artists.While it is not a literary work in the traditional sense, the song's lyrics capture the beauty and sentiment associated with the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, which is often personified as a female figure.The song tells the story of a riverboat captain who longs to be with his beloved, referred to as "Shenandoah", and expresses his desire to go back to her.The lyrics evoke a sense of yearning, nostalgia, and connection to the natural landscape.The Shenandoah River and Valley serve as symbols of the enduring love and longing for home.While the song does not delve deeply into the feminization of landscape, it does embody the romanticized portrayal of the natural world and its association with emotions and personal experiences.The personification of the Shenandoah River as a female figure adds a poetic and emotional layer to the song, emphasizing the deep connection between the narrator and the land.
In "Song of Myself", Whitman frequently refers to the landscape as a female figure.He celebrates the interconnectedness between the self and nature, portraying the landscape as nurturing and life-giving.The same inspiration can be seen in "My Ántonia" by Willa Cather.In this novel, Cather personifies the vast Nebraska landscape as Ántonia, the central female character.The landscape embodies the strength, resilience, and untamed spirit of the American frontier.These examples illustrate how the feminization of landscape in American literature can evoke themes of nature, identity, and the human connection to the natural world.It often serves as a way to explore and convey complex emotions, experiences, and relationships.
At such a landscape, the holy shaman Maquokeeta frantically performs a dance-prayer for rain.Even the tribe leader is oblidged to bow to the earth (Pocahontas, the forces of nature).The poet makes the shaman dance (the rain dance) because Pocahontas is sad because of the drought, so that she would give a sprout, a shoot.The earth must be renewed like a snake shedding its old skin: "I, too, was liege", a slave of this land-Pocahontas.The land is designated by the poet as "Indian emperies", which is interpreted in two aspects: Indian as a reference to India, which Columbus wanted to find, and Indian to designate America as an "Empire of Indians".The dancer writhes like a lizard, saying that "thy bride immortal in the maize!" (an image inherent in Aztec folklore).She is a virgin to the last of the men, so the wizard calls everyone to dance in honor of Pocahontas."He [poet] is enacting one of the rituals of mystic evolution -the mystical intermingling of flesh with spirit.<…> Pocahontas symbolized the life-force -the fertile quality in nature that impels mystic evolution along in its upward spiral" [Perry, 1966, p. 65].In the end, the shaman gives way to a priest who holds a snake and an eagle in his hands.The totemic images of the eagle and the snake in "The Dance" represent Native American symbols of time and space that were used by the Aztecs.
In "The River" the sounds of a locomotive and remembers the "dead echo" of American culture are heard.The image of a snake is found in many national mythologies, in some it is associated with the creation of the universe.Among the Indians of South America, the snake mostly symbolizes masculinity, because it arose from the male penis.According to the legend, the woodcutter, who could not satisfy the toad that fell over the girl, from its hit in the groin, the genital organ, grew to incredible sizes.Only the medicine man (the shaman) was able to help him, cutting the excess part into pieces, which he threw into the lake.Snakes arose from these remains [Березкин, 1994].In American cosmogonic myths, the serpent separates the earth and sky.That is, this image is extremely multifaceted.Some peoples considered this creature to be magical, a symbol of wisdom, fertility, and healing.For example, the North American Indians worshiped the rattlesnake (the queen and progenitor of all snakes), begging for fair wind (sometimes rain) before traveling.Even the Great Manitou was depicted as a horned snake that pierces evil with its horns.Among the Aztecs, the cult of the snake occupies a special place: the god of war (and the sun) holds a snake in his hands as a sign of magical power over death and life.In other nations, the snake is a symbol of death and chaos.In North America, there was an alliance of tribes originating from Utah, Idaho and Nevada who called themselves the Shoshone, or "snakes".They distinguished from others because they looked more like animals than people, and spoke their own special dialect.These tribes were the descendants of the Aztecs.Crane widely uses the Aztec myth of the search for a new land promised by God, which will be located where they will see an eagle eating a snake.Based on the above-mentioned interpretation of the eagle symbol, this myth can be also understood as the victory of eloquence, poetic gift (eagle) over deception, splitting, lying (snake).Many rites are associated with the magic of word among Indians, in particular shamanic sacred spells, in the process of which the shaman takes on the role of creator.Thus, the creation of a new myth is seen by the poet as the creation of a new world through the word, where the poet appears as a creator.
A number of images in the poem "The Bridge" evidences the fact that Hart Crane interpreted Indian mythology and history in general in his own way.For example, the headline "Powhatan's Daughter".Crane did not know that Powhatan is a tribal title for the supreme Dream-Visioner, and not a name; especially since the chief was not the real father of the Indian princess, but the "father" of the tribal alliance.Although historically the most widespread information is that her father was the famous leader of the Pohatan Indians, who managed to unite under his authority more than thirty tribes (about twenty thousand people) living on the Atlantic coast.One of the most used variants of the translation of the nickname Pocahontas is "little wanton" or "playful one" [Покахонтас, 2023].
]. Hart Crane in the epigraph (taken from John Smith's book "Travels and Works of Captain John Smith", 1910) initially used exactly this characteristic of the character: Pocahontas is depicted with the children of the colonists during not very decent for a girl mobile entertainment.We will analyze other variants of the translation of the name of the princess further.
Another example of Crain's metamorphosis of Native American realities is Maquoquita, the shaman in "The Dance", who is an avatar of the author.He is both an actant and an observer who connects the earth with the cosmos through Pocahontas.Crane heard the name of the "dancer" from a taxi driver, and it seemed quite "Indian" to him [Tapper, 2006, p. 58].It is noteworthy that in the 1920s there was an attempt to ban the dances of the Pueblo Indians as immoral.Not all Americans agreed, however, that Pueblo dances should be banned."During the dance controversy, new white activists had developed images of profoundly religious traditional Pueblo Indians who had kept pure their ancient, nature-based creed against all odds.In their portrayal of the Pueblos, the new activists privileged religion as a defining characteristic of Pueblo life over other cultural, social, and economic traits" [Jacobs, 1996, p. 197] In "The Dance", the author so identifies himself with the Indian warrior burned at the stake, that they become inseparable.They, in turn, merge with Pocahontas -the mythical personification of the entire American land.Crane explains the defining role of Pocahontas; he interprets her as a mythical natural symbol representing the physical embodiment of an entire continent.Charles Larson calls her "the first woman of America", "daughter of Eve", "child of the forest", "mother of us all", "Great Mother Earth of all Americans" [Larson, 1978, p. 73].In a letter to the Queen of England, Captain Smith called Pocahontas the first Virginian who spoke English and gave birth to an Englishman [Smith, 1910].Despite the fact that the legend of the love between Pocahontas and Smith is the basis of the plot of many films and literary works, there is no historical confirmation of this fact.The figure of Pocahontas has been a subject of fascination in American literature, particularly in works that explore themes of colonization, cultural exchange, and the clash between Native American and European cultures.For example, "Pocahontas: A Legend" by John Davis Long, 1884.This novel explores the story of Pocahontas and her interactions with Captain John Smith.It presents a fictionalized account of their relationship and portrays Pocahontas as a heroic figure who saves Smith's life and acts as a mediator between the Native Americans and the English colonists.Another example is "Pocahontas and Other Poems" by Lydia Sigourney: Published in 1841, this collection of poetry by Lydia Sigourney includes a poem titled "Pocahontas".It presents a romanticized and idealized view of Pocahontas as a noble and virtuous Native American woman who bridges the gap between her people and the English settlers.
Paula Gunn Allen in the "Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat" notes that this Indian princess is known by many names: Matoaka -birth name; Amonute is the spiritual name of a sorceress and shaman; Lady Rebecca -the name received upon the adoption of Christianity in England; and Pocahontas is a teenage nickname.There is no exact data on the origin of this nickname, but two versions are preferred.The first interprets Pocahontas as a derivative of "powa, pawa" -a type of energy and paranormal abilities that make it possible to predict future events, heal sick people, animals, and plants; connected with magic [Gunn, 2003, p. 335].Note that John Smith in his memoirs explains his rescue by the princess as part of a special magical ritual.Another version of the interpretation of the name is related to the origin of pocohaak (pocohack), which translates as "evil", or "penis" [Gunn, 2003, p. 335].Paula Gunn Allen points out that despite relinquishing her name Pocahontas in favor of Rebecca, the Native American retained the spiritual name Amonut, signaling a lifelong connection to the American land and its traditions.Crane portrays Pocahontas as an eternal bride, turning her into an earth goddess, a "virgin to the last of men".Thus, the ritual dance is a "creative act of time" that unites flesh and imagination, and the Bridge stretches between the past and the present.In its highest manifestation, Pocahontas is the Muse, Eros, which incessantly encourages creativity.Moreover, in the "Indiana", this image acquires an archetypal meaning, growing into a mother, depicted as a homeless squaw (Crane uses this word) carrying a child.Crane especially singles out her eyes: they are expressive, strange even for an Indian woman, there is too much pain in them, and the woman looks into "all our silent men" [Crane, 1933, p. 25].Those sore eyes filled with love when they saw the man.In such an indirect way, the Indian squaw is already thought of as the All-Mother.That is, in the part "Powhatan's Daughter" Pocahontas goes through a series of metamorphoses, starting with an Indian princess (a real historical figure), and then an eternal bride, nature, land, and mother.Since Pocahontas, according to legends, tried to reconcile the colonists with the Indian tribes, in this indirect way Crane also understands her figure as an element of the combination of the traditional and the new (the nascent American nation and the Old World), perhaps even the spiritual and the material.For Crane, Pocahontas is the embodiment of an entire country, a land that has a peculiar national interpretation.The tradition formed by the first settlers was fundamentally different from the European one, because it was immediately bourgeois, modern, no matter how superstitious its Puritan founders seemed.The tradition started by them was focused on the personality, on the individual from the beginning, and not on the family.And an individual's relationship with others, even though they "passed" through God, was based on the individual qualities of each person.Therefore, the relationship between man and land was rather based on the understanding of land as a philosophical category, a generalized concept, and not a concrete patch of soil as a source of life.So the American community was formed on a new land and with new foundations, different from the European ones.This was due to the goal to which the first settlers aspired -to build the "Promised Land", to create a kingdom of justice and freedom.Therefore, there was no such, so to speak, forced connection of a person with a certain plot of land, which is characteristic of the farmer of the Old World.In the USA, it was different -the connection of man with nature, with the universe, that is, with the earth in its philosophical and Christian sense.The American South, like the North, was settled by pioneers.However, from the very beginning, the very idea followed by the first settlers of the South and the North was already different.If the Puritans of New England dreamed of building a City on a Hill, then for those who settled in Virginia, the goal was to create a Garden of Eden.The most important feature of this region is its closeness to the land, rootedness in a certain area, i.e. locality.There is a new understanding of land as a concentrated human history, and a desire to understand and assimilate this phenomenon, to find its history.
The climactic section "Atlantis" (the actualization of another ancient myth) produces the myth of the Bridge, the myth of ever presence."The hand of Fire", which makes the Brooklyn Bridge a bridge of fire, is a creative imagination that regenerates the poet, prompts him to act, turning the author himself into a bridge: between the past and the present, between the poet and creativity, between the poem and the reader, between the spiritual and the physical (technical, mechanical), between traditions and innovation.In the final part of the poem, the majesty of the bridge is confirmed -it is a song, Bridge of Fire, Cathay, which combines a snake with an eagle.In this way, allusions to ancient mythologies are actually made to glorify the "Myth of the Bridge" [Sugg, 1969, p. 31].
Due to disputes about the identity of American society, the poet set the goal of creating a work of national scale [Crane, 1952, p. 89].It is this factor that caused the writer to use the epic genre, which enables him to act as a singer of the new age."The epic and the novel ˂…˃ continue the ˂…˃ mythological narrative" [Элиаде, 1995, c. 140].Hart Crane interpreted Native American mythology in such a way as to create a new myth by combining tradition and modern trends.Such a synthesis became the basis for building an American society, aware of its history in the movement towards the "American dream", which "is based on the American's belief that he / she will be able to find the desired happiness, success, and personal well-being in this country" [Гиленсон, 2003, c. 8].Crane does not distinguish between the concepts of "own" and "alien": for him, everything is his own, because it became and is now American.Crane's homogeneity of the poetry is achieved by a purposeful orientation to the subordination of all components to the American idea.Hart Crane's works, almost every word holds a mythological potential, it always functions in its original meaning, based on which the mythical context prevails.It can be the name of Pocahontas or the name of Atlantis, stirring up myths about the Indians and the conquest of America by the whites, or about the love of Pocahontas and Captain Smith, about Plato's mythological Atlantis and the migration of the first settlers across the Atlantic, which in Crane's time had also become a myth.Or maybe the seagull is one of Crane's favorite images: an ordinary bird that circles over the Brooklyn Bridge and a permanent character in Native American mythology, in which the boundlessness of freedom and the ingenious mind of a trickster are combined.That is one verbal marker of Crane -the seagullholds and simultaneously produces several meanings, from concreteness to the symbolism of the myth, as the majestic image of the Brooklyn Bridge, which removed the mythological dimension, became the new myth created by Hart Crane.
According to M. Eliade, a myth means a sacred event, a sacred story, which is the "beginning of all beginnings", a phenomenon of a sublime nature.Directly or indirectly the myth con-tributes to the exaltation of man, and works of literature transform "mythical matter" into a plot [Элиаде, 1995, c. 111].Hart Crane's overlapping of different mythologies is due, on the one hand, to the legacy of the Puritan pioneers who founded the United States, and on the other hand, to the legacy of the native Indians, to whom he attributes the indigenous population of both North and South America.
Using heroes from the myths of different peoples, Crane adapted them to modern needs which helped the author express his views on social problems through the prism of the characters.Mythical creatures often play the role of inspirations of the poet or, on the contrary, destructive forces that are present in the life of every artist.Among the various myths used by Crane, the myths of the Indians, the indigenous population of America, occupy a prominent place.The poet preferred these myths because they are the national basis for producing a new myth for a new society.Combining folklore images of different peoples in almost every poem, Crane saturated their semantic meaning with a multiplicity of possible interpretations.
Mythopoetics of Hart Crane's works is a synthesized multi-faceted and multilevel phenomenon in which at first glance alien, distant in time and space elements are harmoniously combined.In the creative universe of Hart Crane, on the one hand, they function as components of the unique national myth of the USA -colorful and at the same time homogeneous, i.e., such as the "American myth" was from the beginning and remains to this day; and on the other hand, thanks to the omnipresence and eternity of constant myths in national mythologems, they affirm the organicity and validity of the presence of the Poet, that is, the author's Myth in national and world mythology.The authorial, individual, individual as a necessary component in the system of the general, collective, social -this is how Crane understood, and in this way he embodied the motto "E pluribus unum", a symbol of American statehood and humanity.It is worth mentioning that the authorship of this expression is attributed to Heraclitus, Cicero, and Virgil, that is, both Greeks and Romans, representatives of different eras, peoples and cultures are unanimous in understanding the genesis of the new: only if various components interact, a qualitatively new phenomenon emerges.This is how Hart Crane saw his task as the creator of a national epic, which he had to gather together, homogenize, but at the same time preserve the uniqueness of each separate component-mytheme that formed his artistic world.Therefore, this world consists of a huge number of mythologists, who in one way or another were tangential to the formation of not only the United States but in general the countries of the American continent.
The first of the mythological complexes that Hart Crane modifies when creating the sacraluniversal poetic myth of America is the Indian one.Almost all of Crane's works are marked by allusions to the myths of the indigenous population of the continent.They include myths about the origin of the world, etiological, anthropogenic, etc., and Crane seeks to emphasize the uniqueness of the interpretation of the mythologeme by the Aztecs, Maya, or North Indian tribes.A separate thematic, legendary component of these myths is the appearance of white conquerors who seek not only to capture, but to physically take possession of the body of the continent, which forms an expressive gender discourse (feminine and masculine dialogue) of the author's reception and its artistic retransmission.One of the leading motifs of Crane's poems is the symbolic transmission of experience from the Indians to the white settlers, such as the violet from the squaw to little Larry in the poem "The Bridge".In general, the floral motif, from Persephone, through Roman funeral rites and holidays to the Indians and then to the Americans of the beginning of the 20th century on the Brooklyn Bridge, is one of the thorough and powerful, semantically saturated in the author's mythology of Crane.Close correlations with Indian myths in the space of American poetry have mythological complexes of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Celts, which, woven into the plot of the lyrical reflections, form an informative text that requires the active and creative participation of an erudite reader for its more or less adequate reading.In this way, the meta-idea of all of Crane's work is realized by the interweaving and interpenetration of multinational mythologists in one poet's space as convincing evidence of the vitality of the "American myth".