Hart Crane's Queer Modernist Aesthetic

Hart Crane’s Queer Modernist Aesthetic This page intentionally left blank Hart Crane’s Queer Modernist Aesthetic

Niall Munro © Niall Munro 2015 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-40775-7 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6– 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-48824-7 ISBN 978-1-137-40776-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137407764

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Munro, Niall, 1979– Hart Crane’s queer modernist aesthetic / Niall Munro. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Crane, Hart, 1899–1932—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Homosexuality and literature—United States. 3. Modernism (Literature)—United States. I. Title. PS3505.R272Z754 2015 811'.52—dc23 2014038554

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. To Nadia and Frieda This page intentionally left blank Contents

List of Figures ix Acknowledgments x Abbreviations and Notes on Sources xiv

Introduction: Relationality 1 Writing about “the activity of living” 2 Crane’s modernism 3 Difficulty and queerness 7 Following “different paths to queerness”: interpreting Crane’s aesthetic 11 1 American Decadence and the Creation of a Queer Modernist Aesthetic 16 (American) Decadence 17 Crane’s Decadence: The outsider and aesthetics 19 Crane’s Wilde and “song of minor, broken strain” 25 Crane’s defence of Decadence 28 Forming an aesthetic vocabulary 30 Impressionism and Imagism 32 Hellenism and Walter Pater 35 2 Abstraction and Intersubjectivity in White Buildings 41 Visual influences and the language of art 42 Ekphrasis: An alternative form of literary modernism 44 The challenge to artistic and heteronormative reproduction 48 The further challenge: abstraction 50 Doubleness and the crisis of perception 52 Reality 53 Looking and touching 57 3 Spatiality, Movement, and the Logic of Metaphor 63 Enclosed spaces 65 Utopian spaces? 67 Atopias 71 The queer flâneur 73 The conflicts of cruising 75 A poetics of transgression 79

vii viii Contents

Space deregulated 83 The logic of metaphor, space, and the phatic aspect 85 4 Temporality, Futurity, and the Body 91 Out of time and out of history 91 The “Moment” 97 Negation and futurity 99 The body and temporal gaps 104 Temporal blur 110 Recurrence and sameness 112 Self- consciousness 115 Completion 118 Death and ecstasy 120 Beyond time 123 5 Empiricism, Mysticism, and a Queer Form of Knowledge 125 The difficulties of experience and knowledge 127 Radical empiricism 132 The new materiality 136 A crisis of materiality, sexuality, and language 142 “Hauntology” of the body 147 6 Queer Technology, Failure, and a Return to the Hand 150 Technology and failure 154 Failed technology and queer community 157 Language and difference 161 Technology’s threat 163 Nature and the primitive 165 Making things: The ordinary and a return to craft 167 Conclusion: Towards a Queer Community 172 Unexpected interest 172 Queer reading 174 Reading strategies 176 Embracing surprise 177 A queer modernist community: Crane, H.D., and the reader 178

Notes 183 Bibliography 198 Index 211 List of Figures

I.1 Walker Evans, [Hart Crane’s Hands], 1929– 30, printed ca. 1970, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arnold H. Crane, 1972 (1972.742.11) © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. xvi

ix Acknowledg ments

I have been very fortunate, particularly so in the current climate, to have worked for a number of years now in various roles in the English and Modern Languages Department at Oxford Brookes University, and there I have also been extremely lucky to be part of a team that consists of exceptional scholars and teachers. There can be no better environ- ment in which to work. My first acknowledgement must be to Alex Goody. Her advice, knowledge, and expertise were essential in getting the project started and sustaining it in its original incarnation, and I owe her a great debt. Other former and present colleagues at Oxford Brookes have been tremendously supportive, particularly Steven Matthews, who kindly offered the benefit of his experience and unfailing eye for detail at cru- cial moments, and Eóin Flannery, who has been a fantastic colleague in the Poetry Centre, and invited me to deliver a paper about Crane as part of the research seminar series at Brookes. Eric White has been a model of enthusiasm, intellectual commitment, and good academic sense, and his generosity in looking over and commenting thoroughly upon my work and ideas has always been much appreciated. Mark Whalan took an interest in the project early on, answered questions that I had about Crane and Jean Toomer, and was generally encouraging. I am much indebted also to Nick Selby for his constructive and incisive comments on an original draft of parts of the book. I also owe thanks to Richard Sales of the Camden Library Service, who made a number of enquiries on my behalf to dredge up obscure volumes from Camden’s holdings. At Palgrave Macmillan, Paula Kennedy and Peter Cary were very supportive of the book from beginning to end, and have been a pleasure to work with. The manuscript also benefited a good deal from the constructive comments of an anonymous reviewer, and I am very grateful to them. My friend Néstor Cerdá offered great encouragement throughout the writing of the book, and his commitment to his own academic work has been an inspiration. I should also like to put on record my thanks to TLM, LA, and TTK. A substantial portion of the book deals with Crane’s manuscripts, and if it had not been for the generosity of Gerry and Daoud Arbach, I would

x Acknowledgments xi not have been able to visit the Crane archive at Columbia University in order to do the research which this project demanded. They have always shown interest in the book, and I am thoroughly grateful to them. As they always have, my Mum, Dad, and my brother supported (and cajoled) me throughout the writing of this book, and I will always be thankful for everything that they have done – whether they realise it or not – in preparing me to write it. Their support has been essential. I could not have written this book without Nadia Arbach. On a prac- tical level she helped enormously with editing and referencing, which happen to be things she is exceptional at doing, but she also willingly gave an extraordinary amount of time and energy to the project and encouragement to me when I really needed it. Her importance in the book’s creation truly was “[b]eyond all sesames of science.” Frieda should probably start her study of literature by reading The Snowy Day or I Want My Hat Back. But one day, perhaps, she might look this book over. It is dedicated to her and her mother.

Permissions and copyrights

I am grateful to Carl Schmitt Jr. for sending me documents about his father and for answering questions about Carl Schmitt’s relationship with Crane, and to Professor Langdon Hammer for kindly sending me, and generously allowing me to quote from, his unpublished essay about Crane’s interest in photography. I should like to thank Jane Siegel and all the amiable staff at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, where I spent a very enjoyable couple of weeks in the Crane archives in May and June, 2008. I am most grateful to Tara C. Craig, Reference Services Supervisor there, for allowing me to quote from the following selections from the Hart Crane Papers: “Notes for / VOYAGES,” 27 September 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York, “Voyages II,” ca. Autumn 1924, “Voyages II,” ca. Autumn 1924, “Voyages II,” ca. Autumn 1924, “Voyages – II,” ca. Autumn 1924, “VOYAGES II,” ca. Autumn 1924, Untitled, ca. Autumn 1924, “CAPE HATTERAS,” ca. 1927- August 1929, “NOTES | Cape Hatteras section – (the forge),” ca. 1927. I am grateful also to Nancy M. Shawcross, Curator of Manuscripts at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, for permitting me to quote part of a letter from Crane to Waldo Frank from April 21, 1924: “SONNET,” April 1924. xii Acknowledg ments

I am happy to acknowledge Jean Cannon at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, who was a great help in tracking down Crane manuscripts, and Natalia Sciarini at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, who also provided a number of copies of Crane documents. I am very grateful indeed to Eileen Sullivan of the Digital Media Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for kindly granting me the rights to reproduce Walker Evans’s photograph [Hart Crane’s Hands], 1929– 30, printed ca. 1970, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arnold H. Crane, 1972 (1972.742.11) © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Thanks are also due to Melissa Malone, Digital Licensing and Permissions Associate at Perseus Books for allowing me to quote from the following of Hart Crane’s letters (the page references refer to the pages of my book on which these quotations appear): quotation from Ezra Pound, 30, “To Carl Zigrosser [late Feb 1919],” 32, “To Gorham Munson, Nov 22, 1919,” 32, “To Gorham Munson, Dec 27, 1919,” 32, “To Gorham Munson [mid-Feb 1920],” 31, “To Gorham Munson, Dec 13, 1919,” 32, “To Gorham Munson, April 10 [1921],” 43, “To Gorham Munson [prob early July 1921],” 43, “To Gorham Munson, October 1, 1921,” 100, “To Gorham Munson, Nov 26, 1921,” 43–4, “To Gorham Munson, Dec 10, 1921,” 185, “To Sherwood Anderson, Jan 10 [1922],” 44, quotation from Crane to Munson, 153, “To Allen Tate, May 16 1922,” 100, “To Allen Tate, June 12 [1922],” 100, “To Gorham Munson, Sunday midnight [June 18 1922],” 136–7, “To Gorham Munson, Friday night [late Aug 1922],” 44, “To Wilbur Underwood, Dec 10, 1922,” 187, “To Gorham Munson, Jan 5, 1923,” 45, “To Louis Untermeyer, Jan 19, 1923,” 83, “To Waldo Frank, Feb 7, 1923,” 140, “To Gorham Munson, Feb 9, 1923,” 77, “To Allen Tate, Feb 15 1923,” 137–8, “To Gorham Munson, Feb 18, 1923,” 127, “To Waldo Frank, Feb 27, 1923,” 78, “To Gorham Munson, Mar 2, 1923,” 193, “To Alfred Stieglitz, April 15, 1923,” 60, “To Alfred Stieglitz, Fourth of July, 1923,” 79, “To Jean Toomer, Sun Aug 19 [1923],” 51, “To Alfred Stieglitz, Sun Aug 25, 1923,” 54, “To Jean Toomer, Sep 28 1923,” 76, quotation from “Possessions,” 77–8, “To Allen Tate, Mar 1, 1924,” 55, “To Waldo Frank, April 21, 1924,” 62, “To Jean Toomer, Mon June 16, 1924,” 119, “To Waldo Frank, Aug 19 [1925],” 52–3, “To Charlotte and Richard Rychtarik, Mar 2, 1926,” 156, “To Gorham Munson, Mar 17, 1926,” 56, “To Wilbur Underwood, [July 1? 1926],” 192, “To Waldo Frank, Aug 19, 1926,” 164, “To Yvor Winters, May 29, 1927,” 35, “To Caresse Crosby, Dec 26, 1929,” 159, “To Yvor Winters, June 4, 1930,” 92–3, “To Wilbur Underwood, Feb 14, 1932,” 143–4 Acknowledgments xiii from O, My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane by Langdon Hammer and Brom Weber, copyright © 1997. Reprinted by permission of Da Capo Press, a member of The Perseus Books Group. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Clementson, Permissions Manager at W.W. Norton & Company, Inc for her assistance in arranging for the following permissions to quote from Hart Crane’s poetry and prose: “Legend,” “Black Tambourine,” “My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” “Garden Abstract,” “Stark Major,” “Sunday Morning Apples,” “Possessions,” “Lachrymae Christi,” “Passage,” “The Wine Menagerie,” “Recitative,” “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen,” “At Melville’s Tomb,” “Voyages I,” “Voyages II,” “Voyages III,” “Voyages VI,” “To Brooklyn Bridge,” “Ave Maria,” “Van Winkle,” “The River,” “The Dance,” “Indiana,” “Cutty Sark,” “Cape Hatteras,” “Quaker Hill,” “The Tunnel,” “Atlantis,” “C33,” “October- November,” “The Hive,” “Fear,” “Annunciations,” “Modern Craft,” “Porphyro in Akron,” “Interludium,” “The Broken Tower,” “The Moth that God Made Blind,” “Episode of Hands,” “The Bridge of Estador,” and “Hieroglyphic,” from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane by Hart Crane, edited by Marc Simon. Copyright 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1986 by Marc Simon. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. “Joyce and Ethics,” “Sherwood Anderson,” “A Letter to Harriet Monroe,” “General Aims and Theories,” and “Modern Poetry,” from The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane by Hart Crane, edited by Brom Weber. Copyright 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright 1952 by Brom Weber. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. A short section of Chapter 1, “American Decadence and the Creation of a Queer Modernist Aesthetic,” first appeared in the chapter “Hart Crane’s American Decadence,” published in American Modernism: Cultural Transactions, edited by Catherine Morley and Alex Goody in 2009. It is published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and I am grateful to Konstantinos Peslis and Chris Humphrey for granting that permission. Abbreviations and Notes on Sources

I. Abbreviations

CP: Crane, Hart. The Complete Poems of Hart Crane. Ed. Marc Simon. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1986. CPSL: Crane, Hart. The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane. Ed. Brom Weber. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1968. OML: Crane, Hart. O My Land, My Friends: The Selected Letters of Hart Crane. Eds. Langdon Hammer and Brom Weber. London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1997. WUD: Webster, Noah, ed. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary: An American Dictionary of the English Language. Rev. Chauncey A. Goodrich and Noah Porter. Albany: J.B. Lyon, 1909. LM: Lohf, Kenneth A. The Literary Manuscripts of Hart Crane. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1967.

II. Hart Crane – original manuscripts

The manuscripts cited are catalogued in Kenneth A. Lohf, ed., The Literary Manuscripts of Hart Crane ([Columbus]: Ohio State University Press, 1967).

“Voyages I” A31a, “THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA IS CRUEL,” October 1, 1921, Ohio State University, Columbus.

“Voyages II” A32, “Notes for / VOYAGES,” September 27, 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. A33, “Voyages II,” ca. Autumn 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. A35, “Voyages II,” ca. Autumn 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. A36, “Voyages II,” ca. Autumn 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

xiv Abbreviations and Notes on Sources xv

A37, “Voyages – II,” ca. Autumn 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. A39, “VOYAGES II,” ca. Autumn 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. A42, Untitled, ca. Autumn 1924, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

The Bridge B24, “CAPE HATTERAS,” ca. 1927- August 1929, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. B29, “NOTES | Cape Hatteras section – (the forge),” ca. 1927, Hart Crane Papers, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York.

“The Broken Tower” C45, “The Broken Tower,” March 14, 1932, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. “What miles I gather up and unto you” D102, “SONNET,” April 1924, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Incorporated into letter from Crane to Waldo Frank, April 21, 1924. Figure I.1 Walker Evans, [Hart Crane’s Hands], 1929–30, printed ca. 1970, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Arnold H. Crane, 1972 (1972.742.11) © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.