STEPHEN CRANE%» a PA I NTER's EYE, a DEFINIT!ON of CRANE's IMPRESSIONISM Brian F^W. G a Rfie Ld a Thesis Submitted to The
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Stephen Crane; a painter's eye; a definition of Crane's impressionism Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Garfield, Brian, 1939- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 05/10/2021 06:12:13 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/566731 , STEPHEN CRANE% » A PA I NTER'S EYE, A DEFINIT!ON OF CRANE'S IMPRESSIONISM ; by : Brian F^W. Garfield A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH in Parti at Fu i f i 11ment of the Requ irements For the Degree o f MASTER OF ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 6 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillm ent of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quota tion from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in their judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholar ship. In a ll other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has beenbeen approveda on the date shown below: b j/9 6 ~ 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page 1 DEFINITION AND PROPOSAL,. 09.000 00900 O 9 0990099 O I I COLOR IN LITERATURE, AND THE IMPRESSIONIST P A I NT ERS o 0 0 9 0 0 OOOOOO o O O 0 0 0-0 0 0 O o o o 0O 0 000 O 0 0 OOO O 18 .II I THE EARLY YEARSs BEFORE THE RED BADGE OF . ■ COURAO E 00 000 00600 0000 oo@ 000 00 0 O' 0 '0 o O’ o o 000000 ^0 00 3 3- I V THE COLORS OF THE RED BADGE OF COURAGEp.0 00. 53 V AFTER THE RED BADGE,.,.0 0, 0000000, 00, 000000,00 86 VI THE SOURCES OF CRANE'S IMAGERY,, . 0 . 102 A PPEND1 Xo O 0 0 0 .0 0 O 0 OOO O 0 0 0 O 00 O O OOO O O O OO O O 0 0 , 0 0 0 0 6 000 0 0 , 0 112 LIS T OF WORKS CONSULTED,o., o, ,, . ,, . ,00..,. 114 I DEFINITION AND PROPOSAL Like a Homeric characterj Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900) is a figure on whom it has been a favorite pastime to heap epithets. He is Realist Crane, Naturalist Crane, Crane the Undisciplined Natural Genius, Crane the Burnt-Out, Crane the Rebel, Crane the Imagist, Crane the Symbolist, Crane the Impressionist, Epithets, obviously, are merely names with which we try to f i t one man into a category shared by many others. Words like "Imagist11 and “ Impressionist" have to be used . loosely or not at all; it Seems hardly possible that they could mean exactly the same thing when applied to two different figures, For example, the literary Natural ism found in the - ' i work of Stephen Crane did not take the same clumsy form as did Dreiser 1s, nor did it ever seem to attempt the b itte r, scien tific experimental ism that Zola’s Naturalism called for, Whe subject of Crane's literary Naturalism has been surveyed In Richard J, Fisher, “Stephen Crane's Natural ism 11 (unpublished Master's Thesis, Department of English, Univer sity of Arizona, 1951) » 1 ' .. ■ "■ ' ■ -" : 2 And If Crane is an Imagist, he certainly displays a different brand of I mag i sm from the cadences of senseless sounds found in some early twentieth-century Imagist poets. Epithets and categories 5, then, are conveniences which at times may serve to conceal more than they reveal. And often what they do not conceal, they confuse. Such is the casej apparently, with the Impressionism that mbny critics have found in Crane's writing technique. The particular problem that this paper seeks to exam ine is a question of influences (or sources; the difference 1ies only in point of view). One group of c ritic s of Crane' s work has contended, with some vigor, that Crane owed a great deal of his style -- at least in his later works -- to the painters of the impressionist school. Crane's fiction and poetry have always been known for their colorful descriptions; there is no question but that Crane made more use of color adjectives per page than did any other writer in English. His images depend largely on sensory perception (color, light, : and sounds), and in some of his works, such as "The Blue Hotel ,11 "Horses -- One Dash," and "The Open Boat," a large part of the effectiveness of the tales depends on the calcu lated effects of the color images. In the presentation of these images, the above-mentioned school of thought contends. Crane owed much W his knowledge of Impressionist painting. 3 This idea in turn has led to considerable confusion as to the meaning of the term "Impress ionist" as it is ap plied to Stephen Crane. The purpose of this thesis w ill be to lim it the definition of that term. An important difference exists between Impressionism in literature and Impressionism in painting, at least as the terms are commonly used. Literary Impressionism, with which this paper is not particularly concerned, is primarily a mat ter of descriptive selectivity, although in its broader senses the word covers a vast number of meanings. The Impres- *' ' O sionist writer is one who "carefully selects his details," He is a writer to whom, if "one feature of a landscape is successfully exaggerated, a 1# the rest of it w ill reside be fore the eye," Crane was just such "an observer of s ig n ifi cant d e ta il,"3 When Amy Lowell says that Crane displayed "a 4 keen, impressionistic perception of people and things," she 2james Trammel 1 Cox, "Stephen Crane as Symbolic Nat uralist: An Analysis of ‘The Blue Hotel,‘" Modern Fiction Studies I I I (Summer 1957)„ 147. See also Rusself Roth, "A Tree in Fiction: The Short Fiction of Stephen Crane," New Mexico Quarter ly XXI 11 (Summer 1953)» 190, 3D on Honig, ih the Introduction to Stephen Crane, "An I 11us ion 1n Red and White" and Ten Other Stories Not Available i n Any Other Book in Print (New York: Avon Book Division, The Hearst Corp., T 962), p.8, ^1n her Introduction to The Black Riders and Other LJnes, Vol, VI of the series The Work of Stephen Crane, ed, WlIson F o llett (New York: Alfred A, Knopf Co,, 1926), pp. xv-xvi, Hereafter the series w ill be called the Work, : : : , ; , . “ is probably referring to his writing style rather than any significant parallels with painting. Formal definitions are so broad and vague that they ' ; ■■ : : . / ■ ■' ; , ' ■' ' ■ ■■ seem of l i t t l e help. For example, Benet1s Reader's Encyclo^ pedia te lls us only this: Impressionism [is] a movement in painting, music, and literature in the latter half of the 19th century, originating in France, the aim of which was to por tray the effects, or "impressions", of experience upon the consciousness of the a rtis t, . rather than the objective characteristics of things and events. o > o In poetry and the novel, impressionism . „ . [applies.to] symbolism, imagism, and related movements, and fiction making use of the stream-of- consciousness technique, as well as other writing which may not f i t into any formal category.5 Certainly the definition would be more useful were it less ';v';vague./;:::v<::^ ; v? f The important point of difference between the literary and graphic kinds of Impressionism would seem to lie in the kind of images used and the technique of presenting them. With reference to Crane, we find ievera1 statements to such things as his "prose pointillism ,"^ and his style amounting to painting "with words exactly as the French Impressionists paint with pigments; both use pure colors and contrasts of colors. For the purposes of this paper, such statements as 5wi11iam Rose Benet, ed», The Reader's Encyclopedias An Encyclopedia of Wor1d Literature and the Arts- (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell” Co,, 1948), p. 537. ^Robert Wooster Stallman, "The Red Badge Of Courage," i n his The Houses that James Bui 11 (Ann Arbor: Hi chi gan State University Press, 1W T), p. 83» ' v , 7 |bi d l, p. 84. ■ : v ■ ■ . : 5 the last two are of more interest than one, for example, like this: "He [Crane] is rather the best of our writers in what is 8 called ‘description 1 because he is the least describing." B riefly, then, the purpose of this thesis is to study the singular imagery in Crane's work, with special attention to color images and light-dark contrasts, in an effort to decide whether or not painting (and, in particular. Impres sionist painting) had an influence on him -- and, if there was such an influence, how great it was, It w i11 probably prove impossible to provide any definitive statements about the exact or intended meaning of any particular symbols or symbolisms that exist in the works, and it is hardly more likely that the information gathered in this paper w ill be of much help when it comes to trying to produce evidence that w ill corroborate or contradict existing interpretations of Crane's work.