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 sup- portive of the book from beginning to end, and have been a pleasure to work with. The manuscript also benefited a good deal from the con- structive 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 follow- ing 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.