The Poet in Stone
When you get a statue in order to commemorate your life, usually it means you are fairly important, and usually well liked. For example, Michelson and Morley have sculptures to commemorate their achievement in experimental physics. Amasa Stone has an entire church named in his honor. I suspect that there are already President Obama sculptures in the making, if there are not ones in place already. So it stands to reason that if you have a sculpture that commemorates your life or your achievements or even where you lived, you were important.
So if having a sculpture makes you important, having two must make you doubly important. It takes two monuments to even begin to match your monumental importance, according to this logic. One even has to have your likeness carved into the eternal stone, so that everyone for generations, people will remember your face. So you should not be surprised when I tell you that Hart Crane is so important to the history of University Circle that two sculptures were installed in his honor.
But I am going to guess based upon your confused expressions that unless you are very familiar with early 20th century American literature, you have no idea who Hart Crane was. I would suggest that you keep reading if that is the case.
If you are not familiar with the Hart Crane sculptures, the first is between the Village at 115 and the Twin Gable apartment building. The other is between the Kelvin Smith Library and the Freiberger Field. Their obscure positions make reduce the chances of seeing them on a regular basis, such as the case with the prominent silvered Michelson and Morley Monument. However, it would seem counter-intuitive to have sculptures installed of someone who is apparently forgotten by many on this campus. This should only add to the question: who was he?
Harold Hart Crane was born in 1899 in Garretsville, OH. Early accounts say he spent much of his early childhood ill, but there have been some speculations that may have been due to the situation at home. While his family was moderately wealthy, there was constant friction between his parents. His father, Clarence Crane, had been in the business of sugar and candy products, and produced chocolates that were popular at the time. However, he missed the opportunity of a lifetime when he sold the patent on a ring-shaped breathmint, believing that the product would be so unpopular that it would fold within a few years of being sold. This candy was later rebranded as Life Savers.
Because of his father’s business, Crane spent much of his childhood with his mother Grace. At the time, Christian Science was at the peak of its popularity, and Crane was soon brought into the church. However, Crane would later become disgusted with Christian Science, and declare a more agnostic point of view, something that was unheard of in the early 20th century. By 1908, his parents had divorced and Grace took Hart back with her to her family in Cleveland. There Crane would spend the rest of his childhood years, and even after he grew up and left Ohio he would periodically return to his mother’s family’s home.
As Crane grew up, he showed the typical moodiness that is associated with teenagers today. There are even speculations that some of his poor health in adolescents was due to attempts at suicide, particularly a near drowning incident during a family trip to Mexico. However, as part of the upper class in Cleveland, it would have been unbecoming of a Christian Scientist and the child of aristocracy to try and kill himself and thus was written off as simple illness.
However, during these years he also spent much time reading literature, in particular taking great inspiration from Oscar Wilde. In 1916 Crane studied under Richard Lockluffe, a local bookstore owner who would let Crane read there. Crane had already written poetry as a pastime since the age of eight years old, but after 1916 he truly began to take great interest in refining his talents. Within a year, by 1917 he felt the cultural confines of Cleveland and moved his permanent residence to New York. He would spend the next fifteen years traveling the world, but also showing particular fondness for his home in New York and his mother’s family in Cleveland. While in New York, he quickly established himself a following. His poetry was new, fashionable and drew both criticism and praise wherever he went.
Crane’s life was tragically cut short by a successful suicide attempt in Mexico in 1932, after leaping off a boat into the water. His body was never recovered. However, there is some controversy over why he killed himself. He was married to Peggy Crane, but personal accounts and letters indicate that he was secretly homosexual, something that was often a punishable crime in that era. His popularity as a poet had also begun to dwindle for several reasons, but he was still considered essential to the American Modernist movement of the time. There were even some claimed sightings of him walking the street years after his death, but none were ever substantiated. What strongly indicates his lost legacy was that his biography was published a short five years later in 1937, but sold poorly.
Yet there is a lifelike sculpture of him by Freiberger Field, and one that marks where his family’s Cleveland house once stood. So what makes this poet so important if people couldn’t be bothered to read his biography after he died? Without going into literary analysis, Crane was on the forefront of the American Modernist movement. He was friend with e.e. Cummings and T.S. Elliot, and was considered by many the greatest American poet. While nearly a century has passed since his death and generations of poets have come and gone, he is considered still to be among the best by those who are familiar with his literary era. I will let you decide for yourself about what you think about his poetry, and whether he deserves sculptures to remember him.
Forgetfulness
FORGETFULNESS is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, --
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.
Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, -- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, -- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.
I can remember much forgetfulness.
By Greg Wu (gregory dot wu at case dot edu)
Sources: Hart Crane: a Life by Clive Fischer
Comments