SOURCE: "Hart Crane's Myth: The Brooklyn Bridge," in American Literature, Vol. XXXIX, No. 1, March, 1967, pp. 75-86.

[In the following essay, Arpad attempts to "uncover the Platonic sources" for Crane's "myth of the Brooklyn Bridge. "]

One striking feature of Hart Crane's The Bridge is the poet's seemingly unorthodox conception of myth. Although several scholars have made known Crane's use of myth, they have not concerned themselves with exposing the poem as myth—an idea explicit in its dedicatory proem. Furthermore, although various critics have been successful in establishing Crane as a poet by equating his Platonic idealism with romantic mysticism, this approach has not proved precise enough to lend total coherence to the symbolism, the metaphysical imagery, and the structure of the poem, nor in particular, to explain the poet's use of the term myth.¹ By emphasizing, however, Crane's Platonism—by opposing it to notions of romantic mysticism—one may gain this needed insight, and in so doing, add meaning to Crane's poetic principle "the logic of metaphor," establish a structure for The Bridge, and uncover the Platonic sources for his myth of the Brooklyn Bridge.

I

Although the Platonic implications of Crane's poetry have received due critical attention, the exact nature and extent of the Platonic influence has not been adequately explored. Philip Horton, for example, Crane's first biographer, noted that an early influence on Crane was the "Ion" section of Plato's Dialogues, where Socrates argued the necessity of madness in a true poet, an idea the young poet found impressive enough to underline doubly in red ink. On such evidence, Horton and others have reasoned Crane adhered to the Platonic conception of the poet, the poet as mystic, who creates from hallucinations and narcotic dreams, who cannot create unless he is inspired and possessed, no longer in his right mind.² This observation may be true for Crane's early poetry, but later, Crane came to reject the validity of Plato's analysis. In 1926, in a letter to Gorham Munson, he articulated his "logic of metaphor" principle, a new direction in his poetic theory, one that did not deny Plato's general thesis, but instead, redefined the poet's technique of acquiring knowledge as identical with the Platonic philosopher's.³

Plato, it may be recalled, held there were two kinds of extrasensory vision: dream-visions, the insights of poets; and Idea-visions, the insights of philosophers. Since neither of these corresponded to ordinary sensory perception, the poet and the philosopher must appear equally "possessed" to the common man. If, however, Plato's ideal state were ever to become fact, the common man would have to be persuaded to accept philosophic vision as more valid than his own. To prevent confusion, Plato banished poets from the ideal state; their dream-visions had no validity, being only imitation, a product of the imagination, the lowest form of cognizance. The philosopher's Idea-vision, however, was a product of "rational intuition" (noesis), the highest form of cognizance; his was a "synoptic view" of experience which allowed him to perceive the universal Form or Idea in particular objects or events.⁴

In his letter to Munson, Crane argued that in banishing poets from the ideal state, Plato had been merely acting in self-defense. According to Crane, both the poet and the philosopher attained truth through a synoptic view of experience. The only difference was in the kinds of truth acquired—one, a poetic truth, the other, philosophic—and there was no reason to believe, the techniques of vision being the same, that one was more valid than the other.⁵ Thus, for expository purposes, Crane's "logic of metaphor" may be equated with Plato's philosophic method of perceiving universal Forms or Ideas, the "synoptic view" of experience. This approach acts toward clarifying certain problems which have frustrated attempts to explicate The Bridge.

The first of these is the poet's disturbing use of the word myth. In the last stanza of "Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge," the poet invokes the bridge to "descend / And of the curveship lend a myth to God."⁶ The idea of the Brooklyn Bridge, specifically the curves of the bridge, lending a "myth" to God does not readily agree with the traditional sense of myth, meaning a story or narrative.⁷ Yet, it does correlate with the Platonic sense of myth. Platonic myths were not stories but philosophic expositions of Ideas. Throughout the Dialogues, Plato made little apparent distinction between the Greek words mythos and logos; the stories he told were both the ideal and the philosophic exposition of the ideal. The "accounts" were narrative syllogisms, logical progressions of insights, pressed forward by the Platonic dialogues. But since, for Plato, all insights were visions of forms or images, the dialectical progressions were actually of images, not words.⁸ Crane recognized this as closely approximating the "qualitative progression" of images found in lyric poetry; the Platonic philosopher, like the lyric poet, attained his vision of truth through a logic of imagery—in Crane's terms, a "logic of metaphor."⁹ Thus, it was perfectly appropriate to have the Brooklyn Bridge "lend a myth to God." In Crane's poetic vision, the bridge embodied an absolute Form or Idea (its curveship) which could only be comprehended through a lyrical progression of images; the poem itself was a record of that progression and was, in the Platonic sense, a myth.

A second implication of Crane's Platonic "logic" is that the absolute Form or Idea, which the poet envisions in the Brooklyn Bridge, exists in the bridge itself—not in the poet's imagination or in any narcotic dream-vision.¹⁰Crane was particularly aware of the Brooklyn Bridge as a formal work of art.¹¹ Not only did he study the bridge's architecture, he also investigated the biography of John Roebling, the designer of the bridge, to discover his aesthetic theory of art.

Roebling, a German immigrant, had been a student and friend of philosopher Georg Hegel while studying at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in Berlin. It was there that Roebling first viewed a suspension bridge, a small span suspended by four chains across the Regnitz River at Bamber. For Roebling, the logic of the "miracle bridge" must have appeared remarkably compatible with Hegel's philosophic dialectic; it was a perfect synthesis of antithetical elements, of opposing forces, the chains in tension, the towers in compression, uniting to form a coherent structure of surprising strength. As a consequence, Roebling dedicated his entire life to perfecting the form of suspension bridges, a task which culminated in the design for the Brooklyn Bridge.¹²

The Brooklyn Bridge is a thoroughgoing architectural statement of the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Against the massive granite towers, a stone architecture of the past with Gothic arches and shadowy solids, stands the spidery web of steel, an architecture of the future, light, airy, a composition of voids rather than solids.¹³But more important, for Crane at least, was one other aspect: the bridge is actually two bridges in one. Unlike more modern suspension bridges which have only two suspending cables, the Brooklyn Bridge has four.¹⁴ The New York-bound roadway is suspended separately with its own set of cables; it is thus a distinct unit, apart from the Brooklyn-bound roadway. The towers which lift the cables at each side of the river are the unifying medium of the bridge; although their twin arches reveal the duality of the bridge, they embrace the separate roadways in a common wall of granite, effecting the appearance of one bridge. When these aspects are considered in relation to the more obviously contrasting configurations of the bridge's curves—the rising and falling arcs of the bridge's cables versus the broad arc of the bridge'sfloor—the overall effect of the bridge's formal artistry becomes apparent: a distinctive tone, texture, tension, and rhythm attained through a synthesis of antithetical elements.

This inherent synthetic form is of course apparent through a common sensory vision of the bridge. As Crane's poetic theory suggests, though, the full exposition of the bridge's absolute form, the ultimate Idea of the bridge, can only come from the poet-philosopher's Idea-vision, his synoptic insight into the bridge's ultimate reality. The poem, The Bridge, is an attempt to do just that, to expose the metaphysical form or idea of the Brooklyn Bridge's physical form. Characteristic of the bridge itself, the metaphysical imagery and symbolism are synthetic, as these lines from "Proem" indicate: "O harp and altar, of the fury fused, / (How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)"; the poet envisions the bridge's cables as a harp, the granite towers as an altar, and wonders at their amazing synthesis. As a consequence, the imagery and symbolism create a dialectic, in both the Hegelian and Platonic senses, and thus function as the raw material for the poetic myth, the lyric progression toward an absolute poetic truth.

II

The final value, therefore, of recognizing Crane's Platonism is that it suggests a coherent form for The Bridge, a logical structuring of ideas and imagery.¹⁵ Crane began his poem in 1923, writing to his friends that he was building a bridge that would synthesize the American experience.¹⁶ Three years later, his bridge, his poem, was barely out of the planning stage; he had written slightly more than eighty lines, a bare semblance of what now appears as the conclusion, Part VIII, the Atlantis section.¹⁷ Then, suddenly, late in July, 1926, work began in earnest. Starting with the prologue, "Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge," Crane wrote approximately one-half the entire poem in a matter of months. To Waldo Frank, the poet explained his previous difficulty: "I didn't realize that a bridge is begun from the two ends at once. . . . "¹⁸ As this remark suggests (and the early revisions of "Atlantis" indicate), the poet was having difficulty in establishing a dialectic from which he might draw a synthesis. He found inspiration for the dialectic in two Platonic myths: the Atlantis myth, which forms the basis for the final section of the poem, and the myth of the cave, which forms the basis for the prologue.¹⁹

The Atlantis myth, though only a fragment, embodied sufficient material to suggest a poetic analogy with modern America.²⁰ The Brooklyn Bridge, the longest and highest span of its time, a great engineering spectacle, a monument and symbol of America's scientific and technological advance, readily suggested the Great Bridge of Atlantis. It, more than any other form, structure, or idea, represented what was good and beautiful in a materialistic culture, an industrial age. In Part III, "Cutty Sark," Crane developed this analogy into a poetic image, "ATLANTIS ROSE";²¹ in Part VIII, "Atlantis," he elaborated the image, developing "ROSE" into "Anemone." In this context, rose had dual meaning: first, a flower, the traditional symbol of beauty; and second, resurrection, a divine second chance. America, the image of Atlantis, was to rise magnificently from the floor of the Atlantic, manifesting absolute beauty and perfection, establishing once again a lost Adamic Eden.

It should be noted here that the Atlantis fable was for Plato a national myth, created to expose a national ideal, not an individual one.²² Similarly, for Crane, The Bridge was originally to be a national myth, embodying a national ideal, the absolute Idea of America. In this sense, Crane's original intent was epic, and as an epic poet he felt a commitment to sing the national ideal, regardless of whether he himself embraced it as his own.²³ Here, of course, lay the problem: the national ideal in America was not identical with the poetic ideal; indeed, the two were in direct conflict. The national ideal saw beauty, good, and truth only in material objects, the physical reality; the poetic ideal saw these in spiritual objects, the non-physical reality. Thus, Crane found himself taking an absurd poetic stance: singing the glory that was America, not by celebrating the spirit of that country as embodied in a national hero, butinstead, by holding up for public acclaim a non-spiritual, though magnificent, physical object, the Brooklyn Bridge. To square himself with his poetic tradition, Crane adapted Plato's myth of the cave.

Often referred to as the "allegory" of the cave, the Platonic myth was created to expose an individual ideal, the Idea of the philosopher.²⁴ As Crane had stated earlier in his letter to Munson, this was also the poetic ideal, the Idea of the poet. Thus, in "Proem," the poet states (stanza three):

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen.

The "cinemas" are described as "panoramic sleights"—that is, as panoramas of sly artifice, like the shadows on the wall of the cave. "Multitudes" are "bent toward" these shadows, but the reality is "never disclosed" except to "other eyes," the eyes of Crane's poet-philosopher. Here, then, is a direct allusion to the Platonic myth.²⁵Another is the fifth stanza:

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

The poet sees in this suicidal attempt a re-creation of Plato's warning to the would-be philosopher. Out of the subway scuttle (the subway itself, a tunnel, remarkably similar to Plato's description of the cave), a man "speeds" to the parapets of the bridge, as though escaping from some imprisonment (suggested by "cell").²⁶Standing upon the parapet, the man hesitates, as though blinded and confused by what he sees on the other side. The words "tilting," "momently," and "jest" suggest his fate: having been blinded by what he has seen, the man is unwilling to consummate his escape by jumping; instead, he is suspended there, "tilting" back and forth "momently" (not momentarily), as though vacillating between two worlds, both of which he can no longer comprehend. The witnesses to his act (the "caravan") are "speechless"; yet, at least one of them finds opportunity to ridicule him for destroying his vision ("a jest falls . . .").

With these allusions in mind, it is possible to explicate briefly the prologue, eliminating several obscurities otherwise encountered. The passage opens with the poet exclaiming: "How many dawns" has he observed the seagull, "chill from his rippling rest," suspend himself high over the "chained bay waters" and then swoop downward with "inviolate curve."²⁷ The vision of the seagull's flight is "apparitional" to the poet, as though a dream. Yet, it is not. He thinks of a scene recalling Plato's distinction between shadows and reality and recognizes that the flight of the bird describes a form which he sees also in the Brooklyn Bridge, the "inviolate curves" of the bridge's cables. This form is actually an idea: the "Liberty" of the seagull's flight and the "freedom" implicit in the architecture of the bridge. In contrast with these comparatively serene images of freedom, the poet sees a third: the freedom the bedlamite attains in speeding to the parapets of the bridge—a rather ominous freedom, for it does not appear to be freedom at all, but instead, a kind of paralysis, a pitiful alienation from both the worlds of reality and of shadows.

Then, a strange phenomenon occurs (stanza six):

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . ..
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.

If one observes the towers of the bridge at noon, one will notice a pattern of light and shadows which appears to "leak" down the granite walls, suggesting the jagged blast ("a rip-tooth") of an acetylene lamp or torch. But "Wall" is capitalized, like "Liberty" in stanza one, indicating an absolute quality oridea; in the context of the bridge's architecture, the granite walls represent unity, a fusion of the bridge's duality. "Acetylene," too, connotes not only a brilliant light, but also a cutting action. This impression is augmented by "rip-tooth," indicating something vicious that can rive the bridge in two. Yet, later in "Proem" (stanza eight), the bridge is envisioned as "harp and altar, of the fury fused," suggesting a welding action. Thus, the general impression of stanza six is that the bridge has survived a trial by fire: the same force (the blast of brilliant light) that would divide, can also unify, that would destroy, can also create.²⁸ The specific reference is to the bedlamite who, like the bridge, is in the act of being riven in two, torn between two worlds. But in the general context of the prologue, the acetylene image may be viewed as symbolic of a bright new truth—specifically, scientific knowledge and industrial advance. The bedlamite then becomes representative of modern man, torn between two worlds, the old world of Nature which science has destroyed, and the new world of science which he cannot yet fully comprehend. The bridge's ability to survive this divisive force serves as an example: man's world too will remain unified, even in the light of this new truth. Modern man, like the bedlamite, has only to endure his fate; like the bridge itself, he must remain suspended between antithetical forces which would destroy his precarious balance.

The remainder of "Proem" is the poet's affirmation of how a vision of the bridge's absolute form or idea (though as "obscure as that heaven of the Jews") may assist man in enduring his fate, may lead him eventually to see the ultimate reality. First, the bridge offers man an anonymous embrace ("Accolade thou dost bestow . . ."); it shares his fate of being suspended between two worlds. Second, the bridge has the ability to "condense eternity"; since it is a synthesis of the old and the new, it offers man the opportunity to perceive these in a shade, a form, familiar to his vision. Finally, the bridge "lends a myth to God"—myth, not in the sense of story, but as logos, the philosophic Word. In Christian terms, the Word has been identified with Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Church, and the Gospel; in all instances, the Word has been both a vision of God and an intermediary means of attaining a vision of God. In Crane's terms, the Brooklyn Bridge had been given this function in the modern world.

Thus, by envisioning the Brooklyn Bridge as logos, as a Platonic myth, Crane was able to justify his celebration of a physical object in the epic tradition; the bridge was not only the material ideal of a nation, but also the spiritual ideal of the individual. The Bridge exists as literally suspended between these two points: the prologue, where the individual ideal is exposed, and Part VIII, where the national ideal is evoked. What occurs in the middle is a series of ideas experienced by the poet while contemplating the bridge. Each section, therefore, embodies some essential of the bridge's ultimate meaning. Part I, for example, "Ave Maria," has Columbus establishing a bridge between the old world and the new, doing so through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. Furthermore, the ideas expressed in each section are seldom parallel, nor even antithetical, but are often differing insights into the bridge's ultimate reality. Part IV, for example, "Cape Hatteras," expands upon the "curveship" of the bridge, the poet seeing the same curves in the geographical shape of the cape, jutting out into the ocean, as well as in the flight of the airplane, first achieved at Kitty Hawk. In contrast, Part VII, "The Tunnel," expands upon the cave myth, the poet seeing there in the subway the apparition of Edgar Allan Poe, another "bedlamite" who escaped the shadows only to become blinded by the bright reality. As a result of all this, there is no linear progression of ideas or images throughout the poem. Instead, the progression is accumulative, each subsequent section adding new insights into the bridge's meaning, producing increments of knowledge for the poet, so that by Part VIII, the Atlantis section, the poet has gained an awareness by which he can finally realize a synthesis of his initial dialectic, the conflict between the individual and the national ideals.

The "logic" of The Bridge, therefore, exists not in a syllogistic structuring of the poem, but in the qualitative logic (the logos) embodied in the bridge itself. The bridge is made an object of contemplation, with the poem existing as a record of that contemplation. The poetic technique is neither mystical nor dream-visionary, but represents a poetic adaptation of Platonic philosophy.

¹ For the rationalist critique of Crane as a romantic mystic, see, for example, R. P. Blackmur, Form and Value in Modern Poetry (New York, 1957), pp. 269-286; Allen Tate, Collected Essays (Denver, 1959), pp. 225-237, 528-531; and Y vor Winters, In Defense of Reason (Denver, 1947), pp. 577-603. For a sympathetic treatment, see Sister M. Bernetta Quinn, The Metamorphic Tradition in Modern Poetry (New Brunswick, N. J., 1955), pp. 147-167. L. S. Dembo, in Hart Crane's Sanskrit Charge: A Study of "The Bridge" (Ithaca, N. Y., 1960), among others, has attempted a definition of Crane's use of myth, but in terms of romantic mysticism.

² Philip Horton, Hart Crane: The Life of an American Poet (New York, 1937), p. 31 et passim. See also Brom Weber, Hart Crane: A Biographical and Critical Study (New York, 1948), pp. 150-163, and Alan Trachtenberg, Brooklyn Bridge, Fact and Symbol (New York, 1965), p. 148-149 n., who argue the influence of P. D. Ouspensky's Neoplatonic mysticism on Crane's poetry.

³The Letters of Hart Crane, 1916-1932, ed. Brom Weber (New York, 1952), pp. 237-240. See also Crane's unpublished essay, "General Aims and Theories," and his letter to Harriet Monroe, in Horton, pp. 323-334.

⁴The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis M. Cornford (New York, 1945), pp. 221-226.

⁵Letters, pp. 238-239. Crane felt the articulation of these ideas was a significant mark in his development as a poet; he chided Munson for failing to recognize the new "logic" of his poetry, for allowing "too many extra-literary impressions of me" to shape his criticism of the poet.

⁶The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, ed. Waldo Frank (Garden City, N. Y., 1958); all quotations are from this text.

⁷ See, for example, Weber, Crane, pp. 321-329. Roy Harvey Pearce, The Continuity of American Poetry (Princeton, 1961), pp. 101-111, and Dembo, pp. 9-10, equate Crane's use of myth with logos, or the Word; Pearce, however, tends to interpret Word literally, finally equating it with language; Dembo emphasizes the mystical sense of Word, not the Platonic. For other interpretations, see, for example, Howard Moss, "Disorder as Myth: Hart Crane's The Bridge" Poetry, LXII, 32-45 (April, 1943), and Deena Posy Metzger, "Hart Crane's The Bridge: The Myth Active," Arizona Quarterly, XX, 36-46 (Spring, 1964).

⁸ J. A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato (London and New York, 1905), pp. 20-39. Crane may have been familiar with this standard work. See also his letter to Gorham Munson, Dec. 10, 1923, on his reading of Walter Pater's Plato and Platonism, a work he admired more than Pater's The Renaissance {Letters, p. 161).

⁹Letters, pp. 238-239, and Horton, pp. 326-327, 330-333. The term "qualitative progression" is Kenneth Burke's: Counter-Statement (New York, 1931), pp. 157-159. Crane and Burke, of course, were friends, Crane being particularly appreciative of Burke's critical theories (Letters, pp. 103-104 et passim).

¹⁰ In Part VIII, for example, the poet invokes the "intrinsic Myth" of the bridge. The influence of Pater may be seen here: Plato and Platonism (New York, 1905), pp. 134-155. For sources of Crane's "power in repose" and the Platonism of the Atlantis section, see Pater's chapters on the Platonic doctrines of motion, rest, and numbers (pp. 1-65).

¹¹ For Crane's appreciation of art, note especially his relationship with Alfred Stieglitz (Horton, pp. 152-154, and Letters, passim). See also Gordon Grigsby, "The Photographs in the First Edition of The Bridge," Texas Studies in Literature and Language, IV, 5-11 (Spring, 1962).

¹² D. B. Steinman, The Builders of the Bridge: The Story of John Roebling and His Son (New York, 1950), pp. 12-14, and especially Roebling's "A Metaphysical Essay on the Nature of Matter and of Spirit," pp. 128-130. Crane had negotiated without success to be the official Roebling biographer (Letters, pp. 293-294).

¹³ Lewis Mumford, Sticks and Stones (New York, 1924), pp. 114-117.

¹⁴ The Manhattan Bridge, immediately adjacent to the Brooklyn Bridge, also has four cables; it was completed in 1909. The reduction to two cables came with improvements in the tensile strength of steel—e.g., the Golden Gate Bridge.

¹⁵ See also John Unterecker, "The Architecture of The Bridge," Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, III, 5-20 (Spring-Summer, 1962).

¹⁶Letters, pp. 124, 127, 223, and esp. p. 319, where Crane defines logos in terms of a "substantial synthesis."

¹⁷ Weber, Crane, pp. 425-440.

¹⁸Letters, p. 270. Completed by the end of the year were "Ave Maria," "Cutty Sark," "The Tunnel," "Atlantis," and parts of "Powhatan's Daughter." Crane's poetic fecundity may have been triggered by the death of Washington Roebling, July 21, 1926; he sent "Proem" ("my little dedication") to Waldo Frank on or about July 24, 1926 (Letters, p. 267).

¹⁹ Trachtenberg, pp. 161-164, argues effectively that Crane relied on the Platonic version of the popular Atlantis myth; he mentions Crane's use of the cave myth only in passing (p. 154).

²⁰ The myth postulated an island-continent in the western Atlantic Ocean, geographically isolated by several concentric rings of sea and land. The inhabitants of the island, guided by their god Poseidon, eventually overcame their insularity, first, by inventing boats, and second, by constructing a Great Bridge, of such length that it reached from the inner island to the outermost ring of land, and of such height that ships could sail under it with ease. Thus freed, the inhabitants of Atlantis became a powerful nation, using the knowledge bestowed by Poseidon to create a bright materialistic culture in the West. See the "Timaeus" and "Critias" sections of The Dialogues of Plato, trans. B. Jowett (4th ed.; Oxford, 1953), III, 631-639, 781-804.

²¹ Crane claimed this section was the center of the work, "both physically and symbolically" (Letters, p. 347).

²² Stewart, pp. 451-456.

²³ On the epic intent of Crane's poem, see Letters, pp. 304-309, and Pearce, pp. 61-62 et passim.

²⁴ Stewart, pp. 245-253, 451-456. Though the myth is well known, it is useful here for purposes of analysis to note its outstanding features. Men were compared with prisoners in a cave, shackled facing a wall, their backs to the light, unable to see themselves or anyone else; they observed only the shadows of things on the wall. The philosopher was compared with one who left the cave, came to know things as they really were, and returning to the cave, could recognize the reality of things by their shadows. The myth included a warning to those who would become philosophers. The light in the cave was produced by a brilliant flame situated behind a parapet. People behind the parapet manipulated figurines above their heads, producing the shadows on the wall of the cave. If one of the men were ever set free and allowed to witness the machinery, he would not comprehend what he saw, for he knew only the world of shadows. Furthermore, if the man were to rush to the parapet, not allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the light, he would no doubt be blinded by the brilliant flame. He might then prefer to return to his chains and the comfortable world of shadows; but being blinded, he would no longer comprehend the shadows either. Thus, the escaped prisoner would find himself in a frustrating state, caught between two worlds, neither of which he could comprehend. As a consequence, he would no doubt experience the ridicule of the other prisoners for having tried to see the light, only to have his vision destroyed (Cornford, pp. 227-235).

²⁵ Coincidentally, Cornford, in his translation of the myth, notes: "A modernPlato would compare his Cave to an underground cinema . . ." (p. 228).

²⁶ When The Bridge was written, the subway still traversed the Brooklyn Bridge. See Crane's letter to his mother, May 11, 1924, where he described the lights of the elevated trains on the bridge (Letters, p. 183).

²⁷ "Chained bay waters" refers to the "chain bridge"—i.e., the Brooklyn Bridge.

²⁸ "Cloud-flown derricks" has caused some difficulty in interpretation (see, for example, Dembo, p. 50 n.); actually, it probably refers to a common scene along the docks under the bridge, as the tall booms (the "derricks") of the unloading equipment turn "all afternoon," enveloped in clouds of vapor from their steam-driven engines. For a description of such a scene, see Crane's letter to his mother, Oct. 21, 1924 (Letters, p. 192). In a general sense, then, the line merely represents a passage of time, during which normal activities continue.

I should like to emphasize here the general nature of this explication. I believe it is consistent with Crane's poetic technique (i.e., his Platonism) that any one of his poetic images may have several particular referents. For example, "Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks" may refer to the brilliant slice of light that penetrates at noon through the division between the roadways into the street below, where the bridge "leaps over the edge of the street" (Letters, p. 181). It may also refer to Wall Street, where, because the buildings are so tall and the streets so narrow, only at noon can the sun penetrate into the street below. These complement, however, rather than supplant the general poetic image: the first reaffirms the impression of an attack on the bridge's unity; the second, the reference to Wall Street, identifies one symbol of America's materialistic culture with another, the Brooklyn Bridge. By concentrating on the general poetic image, I do not intend to deny the richness of Crane's symbolist technique.