Text: J. Lasley Dameron, “Symbolism in the Poetry of Poe and Stephen Crane,” New Approaches on Poe, 1970, pp. 22-28

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Poe's contribution to contemporary poetry is generally attributed to his influence upon French Symbolist poetry.(1) Charles Baudelaire(2) and French Symbolist poets like Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Valéry(3) admired Poe's works, and evidence is strong that he inspired them, among other things, to develop verse techniques that pointed the way for major American poets of the twentieth century including, for example, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens.(4)

During the closing decades of the nineteenth century, when contemporary poetry had its start, American poets, as did Swinburne(5) and other British artists, commended the evocative lyrics composed by those French poets generally associated with the Symbolist movement. These French poets, in seeking new ways to express their personal visions of life and reality, created verse forms that were new, fresh, and very often faultless. Their poetry tended to suggest and evoke rather than to inform, achieving as Poe argued, “a suggestive indefiniteness of meaning with the view of bringing about a definiteness of vague and therefore of spiritual effect ...”(6)

T. S. Eliot, in citing his tenuous affinity with Poe by way of Valéry,(7) confirmed and largely established the thesis that Poe's contribution to contemporary poetry came by way of the Symbolists. Yet Poe was read and generally appreciated in America during the late nineteenth century,(8) and in some instances his contribution was certainly direct. Vachel Lindsay, for instance, acknowledges the strong impression Poe's poetry made upon his mind.(9) Stephen Crane, one late nineteenth century poet known primarily as an innovator of verse form and technique, had ample opportunity to know Poe and had little or no acquaintance with French Symbolist poetry.(10) Crane's poetry, often anthologized but less respected than his prose, has been a complex problem for the literary historian and critic.(11) His modernity, particularly the genesis of his form resembling the methods of the French Symbolists with whom he was not familiar, is very difficult to explain. My purpose here is to demonstrate that the link between Poe and Crane is closer than previously supposed, and at the same time to shed some light upon the origin of Crane's poetic style. Crane and Poe, although certainly different in matters of prosody and poetic diction, tend to accomplish symbolism by setting forth unreal physical scenes.

When the slim edition of Crane's The Black Riders came out in 1895, some critics saw little value in his poetry. The little volume War Is Kind and Other Lines, published in 1899, fared little better under the reviewer's attacks. During the last fifty years, however, critics have re-evaluated Crane's poetry and have offered various answers to the question of the group or movement to which he belongs. He has been compared to the Imagists(12) as well as to the French Symbolists, but no sure link can be tied with any movement. Although he was exposed to the [page 23:] poetry of Emily Dickinson,(13) any debt to her has never been established, and he does not fit very squarely into the Emerson-Whitman tradition. His poetry is said to owe something to Henly, Bierce, Olive Schreiner, Whitman, the Bible and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The most satisfactory criticism of Crane's poetry is Daniel Hoffman's The Poetry of Stephen Crane published in 1957. Hoffman traces Crane's development of a symbolical form and concludes that the poet derived his aesthetic from his early reading of major writers of the mid-century American Renaissance, including Emerson, Whitman, Poe, and perhaps Melville and Hawthorne.(14) Hoffman's analysis has given a sound perspective for examining Crane's poetry, and R. W. Stallman's recent biography(15) of Crane points to evidences of Crane's reading nineteenth century Romantic poets during his late teens and early twenties.

There are several indications that Crane read and knew Poe. Willa Cather reports that on one occasion he carried a selection of Poe's poems in his pocket.(16) Berryman(17) and Stallman have found Poesque overtones in Crane's Sullivan Count tales (p. 42), and his stories “A Tale of Mere Chance” and the posthumous “The Squire's Madness” are said to be clear examples of Poe's influence.(18) Editions of Poe's works were readily available to him, including the Stedman-Woodberry edition of 1894. Poe would have appealed to Crane and, according to Hoffman, may have inspired him to compose short verses (p. 263).

Though Crane used a new verse form like Whitman to emphasize rhythm more than meter or rhyme, Crane is more like Poe in his efforts to poetize the grotesque for its own effect. Lines 20-23 of Crane's “On the Desert” (p. 86)(19) from War Is Kind offer an image which is vivid and achieve the effect of horror and repulsion:

The same can be said for five lines of the fourth stanza of Poe's The Conqueror Worm:(20)

A similar thought is expressed in Crane's lyric (p. 60):

Compare Poe's Dream-Land:

Largely because of their emphasis upon the grotesque and the bizarre throughout their poetry, Crane and Poe, in contrast to Whitman, Emerson, and Emily Dickinson, resemble Romantic writers associated with the Gothic tradition. Crane and Poe belong to the dark vein of American literature; and like the prose of Hawthorne, Melville, James, Hemingway, and Faulkner, their poetry can be said to express the symbolic loss of Edenic innocence, asserting in tone and theme that the American Dream is illusory.(21) Crane created paradoxes to convey a disconsolate psyche, and Poe created a strange and death-like beauty to express a nightmarish view of life. In their portrayal of the strange and fantastical, both rely upon vivid images to create dispirited feelings within the reader's consciousness.

Crane and Poe often present unworldly scene to convey an idea or state of mind. Their imagery, macabre and bizarre, has the purpose of symbolizing, or perhaps of objectifying, their thoughts or feelings in a discernible form. They paint pictures of an imaginary world, presenting a series of images the total effect of which is to give the reader an atmosphere suggestive of the mood of the poet. This mood is not expressed directly, but is inspired by the poet's symbolic representation of the material. Crane wrote:

In “On the desert,” Crane presents a series of images that symbolize rather than picture reality. The desert becomes unearthly in the first two lines as the poet describes its quietness in terms of the silence of the moon. Crane then goes on to paint a picture through images that create a sense of horror in the reader's mind. The whispering snakes add little sound to the stillness as they circle the throat of the woman. The image of the desert dominates the images which contribute to its impression and convey a mood symbolizing the idea found in the closing lines of the poem: slavery, despair, and death are as “whispering snakes” that prey upon mankind. The use of the word “glory” is Crane's ironic touch. The same can be said for Poe's The Conqueror Worm:

Here, Poe sets a single image. The picture is painted by a series of strokes which are minor images. The angels watch a motley drama in which are “... much of Madness, and more of Sin, / And Horror the soul of the plot.” The image is completed as the worm crawls and devours “human gore.” The angels watch with tears in their eyes, and the effect upon the reader is one of horror that leads to the final thought: “That the play is the tragedy, ‘Man,’ / And its hero the Conqueror Worm.”

Both Crane and Poe have described a physical scene to set a mood. The method is the same in each poem, for both give a symbolic expression of an awesome vision of the universe made clear by a concluding tag. In many of their poems, however, they do not use a concluding tag to impart an explicit meaning. Their unworldly scenes evoke meaning through atmosphere or mood, and it is this practice or feature of their method that they have in common with the French Symbolists and with some contemporary poets.

The opening lines of “In the night” (p. 93) again reveal Crane's method of setting up an unreal world: “In the night / Grey, heavy clouds muffled the valleys, / And the peaks looked toward God, alone.” These lines suggest the central idea of [page 25:] the poem; the reader is introduced to a kingdom in which God is King and the peaks are His subjects. Whereas the peaks represent physical nature that is “humble, idle, futile,” God, sitting on the throne, is praised by a chaotic universe. The physical setting is an image which sets the mood and suggests the poet's intense aversion to a disordered cosmos. In Dream-Land, like Crane, Poe presents in lines 1-4 an image of a kingdom that is “Out of SPACE — out of TIME.”

Instead of God as King, Poe's kingdom has “night” as king, and the unreality of Poe's domain becomes apparent in lines 9-11: “Bottomless vales and boundless floods, / And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, / With forms that no man can discover. ...” The realm of Dream-Land suggests Poe's dissatisfaction with earthly life and constitutes, perhaps, an attempt to find some solace through his own psychic vision.

In the closing lines of “God lay dead in Heaven” (p. 67), the image that Crane attempts to present is best described as a picture of the end of time, an image which suggests the mood of anguish and despair which the poet apparently had experienced. When God dies the physical scene that is painted suggests a soul witnessing the day of doom. Man's sins become monsters and conquer all; even the power of human love is not invincible: “A woman's arms tried to shield / The head of a sleeping man / From the jaws of the final beast.”

Poe's Eulalie — A Song reveals a similar attempt by the poet to use landscape imagery as a device to evoke the emotion of despair and to impart Poe's antipathy to the real world:

Though the world to Poe is one of “moan,” the love of Eulalie makes it shine “bright and strong.” In contrast to Crane, the power of human love saves the soul from utter despair. In “A slant of sun on dull brown walls” (p. 89), Crane sets forth the physical image in the first few lines and strongly suggests the poet's detestation of life in a large city:

In The Lake — To. —— , Poe pictures a lonely lake far removed from life:

The emotional effect of this poem can be described as the kind of joy stemming from intense melancholy. By presenting an image of a “wild lake” bounded by black rock and surrounded by tall pines, the poet once again creates a mood which effects the reader. The speaker senses the delight of the lake's terror and rejoices in its loneliness, the implication being that loneliness, death, and solitude of soul are desirable.

Other instances of this method can be noted in the poetry of both poets, physical imagery being used to express their disconsolate reactions to the real world. Their unreal scenes can be said to symbolize, largely through mood and atmosphere, their vexation of spirit, which is communicated to the reader. Each controlling image is a single symbol and centers around one suggested idea. Though most of the poems in Crane's The Black Riders are too epigrammatic to illustrate this method, the post made better use of his imagery in the longer poems of the War Is Kind volume(22) and resembles Poe in his employment of imagery for its connotative rather than its denotative effect. His “Once, a man, clambering to house-tops,” (p. 90); “There was a land where lived no violets,” (p. 98); “The Wayfarer,” (p. 88); and “The successful man has thrust himself” (p. 92) are further examples of this technique found in Poe's The City in the Sea The Haunted Palace, Spirits the Dead, and Ulalume — A Ballad.

The use of unworldly scenes to achieve symbolism is found in French Symbolist poetry. Largely inspired by Charles Baudelaire, the members of this group, although distinctive, reacted against cognitive content and attempted to find links between poetry and elements of experience. Arthur Rimbaud, in Le Bateau ivre,(23) is like Crane and Poe in depicting an unreal scene as a method of evocation. In the manner of Kubla Kahn, Rimbaud concentrates upon the visions of inner life, using the symbol of an abandoned boat drifting at random upon strange waters. Here are the concluding stanzas:

For another example see Colloque sentimental(24) by Paul Verlaine:

One notes a similar method in Jules Laforgue's “Couchant d'hiver” from Le Sanglot de la terre(25) and in Leconte de Lisle's “le coeur de Hialmar” from Poèmes barbares.(26)

Hence Crane and Poe, like the Symbolists in the French lyrics I have cited, tend throughout their poetry to set forth unreal, unworldly scenes for the purpose of achieving symbolism. This method, having its roots largely in nineteenth-century Romanticism — especially in the poetry of Coleridge — is apparent in Eliot's The Waste Land and in other major poems of the twentieth century. The French Symbolists, greatly influencing contemporary poetry, developed complex theories that dwell upon symbolism as a means of perceiving ultimate reality, and go beyond Poe and Crane in developing technique and form. Crane and Poe generally depend upon macabre, pictorial imagery to incite the reader's feelings, their appeal being largely emotional rather than intellectual.(27) Critics have pointed out that the method of both poets can be understood in the light of Eliot's concept of the “objective correlative,”(28) for their emotive symbols evoke an idea that can be realized in objective form. It is not surprising, therefore, that elements of Crane's poetic method can be comparied [[compared]] with stylistic features found in both Poe and the Symbolists. All had opportunity to discover in Poe a poetic method to convey feeling and thought through mood symbolism.

Memphis State University

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[[Notes]]

1 Célestin P. Cambiaire, The Influence of Edgar Allan Poe in France (N.Y., 1927). See also A. G. Lehmann, The Symbolist Aesthetic in France, 1885-1895 (Oxford, 1950), pp. 129-142. Poe's literary affinity with the French Symbolist poets is generally acknowledged; however, Joseph Chiari, in his Symbolisme from Poe to Mallarmé: The Growth of a Myth (London, 1956), argues that Mallarmé owes very little to Poe.

2 Charles Baudelaire, Baudelaire on Poe. Trans. Lois and Francis Hyslop, Jr., (State College, Pa., 1952). See pp. 1-33 for a discussion of the backgrounds of Baudelaire essays on Poe and on Poe's critical reception in France.

3 Floyd Stovall, “Introduction,” The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Charlottesville, 1965), pp. xxviii-xxix.

4 Roy Harvey Pearce, The Continuity of American Poetry (Princeton, 1961), pp. 7, 303.

5 Ruth Z. Temple, The Critic's Alchemy: A Study of the Introduction of French Symbolism into England (N.Y., 1953), pp. 77-92.

6 Edgar Allan Poe, “Marginalia,” in Complete Works, ed. James Harrison. Volume XVI of 17 vols. (N.Y., 1902), p. 28. C. M. Bowra, in his The Heritage of Symbolism (London, 1962), writes that Poe's dictum of “suggestive indefiniteness” closely parallels Mallarmé's theory of art; see p. 9. Bowra's study was first published in 1943.

7 Thomas Stearns Eliot, “From Poe to Valéry,” Hudson Review, II, (Aug., 1949), 327-343. [page 28:]

8 Carlin T. Kindilien, American Poetry in the Eighteen Nineties (Providence, 1956), passim.

9 Eleanor Ruggles, The West Going Heart: A Life of Vachel Lindsay (N.Y., 1959), p. 42.

10 There is little evidence to suggest that Crane knew French Symbolist poetry. Richard Earl Peck, however, in “Stephen Crane and Baudelaire: A Direct Link,” AL, XXXVII (May, 1965), 202-204, points out a minor parallel between Crane and Baudelaire.

11 Daniel Hoffman, The Poetry of Stephen Crane (N.Y., 1957[[)]], pp. 3-4, 24-30.

12 Crane prefigures the Imagist movement; see Stanley K. Coffman Imagism: A Chapter for the History of Modern Poetry, (Norman, 1951).

13 R. W. Stallman, Stephen Crane: A Biography, (N.Y., 1968), p. 72.

14 See Hoffman, pp. 192-224, for a fine discussion of Crane's sources and kinships; Hoffman summarizes much that has been done on this subject.

15 Stallman, pp. 18-32. The listing of titles recorded in Crane's library at Brede Manor (his last residence prior to his death) includes the poems of nineteenth century poets like Shelley, Lowell, Longfellow, Thomas Moore, D. G. Rossetti, Browning, Kipling, Meredith, and Henley. Poe's works do not appear on a copy of this list sent to me by the Butler Library of Columbia University.

16 Ibid., p. 131.

17 John Berryman, Stephen Crane, (Cleveland, 1962), p. 41.

18 Hoffman, p. 246. Eric Solomon, in his Stephen Crane: From Parody to Realism, (Cambridge, 1967), declares “A Tale of Mere Chance” to be a burlesque of Poe's method, p. 10.

19 Stephen Crane, The Poems of Stephen Crane, ed. Joseph Katz, (N.Y., 1966), p. 92. All references to Crane's poetry are cited from this edition. References to specific poems are indicated by the first line of each poem followed by the number the poem designated by the editor.

20 Edgar Allan Poe, The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Floyd Stovall (Charlottesville, 1965), pp. 91-92. All references to Poe's poetry are cited from this edition.

21 Two basic discussions of the Myth of the American Dream and trends in American literature are Frederic I. Carpenter's American Literature and the Dream, (N.Y., 1955) and R. W. B. Lewis' The American Adam, (Chicago, 1955).

22 Hoffman argues that Crane's “symbolistic” poems, especially those in War Is Kind, are Crane's best. Harland S. Nelson takes a different view in “Stephen Crane's Achievement as a Poet,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, IV, (1963), pp. 564-582.

23 Arthur Rimbaud, “Le Bateau ivre,” Oeuvres complètes D'Arthur Rimbaud. Texte établi et annoté par Rolland de Renéville et Jules Mouquet. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, LXVIII, (Paris, 1963), pp. 100-103.

24 Paul Verlaine, “Colloque sentimental,” Oeuvres poétiques complètes De Verlaine. Texte établi et annoté par Y. -G. Le Dantec. Edition revisée complétée et présentée par Jacques Borel. Bibliothèque de La Pléiade, XLVII, (Paris, 1962), p. 121.

25 Jules Laforgue, “Couchant D'Hiver,” Oeuvres complètes De Jules Laforgue. Vol. I of 6 vols., (Paris, 1926), pp. 42-43.

26 Leconte de Lisle, “Le Coeur De Hialmar,” Vie et oeuvres De Leconte de Lisle. Par Jules-Marie Priou- (Paris, 1966), pp. 164-165.

27 Yeats discusses the functions of emotional and intellectual symbols in poetry in “The Symbolism of Poetry,” Essays and Introductions, (N.Y., 1961), pp. 153-164.

28 Thomas Stearns Eliot, Elizabethan Essays (London, 1934), p. 61. Hoffman observes: “In so far as Crane's symbols have been assigned through unstated meanings they are much closer to the objective correlative described by T. S. Eliot than they are either to the symbols of Symbolism or the images of Imagism,” (p. 260). With respect to Poe's poetic technique, Stovall finds that “picture takes the place of story or statement; the idea is not expressed, but realized in objective form, somewhat as in what has come to be known by T. S. Eliot's term, the “objective correlative,” (p. xxiii).