| | 1 | Author: | Crane review: Barry, John D. | Add | | | Title: | A note on Stephen Crane  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Not long ago, the New York Evening Post, in an editorial
discussing "The Decay of Decadence," grouped the late Stephen
Crane, as a poet, with the Symbolists of France and England. I was
struck by the association, for the reason that I happened to be
familiar with the peculiar circumstances under which The Black
Riders and Other Lines, from which a quotation is made in the
editorial, had come to be written. As a matter of fact, at the
time of writing that volume it is probable that Mr. Crane had never
even heard of the Symbolists; if he had heard of them, it is pretty
certain that he had never read them. He was then about twenty-one
years of age, and he was woefully ignorant of books. Indeed, he
deliberately avoided reading from a fear of being influenced by
other writers. He had already published Maggie, his first
novel, and by sending it to Mr. Hamlin Garland he had made an
enthusiastic friend. Through Mr. Garland he met several other
writers, among them Mr. W. D. Howells. One evening while receiving
a visit from Mr. Crane, Mr. Howells took from his shelves a volume
of Emily Dickinson's verses and read some of these aloud. Mr.
Crane was deeply impressed, and a short time afterward he showed me
thirty poems in manuscript, written, as he explained, in three
days. These furnished the bulk of the volume entitled The Black
Riders. It was plain enough to me that they had been directly
inspired by Miss Dickinson, who, so far as I am aware, has never
been classed with the Symbolists. And yet, among all the critics
who have discussed the book, no one, to my knowledge, at any rate,
has called attention to the resemblance between the two American
writers. It is curious that this boy, feeling his way toward
expression as he was then doing, should have been stimulated by so
simple and so sincere a writer as Miss Dickinson into unconscious
cooperation with the decadent writers of Europe. Perhaps an
explanation may be suggested by the association of Mr. Crane at
this period with a group of young American painters, who had
brought from France the impressionistic influences, which with him
took literary form. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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