Hart Crane’s Queer Modernist Aesthetic PDF
Preview Hart Crane’s Queer Modernist Aesthetic
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], 1 929– 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
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