HISTORYOGRAPHY OF HART CRANE`S WORKS

Abstract

The article deals with main life periods of famous American poet HartCrane. There are different tendencies to analyse Hart Crane`s works in thisarticle.The poetry of Hart Crane has never stopped presenting challenges.Appearing in the United States during the 1920s, a period of intense renovationand rebellion in the arts and letters, it stood in an unclassifiable mid kingdombetween tradition and innovation. This duplicity was responsible for theambiguous critical reception received at the time. Hart Crane, in the tumultuous32 years he lived, produced a very small body of work, consisting of onecollection of poems, White Buildings (1926), a long narrative poem called TheBridge (1930), a number of unpublished poems and others which werescattered through literary magazines of his time. Crane‗s poetry, very ambitiousin scope and style, was far too radical for its age. Nevertheless, throughout the20th century his poetry did not lose, but actually gained in interest andattention, although his methods and aesthetics always remained a challenge tothose critics who attempted to decipher it. In recent years, however, differentareas of literary theory and criticism have presented approaches that open fieldsof possibility for studying Crane‗s work. Theoreticians and critics seem to bepaying more attention to different aesthetic dimensions of a work of art.Crane also associated with a far different periodical, Seven Arts, whichdevoted itself to traditional American literature. Both Seven Arts and LittleReview exerted considerable influence on the impressionable Crane, and in hisown poetry he would seek to reconcile the two magazines' disparatephilosophies. Hart Crane is a legendary figure among American poets. In hispersonal life he showed little self-esteem, indulging in great and frequent boutsof alcohol abuse.Hart Crane lived only until the age of 32. He committed suicide, agonized,among other things, by doubt in his poetic skill. Little did he know that in timehis approximately 100 poems—written during a short period of just 16 years—would be viewed so favorably. In fact, they proved more than enough to puthim on par in many critics‘ eyes with the great handful of American geniuspoets—Whitman, Dickinson, Frost, Stevens, Eliot, and Emerson.