BRIDGE INTO THE
SEA
roots and "silted shale" dragged seaward by the River. In "Ti.e
River" the images of disorder contribute to the whole triumphant
imaginative conversion of form into its opposite, which at last takes
on the aspect of a goal and defines itself as the Gulf; in "Cutty Sark"
the disorder is unattractive, a senseless shifting apparently leading
nowh~
Here the sea of earth is repellent, and when the sailor stag–
gers away to his ship, the poet is apparently altogether justified in
taking his different way, landward over the Bridge. The rest of " Cutty
Sark," the "calligramme of ships" seen by the poet "Walking home
across the Bridge," has superficially the appearance of an afterthought.
Crane himself seems to have had nearly this view of it, since he
described the passage to Qtto Kahn as "simply .a lyrical apostrophe
to a world of loveliness forever vanished." It is, however, strictly
relevant, being no less than a vision of the poet's ultimate success
foregone, the clipper ships of a "phantom regatta" laden with the
"opium and tea" of China, the spoils of Cathay which he will never
reach because he persists in turning away from the sea.
Repeatedly in
The Bridge
a tone of sadness, depression, or weari–
ness marks the denial of the sea. At the center of the melancholy
dearth and decay of "Quaker Hill" stands that American mansion
"old Mizzentop, palatial white / Hostelry," a deserted and stranded
ship. Even more somber is the following encounter with American life,
in "The Tunnel," a subway journey to the water's edge. Here Poe's
City in the Sea, a city of the dead as yet unsunken beside spiritless
waters, symbolizes the deathly arrest of our civilization sustained by
"phonographs of hades in the brain," "tunnels that fe-wind them–
selves." The journey through that narrow hell of self-perpetuating dis–
organization cannot bring release. Beyond it, however, is open water.
Having passed through the tunnel underworld, the poet emerges be–
side "the River that is East," that is Cathay and is, of course, a part
of the Atlantic Ocean. His goal is immediately before him. But though
his
hands "drop memory" and lie in the abyss of water, he goes no
further, does not descend into it.
In the
final
section of
The Bridge}
the terms of fulfillment are
intimated, but not accepted. There the "whitest Flower, ... Ane–
mone, ... Atlantis"- the "Atlantis Rose" of "Cutty Sark"-the
flower which like Atlantis lies beneath the water, and which stands
for the Absolute or Eternity, as Crane explained to Qtto Kahn, is
