Brewster Ghiselin
BRIDGE INTO THE SEA
In
"The River," that part of
The Bridge
which is perhaps
the major achievement of Hart Crane's poem, certain tramps are
represented, men knowing intimately the earth's body- the earth
of Ameri,ca: "Hobo-trekkers that forever search/ An empire wilderness
of freight and rails, , ' . / -As I have trod the rumorous midnights,
too," Possibly a part of Crane's interest in them came of his recognition
of their resemblance, however obscure or slight, to himself. "Each
seemed a child, like me. . . . Holding to childhood like some termless
play." These men seem not to belong to the noonday. Almost fan–
tasmal, they haunt the American place, ghostly survivors of the
American story-for they are "pioneers in time's despite," but seekers
who never find, since "They win no frontier." Without tangible posi–
tion or solid accomplishment
in
the world, they exist a little apart, as
if they had lost some connection with the whole American life the
ideal development of which
The Bridge
purports to celebrate. They
never ride the coaches that span the continent, They watch "the tail
lights wizen and converge" or "jolted from the cold brake-beam"
they die. With silt and roots and "floating niggers" they are drawn
down by the Mississippi, which drinks away the substance of the
very continent, into the waters of the Gulf. With others, they "feed
the River timelessly."
Despite their momentary prominence in the poem, they seem
even less than unimportant. Crane refers to them as "Blind fists of
nothing." And their disappearance seems
inconseq~ential,
a slight con–
tribution amid all the tribute of earth to water. Yet what happens
to them
is
of considerable import, as I hope to show.
There are other pioneers in the poem. Most significant is that
first
American pioneer, Columbus himself, whose exalted meditation
as he approaches the shores of Spain form Part I of
The Bridge.
The
