Abstraction and Intersubjectivity in White Buildings

Abstract

Hart Crane could count himself a success when he found himself fêted at a distinguished New York party hosted by the critic Paul Rosenfeld in November 1924. He read “Chaplinesque,” “Sunday Morning Apples,” “Paraphrase,” and then, as an encore, “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen.” His appreciative audience reads now like a roll call of American modernists, and not just literary figures: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jean Toomer, Paul Strand, Aaron Copland, Marianne Moore, and Edmund Wilson.¹ The presence of painters and photographers at this party would not have been novel for Crane, since he made a conscious effort to surround himself with visual as well as verbal artists. The strong visual style that he derived from Decadence and Imagism was augmented by his tutelage by visual artists, in particular his Ohio Cézanne, William Sommer, who helped to develop Crane’s understanding of aesthetics, and whom Crane must have mentioned at the 1924 party, since “Sunday Morning Apples” is concerned with his work. One of the aims of Crane’s queer project is to challenge normative representation, which Crane did through the use of techniques like ekphrasis, and the embrace of abstract presentation which, he hoped, would allow him to connect with his readers.