The Letters of Hart Crane, 1916-1932, edited by Brom Weber. New York: Hermitage House, 1952, $5.00.

Hart Crane was born in 1899, died in 1932, and in the few short years of his maturity, left a not voluminous body of poetry that assures him a permanent place in American laterature. Now, in one volume, 405 letters written by Hart Crane, to family, friends, literary acquaintances, have been brought together, magnificently edited to avoid unimportant details or acknowledgment, yet never expurgated.

In these letters, Hart Crane reveals himself: as a poet in search of inspiration; as a man in search of values; as a homosexual in search of love. That he could never quite accept his way of life as being a proper one is clear in these letters, but should not prove surprising, in view of his youth when he died, the very slight progress that America had made in this field at the time, and because Crane was evidently beset by a search for love that came into sharp conflict with his own sexual proclivities.

For reasons that the editor has explained elsewhere, it was impossible to present both sides of this correspondence. None of the letters to which these were replies, and none of the replies to these letters, are included. The book, therefore, becomes one more of scholarly reference than of reading from start to finish. Inasmuch as an outstanding biography of Crane was written by Philip Horton and appeared in 1937, it is hoped that the publication of these letters will stimulate enough interest to cause reissue of that biography. This would be a service not only to a fine book but to a great poet.

On reading these letters, I could not help but think of the shallow criticisms of the homosexual influence in American literature, and of self-appointed critics who delight in telling stories of second-rate novelists who had their works published because they belonged to the same minority as some editor or publisher. I cannot help but wonder why these irate critics make mention of practically unknown authors, and overlook completely the influence of Whitman, Crane and perhaps Melville, James, and Gertrude Stein, all of whom dealt with this theme in their works, and some of whom were deeply interested in it in their personal lives.

Donald Webster Cory

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