Chaplinesque

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The poem “Chaplinesque” is based on a clown, particularly a very entertaining clown in Hart Crane’s eyes. Crane thought that Charlie Chaplin was a “‘dramatic genius’” of “‘the fabulous sort’” (Lewis). Hart Crane wrote the poem “soon after Crane had seen and been enthralled by…//The Kid//” staring Charlie Chaplin, which greatly influenced Crane in the writing of this poem (Lewis). Crane thought that this poem expressed the life of a poet much as Charlie Chaplin expressed the life of a tramp in the silent film comedy. During this time, Crane gave people an outlet to laugh and relax. He was a natural poet. The first stanza describes how Crane’s feelings about what poets must do in order to express themselves as they write poetry. The actions are described as quiet and provided to many people with the poets getting the recognition that they deserve. The ‘meek adjustments’ describe the poems that are completed and the “random consolations’ are the recognition or rewards that the poets receive. His “too ample pockets” were “…always opened to the world, ready to accept and receive…” (Lewis). One critic describes Crane’s financial status as a, “…repository of the wind’s savings, almost as if his slithered pockets were a bank teller’s window” (Hutson). In the second stanza, Crane compares the poet’s life to that of a kitten. The kitten is trying to survive in the world that will destroy him (Lewis). So the kitten hides his feelings and tries to survive the fury of the world. The fury of the streets is a violent place, such as the “…humdrum, rushing, mechanical scramble of today that the man who would preserve them must duck and camouflage for dear life to keep them or keep himself from annihilation” (Hutson). In the same way, the poet must hide his feelings and in order to not be annihilated by the hustle and bustle of the world that he lives in (Lewis). If he allows the world to destroy him, then the ability to express his feelings will also be destroyed. So the poet must know the places to hide his feelings in order to write with human feelings. The third stanza describes how the poet must be sneaky in expressing his views through poetry. The theory of a “city cop who looms up so persistently, hand upraised, to block the little tramp…” (Lewis). The image of “the inevitable thumb” and “its puckered index” finger pointing at the poet reminds the reader of someone telling, being mad, or correcting the poet by telling him what can and cannot be written (Crane). But the poet will laugh at the person pointing his finger and write the poem anyway. The laugh, or smirk, is conceited, “…even as Charlie manages for a while and with an ingratiating smirk to skip or sidestep past him” (Lewis). The poet acts like he is innocent and has done nothing wrong. The poet knows that he will write what he wants, regardless of what the person tells him to do. Crane was very conscience of censorship in films and writing. The fourth stanza reveals that the Crane knows what he is talking about in his poems and is only hiding the truth and not destroying it (Lewis). He tried to protect the freedom of poetry that was so easily being threatened by the editors and society, “…Crane was aware of the falsehoods into which cultural circumstance, as well as the very nature of poetic discourse, might seem to force a poet…” (Lewis). An enterprise is a project that is very difficult or risky (“Enterprise”). So the poet must be willing to dance, “the pirouettes of any pliant cane”, around the authority, or publisher, that is telling him what to write in order to complete the project. Crane used imagery that implies danger, or risks, earlier in the poem in words or phrases like “meek adjustments”, “famished”, “fury”, “doom”, and “inevitable thumb” to give the reader a vivid picture of what he was talking about (Crane). One critic describes Crane’s word choice, “But it is safer with Crane to assume that he knew what he was doing in his selection of words” (Lewis). Crane used his power of words to tell his own story, even when outside sources endangered the art of poetry. “…Crane thus suggests that the self-demeaning compliance which the contemporary word demands of the poet or of any sensitive being would, if submitted to, lead only to utter spiritual death” (Lewis). In the final stanza, Crane uses imagery to describe the laughter of actually completing a poem regardless of the world around him. One critic describes the completion “…when the enforced smirk of daytime experience becomes moon-changed into a kind of holy laughter…” (Lewis). Completing a poem can be lonely, but the knowledge of completing the poem is a great experience, which is revealed in “But this Chaplinesque self is open to the pure gratuity of a vision of liberation. Beyond his need, his humiliations and hunger, he finds spiritual fulfillment” (Hutson). The imagery of seeing an ash can turned into a beautiful cup by the moonlight represents the finished work of the poet “…in a hauntingly melodic vision of the moon transforming a slum-ally ash-can into a silver chalice…”(Lewis). Crane also conveys the humorous personality of Charlie “The game enforces smirks…A grail of laughter of an empty ash-can…” (Lewis). One described, “Charlie Chaplin would change it because he is very vibrant, sensitive and responsive to the ever-changing, dynamic quality of life” (“Charlie”). With this in mind, Chaplin was an escape from the normal everyday routine. Crane elaborates on Chaplin’s figure in society throughout the poem. Hart Crane’s writing is unique and emotional as he goes from being a convicted poet, to a poet that laughs at the face of distress. He takes his audience through this whirlwind of humor, passionate imagery, and powerful feelings, through the image of Charlie Chaplin. In his effort to display the impact of Chaplin, Crane might have been wanting his audience to become more “Chaplineques” in their ways with his “...gail of laughter..." or care-free attitude about life (Crane). One is able to view this in Charlie Chaplin's shows, where comical things happen everytime (Chaplin). This is interesting when looking at his scarred past. The life of Hart Crane was one that was surrounded by conflicting parents and temporary jobs and homes. One describes his life as “Crane's personal life was anguished and turbulent” (“Hart Crane Facts”). His life held “estranged parents” and “a variety of uninteresting jobs” (“Hart Crane Facts”). Hart Crane’s poems were not bright and cherry, but rather dark. In “Porphyro in Akron”, he writes about “The stars are drowned in slow rain…” (Crane). This mirrors his childhood with his gloomy past that then reflected on his future. With his poetry, came the characteristics of modernism. One portrays modernism as “…experimentation, anti-realism, individualism and a stress on the cerebral rather than emotive aspects” (“Modernism”). In his poem Chaplineque, Crane uses Charlie Chaplin as a clown to express what he wants his readers to essentially be like making it more intellectual. The evidence of anti-religion is shown in the first stanza when Crane distinguishes the world and self. “This play between the world and self, between the world’s initiative and the self’s reactive powers is the essence of the poem. If the self is not strong enough to force its way, it can exploit…” (Hutson). It is all about the self, the “me”. Crane writes of no god, but rather how one can only rely on themselves to survive in the world. Crane displays this type of writing in multiple other works as well. In “Porphyro in Akron” and “My Grandmother’s Love Letters” he brings to attention the fact that poets are cast aside and not needed. “…we remember, his best creative efforts were attended by slow rain-the rain that does not so much echo an oppressive world as comment upon his own creative inadequacy, with its ‘sound of gently pitying laughter’” (Lewis). Crane writes about how there are many poets in a world where they are not very appreciated. In Robinson Jeffers’ “Vulture”, he writes about how one should in a sense be “one with nature”. Like Crane, Jeffers wrote about anti-religion. Instead of being eaten by the vulture and going to heaven, Jeffers vividly describes how he will die and live through the vulture. “To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes-What a sublime end of one’s body…” (Robinson). Overall, Crane was influenced by his past and had distinct writing because of it. His writing clearly represented the Modernism time period by including individualism, cerebral, and anti-religion. When viewing his other poems, one can sense a theme that poets are not as respected as they should be or should have been. Crane did earn some respect because according to Lincoln Kirstein, E. E. Cummings claimed that "Crane’s mind was no bigger than a pin, but it didn’t matter; he was a born poet" (“Hart Crane Bibliographical”).

CITATIONS: Lewis, R.W. B. "Hart Crane and the Clown Tradition." //A Collection of Critical Essays//. Englewood Cliff: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1982. 97-110. Print.

Hutson, Richard. "Exile Guise: Irony and Hart Crane." //A Collection of Critical Essays//. Englewood Cliff: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1982. 143-146. Print.

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