The Search for Paradise: Hart Crane

[REFERENCED POEM BELOW]

The Search for Paradise: Denying Custom in Hart Crane’s “Voyages I & II”

    Hart Crane’s poem Voyages I & II encapsulates the maturation and the subsequent knowledge acquisition of a young man. Crane begins the journey with a careless “conquest for shell shucks” in an innocent utopia free of adult prohibitions. After breaching the confines of childhood and ignorance, the protagonist experiences not the anticipated discomforts of a cruel and disruptive sea, but rather a paradise disconnected from instilled beliefs where “adagios of islands” carve an alternative path. This paper unpacks how Crane illustrates the distinction of the prohibited from the permissible as an obstacle to self-acceptance. By analysing the role of personification in shaping desires, we can gain deeper insight into why the protagonist exchanges instilled custom for paradise.

    Crane establishes customs, or norms determining the prohibited from the permissible, by establishing love itself as a benevolent parent. In Voyages I, personified love warns the children of a precarious future where the sun no longer serves to protect their innocence from a corrupt sea: “the sun beats lightning on the waves.” It pleads to never “cross/the bottom of the sea” as breaching into the territory will void the children of their goodness. The young minds fail to comprehend society’s strict customs based on the supposed violence and seductive nature of the sea; thus, they continue their innocent quest for harmless shells “bleached by time and the elements.” Crane illustrates the personified love as benevolent; consider how she addresses the children with “O brilliant kids,” she foresees their inevitable disobedience of custom and seeks to mitigate the consequences by indoctrinating a sanctuary of beliefs, norms, and methods. However, the efforts are in vain because one cannot alter what has been decided, such as sexuality. Crane describes her pleas as persistent and mournful simply because she understands the immutability of sexuality yet desires for their safety possible uniquely through transformation. Like Raphael’s inability to sway the disobedience of Adam and Eve through lecture in Paradise Lost, personified love fails to foster a sanctuary of custom capable of reducing the desire for authenticity.

    Elite, powerful, and boundless—the sea uplifts the “the wrapt inflection of our love” and promotes the sexuality of the protagonist and his lover. In Voyages II the sea speaks in opposition to the customs instilled by love, bearing an expansive mindset “of rimless floods” that reveals the possibility for a future through self-acceptance. “This great wink of eternity” illustrates the harmonious nature of the sea, which Crane argues is a characteristic of a good educator, by handing her an authority over the biased notions of love. The sea invites the protagonist on a cruise of sexual indulgence that honours the “pieties of lovers’ hands” and presents novel pleasures by evoking the movement of an “adagios of islands.” His desire matures in the sea, eventually transcending from yearning for physical wealth to metaphysical, somewhat divine form that overwhelms his bleached senses: “penniless rich palms.” As the voyage continues, the protagonist and his lover are introduced to and propelled by the unavoidable finality of death: “one instant in one floating flower.” They learn that sleep, death and desire are the premises of life and decide to continue the remainder of their existence in authenticity until “the vortex of our grave” is victorious. The choice is destructive and illuminative as homosexuality in Crane’s zeitgeist implies a life of external prejudice complete with a “Carib fire” of internal liberation.

    The lovers discover a beauty in authenticity by welcoming death not as a grim conclusion but as a motivator to live a fulfilling life. Paradoxically, the dangers evoked through the personification of love refer not to the physical perils of venturing into the sea, but to the societal consequences of defying her imposed customs. Crane argues that if the lovers remain unseen, “bequeath us to no earthly shore,” they will remain safe from the indoctrinated adults. After considering the dualism of perspective, by evaluating the voice of love relative to that of the sea, the protagonist chooses to embrace his homosexuality through the denial of external judgement. Continue without society, without onlookers, and “gaze toward paradise”! 

Voyages

By Hart Crane

I

Above the fresh ruffles of the surf

Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.   

They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,   

And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed   

Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections   

The sun beats lightning on the waves,   

The waves fold thunder on the sand;

And could they hear me I would tell them:

O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,   

Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached

By time and the elements; but there is a line   

You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it   

Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses   

Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.   

The bottom of the sea is cruel.

II

—And yet this great wink of eternity,

Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,   

Samite sheeted and processioned where   

Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,   

Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells   

On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,

The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends   

As her demeanors motion well or ill,   

All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.

And onward, as bells off San Salvador   

Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,

In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—

Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,

Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,   

And hasten while her penniless rich palms   

Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—

Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,   

Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.   

O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,

Bequeath us to no earthly shore until

Is answered in the vortex of our grave

The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.