From: The Academy, No. 1504, March 2, 1901, p.177
The Academy, No. 1504, March 2, 1901
It has been suggested that, in his volume of short stories entitled The Monster, the late Mr. Stephen Crane was less original than usual, that he was indebted to Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the idea of the title story, and that “The Blue Hotel” resembles a story by a distinguished compatriot called “Snow-Bound at Eagle’s.” These suggestions hardly carry conviction, and we are not surprised to learn, from Mrs. Crane, that the stories which are thus criticised were founded on her late husband’s personal experiences. Mrs. Crane writes: “‘The Blue Hotel’ was one of Mr. Crane’s own experiences when he went West for the Batchelor Syndicate of New York. . . . Uncle Tom’s Cabin did not suggest the ‘Monster.’ Mr. W. D. Howells says: ‘“ The Monster” is the greatest short story ever written by an American.’ Henry Johnson was a real man — that is, he was burned horribly about the face; but he was a hero only as he was a horror. Out of the crepe-bound face of a negro whom Mr. Crane saw came the story of the ‘Monster.’”
From: The Academy, No. 1444, January 6, 1900, p.13
Active Service by Stephen Crane. (Heinemann. 6s.)
The hero of this novel is the editor of the Sunday edition of a New York paper, Rufus Coleman, a down-East Yankee of the most resourceful and clear-headed type. Coleman falls in love with Marjory Wainright, daughter of a college professor. The professor declines the young man as a son-in-law, and then, his daughter proving obstinate, takes her and his wife to Greece, with a party of young students. Rufus follows as correspondent of his paper, and there follows also a divette named Nora Black, who has something more than a preference for the great young Sunday editor. The presence of all the characters in Greece can only be explained by the fact that Mr. Crane has spent some time in Greece as a war-correspondent, and must have a large quantity of descriptive stuff to ‘‘ work off.” Otherwise it has no significance. Mr. Crane makes of the Turko-Greek war a rather effective background to a romantic love-tale with a “happy” conclusion. The book is full of those feats of description for which the -author is famous — some of them really excellent, others nothing but trickeries in which a certain effect is obtained by applying to men the epithets of things and to things the epithets of men. But let us admit that Mr. Crane can handle the epithet and the simile with surprising, almost miraculous dexterity. The best chapter in the book is that in which is set forth the strenuous life of the sixteenth floor of the New York Eclipse building. It is a piece of sheer impudent vivacity, the end justifying the means. If it had not succeeded it would have been obviously crude; but it does succeed, and the sixteenth floor of the Eclipse building lives for you as in a biograph.
A large part of the book is occupied with the American University student, of whom Mr. Crane presents several varieties in what one of his characters calls a “calcium light.” These persons are not wholly fascinating; their passion for slang amounts to a disease — a disease which has communicated itself to Mr. Crane. If a slang phrase will roughly serve his turn he never hesitates to use it. The students’ conversations have picturesqueness:
In the corridor, one of the students said offensively to Peter Tounley:
“Say, how in hell did you find out all this so early?”’
Peter’s reply was amiable in tone.
“You are a damned bleating little kid, and you make a holy show of yourself before Mr. Gordner. There’s where you stand. Didn’t you see that he turned us out because he didn’t know but what you were going to blubber or something P You are a sucking-pig, and if you want to know how I find out things, go and ask the Delphic Oracle, you blind ass.”
“You’d better look out, or you may get a punch in the eye!”
“You take one punch in the general direction of my eye, me son,” said Peter cheerfully,” and I’ll distribute your remains over this hotel in a way that will cause your friends years of trouble to collect you. Instead of anticipating an attack upon my eye, you had much better be engaged in improving your mind, which is not at present a fit machine to cope with exciting situations. There’s Coke ‘. Hello, Coke, heard the news? Well, Marjory Wainwright and Rufus Coleman are engaged. Straight? Certainly! Go ask the minister.”
On the whole, Active Service is a little below Mr. Crane’s best. It is mannered, and the mannerisms of a writer with methods so audacious and novel as Mr. Crane’s are apt to irritate. But it quite deserves to be called a remarkable book.
From: The Bookman, V. 1, No. 4, May 1895, p.254
SOME RECENT VOLUMES OF VERSE by Harry Thurston Peck
Mr. Stephen Crane is the Aubrey Beardsley of poetry. When one first takes up his little book of verse and notes the quite too Beardsleyesque splash of black upon its staring white boards, and then on opening it discovers that the “ lines” are printed wholly in capitals, and that they are unrhymed and destitute of what most poets regard as rhythm, the general impression is of a writer who is bidding for renown wholly on the basis of his eccentricity. But just as Mr. Beardsley with all his absurdities is none the less a master of black and white, so Mr. Crane is a true poet whose verse, long after the eccentricity of its form has worn off, fascinates us and forbids us to lay the volume down until the last line has been read. Even in the most fantastic of his conceits there are readily to be found a thought and a meaning. In fact, if Walt Whitman had been caught young and subjected to aesthetic influences, it is likely that he would have mellowed his barbaric yawp to some such note as that which sounds in the poems that are now before us. A few examples of Mr. Crane’s manner may serve at once as an illustration and as a diversion to those who have not yet made his acquaintance. Mr. Crane will perhaps pardon us if we neglect to display his lines in the capital letters that he appears to love.
The following is a fair specimen of Mr. Crane’s treatment of things religious — or as one might more truly say, of things dogmatic:
“Two or three angels
Came near to the earth.
They saw a fat church.
Little black streams of people
Came and went in continually.
And the angels were puzzled
To know why the people went thus.
And why they stayed so long within.”
Here is a good instance of his allegorical way of giving new expression to philosophic truths or truisms:
“I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
‘It is futile,’ I said,
‘You can never—’
‘‘You lie,’ he cried,
And ran on.”
Very few of his poems sound the note of love; and when they do, there is always something gloomy or unhappy either in the main thought or in the accompanying suggestions. This short poem is sufficiently typical of the rest:
“Should the wide world roll away.
Leaving black terror.
Limitless night.
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential,
If thou and thy white arms were there,
And the fall to doom a long way.”
Here is an example of his weirdness:
“Many red devils ran from my heart,
And out upon the page.
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them,
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange to write in this red muck
Of things from my heart.”
On the whole, Mr. Crane’s work has traces of Entartung, but he is by no means a decadent, but rather a bold — sometimes too bold — original, and powerful writer of eccentric verse, skeptical, pessimistic, often cynical ; and one who stimulates thought because he himself thinks. It is no exaggeration to say that the small volume that bears his name is the most notable contribution to literature to which the present year has given birth.
From: The Athenaeum, No. 3617, February 20, 1897, p.245
The Athenaeum, No. 3617, February 20, 1897
Mr. Heinemann prints in his “Pioneer Series” The Little Regiment and other Episodes of the American Civil War from the pen of Mr. Stephen Crane, who on this occasion equals his ‘Red Badge of Courage ‘ and excels his ‘Maggie.’ The extraordinary power of imagination which transports the reader into the very firing line of the Northern troops of 1863 is displayed by a writer born, if we mistake not, many years after the close of the scenes which he describes, - and is, for this reason, more wonderful than that of Defoe. Mr. Crane’s English, when he writes in his own person, is his own, and follows no known rule as to the use and even the meaning of words. It is in dialogue that he is at his strongest, for in this the words are used as the soldiers would have used them.
From: The Book Buyer, V. XIII, No. 12, January 1897, p.983-984
The Little Regiment — The Book Buyer, V. XIII, No. 12, January 1897
The six short stories which Mr. Crane has printed under the title of The Little Regiment seem to have been produced in response to the public demand, familiar enough nowadays, that a writer who has done a striking thing once should promptly proceed to do it over again. These war stories are without exception variations upon the underlying motive of “The Red Badge of Courage” namely, a study of the human animal under the stress of unreasoning terror. The people who were troubled by the grammar of “The Red Badge” and by some of its structural defects, will find less fault with these shorter sketches. They exhibit the same wayward experiments in color, sometimes extraordinarily successful, but often spoiled by effectivism and overloading of the brush. They have the same Maeterlinckian vagueness of outline and trick of imparting to every inanimate object a grotesque and sinister significance. The close of each story in “The Little Regiment,” however, is a clever attempt to redeem the fundamental cynicism of the author’s point of view, and the impression made by the volume as a whole, when compared with his earlier book about war and warriors, is distinctly less depressing.
The power of Mr. Crane’s art is undeniable. His method is frankly individualistic. He ignores literary conventions and escapes the commonplace. His impressions are rendered with a vividness and nervous energy that compel attention, as is evidenced by the recognition which his work has already received. Whether his war stories have the characteristics that will enable the normally minded lover of literature to turn to them again and again, for their permanent pleasure-giving quality, is quite another matter. They are seriously handicapped by morbid psychology and by mannerisms. Interesting as is the color-notation, for instance, it is frequently obtruded upon the reader at the very moment when his attention should be engrossed with the personages or the action of the story. A sympathetic spectator of the struggle would not notice — nor wish to notice — many of the nuances of atmospheric effect to which Mr. Crane invites his scrutiny, and it is sometimes difficult to resist the conclusion that the author himself did not at bottom care so much for the essentials as for the picturesque accidents of the tale. He takes great risks, likewise, as every impressionist must, in his phraseology. When we are told that a wounded horse is “ turning its nose with a mystic and profound eloquence towards the sky,” or that another horse “with his great mystically solemn eyes looked around the corner of his shoulder at the girl,” or that “ the feed-box was a mystic and terrible machine,” the entire effect depends upon one’s mood at the moment. If he is under sufficient emotional excitation, he is ready to believe that anything or everything is “mystic” when he is told so; but there is always a chance that some one may laugh or that the showman himself may wink. In either case the exhibition suffers. Again, Mr. Crane’s favorite motive, the mania of terror, precludes him from characterizing his personages. “The tall soldier” or “the other soldier” is indeed characterization enough, if abject fear or emotional insanity is a moment later to obliterate the human traits of these men. In “The Veteran,” the finest story in the volume, we are informed that at the alarm of fire the old man’s face “ceased instantly to be a face; it became a mask, a gray thing, with horror written about the mouth and eyes.” We get a striking phrase, but it dehumanizes the hero. In “A Gray Sleeve” “‘the troopers threw themselves upon the grove like wolves upon a great animal.” In a night skirmish between two bodies of troops, in another story, ‘‘ it seemed as if two gigantic animals were engaged in a mad floundering encounter, snarling, howling, in a whirling chaos of noise and motion.” All this is singularly graphic, but the truth is that most readers approach the depiction of war with prepossessions in favor of the distinctively human traits of loyalty, faith, deliberate self-sacrifice, cool-headed heroism. Literature has doubtless done something to encourage them in this prejudice. “A soldier’s a man,” sings poor drunken Cassio; and certainly this view of the case, whether right or wrong, affords more attractive literary material than does the theory that a soldier is an animal, with predisposition to phobomania.
From: The Academy, No. 1294, February 20, 1897, p.231-232
The Little Regiment, and other Episodes of the American Civil War by Stephen Crane.
Mr. Crane has attempted the bold and dangerous task of writing two books on exactly the same subject, from exactly the same standpoint, and making use of exactly the same background. This has proved a stumbling-block to many more experienced authors, and it is high praise to say that The Little Regiment, in every way a companion volume to The Red Badge of Courage, is not one whit behind it in power or picturesqueness. It is true that war is a far-reaching, inexhaustible subject, but Mr. Crane does not content himself with bird’s-eye views of the battlefield. He takes his stand with the rank and file of the army, with the men who fight wherever their feet are planted until more orders come, knowing absolutely nothing of the general significance of their actions. The awful monotony of his pictures is almost depressing: there is no room for variety of any kind.
The present volume is made up of six episodes. The story entitled The Little Regiment stands out from the others as the most finished, the most complete piece of work Mr. Crane has given us. It is a short sketch, but brimful of the grim reality of war. Although individuals seem almost insignificant in such a picture, each man is perfectly realised. Dan and Billie live before our eyes, and we feel sure we should recognise “the man who sat on the horsehair trunk” among a thousand. As a word painting The Little Regiment is truly wonderful. In every sentence we can hear, even more clearly than in The Red Badge of Courage, the panther-like screaming, the witches’ crooning of the shells, the cracking of the skirmishers, the spattering and zipping of the bullets, while through all these pulsates the fierce elation of the men amid the horrors. Great dashes of crimson and blobs of blue break occasionally through the dim and mystic clouds of grey mist, and the whole demoniacal howling of the battle quivers in our brain for hours.
Mr. Crane relies for his effects on daring and original colour similes. He is a word artist of infinite resource, and for everything he invents a special hue. The sense of smell which plays such a prominent part in Zola’s Debacle is conspicuous by its absence. We certainly miss the odeur de la guerre.
Mr. Crane’s peculiar genius is admirably adapted to the exigencies of the short story. He writes at such fever heat, and puts so much of the rush and turmoil of battle into his short, quivering sentences, that a long-continued story like The Red Badge of Courage comes as a strain to the mind of the average reader, who closes the book with a genuine sigh of relief. In these episodes the pace is faster, the intensity more striking than ever; but the pauses between the stories give time for breathing. Compared with The Little Regiment, the other episodes are more sketchy and less compact. An Indiana Campaign is a pleasant piece of comedy, which comes as a relief amid the all-pervading gloom; but Mr. Crane lacks the necessary lightness of touch. The Veteran, the story of an old man who meets his death in the flames while trying to rescue some colts, is a trifle theatrical and commo
nplace. A woman figures in Three Miraculous Soldiers and A Grey Sleeve, but she seems out of her element and only half realised. A Mystery of Heroism, a new version of an episode in the Cave of Adullam, and a splendid psychological revelation of the feelings of a desperado, is, in its way, as perfect a piece of work as The Little Regiment, though the tone is quieter and more subdued.
From: The Academy, No. 1307, May 22, 1897, p.541
MR. STEPHEN CRANE’S NEW BOOK — The Third Violet (Heinemann.)
A precipitate outpouring of lively pictures, a spontaneous dazzle of colour, a frequent success in the quest of the right word and phrase, were among the qualities which won for The Red Badge of Courage immediate recognition as the product of genius. It was felt to be the work of one who had sought deep down in his inner consciousness for the thought and for the image, and had been rigorous in rejecting inadequate expression. These qualities, with less of their excess, are manifest in The Third Violet; and the sincere psychology, the scientific analysis, which in the earlier work lay at the root of the treatment of its subject-matter, are no less sure in the author’s portrayal of more daily emotions — of the hackneyed, yet never to be outworn, themes of a man’s love, a woman’s modesty, and the snobbery which is very near to us all. Of the hundreds who strive after this inward vision, and this power of just expression, once in a decade of years, or in a score, one attains to them; and the result is literature.
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 212
