The very touches of poetic impressionism that
largely make for Crane's greatness, are cited to prove him an ignoramus.
There is the finest of poetic imagery in the suggestions subtly conveyed
by Crane's tricky adjectives, the use of which was as deliberate with
him as his choice of a subject. But Crane was an imagist before our
modern imagists were known.
This unconventional use of adjectives is marked in the Whilomville
tales. In one of them Crane refers to the "solemn odor of burning
turnips." It is the most nearly perfect characterization of burning
turnips conceivable: can anyone improve upon that "solemn odor"?
Stephen Crane's first venture was "Maggie: A Girl of the Streets." It
was, I believe, the first hint of naturalism in American letters. It was
not a best-seller; it offers no solution of life; it is an episodic bit
of slum fiction, ending with the tragic finality of a Greek drama. It
is a skeleton of a novel rather than a novel, but it is a powerful
outline, written about a life Crane had learned to know as a newspaper
reporter in New York. It is a singularly fine piece of analysis, or a
bit of extraordinarily faithful reporting, as one may prefer; but not a
few French and Russian writers have failed to accomplish in two volumes
what Crane achieved in two hundred pages. In the same category is
"George's Mother," a triumph of inconsequential detail piling up with a
cumulative effect quite overwhelming.
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