The Brooklyn Bridge, the icon of unity and beauty, has served as a muse for
writers since the time of its creation. They have analyzed its importance and
used the bridge in metaphors; making the solid structure truly immortal. Lewis
Mumford wrote in 1924, "Beyond any other aspect of New York, the Brooklyn
Bridge has been a source of joy and inspiration to the artist."(1)
In response to the huge impact the bridge had on society, writers took the bridge
and turned it into diverse varieties of work.
| Walt Whitman wrote about the need to unite Brooklyn and Manhattan in the 1850's, nearly three decades before the bridge was completed. His work boldly asserts the worth of the individual. Born in Long Island and raised in Brooklyn, he was torn between the two separate lives of city and country. He wrote of joining rural Brooklyn with energetic Manhattan. In a poem entitled Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry, he unified Brooklyn and Manhattan together under the name "Brooklyniana." |
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Excerpt from Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry:
| Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore; Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east; Others will see the islands large and small; Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high; A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them, Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide. (2) |
Walt Whitman depicted the characteristics of both cities and their interlocked history and future together. He drew a positive connection between the two cities.
Other poets and writers also produced works using the Brooklyn Bridge as their subject. Hart Crane announced in 1924 that he would write an epic poem, entitled The Bridge, that would depict the myths he found in New York and in America. The Brooklyn Bridge was used as the main symbol, the heart of America. After a long (and somewhat incoherent) search through America's history, the bridge is the epithet of encouragement.
Excerpt from "Atlantis," The last section from The Bridge:
| Through the bound cable strands, the arching path Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings,--- Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate The whispered rush, telepathy of wires. Up the index of night, granite and steel --- Transparent meshes --- fleckless the gleaming staves --- Sibylline voices flicker, waveringly stream As though a god were issue of the strings.... ********************************* O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commits The agile precincts of the lark's return; Within whose lariat sweep encinctured sing In single chrysalis the many twain,--- Of stars Thou are the stitch and stallion glow And like an organ, Thou, with sound of doom --- Sight, sound and flesh Thou leadest from time's realm As love strikes clear direction for the helm. (3) |
Hart Crane does not represent the Brooklyn Bridge as a dreamlike idea in Atlantis. It is a tangible link found in the mythical city of Atlantis. As Alan Trachtenberg has observed, "Its properties are not magical but conceptual: it is a 'Paradigm' of love and beauty, the eternal ideas which lie behind and inform human experience." (4)
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When it was completed, the Brooklyn Bridge became a national
confidence builder; a badly needed shot of positivism after the Civil War
which nearly ripped the country apart. The symbol was reinforced by all
who wrote about the Brooklyn Bridge. |
4. Trachtenberg; Fact and Symbol; Page 146
