SOURCE: "Cultural Revisions in the Twenties: Brooklyn Bridge as "Usable Past"," in The American Self: Myth, Ideology and Popular Culture, edited by Sam B. Girgus, University of New Mexico Press, 1981, pp. 58-75.

In the following essay, Trachtenberg discusses The Bridge as a landmark of the 1920s cultural and aesthetic vision.

Hart Crane's The Bridge (1930) has its origins in the twenties. As much autobiography as "myth of America," the poem belongs not only to the decade's syncopated tempos and aesthetic entrancements, but as well to its deep changes and conflicts. The poet's own life in these years of encroaching mechanization, standardization, and consumer capitalism, is the historical ground of the poem, a ground too rarely allowed more than passing notice in criticism. It is characteristic of our criticism that it knows less about history than it does about literary forms and influences, and knowing less about the ground of...