SOURCE: ""Our Native Clay': Racial and Sexual Identity and the Making of Americans in 'The Bridge '," in American Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 1, March, 1992, pp. 24-50.

In the following essay, Gardner discusses Crane's notion of racial and sexual identity in The Bridge.

Being a naïve European, I could not help remarking to my American companion: "I really had no idea there was such an amazing amount of Indian blood in your people."

"What!" said he. "Indian blood? I bet there is not one drop of it in this whole crowd. . . . "

I know the mother nations of North America pretty well, but if I relied solely on the theory of heredity, I should be completely at a loss to explain how the Americans descending from European stock have arrived at their striking peculiarities.

—Carl Jung, "Your Negroid and Indian Behavior" (1930)¹

In his letters, Hart Crane consistently aligned The Bridge...