John T. Irwin talks the triple female archetype

"Established by a prominent Baltimore family in memory of Percy Graeme Turnbull after his unexpected death in 1887, the Turnbull Lecture series quickly established itself as one of the premier lectureships in the nation" (programme notes).

This would seemingly pass for many a lecture across the nation, and yet few can boast the literary luminaries that have lectured, the likes of T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Jacques Derrida, Randall Jarrell, Marianne Moore and Robert Frost — just to name a few.

This is the 121st year of the lecture series. The Turnbull lectures have run almost continuously since 1891, the exceptions being the two world wars and a gap between 1984 to 1996. The Writing Seminars department continues this tradition to the present, and, in this instance, in the form of a lecture from John T. Irwin on his recently published book, Crane's Poetry.

The event itself was catered, creating a genial atmosphere outside of the lecture room as interested Baltimoreans mingled with students and professors. The somewhat sparse audience sported an overwhelming amount of gleaming or white heads, a disappointment for an open event on those young singles of the undergraduate campus looking to mix and mingle. Perhaps this weighted attendance was merely the victim of its timing, the dreaded creep of midterm season slowly making its inroads into the student body.

The subject of the lecture was "The Bridge," an epic poem written by Hart Crane. During his lecture, Irwin looked to unpack the "triple female archetype in Hart Crane's ‘The Bridge.'" This, of course, is no mean feat, especially in regards to Crane, renowned for his highly stylized, complex, modernist poems.

This is a challenge that has apparently been overcome, or at least Irwin would have us temporarily believe; within that hour in Hodson 110, the opaque allusions within the excerpts provided were made startlingly clear.

Irwin posits that Crane's central concern is the repudiation of Oswald Spengler's theory of the inevitable decay of a civilization's culture. A culture will, at a certain point, reach a moment where there are no further new actualizations of that culture. The end is ceaseless repetition, the equivalence of cultural death.

The America Crane envisioned had no such future, as evidenced in his positive take in "The Bridge." He symbolizes this through the layered interplay of the Brooklyn Bridge and Statue of Liberty.

Crane represents his spirited optimism in the future of America through a "triple female archetype." This of course begs the question: Who are the female archetypes? Irwin posits that they are the Virgin Diana, the Lover Aphrodite and, finally, the Mother Juno. Their origins are in Greece but have over time been adopted befitting the circumstance.

Crane focuses on the colossal bearer of light and welcome near the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Irwin links her to a representation of Aestraea, a daughter of Zeus and the last of the immortals to live with humans.

According to Ovid and Eratus, mankind morally deteriorates, descending through eras — beginning with the utopian golden age and ending where we presumably are, the Iron Age. Aestraea flees the wickedness accompanying the advent of this era, joining her brethren in the night sky. Aestraea also goes by the name Virgo, the maiden holding the golden ear of corn, as well as goddess of justice. Her departure from the world of man and, with it, any hope for justice. Another archetype is that of mother and child, in Greek mythology Demeter and Kore. This is updated by Virgil, who prophesizes the eventual return of the long gone golden age, its rebirth marked by the birth of a child, a golden age that was assumed to have been reached by the Romans in the form of Pax Romana.

The Byzantine Emperor Constantine, understanding it to be a prophecy of the coming of Mary and Jesus, then later adopted it. Mary the virgin mother of Christ became the equivalent of Virgo/Aestraea, all of whom were superseded over time by the image of the virgin Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth spread British imperial might to the undiscovered corners of the world and established imperial justice. But what was the American equivalent? It is none other than Pocahontas, who represents the inexhaustible virginity of the human spirit. And in doing so is the Brooklyn Bridge.

Crane wanted to capture the raw force of the virgin, generated dually by sexual force and reproductive ability. The rival to this energy was the newly invented dynamo, which represented anarchic unnatural forces. The Brooklyn Bridge bridges the two disparate worlds of the man-made dynamo from the age of iron and the virgin. Meanwhile, Virgo is manifested in the form of the Statue of Liberty — the corn of Pocahontas is replaced by a torch — and promises liberty and justice for all.