For a revision of The Waste Land in The Bridge by Har Crane

Abstract: The Waste Land was published for the first time in 1922 respectively on two little magazines: The Criterion and The Dial. It was immediate success. It elaborated America’s failing the principal subject of America’s criticism of the time. Crane’s response was ambivalent: utter respect for Eliot’s writing and at the same time an uncompromising refusal of his pessimism and temper. The Bridge composed between 1923 and 1829, and published in 1930, was mainly Crane’s response to The Waste Land positioning himself against Eliot. Nevertheless, few poems are to be considered more influential on Hart Crane than The Waste Land to the point that the whole poem’s intent seems to focus more on the testing of his positive and regenerative vision against the grim reality reported by Eliot than in affirming this vision. Even the poet, at the end of “Atlantis”, the last section of The Bridge, questions the success of his enterprise. In this respect many sections have been defined Eliotic: “Three Songs”, “Quaker Hill” and “The Tunnel” where the poet revisits The Waste Land myths and methods. This paper concerns with the analysis of this revisitation/representation of the Waste Land especially in the “Tunnel” tracing especially parallelism, similarities allusions and quotations .