Possessed by Poe: Hart Crane’s Tribute to il Miglior Fabbro in a Symbolist-Modernist Context

The article explores the ways in which Hart Crane, Stéphane Mallarmé and Mina Loy pay homage to Edgar Allan Poe in their respective poems. A comparative exegesis of the tributes in question reveals the connections as well as the differences between the ways the two American modernist poets and the French symbolist approach the legacy of their eminent American predecessor. A critical juxtaposition of Crane’s, Mallarmé’s and Loy’s poetic texts seems particularly worthwhile in view of the fact that Poe is regarded as one of the fathers of both French symbolism and American modernist poetry, which, in turn, are strongly interconnected. Consequently, the analysis undertaken in the present article results in broader conclusions concerning what, in the context of American and French literature, may be referred to as the symbolist-modernist continuum.