The Danger of Standing in Rows

Stephen Crane is one of those poets who fly under the radar. "Yeah, yeah, Red Badge of Courage and all that stuff, journalist, Civil War, yadda yadda." Some talented poets never get recognized for their verse because it's so overshadowed by the popularity of their prose, especially fiction. (Thomas Hardy springs to mind, but then so do some justly overlooked poetasters like C.S. Lewis.)


But I digress: Fiction versus Poetry is another flame war for another site. I'm not particularly interested in comparing Crane's types of writing except as a historical curiosity. 

I'm especially interested in two things things about him, and the first that strikes me is his voice. Crane's voice has been either consciously imitated or subconsciously absorbed by plenty of writers despite being relatively obscure. It's somewhat reminiscent of Rimbaud's poems at their most lucid or Bob Dylan's poems at their least affected.

I also care about what he's saying and how - usually in terse, muscular lines both vague and specific, making grand points about God, the universe and man's dealings with both. Some have a flavor like haiku, some have more of the flavor of fables.

This is one that leaves an odd taste in my mouth, though.

Once there came a man

Stephen Crane

Once there came a man

Who said,

"Range me all men of the world in rows."

And instantly

There was terrific clamour among the people

Against being ranged in rows.

There was a loud quarrel, world-wide.

It endured for ages;

And blood was shed

By those who would not stand in rows,

And by those who pined to stand in rows.

Eventually, the man went to death, weeping.

And those who stayed in bloody scuffle

Knew not the great simplicity.

I get the point he's trying to make - about politics and reason, about power and order, conformity and individuality. When I first read him, in high school, I felt both the tug of his anti-authoritarian streak and the pull of his call for rationality and sense. Young men tend to like muscular, manly poems with calls to action; if there's some intellectual meat to chew on too, then all the better.

Now, though, when I think about people standing in lines, in rows... I mostly think of places like Büchenwald and the Katyn Forest, Kolyma and Magadan, Sudan. 


It seems less theoretical when you start to ask why the order that man weeps for is a good thing. It usually seems to strip people of the gentle chaos that makes up living. It gets replaced with something artificial and sterile, inauthentic at best and malevolent at worst.


In a word... People lined up make easier targets.


Crane died in the year 1900 and despite his wartime experience, the violence he saw contrasts with the violence we know. He didn't see trench warfare, concentration camps, ethnic cleansing. He didn't see American bread lines in the '30s and German shower lines in the '40s, and plenty of other lines before and after.


If he'd lived longer maybe he'd have written something else, something glorifying the disorder and anarchy of people refusing to stand in rows.