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Introductory Narrative Formulaics in Stephen Crane’s The Black Riders and Other Lines
Rachel Moyes
Brigham Young University
June 12, 2012
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Abstract
While noted for his novel The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane is not often lauded
for his poetry. His first volume of verse, The Black Riders and Other Lines received scathing
reviews at the time of its publication for its lack of standard form. Though lacking in rhyme and
meter, Crane’s poetry has a definite form. The purpose of this study was to analyze the
grammatical formulas at work in The Black Riders which give Crane’s poems a distinct narrative
form. Only those grammatical formulas that introduced the narrative could be handled in a paper
of this scope. Through structural analyses, this study found that there are distinct grammatical
formulas involving setting, character, and action that set up the narrative situation in the poems
of The Black Riders.
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In the annals of American literary history, Stephen Crane is remembered as the great
novelist who gave us The Red Badge of Courage in 1895. One insignia that he does not often
bear, though, is that of poet, though his first volume of verse, The Black Riders and Other Lines,
was actually published before his novel in that same year. Crane himself took his “lines” more
seriously than the literary world ever has, once purporting in a letter, “Personally, I like my little
book of poems, The Black Riders, better than I do The Red Badge of Courage. The reason is, I
suppose, that the former is the more serious effort. In it I aim to give my ideas of life as a whole,
so far as I know it, and the latter is a mere episode—an amplification” (qtd. in Katz, xi). Readers
of Crane’s poetry can need not stretch their imaginations to see that that was his goal; the white
space on the page surrounding his succinct allegorical poems is full of the stuff of the ages.
But many critics have had difficulty seeing The Black Riders as a “serious effort,” despite
Crane’s especial sanction of it. In June of 1895, the St. Louis Republic printed a review of the
volume, remarking that it “was written in three days, a statement that may be believed with
readiness. One wonders, indeed, that he was more than three minutes at it” (qtd. in Monteiro,
15). Truly, Crane’s manner of preparing the text was most unusual. Once, when his publisher
asked him whether there were any more poems ready than the ones Crane had already shown
him, he replied, referencing his brain, “I have four or five up here all in a little row” (qtd. in
Katz, xv). He then flawlessly set down “God fashioned the ship of the world carefully,” as if it
had truly been floating through his mind fully formed, just waiting to be pinned down.
If this was Crane’s only absurdity, his poems might have been more well-received. But
their genesis was just the beginning of their mystery. Each poem was short, usually under twenty
lines, resembling a paragraph of prose with line breaks inserted. Concerning the
unconventionality of the poems, publisher William Dean Howells wrote to Crane, “I wish you
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had given them more form, for then things so striking would have found a public ready made for
them; as it is they will have to make one” (qtd. in Katz, xvi). The reviews from the time seem to
make good Howells’ prophecy that the public was not quite ready to receive Crane’s work. The
New York Commercial Advertiser printed plainly, “There is no verse in these verses. There are
no rhymes. There is no meter. There is rhythm and there is also strength” (qtd. in Monteiro, 16).
These mild concessions were even too compassionate for others: the Daily Inter Ocean’s verdict
was, “There is not a line of poetry from the opening to the closing page” (qtd. in Monteiro, 13),
illustrating how the public viewed Crane’s work as a complete and unforgivable break with
tradition.
From a twenty-first century point of view, these reviews seem as stark to us as Crane’s
poetry seemed to his contemporaries. It is obvious to us that his lines have more to offer than the
undisciplined rhythm or an unruly strength mentioned in the reviews. In particular, Howells’
desire for Crane to have given his poems more form seems unfounded. While dispensing with
the traditional markers of poetic form, such as rhyme and meter, Crane’s lines adhere to
formulaic narrative patterns which give The Black Riders an unusual continuity. Calvert Watkins
discusses these formulas in his seminal volume on comparative Indo-European poetics, How to
Kill a Dragon. According to Watkins, formulas are “the verbal and grammatical device for
encoding and transmitting a given theme” (17), meaning those set phrases or grammatical
structures used across various Indo-European literary traditions to communicate a basic semantic
idea.
An analysis of The Black Riders reveals common grammatical and lexical formulas
throughout the many narrative poems in the volume. Narratives include, at the very least, a
storyteller and a story (Scholes & Phelan, 4), and, as Aristotle observed, a story must have a
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beginning, a middle, and an end (211). This study seeks to quantify the particular opening
narrative formulas in The Black Riders and Other Lines and thus prove that Stephen Crane
composed his poetry within a flexible narrative framework. Contrary to the opinions of his day,
Crane worked within a distinct and viable, though unconventional, form, while still “sing[ing] a
new song” (Psalm 144:9) in each poem. It is these patterns which allow Crane’s poetic works to
transcend the literary traditions and negative reception of his era and offer timeless appeal.
One need only think of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Melville’s Moby Dick and the Book of
Genesis to realize the import of the beginning of a narrative. The introduction familiarizes and
hopes to fascinate the reader with the details and timbre of the story. Since there is not room in
this paper to look at the narrative formulas in all three parts of a story, I shall begin with the
beginning. Crane employs several interrelated introductory formulas which serve to set up the
dramatic action of the narrative. These formulas can be broken down into three basic
categories: setting, character, and action. While the three types of formulas are one in purpose,
they vary in the speed with which they reach the action—from gradually to immediately.
Because Crane’s poems are so short, the beginning section of the story can only last a
few lines at most. Knowing this, I limited the focus of my analysis of introductory narrative
formualics to the first line of each poem in The Black Riders, and looked secondarily at the next
one or two lines, depending on the semantic content of the poem. I admit that action is present in
every poem, characters in many, and setting in some. The three types of formulaic introductions
are not mutually exclusive, nor is there a one-to-one match. But for my study, I chose to classify
the poems by which of the three introductory narrative formulas was evident first.
Setting
Poems that begin with introductory information about the setting approach the dramatic
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action of the narrative most slowly, taking time to set up more robustly before jumping in. In
such terse poems, inclusion of this information cannot be haphazard; it most often plays an
integral role in the story. Of the fifty poems in The Black Riders that contain narrative elements,
I found eighteen with explicit statements of setting in the first line of the poem. The main
formulas used to communicate the setting are prepositional phrases, copular verbs, and verbs of
seeing.
One common way that Crane introduces the setting is through a prepositional phrase
made up of a preposition such as in or on with a noun phrase containing the setting information.
In the most blatant examples, this prepositional phrase comprises the entirety of the poem’s first
line. For example, III begins “In the desert / I saw a creature, naked, bestial” (Katz, 5). The lack
of a comma after this introductory line (which punctuation is included by Crane in other poems
that begin with prepositional phrases) highlights the line and sets it apart starkly, iconically
mirroring the severe setting in which the persona sees this strange creature.
A variation of this setting introduction incorporates a prepositional phrase into a larger
clause in the first line. Poem XXXIV is an example: “I stood upon a highway / And, behold,
there came / Many strange peddlers” (Katz, 36). While the first line include a subject (i.e.
character) and a verb (i.e. action), the focus remains on the prepositional phrase upon a highway.
This focus is made possible by the types of verbs used with this formula: stand thrice, walk
twice, assemble once, and was once. Apart from assemble, these verbs are more stative than
dynamic and thus serve to highlight rather than detract from the setting formula.
A very simple grammatical formula for introducing the setting involves the BE verb with
a phatic subject and an extraposed noun phrase which gives the setting information. More
uncommon in The Black Riders, this formula resembles the introduction of a character (as we
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shall see next), but the noun phrase is a place instead of a person. In the first few lines of poem
LXIII, the phatic subject + BE + extraposed noun phrase formula, “There was a great cathedral”
could be written as a prepositional phrase and combined with the next sentence, “To solemn
songs, / A white procession / Moved toward the altar” (Katz , 67) and retain the same meaning.
Giving the setting formula its own clause does more than the prepositional phrase to slow the
thrust toward the action and give the setting its own moment.
One final setting formula involves introducing the setting with a verb of seeing. For
instance, poem XXII begins, “Once I saw mountains angry, / And ranged in battle-front” (Katz,
24). Unlike the previously discussed formula which used a copular verb to introduce the setting,
this formula includes a linguistic presupposition with the word saw. Instead of stating that there
were angry mountains, the persona already assumes that fact when he asserts that he once saw
them. An interesting variation of the verb-of-seeing formula occurs in poem XXV: “Behold, the
grave of a wicked man, / And near it, a stern spirit” (Katz, 27). The narrator does not explain the
setting through an indicative seeing verb; rather, he issues a directive for the reader to take notice
of the setting.
Character
Many of those Black Riders poems which do not contain information about the setting in
their first lines begin instead with formulaic character introductions, bringing the dramatis
personae of our narratives out onto the stage. These formulas inherently move the narrative out
of the introductory stage faster than do explanations of the setting, since the characters most
often appear in order to introduce their dialogue or serve as the subject of a sentence which
includes the action. Sixteen of Crane’s fifty narrative poems in The Black Riders begin with
character formulas, syntactically comprised of copular verbs, verbs of seeing and meeting, and
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SVO sentences.
As mentioned in the previous section, many character introductions have the specific
grammatical formula of phatic subject + BE + extraposed noun phrase. One such poem is LXII:
“There was a man who lived a life of fire” (Katz, 66). This example also displays an optional
formulaic addition—a relative clause included in the extraposed noun phrase. The extra detail
provided in these clauses is significant because “Crane would not think of giving a name to one
of his characters; they remain abstractions, imprisoned in the generalized form of a man, a sage,
a learned man, a youth, a wayfarer… Crane gives us ideas rather than characters, allegory rather
than image” (Cox, 483). These relative clauses allow Crane’s style to remain sparce and timeless
and yet focus and describe the characters to meet the needs of the narrative situation.
Poem V exhibits a variation on this formula, using the verb COME instead of BE. “Once
there came a man,” it reads, “Who said, / ‘Range me all men of the world in rows’” (Katz, 7).
The slight change in verb offers a bit more story in the first line without necessarily moving
more quickly to the action; the action comes on its own with the dialogue in the third line.
Another variation of this formula can be seen in both poem V, just discussed, and in
poem XLVIII, the beginning of which reads, “Once there was a man – / Oh, so wise!” (Katz, 51).
Both use the word once to introduce the phatic subject-extraposed noun phrase construction. The
word once may be a semantic introductory formula in its own right; when paired with a phatic
subject, it transcends the corpus of Stephen Crane and brings to mind the English fairy tale
formula once upon a time. Howells’ perception that Crane’s poetry lacked form holds little water
when it is noted that his formulaic choices draw upon age-old narrative conventions.
In addition to those variant formulas involving phatic subjects, characters are also
introduced in The Black Riders with verbs of seeing and meeting. This formula is only used in
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those poems written in the first person, in which the storyteller is actually part of the story. In a
poem such as XXIV, “I saw a man pursuing the horizon; / Round and round they sped” (Katz,
26), the formula does not introduce just one character, but two, and reveals the relationship
between them.
One last formula for introducing characters is the sophisticatedly simple use of the noun
phrase as the subject of an SVO sentence. Crane does this from the beginning, starting out poem
II with “Three little birds in a row / Sat musing” (Katz, 4). In this quaint couplet, the first line
exhibits iconicity, the phrase three little birds being made up of three little words sitting on the
page in a little row. But the line break there is more than a visual pleasantry; it appears to be part
of the formula. Five of the seven poems which introduce characters in SVO sentences devote the
first line of the poem to the noun phrase and fill the next few lines with the predicate of the
sentence. This occurs even when the noun phrase, and thus the first line, looks startlingly short
written out on a page, such as in poem XXXI (Katz, 33):
Many workmen
Built a huge ball of masonry
Upon a mountain-top.
Readers in 1895 seeing this on a page for the first time may have seen something devoid of
form—or any poetic sensibility at all—but Crane is actually remarkably regular in his form,
adhering to narrative formulaics and, even more broadly than that, always placing line breaks at
syntactic boundaries.
Action
In the other sixteen of Crane’s fifty narrative poems in The Black Riders, the poet spares
no extra time to introduce setting or characters, but instead delves into the action of the story in
the first line. While mention of place or people may appear in these lines, the focus lays on the
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action of the verb. These nominal details complete the verb, rather than the verb just introducing
the noun. Though action has the potential to include the broadest semantic themes of the three
categories discussed in this paper, all the examples from Crane’s corpus can still be explained
through the narrative formulaic patterns of dialogue, action verb, and statement of dramatic
situation.
Much of the action, or plot, in Crane’s narrative poetry consists of dialogues between
characters—Cox found the pattern of revelation, interrogation, and interpretation in “no less than
thirty-six of the sixty-eight poems in The Black Riders” (481-2). In some of his poems, he begins
with the syntactic formula, common to novels and other prose, in which a verb of speaking
introduces a direct quotation. The most straightforward example is found in poem XXXVIII:
“The ocean said to me once: / ‘Look!’” (Katz, 40). Though both the ocean and the persona are
technically introduced as characters in the first line, the purpose of the line is to set up the action
of the quotation. The pace of the poem leaves little pause for characters, but pushes on to the
plot. Poem XLIII includes a variation of the formula, featuring a phatic subject-extraposed noun
phrase construction, a more aesthetically marked verb phrase of speaking, and a blurring of the
subject through use of the passive voice: “There came whisperings in the winds: / ‘Good-bye!
Good-bye!’” (Katz, 46).
A similar formula is possible in which the poem begins immediately with dialogue. Crane
seems to be partial to this formula: a quarter of the “action” poems begin this way. This basic
formula is typified in XXVIII, “‘Truth,’ said a traveler, / ‘Is a rock, a mighty fortress’” (Katz,
30), in which part of the quotation shares the first line of the poem with the verb of speaking and
the subject. One poem that diverges from this pattern is XV, whose opening lines, “‘Tell brave
deeds of war,’ / Then they recounted tales” (Katz, 17) omit the verb of speaking and leave the
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reader eternally in the dark as to who the speaker is.
Crane sometimes begins the action of the narrative with a simple statement concerning
the dramatic situation at the beginning of the story. Similar to a short prologue, these first lines
range from prosaic to startling. In LXV, the persona purports, almost precociously, “Once, I
knew a fine song, / —It is true, believe me, —” (Katz, 69), whereas LXVII demands attention
with, “God lay dead in Heaven” (Katz, 71). James M. Cox describes this formula as “begin[ning]
with an abrupt descriptive statement… which sets characters in motion and presents a problem or
scene” (482). In these examples, the statements do not contain the action, but set both the poem
and the action of the poem in motion.
Lat, many poems begin their action with an SVO sentence, similar to the character
formula described above in that it employs the same sentence type. The difference is that there is
no line break after the subject; both the subject and the verb appear on the first line, giving the
action of the verb greater focus. Often, the entire sentence fills the first line, as in LVIII, “The
sage lectured brilliantly” (Katz, 62), XLI, “Love walked alone” (Katz, 44), and I, the poem for
which the volume was name, “Black riders came from the sea” (Katz, 3). In other poems, such as
LXVIII, the SVO sentence takes up more than one line: “A spirit sped / Through the spaces of
night” (Katz, 72). An important conclusion can be drawn from the fact that this formula is, for all
intents and purposes, the same as the SVO formula for introducing characters. Crane was not an
undisciplined artistic madman trampling form under his feet for the sake of prose poem anarchy;
rather, he used line breaks artfully to subtly shift the focus from noun to verb, and thus revealing
the true import of form in his work.
Conclusion
This study sought to prove, through an analysis of the grammatical formulas used in the
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first lines of each poem, that Stephen Crane’s work in The Black Riders and Other Lines was
informed by a sophisticated understanding of form—just not form generally accepted at the time.
Though he rejected meter and rhyme, Crane wrote with an internally consistent, syntactically
astute style perfectly suited to offer allegorical tales about life as a whole.
Because so little has been written about Crane’s poetry, there is much future research to
be conducted. The natural next step is to research narrative formulas employed in the middles
and ends of Black Riders poems. A major theme in the middles of the poems is the “clash of
voices,” described by Katz (xxxiv). “Frequently there is a major voice, usually that of the
persona, reporting an incident seen, retailed, or experienced. The second voice and occasionally
the other voices represent a point of view which is revealed as inferior” (xxxiv-xxxv). I believe
that an analysis of the middle sections of Black Riders poems will show syntactically the
qualitative statement made by Katz.
The endings of Crane’s poems are some of their best moments. Many, including
LeFrance, have noted Crane’s ironic sensibility. This often comes out through “plain,
unpretentious, and accurate” ironic understatement left dangling at the end of a poem (Hoffman,
189). Research should be conducted on the grammatical formulas of that irony. I have also
noticed that many of the verses in The Black Riders end with a repetition or restatement of an
earlier line, and I would like to examine what role that formulaic ending plays.
Additionally, this study has only sought to analyze Crane’s first volume of poetry, The
Black Riders and Other Lines. His other volume, War Is Kind, deserves attention, and begs a
comparison.
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Works Cited
Cox, J. M. (1957). The pilgrim’s progress as source of Stephen Crane’s the black riders.
American Literature, 28(4), 478-87.
Hoffman, D. G. (1957). The poetry of Stephen Crane. New York: Columbia University Press.
Katz, J. (Ed.). (1972). The complete poems of Stephen Crane. London: Cornell University Press.
LaFrance, M. (1971). A reading of Stephen Crane. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Monteiro, G. (Ed.). (2009). Stephen Crane: The contemporary reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Scholes, R., Phelan, J., & Kellogg, R. (2006). The nature of narrative: Fortieth anniversary
edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Watkins, C. (1995). How to kill a dragon: Aspects of Indo-European poetics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.