The sense of pain and the aspiration for transcendence, the transfiguring power of art and the spiritual quest for a higher dimension of consciousness, love as a force capable of redeeming the drama of existence: these are universal themes that Hart Crane expresses with his intense voice in The Bridge (1930) and in The Broken Tower (1932). Crane’s noble and undefended individuality, unable to deal with life (he committed suicide by drowning when he was thirty-two), also discovers the principle of a magnificent poetic word, sublime and vivid at the same time, dazzling with its tragic splendor. This book, offering a new translation of Hart Crane’s two major works, retraces the artistic and existential experience of one of the greatest American writers of the Twentieth century, comparable in his highest achievements to T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. The Broken Tower , so far unpublished in Italy, is the poem from which the actor and writer James Franco has recently drawn the inspiration and the title for a film about the poet’s life.