Mina Loy’s crystal imagery

Images of crystals abound in Mina Loy's works, from crystal globes and crystalline substances like sugar to processes of crystallization and dissolution. This article traces the intellectual roots of Loy's crystal imagery in fields like chemistry, photography, parapsychology, and philosophy. It argues that while Loy, like her contemporaries, used crystal imagery to theorize modernist aesthetics, she also reworked it towards a poignant feminist critique. Capitalizing on the crystal’s paradoxical duality as a symbol for both lucidity and illusion, and drawing on the scientific, philosophical, and artistic concepts of crystallization and dissolution, Loy exposes the ideals and fantasies underlying romantic love. Most notably, she adapts Stendhal's concept of “crystallization,” a lover's idealization of his beloved, to call for a more honest representation of intimacy; she depicts that intimacy by linking disillusion and dissolution—the theme of collapsed romantic ideals and chemical breakdown—in her poem “Human Cylinders.”