The Iowa Review
Volume 8
Issue 2 Spring
1977
Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of "Howl" and
"Kaddish"
James Breslin
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Recommended Citation
Breslin, James. "Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of "Howl" and "Kaddish"." The Iowa Review 8.2 (1977): 82-108. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol8/iss2/33
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Article 33
with more water
and 3
of fresh ground rye, knead for about 20 minutes
small handfuls of salt. Flour hands and board and shape loaves. This should
make 6 loaves of 4-5 pounds. Bake at about 275? for one to one-and-a-half
hours.
Appendix II
CHARLOTTE'SWAG
?
CRITICISM
/ JAMES
Sid Blum
BRESLIN
Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of "Howl" and "Kaddish"
aware of Allen Ginsberg
first become
literary people have probably
role as public figure
in
and
self-elected
controversial
his
the
media,
through
over
has changed
and prophet of a new age. Ginsberg's
public personality
man
to
the
fifties
of
the defiant and histrionic
the years?from
angry young
activist of the sixties and
and political
and benign patriarch
the bearded
one that most
has remained
the personality
seventies?but
literary people
with
that of
find hard to take seriously. Compare
reception
Ginsberg's
Most
82
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®
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one who,
is also a
another writer who
figure and
public
as
to replace rational with magical
the mode
like Ginsberg, wants
thinking
writ
of public discourse. Mailer's
and
his
confessional
public appearances
Norman
Mailer,
but end by promoting
himself,
ings characteristically
begin by humiliating
have
and they have been
Mailer's
talents
been
successful:
enormously
academic
who
have
critics,
pro
widely
already
exaggerated,
especially
by
duced several studies of his work. Mailer has succeeded because his theoriz
no matter how
on all matters
to the
from the digestive
system,
ing
political
are
a kind of
bizarre or brutal the content,
developed
by
intellectualizing
even when
most
it is
half
(as in Mailer)
respect,
literary people
adopted
a lot less brutal,
is at least as intelligent,
in the spirit of the put-on. Ginsberg
and often a lot more self-aware, but the man who took off his clothes at a
in
"Om" during
the gassings
chanted
poetry
reading, who
in Chicago,
at the 1968 Democratic
Convention
and who has
the liter
with a wide variety of drugs, strikes those manning
experimented
a
as
a
more
to
at
western
fun
armchairs
of
threat
best
or,
ary
figure
likely,
as a
his
civilization.
has
been
role
of
attempt
part
Ginsberg's
public figure
one result of it has
to reassert the romantic role of the poet as
prophet; but
more admirable
been that his genuine
personal
quali
literary talents and
ties have been obscured.
Los
Grant
Angeles
Park
has been too incon
It is true that, so far, the quality of
Ginsberg's writing
sistent for him to rank as a major poet. Ginsberg writes often, quickly,
and,
as his career has advanced,
too much
his cult
without
revision;
apparently
some of the real
but it also generates
of spontaneity
results in unevenness,
a lifetime's ex
A
like
his
of
Eliot, carefully
poet
turning
writing.
strengths
a
to create the
finished
into
volume
of
work, helped
perience
highly
single
to
write
the
modern
artist who,
of
when
dominant
)
(
Ginsberg
myth
began
a
a
in spite of himself,
disci
remained
hard-working,
literary revolutionary
an
Like
avowed
craftsman.
many
poets, Ginsberg,
contemporary
plined
even failure;
seems much more
to risk imperfection,
willing
revolutionary,
and immediacy
of feeling, rather than
what he hopes to gain is an honesty
he is least successful, Gins
the finish of a well-wrought
work of art. When
as he does
berg has drifted into the solipsism of purely private associations,
or
in the drug poems in Kaddish
he has fallen into
and Reality Sandwiches,
and
characteristic
of a polemi
of
the predictable
feeling
thought
patterns
cist, as he does in much of his political poetry. But the really exciting mo
new orders in
come when he breaks
ments
in reading Ginsberg
through to
"Howl"
"Kaddish"
and in self-understanding.
the poem
(1959),
(1956),
"The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo
(1967)
(1963), and "Wales Visitation"
Express"
from the pressures of some
?all poems of some length, all evolving
personal
seem to me to be the main such moments
in Ginsberg's
crisis?these
poems
career.
83
to be "Howl" and
Of these the most powerful?and
influential?appear
of Ginsberg's
"Kaddish." Several poets have testified to the importance
early
an alternative
to the well-made
in establishing
poetry
symbolist poem that
was fashionable
in the fifties, and his early work does fuse two modes?the
were
to become
in the six
confessional
and the visionary?that
important
a
case
can
on historical
ties.1 Not that
for Ginsberg
grounds;
only be made
poems, given the intense and concentrated
energy of their surrealistic
terrors and
creation of a world of primitive
vivid
their
language,
hallucinatory
mer
voice
shifts
and
have
their
of
brilliance,
mood,
striking
genuine
literary
it. For a long time, their explosive
has
been
missed,
energy
poetic
partly
of a "shocking"
of the distractions
because
and matter
language
(drugs,
madness,
suicide, homosexuality,
incest), but mainly because many readers,
to the kind of form found in these poems, have ac
still not sympathetic
cused them of an absence
of form. Moreover,
while
they achieve
literary
a
these
form and attain
from
derive
poems
impact,
public
deep, long-stand
in Ginsberg?conflicts
stem from his
conflicts
that ultimately
ing private
to his mother, his difficulties
in asserting a separate,
ambivalent
attachment
While
there is a progression
of self-awareness
independent
personality.
seem
to "Kaddish"
to me to ex
from "Howl" (1956)
both
works
(1959),
both
pose rather than to resolve these conflicts,
though they make valiant efforts
areas
at such resolution. Nevertheless,
it is
to
Ginsberg's
probe these
ability
that largely explains
of conflict
their innovative
and
energy
ap
powerful
peal.
*
<*
*
is sl mystical
Ginsberg
and persistent
self-doubts,
intense
suicidal
and messianic
poet with
a
artist whose most
would-be
wishes
spontaneous
turn toward feelings
sti
of being
characteristically
spontaneous
thoughts
in?and
thus toward longings
for
and bounded
fled and inhibited?walled
To
some
itself.
read
the
death
deliverance?ultimately
apocalyptic
painful,
has kept from adolescence
onwards
and journals that Ginsberg
notebooks
one who
re
a man with
for
but
is to encounter
himself,
hopes
grandiose
and who tends to assume that
himself
for
his
failures
lentlessly flaggelates
will end, just as they have ended, in disaster.2 Just the
all his undertakings
out
Indian Journals (kept during 1962-63)
amply reveal how this
published
serene bard is intrigued with
of
failure
and
much
death, spending
wardly
the ghats where
the Indian dead are cremated.
his time contemplating
Allen
the Ginsberg
of the late fifties and early sixties, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti
"he is the flippy flesh made word
/ and he speaks the word he
remembers,
is Death."3 To say all this is not to say
hears in his flesh / and the word
manner
it has been
is false but that, on the contrary,
that Ginsberg's
public
like "Howl" and "Kaddish" have a key place in the
hard-won. And poems
out of a time in his life when
his
of his personality,
evolution
developing
Of
84
into something
like a balance with his propensities
As Ginsberg
himself
tells it?a version
of his life we
career
should approach
his
of
and in a way
story
skeptically?the
literary
the real story of his life
New
with
his
removal
from
York to San
begin
in 1953.
Francisco
to popular
work
"Howl" is not?contrary
of an angry
impression?the
was
man.
wrote
he
the poem, Ginsberg
When
30; in 1953, when he
young
culture
left family, friends and the established
behind him in the
literary
a romantic wanderer
like his friend Jack Kerouac,
East, he was 27?being,
sees the 1953
to sever family ties.
himself
who found it difficult
Ginsberg
as a crucial and symbolic kind of act: "It was like a
west
journey
big proph
one season of my life and
Like I had
ecy, taking off for California.
passed
it was time to start all over again."4 It was not quite this easy and final, as
was a dramatic
we shall see; but
moving west
attempt to loosen the parental
from
created by his mother's
free himself
pressures
grip?to
long history of
as
as
his frequently
illness
well
acrimonious
relation
with
his
psychotic
father. Going west was, in short, a turn away from the threatening
images
suffocation he associated with home?a
of failure, disintegration,
gesture to
to start all over again as his own
ward the future, toward life, an attempt
creative
impulses
for self-destruction.
came
man.
Yet it is also true that Ginsberg made
this journey half looking back
as in "Howl" he would
over his
return to the
and
shoulder?just
experience
emotions of his life in New York in the late forties and in Part III of the
ever
I'm with you in Rockland.")
("Carl Solomon,
poem
deny that he had
to imagine a recreated
left. It is certainly mistaken
into
Ginsberg
floating
on
a
in
San Francisco
carpet, dressed
magic
long robes, with flowing hair,
hand cymbals and a "San Francisco
Renaissance"
banner. The Gins
Poetry
rancorous
in
the
that
and somewhat
berg
emerged
"Howl"?Ginsberg
gloomy
mystic
seer?must
in
some
sense
have
been
there,
but
he
was
ap
a deferential
at first beneath
hidden
and conventional
exterior.
parently
a three-but
to imagine him
In fact, it would be more accurate
in
arriving
ton suit, striped tie, and an attach? case. Soon after his arrival in San Fran
a
cisco, Ginsberg was
research, and he quickly
looking for
job in market
found one. There was no reason he shouldn't?since
this was precisely
the
kind of work he had been doing back in New York.
a
Not
involved with
became
long after he secured the job, Ginsberg
an
he
moved
into
in
with
whom
Fran
San
woman,
apartment
eventually
in this
cisco's posh Nob Hill district. Life went
along
style for several
a
in the fall of 1953-until
months
began seeing
therapist at Lang
Ginsberg
a
to
out
Dr.
find
the job
Institute,
Phillip Hicks,
why neither
ley-Porter
nor the woman
seemed to satisfy him. According
to Ginsberg,
at one point
in his treatment, the doctor asked,
85
I said,
is your desire,
you like to do? What
really?"
to
and
think
find
this
clear,
"Doctor,
very healthy
you're going
like to stop working
forever?never
work
but I really would
again,
never do
like the kind of work I'm doing now?and
do nothing
anything
but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to
museums
someone?
and see friends. And I'd like to keep living with
even a man?and
that way. And cultivate
explore relationships
maybe
a
me.
in
cultivate
the visionary
my perceptions,
literary and
thing
Just
existence."
he
don't
Then,
said,
"Well,
quiet city-hermit
why
you?"5
"What would
I don't
In several
interviews
into The Great
Ginsberg
discusses
that allowed
this
him
it
encounter,
mythologizing
to start a new life. As Gins
Breakthrough
of Ginsberg's
unconventional
tolerant acceptance
berg tells it, the doctor's
end
his
and
the
of
desires encouraged
attempts
misguided
self-acceptance
in turn,
"Howl." So, the story
to
his
of
father?both
which,
generated
please
a
how his firm could replace him
wrote
goes, Ginsberg
report showing
on
went
free to
he
him
and
fired
with a computer;
unemployment,
they
a
met
this
time
he
had
existence."
By
already
enjoy
"quiet city-hermit
in
the
with
Robert
then a student
Peter Orlofsky,
living
painter
Lavigne
with
dis
involvement
and Ginsberg's
North Beach,
increasing
Orlofsky
not fol
he was living with. The eventual
turbed the woman
result?again
too long after the episode with Dr. Hicks?was
that Ginsberg
left
lowing
to
with
Hill
live
Nob
for
downtown
affluent
Street,
Orlofsky.
Montgomery
"Howl."
shifts in his life he began writing
And soon after these dramatic
account of these events sounds suspiciously
like a fantasy
Yet Ginsberg's
a
at
time reveals
he
the
the
of a magical
and
of
cure,
journals
reading
kept
a
even
to
has
bit
the
of
been
transformed
that
promote
myth
chronology
re
at
to
work
his
market
the Breakthrough.6
continued
Actually,
Ginsberg
in with Orlofsky
and in
search job for three or four months
after he moved
so far as his
at
the time, they suggest he felt de
journals reveal his mood
not liberated, when
while
he
his
lost
Ginsberg
job. Moreover,
pressed,
even the need for it) ended with his
his
that
(and
therapy
strongly implies
in treat
doctor's laying on of hands, the journals indicate that he continued
as
as
in
the
time
which
several
for
months,
ment, perhaps
including
long
the lengthy and almost daily entries from
"Howl" was written. Moreover,
into this
show that Ginsberg
entered
late 1954, when he first met Orlofsky,
same
same
of
salvation
and
the
with
the
premoni
expectations
relationship
tions of disaster with which he then launched all his activities. An entry for
April
20, 1955?written
sky?vividly
pated
conveys
after he had started living with Orlof
four months
at
the time, and it was not one of emanci
his mood
self-acceptance:
86
what can I say?rapid
of events,
exchange
jobloss,
no one I love loves me no
the isolation
contact,
peterloss,?isolation,
as
loss of Jack [Kerouac] and Bill
loss of
?facing
previous
[Burroughs]
contact with L?the myths held for the decade to fill time.7
Not writing
enough
affirm its author's capacity to survive an agonizing
ordeal; yet
the poem is
with
and
of
strong feelings
charged
equally
personal
literary
isolation
of this journal
failure,
and, most
loss, the feelings
powerfully,
entry and many others like it. In fact, both "Howl" and "Kaddish" react to
in the journal?not
loss in precisely
the way
and
suggested
by acceptance
the lost object
working
through the loss, but by idealizing, mythologizing,
("the myths held for the decade to fill time").
"Howl" does
In addition, a more careful look at what Ginsberg
tells of the transaction
a different
his psychiatrist
from the one sup
interpretation
suggests
In
this
he
himself.
has
transferred
encounter,
plied by Ginsberg
clearly
onto the doctor, speaking to him as if he were
to
his
father, con
speaking
intimate
his
about
about
about "vis
work,
fessing
feelings
homosexuality,
or
that
his
he
had
(like
mother)
ionary"
experiences
hallucinatory
experi
with
his father disapproves
of all this, and he
him
disapproves
self of these impulses, but projects
such criticism onto the doctor:
"I don't
to be
think you're going to find this very healthy
and clear." He expects
to hear from his
but what he hears is what he always wanted
denounced,
is not, however,
Permission
the only possible
father?permission.
interpre
enced. He
knows
tation of the doctor's
to examine
Ginsberg
remark that could have led
"Well, why don't you?"?a
his inhibitions
the origins of his wish
and, ultimately,
as
we
shall
him
the mother,
with
es, all yearnings
see,
that,
align
against
the father. The doctor, Ginsberg
comments,
gave him "the au
revealingly
so to
to be myself"?as
if this authority were external to him.8
thority,
speak,
In Young Man Luther, Erik Erickson points out that young men
in a state
as
was at this time, often trans
of "identity diffusion,"
Ginsberg
clearly
form their therapy into "something
like Jacob's struggle with
the angel, a
a benediction
is
to
to
for
which
lead
the
conviction
that
wrestling
patient's
he is an alive person, and, as such, has a life before him."9
seem
Ginsberg,
a "benediction"
rather than a fuller exploration
of his
ingly satisfied with
wishes and fears, temporarily wrestles himself "free" from guilt?but
remains
father for permission
to be
upon the authority of the forgiving
dependent
himself.
In this exchange we can see some of the motives
for
Ginsberg's
own later
of the role of the tolerant, benign
toward
adoption
patriarch
turns
men
he
himself
toward
older
younger people?while
(from
continually
in search for reassurance
Martin Buber to Swami Shivananada)
that he does
indeed have the authority to be himself, a right to a life of his own.
87
across the
It should come as no surprise that
by virtue of moving
country
and acquiring an idealized
father figure in his doctor, Ginsberg
had accom
a less than
to a
break with his past. Both the removal
complete
plished
context of
"safe" distance
and the supportive
therapy probably
helped him
more to
was
rather
than
the
and
it
the
insistence
of
shed,
very
explore,
past,
his private
life as the material
for his poetry
that pushed Ginsberg
away
from the predominant
idea of the poem as impersonal
artifact and toward a
sense of the poem as confessional
In reality the
of the
outpouring.
Ginsberg
a
on his own,
an
to
late fifties manifests
out
wish
strike
with
powerful
along
fear
A
asserts
of
freedom.
like
"Howl"
the
poem
equally powerful
angrily
"real" self of its author, the "angel-headed
hipster" persecuted
by social and
a
so
the
with
kind
and
does
of
exhilara
tormented
poem
paternal authority,
a
tion that suggests the release of long-repressed
cry of pain
feelings. More
also seeks to af
than of anger, "Kaddish," an elegy for Ginsberg's
mother,
firm a new and separate life for the poet. Yet for all of the rebelliousness
of
of accepted
loss in "Kaddish," both poems
"Howl" and all the protestations
as "isolation" and
view
life (in the language
of the journal)
independent
the
"loss." Independence
and submission,
toward
future and being
struggling
that inform the best of
drawn back into the past: such are the conflicts
ways that we can see even more clearly by examining
poetry?in
Ginsberg's
to both his parents.
the dynamics
of his attachments
or heard him read his poems at one
met
Louis Ginsberg
Anyone who has
a short,
of the joint readings he's given with his son will have encountered
a
man well
with
his
and
into
seventies,
eyes
large inquiring
slightly
sturdy
rather oppressed
expression. At first glance he seems, in his poems
frowning,
as well as his person, a modest
and mild man, a very likely candidate
for
a man whose
wished
father
that
that
for,
Ginsberg
just
kindly,
forgiving
a reluctance
to assert his authority
rather than in with
weakness
might be
Yet
attitude
of
mutual
the
the two men
his
respect which
sympathy.
holding
now
has the quality of an uneasy truce which,
if
other
each
toward
display
is
to
into
hostilities
still
filled
with
from
critical
break
open
sniping
unlikely
in her
created by Jane Kramer
both sides. At least this is the impression
in her report of a Sunday morning
in America,
Allen Ginsberg
especially
in Paterson, prior to one of their father/son
conversation
reading perform
ances. Louis
to
for the reading
if Allen has "some good clothes
inquires
twits his son for not being home enough,
scolds him for not writing
night,"
in Allen's
the lack of discipline
when
life and
away, denounces
to his son's greater fame. Allen himself,
alludes
and
poetry,
uneasily
showing
more
than his father credits him for, responds with gentle
discipline
perhaps
a little more
one
the issues become
tolerance, even when
charged. At
point,
announces
is hashish, Mr.
that her sadhana
friend Maretta
after Allen's
enough
Ginsberg
asks,
88
"What's with
this Maretta?
Why
can't you bring
home
a nice
Jewish
girl?"
Ginsberg,
laughing, threw up his hands. "For the love of God, Louis,"
said, "here for years you've been saying, 'Please, just bring home a
a
now that I do, you want a Jewish one?"
girl for
change,' and
an
"You're such
said. "Tibetan
Allen," Mr. Ginsberg
experimenter,
Buddhist
All
friends.
this
talk
from
Swamis,
you about pot
Drugs.
girl
so
is
?It's
So
ecstatic.
Louis.
outside
soul
my body. I see
elevating, "
My
? say? I say,
Mr.
ultimate
"You
frowned.
know
what
Ginsberg
reality.'
"10
it
take
'Allen,
easy.'
he
in his seventies and Allen nearing 40, the father still does not
the
son's
while
the son's experimental
accept
style of independence,
style
seems
as
a
a
at
itself
to the father's
direct challenge
arrived
and
authority
test of his love. In this
sensitive
issues
the most
and persistent
exchange
between
vis
the two are touched on?family
loyalty, drugs, homosexuality,
a manner
a
ions of ultimate
that
(here
suggests
reality?in
mollifying
that were earlier expressed with much more
of conflicts
through humor)
In John Clellon Holmes'
novel of the Beat Generation,
Go?a
acrimony.
conver
accurate as
book he says he tried to make as
factually
possible?the
sations between
David
and his father seem to repre
Stofsky
(Ginsberg)
sent the
on a much
later Sunday
original clashes,
ritualistically
repeated
in
Paterson.
morning
With
Louis
to his father that he had
got home, he announced
[Stofsky]
"visions," and when this brought forth little more than a pseudo-literary
on its effect, that he was afraid he
reaction, he appended,
reckoning
was
His
rewarded
mad.
father
him with
the same sort of hys
going
When
terical outburst that had seized him when,
after several weeks
of hesi
tant feelers,
his
two
had
confessed
The
had an
Stofsky
homosexuality.
was
at
the
bottom
of
which
dis
mutual
uneasy
anyway,
relationship
were
over
and
when
trust,
together
squabbled
they
they invariably
or
matters
of the city" ( as his
philosophical
Stofsky's "evil companions
father called them ) .n
an
at Columbia
contain
Archives
but
Ginsberg
incomplete
between
and
the
father
still quite extensive
son, dating
correspondence
in the mid 1940s down to the early seventies.
from Allen's days at Columbia
is given over to intricate and often heated
of the correspondence
Much
and literary debates. At a time when his son, still an under
moral,
political,
was
himself as a decadent
and ardent
self-consciously
identifying
graduate,
as Gide,
such
modern
thinkers
advanced
Rimbaud,
Spengler,
ly reading
The
Allen
89
"A little of the Greek
and Baudelaire,
Louis advised:
ideal of moderation
can be
do you no harm, m'lad";12 and the father's perspective
briefly
as a deliberate
characterized
cultivation
of a moderate,
well-balanced,
prac
would
a decided
in
tilt toward the cautionary
a while,
the father explodes. As late as
wrote:
"All your vehement,
vaporous,
one
not
is
Your
attitude
jot.
irrespon
written
earlier letter, probably
during
second year at Columbia,
the father proposes
the safety of ac
Ginsberg's
and warns
those "deviant" routes his son
commodation
against precisely
was to take up.
to life,
tical approach
though with
in
his dealings with his son. Once
Allen
1955, with
30, Louis
nearing
move me
rebellion
of
vituperations
sible?and
it stinks."13 In a much
as well as abnormal ones, the
if normal values are rationalizations
as
normal
values
normal
ones, result in a better and safer
latter,
qua
to society and a greater integration
of the person. Accord
adjustment
to
blanket
would
bracket
the rationalizations
statement,
your
you
ing
or an insane person as
of a homosexual
for society and for
satisfactory
to him
the person. The homosexual
and the insane person is a menace
self and to society. Danger
and disaster lie that way! Your clever verbal
solutions are incongruous with
[the] reality of life. You are developed
but, emotionally,
you lag.14
intellectually;
Even
is characteristically
letters, as in his poetry, Louis Ginsberg's manner
are
often
based
either on the
his
timeless
truths
but
sententious;
avowedly
or
in
to
his
the
world
the "safety"
of
greater experience
authority
appeals
of his position
rather than its intrinsic value. The letters show a genuine
concern for a troublesome
son, but it is also easy to see how his son might
that the father holds that truth can be arrived at by
get the impression
re
then coming down
both sides of every question,
examining
carefully
in favor of the status quo. The trouble with Allen's undergrad
soundingly
uate literary hero Rimbaud,
his father tells him, is that the French
poet
In his
values."15 At
sought "absolute moral values" rather than "adequate moral
about the same time, just after reading Karl Shapiro's Essay on Rime, Louis
in religious
asserted
that, of course, modern
poets reject the "superstitions
the hypocricies
beneath
the surface mores
of con
faith" and they detect
not
to
BUT
should
conclusions:
temporary
society,
they
pessimistic
leap
must
remain "clear-headed"
to reject "dec
(unlike Allen)
enough
they
I say, Allen,
adence" as well and opt for "pragmatic values." "Concluding,
seen
between
the
world
and the
suspend your judgment; walk balanced
unseen one; and take care of your health!"16 In fact, in the letter
warning
to
Louis had pronounced
that one "must resign himself
against Rimbaud,
or commit suicide."17
values
pragmatic
90
a
of values by adopting
the son, who later was to solve the problem
not
to
refused
his
he
asserted
faith,"
"religious
only
suspend
judgment;
radical views, declaring,
for instance, all modern
civilization
corrupt and
a
as "off-bal
views
in
Such
the
father
dismisses,
disintegrating.
key term,
ance."18 It is clear that each, questioning
the other's love, questions
the
other's sense of reality and demands
that the other "see things as I do."
as
A visionary poem sent to Louis
in 1958 is
judged
"brilliantly myopic."19
war
In their
in
debate
is
cold
the late fifties, Allen
political
long
beginning
But
him too harsh on the United
vision, which makes
too easy on Soviet Russia. And in their ongoing
literary argu
of parental
caution
attitudes
adolescent
ments,
again clash with
egotism
and rebellion. The older man conceives
of poetry as a practical
craft, gen
erated by emotion and shaped by individual vision but
to effect
designed
immediate
commuication
with a fairly wide
and hence comfort
audience
resources
on traditional
of technique
and language.
Louis
ably drawing
a steadfast traditionalist
after
40
modernist
of
years
experiment,
Ginsberg,
likes verse "neat, / Exact,
/ To file / My style / And pare
/ Compact?
as we
shall see, feels he can only really
/ It bare";20 but the son who,
in acts that shatter established
himself
boundaries
(of self, of lit
identify
means
are
on
more
more
insists
that
free?and
erary form),
poetic
ample,
more
a
on the
In
letter
Louis
attacks
follow-up
Shapiro poem,
grandiose.
a
verse as
modernist
obscure," unnecessarily
creating
"willfully
"gulf be
tween the poet and the intelligent
In
reader."21
his view, "the ideal of a
a
more
to the many and a
poem is that it give
general meaning
deeper and
to the few," an ideal enacted
in his own
experience
complex
practice.22
on
offer comments
the letters frequently
Moreover,
poems: Al
exchanged
len's earliest verses are often praised, but just as often criticized as too "knot
accused
States
ty,"
of distorted
and
"impacted,"
"inchoate"?in
a word,
obscure.23
Again
the message
is
that
son should
his literary decadence,
quit his pretentious
inaccessibility,
to his audience.
himself
and accommodate
"Not bad advice," anyone who
has read these poems might
but it no doubt
struck the young
conclude,
as
are
on
Allen's
old
faulted, however,
poet
poems
philistine
fogeyism.
are
than
their
"false
about
life
ques
deeper
stylistic grounds;
assumptions"
tioned as well.24 A key instance is Louis Ginsberg's
reaction to "Howl," a
to the very hallucinations,
admitted
poem in which his son publicly
drug
the
his father had warned
him against.
and homosexuality
Significantly,
a copy of the poem to his father not too
com
sent
Ginsberg
long after its
a pure and naked confession
as if the poem, far from
being simply
pletion,
some kind of hostile
inmost soul, made
of Ginsberg's
and per
reference,
an
to the father, who responded with a
bal
characteristically
haps
appeal,
"
"
extrav
"is a wild, volcanic,
he wrote,
anced assessment.
'Howl,'
troubled,
unbridled
agant, turbulent, boisterous,
gems and
outpouring,
intermingling
use,
91
flashes
It
of picturesque
insight with
slag and debris of scoriae matter.
a
it
it
it
is
has
In
has
one-sided
violence;
life;
my opinion,
vitality.
neurotic
view of life; it has not enough
affirmations."25
glad, Whitmanian
The poem does have emotional
BUT
its
vision
of life is,
force, vitality,
in its angry disillusion
sick?"one-sided"
and "neurotic"
again, off-balance,
has
ment.
In view of the
and often acrimonious
conflicts between
deep, persistent,
to read "Moloch," the wrathful
it is tempting
the two men,
child-devouring
as an angry
of the father. But to derive
representation
deity of "Howl,"
from the poem a picture of the author as the essentially
innocent victim of
to
is
authorities
derive
the
the author
sadistic, persecutory
exactly
picture
like us to carry from the poem. "Howl" may be an honest confession
would
at the time he wrote
of Ginsberg's
conscious
of the
it, but many
feelings
serve
as
a
attitudes
defense
that
poem's rebellious
against feelings
actually
he is less able or willing
to admit. It is true that Louis
became
Ginsberg
the focus for many of his son's resentments,
and while many of these griev
ances
from other sources, the anger also had some
really derived
genuine
basis in reality, as did his criticisms of the social system. Even their corres
en
in abeyance
where
conflicts might be more
than in personal
pondence,
a
reveals
and
sent
to
letter
counters,
paternal vituperation
ultimatums?e.g.,
Allen in the summer of 1948 which
sentence
consisted
the
of
"Exor
simply
cise Neal," a reference
to Ginsberg's
to Neal
erotic attachment
at
Cassady
the time26?and
the father seems to have insisted upon the son's successful
as Allen
of college and his becoming,
completion
put it, "a fine upstanding
virile
son."27
the father often questions
not just his
Moreover,
completely
a sensitive
son's judgments but his very mental balance,
issue given his mo
ther's history of psychotic
illness.
Yet if Allen feared his father as a severe judge and angry persecutor,
it is
and admiration
for Louis Ginsberg,
also clear that he felt a deep attachment
tender father in his
the origin of the recurrent
image of the idealized,
was
to poetry and
It
his
after
who
introduced
father,
all,
poetry.
Ginsberg
an
area
in
to
which
Louis
himself
seemed
real mastery
literature,
display
to make his own life's work. Moreover,
his son was
and which
Naomi
was a mother who was often
or even
Ginsberg
emotionally
physically
?or
As
Louis
in a memoir
remembers
present.
Ginsberg
frighteningly
"My Son the Poet,"
absent
called
a shadow of sorrow fell on our
In the early years of my marriage,
a neurosis, which,
as the
somehow developed
family. My wife, Naomi,
a
or
two
into
would
She
went
thickened
on,
years
psychosis.
spend
then I'd take her out for half a year or a
three years in a sanitarium,
92
year. After that, ominous
take her back.
hints
of her worsening
condition
to take her back to the hospital,
Once, when he had decided
then attempted
suicide, slashing her wrists in the bathroom.
She opened
were
They
boys stood
What
made
me
she threatened,
[the door] and came out with blood oozing at both wrists.
them and got her to bed. The
surface cuts, so I bandaged
in their night clothes, panic in their eyes.
there, shivering
traumas,
I thought, might
sink into them
and burrow
into their
psyches.28
In view of Naomi Ginsberg's
illness, apt to make her rigid in her expecta
in her own, it is
tions of her son's behavior
and unpredictable
likely that
her son turned to his father as a refuge, hoping to find both a point of sta
a
for
benign protector. And it is in such yearnings
bility in the family and
a
a
we
attachment
with
memories
older
tender
tolerant
male
that
of)
(and
of Ginsberg's
later search for a kind of maternal
find the beginnings
father,
in San Francisco
and in such lit
of the sort he felt he'd found in Dr. Hicks
as Whitman
and Blake. "The Father
is merciful,"
Ginsberg
in
of
what he contin
Music";
Organ
proclaims
"Transcription
ecstatically
is some mild,
Christ-like
saviour, who will protect
accepting,
ually seeks
and offer the tender accept
him from the terrifying aspects of the mother
ance that she does not.
Seeking salvation from the father (rather than recon
led to disappointment,
but even during
the
ciliation with him)
inevitably
his
the
courted
of
older man's
adolescence,
Ginsberg
bristly period
clearly
If Allen could con
love and approval by striving to perform "good works."
of one of his short stories as "a symptom
demn his father's assessment
of
of
the
intellectual
the smug normalcy
attitude," he assured his
bourgeois
father in the same letter that he was no longer cutting classes, indeed was
a conservative
black
(even wearing
tie) and had
decorously
dressing
an
re
the most of the College
"started to really get
education, making
by
to
all
his
the
volumes
of
unread
and
Gide
Baudelaire.29
turning
library"
wrote a few years later that he was
his final
Similarly, when he
postponing
so in order to save
term at Columbia,
he explained
that he was
doing
a course earlier
to start psychoanalysis,
enough money
suggested
by the
a
"Don't worry about me becoming
father himself.
wastrel
permanent
just
as
I'm trying to 'save my soul' as scientifically
because
possible," he wrote.30
to the father (or his surrogate,
to
the psychiatrist)
Such yearnings
yield
real his attachment
however
and his desire
also threaten Ginsberg,
to
For Ginsberg's
basic image of the father, during adolescence
and
please.
erary mentors
93
is neither
that of the powerful
foe nor that of the benign
early manhood,
a timid, rather withdrawn
one who, with his
but
that
of
man,
protector,
to external pres
and normality,
has himself
surrendered
cult of practicality
sures and is thus
not because he is too
feared
but because
finally
powerful,
to save his son. The picture of Louis
he is not strong and certain enough
we get in "Kaddish"
is that of an introverted,
man,
neglectful
Ginsberg
and
his
humiliated
wife's
hallucinations
worried,
frightened,
by
paranoid
it seems, can only be caught by such apocalyptic
but whose
attention,
means.
In this view, mother
and son are linked as victims
of the father's
and neglect;
the final impression
of the father is one of ineffect
weakness
Naomi Ginsberg,
the psychotic
mother
rather than
inconsequence:
uality,
as her son's muse. Moreover,
is celebrated
Louis Ginsberg
the poet-father,
was a
in the high
and writer who
intellectual
taught English
literary
in
and who published
like
schools of Paterson
the
editorial
poems
places
the
York
Times
and
the
New
What
Herald-Tribune.
pages of
may have
to a very young
must have
seemed
like impressive
accomplishments
boy
come with
the increasing
of adolescence,
(and grandiosity)
sophistication
to signify a singular lack of
not too surprising,
is
and
ambition.
It
daring
wrote
to the father's
introduction
that Ginsberg
re
in
beneath
that
the
affectionate
collection,
(1968),
Morning
Spring
now
son
we
with
writes
which
the
world-famous
of
his
should
father,
spect
a
hear persistent
hints of disappointment.
with
generation
"Living
lyrics
some
stanzas
as
in
settle
the
memory
wrought
by my father,
perfected,"
sen
well-formed
deliberate,
(uncharacteristically)
Ginsberg
opens.31 This
tence carefully defines an attitude of respectful but
ad
enthusiastic
hardly
a
contrast
to
effusive
of
such
miration,
striking
Ginsberg's
praise
frequently
as
of his contemporaries,
like Jack Kerouac, who
share his own ultimate
no
The
"some stanzas" but apparently
whole
son, remembering
sumptions.
is clearly not going out on any critical limbs for the old man, whose
poems,
views are now turned back on him. As soon as Louis Gins
well-balanced
is introduced, he is
(in a losing battle)
berg
pitted
against W. C. Williams.
"
Tn this mode perfection
is basic,' W. C. Williams
wrote,
excusing himself
for rejecting my own idealised
iambic rhymes sent him for inspection."
(p.
went
he was
verses, Ginsberg
11). Imitating Louis* idealized
astray?until
saved by a bolder,
and more
successful
In fact, in the first three
guide.
of
the
mentions
Williams
and Pound four times
introduction, Ginsberg
pages
an
time
invidious
their boldness
between
each, every
comparison
making
and his father's timidity. Says
of
his
father's
of
kind
poetry:
Ginsberg
therefore,
to find
in the
as an anachronism
in my own time?the
this mode
the outworn verse of previous
of my own father writing
anachronism
music
the
and faded effect or senti
voices,
reechoing
century
jaded
I have
resisted
94
in a dream-life
of his own sidestreet under dying
the very time that Paterson
elms of Paterson, New Jersey?at
phantom
to its very rock-strata
foundations
itself was
(having been articulated
voice in W. C. Williams'
and aboriginal waterfall
epic) degenerating
into a XX Century
Mafia-Police-Bureaucracy-Race-War-Nightmare
suburb, (p. 14)
TV-Squawk
ment
of that music
an awareness
combines
primitive
solidity with
dauntlessly
the
social reality, Louis Ginsberg
present,
neglects
timidly
into the "dream-life" of his peaceful
suburban street. It is not
withdrawing
an unreliable
him as an irrelevant "anachronism,"
just that this establishes
man
a
a
the cost of such with
world;
young
entering
bewildering
guide for
and even life. The father's guid
drawal is finally the loss of real autonomy
a mere echo, not his own voice:
is nobody. All
ing voice is hollow,
Daddy
While
Williams
of contemporary
in this passage?"anachronism,"
the language associated with Louis Ginsberg
as if
death,
"outworn," "jaded," "faded," "dying phantom
elms"?suggests
the life had been sapped out of him. The son may take a certain satisfac
of that parental
tion in such diminishing
thoughts
authority whose
judg
with the defeated
ments he feared. Yet disappointment
actual father gen
Aeterna Deus" of "Howl," the "Lord4' of such
the "Pater Omnipotens
as "Kaddish,"
fantasies of an
poems
"Laughing Gas" and "Magic Psalm"?all
can heal and direct the writer.
father whose
So, dur
strength
all-powerful
the
of
whose
the
"failure"
career,
father,
Ginsberg's
ing
earthly
early phase
a
seeks to avoid for himself,
becomes
the son anxiously
model,
negative
and
dar
ironic source for the bardic grandiosity,
literary experimentation
erates
his son's poetry
that characterize
"Howl."
starting with
ing self-exposures
was
to
in
to
have
done
take
In fact, what Ginsberg
1955
up his
appears
it
of communication
hollow
and
father's medium
and, declaring
(poetry)
it
the
it
with
transformed
visions
and
hu
dead,
by infusing
hallucinatory
man
his
of
mother.
vulnerability
?
?
?
?
"You still haven't
finished with
Elise Cowen
?
your mother."
to Allen Ginsberg,
after typing
to "Kaddish."32
the manuscript
"If only you knew
How your poet son, Allen,
Raves over the world,
Crazed for love of you!"
Louis Ginsberg,
One
looked
"To a Mother
Buried."33
with his father is that he often
disenchantment
for Ginsberg's
of his
at the older man through the terrified?and
rancorous?eyes
reason
95
In examining
the kind of grip Naomi
had on her son's
Ginsberg
a
is
the
document
"Kaddish,"
feelings
key
confessional/visionary/elegaic
in five parts in which
in
at
(like
poem
Ginsberg
"Daddy")
Sylvia Plath
to exorcise the
tempts to transform literature into therapeutic magic:
ghost
of a parental
influence. Neither
for all their literary
of the two poems,
in
the poet
from the agonizing
succeeds
conflicts
brilliance,
delivering
comes closer.
in the first place,
the work
that generate
although Ginsberg
a form of hard
but the poem
"Daddy" may heighten hatred into
eloquence,
is pure anger and destruction,
trans
with
the renounced
father simply
to a satanic figure: Plath, whose
formed from a god-like
father died when
was never able to make
she was
the crucial step of perceiving
just nine,
con
In "Kaddish"
him as a human rather than a mythical
figure.
Ginsberg
at
her
his mother's
from life,
of
fronts his anger
abstraction
abandonment
him in madness,
his disgust with her careless physical
habits, his fascina
tion with her sexually seductive manner with him, his guilt about his treat
mother.
ment
of her during her breakdowns?"Kaddish"
lays bare all these feelings
to a declaration
In the poem
and then proceeds
of love for Naomi Ginsberg.
announces
at the start of Part II, a "release of particu
there is, as Ginsberg
is encountered
with elaborate
and moving
lars," and Naomi Ginsberg
speci
as a
it
true
is
human
Yet
that
also
figure.34
by the end Gins
ficity,
complex
not resolved his divided
(p. 27)
berg has
feelings about his "fatal Mama"
us to think, like certain forms of ther
as much as he claims; the poem
tempts
out is to resolve them. But in fact the poem, far
apy, that to get feelings
of the mother,
culminates with an apothe
from moving
toward idealization
osis of death
of life) and a yearn
conflicts
(as release from the agonizing
ing for fusion with this lost parent.
a member
of the Communist
Naomi Ginsberg,
Party from the time of her
in danger
authorities
such as
from political
her life was
believed
youth,
as
as well
her
and the F.B.I,
Roosevelt,
Hitler,
family figures, notably
an in
Her
fears characteristically
concerned
mother
and her husband.
and malevolent
that
vasion of her self by some external,
invisible,
agency
its way under
could subtly creep inside and possess her: poison gas filtering
of three bars inserted
of her thoughts by means
the door, the manipulation
to her brain by the F.B.I, during one of her stays in
in her back and wired
seems to understand
these fantasies of
In "Kaddish" Ginsberg
the hospital.
as extensions
of sexual fears and, though Ginsberg
persecution
political
these
himself never says so, it would be natural for a young boy to equate
fears of violation
with some assault by the father. In any case, Naomi Gins
was the dark side of what her son calls her "mad idealism"
berg's paranoia
the Ideal evident
for the Pure, the Beautiful,
intense yearning
(p. 24), her
for the innocence
of her girlhood, her political
in her nostalgia
utopianism
16), her alternately
fairy tales?p.
(which inspired her to write Communist
96
on the grass in some
and paranoid
("Humans
sitting
paintings
summers
and long-ill-fitting
with
faces
yore?saints
droopy
Camp No-Worry
on
mandoline
the
("Last night
25), her romantic
songs played
pants"?p.
still / it sang in the
all was
the nightingale
woke me / Last night when
/ from on the wintry hill"). As a boy Ginsberg must have
golden moonlight
and
of her idealism,
admired her intensity, been awed by the loftiness
dreamy
shared her fears of the father's "assaults."
her
dissociated
and the longings of Naomi Ginsberg
her
made
also
what
made
her
emotional
admirable
realities;
even
made
her son angry. She, too,
distant, bewildering,
terrifying?and
beautiful
Allen.
will
think
but
"I
says Naomi
nothing
thoughts,"
neglected
"I cooked
in "Kaddish," and she tells her son of seeing God the day before:
a
I
nice
bread &
made him
soup, vegetables,
supper for him.
supper?lentil
.
.
she is serving Allen "a plate of cold
."At that very moment
butter?miltz.
Yet both
the fears
from immediate
fish?chopped
health food
raw
...
cabbage dript with tapwater?smelly
I can't eat it for nausea sometimes"
tomatoes?week-old
(p. 2). "Kaddish" fre
to such nausea-inspiring
meals. Naomi was not providing Al
refers
quently
a son cannot
true sustenance:
alone.
live on beautiful
len with
thoughts
was
care
not
to
fail
take
his
mother
of
did
him, Ginsberg
Moreover,
only
forced at crucial points in her illness to take care of her. In Allen's version
at least, his father and older brother evaded the reality and responsibilities
son with
the excrutiating
thus leaving the youngest
of Naomi's madness,
times
she was hospital
of dealing with her illness. Both
practical problems
was
one
the
who had to take her to a
ized during Ginsberg's
lifetime, he
rest home or, worse, call the police for help. The first of these two episodes
was
that delicate
took place when Ginsberg
just 12. At exactly
point of
and
and
home
the
transition between
between
manhood,
world,
boyhood
were thrust on him,
and responsibility
leaving him frightened,
independence
and tormented
his
with
uncertain,
resentful,
guilt. At that time, when
assassin
"a mystical
from Newark"
mother
started hallucinating
(p. 13),
so ner
she seemed
who had stayed home from school because
Ginsberg,
a doctor, who recommended
a rest home. After
vous and
called
distraught,
a
bus ride, after being thrown out of one rest home
(be
long, humiliating
a blood
cause Naomi hid in the closet and demanded
Allen
transfusion),
in an attic room, got on the next bus home and
finally left her alone
"lay
in
last
head
back
the
worst yet to come??abandon
seat, depressed?the
my
was
ing her, rode in torpor?I
only 12."
to Parcae in
12 riding the bus at nite thru New Jersey, have left Naomi
in a seat?all
to my own fate?sunk
house?left
haunted
Lakewood's
she
heart sore in my ribs?mind was empty?Would
violins broken?my
were safe in her
15)
coffin?(p.
97
at
The sequence
of feeling here?from
her, to pity for his
guilt
abandoning
own isolated fate, to exhaustion
and apathy and finally to the wish that she
desire to be relieved of his mother
die?reveals
and the
would
Ginsberg's
she triggers in him. And the worst was yet to come; that night,
conflicts
hid
the telephone
gone mad?Naomi
rang at 2AM?Emergency?she'd
Louis!
the
of
Buba!
under
bed
Mussolini?Help!
ing
screaming
bugs
Fascists! Death!?the
fag attendent
screaming
landlady frightened?old
back at her (p. 17).
by his father for leaving her
already been criticized
to solitude?"
her
It's a possible
fault,
"my
delivering
was
not some
it
nowhere
he
left
her,
says exactly why
question: Ginsberg
es
on
he
to
he
himself
her
had
describes
bed
do,
sitting
thing
"waiting to
stresses
with
wished
her
dead.
The
and
has
filled
situation,
cape,"
painful
even for an adult, must have seemed
for a boy of 12.
complex
unbearably
was confronted with Naomi
Later, visiting her in the hospital, Ginsberg
saying
"begging my 13-year-old boy mercy,"
who had
Ginsberg,
there, asks himself,
'Take me
taking
home'?I
Shock?and
went
alone
sometimes
I'd say, "No, you're
looking for the
crazy Mama,?Trust
lost Naomi,
the Drs."
19),
-(p.
and still later,
Naomi
imagines
just before her
herself hounded
last hospitalization
in the late
own mother,
Louis
and
her
by
forties,
as
in the room!'?I'm
'?No wires
listen
ditch, Eugene
yelling at her?last
can he do to escape
on
the
that
bed?what
fatal
Mama?'You've
ing
too old to walk?'
been away from Louis for years already?Grandma's
me & Gene & Naomi
in one myth
We're
all alive at once then?even
at
in
other
Forever?I
each
the
room?screaming
ological Cousinesque
in Columbia
I
jacket, she half undressed.
against her head which
banging
gamut of Hallucinations?for
elsewhere?to
my
own?No
real?her
America,
saw Radios,
Sticks, Hitlers?the
own universe?no
road that goes
a
even
not
26-27)
world?(pp.
the way
at this point much
later in adolescence,
emphasizes
Ginsberg
world
his mother's madness
removed her into a private, hallucinatory
( "her
in
own universe")
she
remained
all
where,
screaming,
hysterical
beyond
tri
In
her
madness
Naomi
that
road
accessible
goes nowhere").
("no
her son, who,
transcended
similarly de
reality, but abandoned
umphantly
of asserting reality,
serted by his father and brother, was left in the position
Even
98
her over to those
the validity of her visions and delivering
angrily denying
a situation
In
filled
most
and
authorities?doctors
feared.
very
police?she
stresses
In
with
with
remarkable
reacted
strength.
Ginsberg
exhausting
to
he
"Kaddish" he asks, "Louis what happened
your heart then?"?when
was confronted with his terrified wife
out the
shrieking that he had called
was not
Allen
"Have
been
killed
Naomi's
you
"poison cops":
ecstacy?"
by
a certain hardness
in his strength,
but he suspected
this intensifying
the
guilt already latent in the situation; "It's my fault," he must have felt, "if I
to
to her?and
have happened
had loved my mother more,
this wouldn't
was
that
me." As an adolescent,
left
for
"lost
alone,
searching
Ginsberg
Naomi" who had nurtured him as a young boy, fearing those ecstatic hal
to kill all
that seemed
of the "fatal Mama"
lucinations
feeling between
them, and yet longing to join her in the dramatic
intensity and transcen
dence of her madness.
From the retrospective
point of view of the adult poet, the ideal way to
handle this excruciating
situation would
be to accept a certain amount of
as
to
the positive
and
vindictiveness
natural,
anger
strength and
emphasize
that Ginsberg
did show and so to view a certain amount
tenderness
of
but this is by no means what
for self-survival;
"hardness" as a prerequisite
we find in "Kaddish," where unresolved
feelings of guilt prompt the poet to
exorcise her spirit and be rid of her at last?a maneuver
that breaks down,
even
in
view
his
to
return
and fuse with her in
of
however,
stronger desire
sources of this
we can see in a crucial
death. The deepest
passage
longing
of "Kaddish":
to
time I thought she was trying to make me come lay her?flirting
herself at sink?lay back on huge bed that filled most of the room, dress
up round her hips, big slash of hair, scars of operations,
pancreas,
abortions,
belly wounds,
stitching of incisions pulling down
appendix,
in the fat like hideous
her legs
thick zippers?ragged
long lips between
was
a
I
smell
of
asshole?
cold?later
revolted
even,
?What,
little, not
One
much?seemed
perhaps
a
good
Beginning Womb?Perhaps?that
lover, (p. 24)
to try?know
the Monster
of the
a
she
care?
Would
She
needs
way.
idea
At first glance this passage seems a daring revelation of an incest wish and a
we
of the mother's
realistic description
body. But what
really
shockingly
see here is how one
to be open and at
writer,
pretending
post-Freudian
as a defense
awareness
ease about incestuous
desire, affects sophisticated
are
intense
and
anxieties.
The
lines
with
against
longings
charged
feelings
that the poet, far from "confessing
out," appears eager to deny. Ginsberg's
tone of voice is noticeably more defensive
than frank: he assumes an atti
99
the act into a
scene?idealizing
the Beginning
Monster
of
the
/ psychological
("know
experiment
mythical
more
than his:
his
mother's
emotional
for
Womb")
performed
gratification
to Naomi,
al
is attributed
"She needs a lover." All of the sexual initiative
as
a
in
innocent
to
view
himself
his
her
son,
superior,
sophistication,
lowing
re
and compassionate
conventional
moral
individual,
liberated,
beyond
a
one
of his friends.
straints and thus willing
little help to
and able to give
seeks to
this
himself
above
situation,
charged
Ginsberg
emotionally
Holding
as
attraction
his
mother?as
well
he
feels
toward
the
both
powerful
deny
on
as soon as he
of
the
the fears he experiences
acting
imagines
possibility
on wounds made
on scars,
cut
it. The persistent
by
emphasis
particularly
an
an association
the
female
and
between
mutilation,
ting, suggests
body
male
the
woman's
homosexuals
association
who, perceiving
frequent among
a man and
as the castrated
at the prospect
of a
frightened
body
body of
are
more
for
comfortable
with
sexual
similar fate
themselves,
partners who
rude
of detached
superiority
toward
the
the passage
I have quoted, Gins
Immediately
following
shifts
the
first
the
Hebrew
words of the
subject, inserting
berg dramatically
to
and
then
the
"Kaddish" (a mourning
ritual)
turning
story of his father.
of incestuous
wishes
It is as if the very thought
immediately
provoked
also have
penises.
of death and the presence
of the father, who might
administer
thoughts
son most
in
Part
I
In
of
his
fears.
"Kaddish"
that
fact,
just
punishment
is lamented as a victim who "fought the knife?lost
Cut
Naomi
down"
/
by
a
a heartless
in his recollec
father wielding
"sharp icicle" (pp. 10-11). Yet
fears seem inspired less by
tion of incestuous yearnings, Ginsberg's
deepest
Louis than by Naomi herself. When
he does turn to his father in the suc
lines, he presents his most poignant picture of Louis: "hurt with 20
ceeding
of the all
Naomi's
mad
idealism"?father
and son linked as victims
years
as "mon
is imagined
Naomi's womb
(p. 24). Moreover,
powerful mother
our
the poem reenforce
that it is a
ster" and images throughout
suspicion
monster.
In Part IV Ginsberg
pubic hair
speaks of his mother's
devouring
if her
he is inordinately
as a "beard" (a trite image of which
fond)?as
on
in
visit
to
his
his
last
were a mouth
Part
mother
and
II,
(p. 34);
vagina
the door as a "crotch," on the other side of
he imagines
in the hospital,
of the Hebrew words of the "Kaddish" sug
lies death. The quotation
which
on the
association
of incest with death. It is
level, Ginsberg's
deepest
gest,
she would
swallow him up?
as if, were he to get too close to his mother,
In
her
either.
himself
from
he
can't
"Kaddish," as in
finally separate
though
versus
one
is
of
the
earlier
conflict
all of Ginsberg's
unity.
separation
poetry,
an
never
and frus
is
but always
absolute,
sterile,
independence
Separation
as in the passage where
all members
of the family are
trating isolation,
a
screaming at each other yet with each of them locked in
pri
hysterically
is so radical
The separation
vate world of his or her own, incommunicado.
100
communication
it cannot be resolved by mere
verbal or emotional
so
own
to
universe?no
road
that
goes elsewhere");
("her
longs
Ginsberg
a
of
fus
isolation
be delivered
from this agonizing
kind
self-annihilating
by
his incest
ion with the mother. From this point of view we can understand
uous desires as
to get inside his mother
and see
expressing Ginsberg's wish
as she does. The
in fact, is to
of Ginsberg's
early career,
progression
things
with her paranoid
ward a closer and closer identification
politics, her hal
even her
sexual
"looseness."
and
visions,
sloppiness
lucinatory
physical
in "Howl"?absolute
In "Kaddish"?as
absolute
isolation alternates with
that
in spiritual transcendence,
apoca
poem
seeking "resolution"
a
in the static
fusion
that
could
total
only be realized
perfec
lyptic vision,
it comes less and less to accept the
tion of death. As "Kaddish" proceeds,
loss of Naomi, more and more to yearn for union with her in death or, while
life remains, to incorporate
her vision as the poet's own. "Die / If thou
in the lines from
woulds't
thou dost seek," says Shelley
be with that which
not
chose
for
"Adonais" that Ginsberg
his
epigraph. The poem
significantly
as deliverance
from
the
and
celebrates
death
frustrating
only
frightening
as the source of that
of human
life; it also identifies Naomi
separateness
fusion,
vision
each
of death.
In this rich sense Naomi
is Allen's
inspiration,
his
"muse."
O glorious muse that bore me from the womb, gave suck first
life & taught me talk and music, from whose pained
mystic
head I first took Vision
and beaten in the skull?What mad hallucinations
Tortured
of the damned that drive me out of my own skull to seek
for all
till I find Peace for Thee, O Poetry?and
Eternity
call on the Origin
humankind
is the mother of the universe!
Death which
(pp. 29-30 )
moves
from a celebration
In just these few lines, Ginsberg
characteristically
as
to thoughts of her suffocating hold on him,
muse"
of his mother
"glorious
at once feared and sought.
so that in the end she is conflated with Death,
scar
asserts that the real Naomi was not the overweight,
At first Ginsberg
a
a
room
of
woman
in
the
mother
of
lunatic
locked
red, lonely
asylum?but
him
and
suck
fed
memories
who
his earliest
spiritually:
"gave
physically
an
so com
life & taught me talk and music"?creating
first mystic
intimacy
son
see
Yet
union
mother
of
and
to
with her eyes.
such
plete that he seemed
has its threatening
aspect; her vision of things is "pained," and her life sug
out of suffering
is through a kind of
son that the
to
her
gests
only way
into "Vision." Such destructive-redemp
in it?by being pained
immolation
are
and they derive
tive gestures
poetry,
throughout
Ginsberg's
repeated
to find ex
the
need
but
from
not just from a self-punishing
masochism,
101
to shatter the boundaries
extreme enough,
of the
periences
painful enough,
in
In
and
beaten
the
this passage
separate self.
phrase "tortured
modifying
to
it to refer
both
the skull" floats free of any precise
referrent, allowing
in those moments
in
when
Naomi
and Allen,
they "lose
joined
suffering,
it appears,
is hard to
is his. Yet if such union
their head." Her suffering,
me
so
is
the
curious
makes
from
the
"bore
womb,"
bear,
separation:
phrase,
at birth. And this kind
it sound as if he were cast out from her unwillingly
to a life of his own is yet another reason why
himself
of resistance
Ginsberg
in the skull"?i.e.,
when
is "tortured
tortured
and defeated
and beaten
a
as
sentence
that
locked in the skull of private consciousness.
Here,
began
an
we
as
con
to Naomi
to
expect
"glorious muse" and which
apostrophe
tinue as some form of prayer to her breaks off to frame a question
("What
as it
mad hallucinations,"
that in turn is never completed
etc.), a question
turns into an
to
to
him
and
what
drives
be
like
her,
cry:
agonized
helpless
lose his head in "mad hallucinations"
like her own! The answer is that both
her presence
and her absence drive him out of his skull: when near, she ab
sorbs him into her vision; but once separated, he is driven to return, and the
can return is
by sharing her vision?by
fusing with her. Either
only way he
route ends in a kind of death for the separate personality,
but Death
itself
as
a
is affirmed
release from the frustrating boundaries
of
(now his muse)
the self, and as allowing a peaceful
and final merge with the mother.
seizures the adolescent
his mother's
had tried to break
During
Ginsberg
a realistic
to
her
view
in the
of
("'No wires
through
point
by asserting
a
at
room!'?I'm
line
of
ended
in
that
frustra
her"),
rage,
approach
yelling
But Ginsberg
the long autobiographical
Part II of
closes
tion, hysteria.
a moment
one
"Kaddish" by recollecting
of communication
with Naomi,
a cottage
in
in
that came, "mystically,"
her
death.
While
after
just
living
Berkeley in 1957, having (he hoped) left familial strifes behind him in the
dreamed
of his mother's
thru life, in what form
East, Ginsberg
spirit?"that,
near its death?
it stood in that body, ashen or manic,
gone beyond
joy? /
own
on earth
in
its
with eyes?was
love
the
mother
form,
Naomi, my
my
a
wrote
to the
this
still" and wrote
letter"
love
"&
'long
hymns
declaring
mad." A few days later he received a telegram from his brother,
informing
him of his mother's
death; and two days after that, he got a letter from his
the first he'd had from her in several years?a prophecy
mother,
(seemingly)
ma
mixes
from beyond
the grave. The
letter wonderfully
conventional
ternal advice with cryptic visionary utterances:
'The key is in the window,
the key is in the sunlight at the window?
I have the key?Get
married Allen don't take drugs?the
key is in the
in
in
the
the
window/
bars,
sunlight
102
to the mother,
is
Allen
"Get married
key, according
coventionality:
take drugs." But in Part III of the poem
on
the
Ginsberg
picks up
letter's visionary metaphors,
the image of the flash of light that frees the
self from the locked room, the
con
head?the
pained
prison of solitary
The
don't
sciousness.
in the bars the key is
in the sunlight at the window
key is
in the
sunlight,'
come to that dark
on iron bed
only to have
night
by stroke when
the sun gone down on Long Island
roars outside the great call of
and the vast Atlantic
Being to its
The
own
to come back out of the Nightmare?divided
creation?with
her head
to die
lain on a pillow of the hospital
?in one last glimpse?all
Earth one everlasting Light in the fam
tears for this vision?
iliar blackout?no
sun
But that the key should be left behind?at
the window?the
key in the
can take
the living?that
light-to
turn the door?and
that slice of light in hand?and
look back see
same grave, size of universe,
to
Creation
the
backwards
glistening
on the
size of the tick of the
over the white door?
hospital's clock
archway
(p. 33)
for many years now, victim of shock
inmate of asylums
Naomi Ginsberg,
treatments
and strokes, locked alone in her room, further isolated by her
a kind of
lies in a "dark night" on an "iron bed" like a prisoner,
madness,
ex
clear, it is not just the harrowing
prisoner of life. As Ginsberg makes
it
make
it
is
of
her
life
that
of
the
condition
very
nightmarish,
periences
a bounded,
in
creates
creation"?that
the
being?"divided
physical
living
is pained
In the midst of all this, Naomi
into vision, has her
"Nightmare."
to
the
finds
self. Yet the key,
the
of
locked
glimpse
"everlasting Light,"
key
see
as unreal, a dream
as
is
to
its
it,
life,
ordeals,
interprets
Ginsberg
physical
as the tick of the
?as brief and
insignificant
hospital clock. The vision does
or a Blake, a
not open, as in aWhitman
of physical
and spir
harmonizing
the purely transcendent.
The mo
itual; rather it opts for the apocalyptic,
ment of vision, here, is the moment
of death; and death is the key, releas
a
us from the
of
existence.
(and thus divided)
ing
nightmare
fleshly
In "Kaddish" 's last two sections, Ginsberg
shifts from detailed
narrative
to shorter, more intense
in long "broken paragraphs"
liturgical chants which
of Naomi
and accept her loss.35 Yet the
attempt to let go of the memory
comes to terms with her death is
very means by which Ginsberg
by identi
as his own that very vision of life as death which
on
she
had
fying
imposed
103
years. Section IV utters "farewell" to Naomi Ginsberg
of
her body, aspects of her life, that are expressive
of
parts
by cataloguing
in final review. As
her ordeal?as
if her life were passing before his mind
the list proceeds, Ginsberg
focuses on her eyes: "with your eyes of shock /
with your eyes of lobotomy
/ with your eyes of
/ with your eyes of divorce
stroke / with your eyes alone / with your eyes / with your eyes" (p. 35).
to look into them is
Her eyes convey a kind of mute, helpless
suffering and
in
force
to become
her
vision;
fact, the emotional
transfixed, paralyzed
by
a
to
show the poet mesmerized
of this section is not toward
"farewell," but
him from his earliest
of his mother. The poem's final section, likewise
by the Medusa-like
glance
as
in
transfixed by
manner,
helplessly
liturgical
similarly depicts Ginsberg
Section V begins as a visit to Naomi's
the memory
of his mother.
grave and
crows in the cemetery
caw
the
cries
of
caw")
("caw
proceeds by alternating
with a religious
chant ("Lord Lord Lord"). The crows evoke decomposi
to
the "Lord" is intended
fate of life in the flesh, while
tion, the inevitable
within which
such cruel realities can be ac
define an eternal perspective
Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord
final line?"Lord
cepted. But the poem's
caw
caw
crow and Lord,
caw
Lord" (p. 36)?conflates
Lord Lord
temporal
once
as
and the effect of the line, which Ginsberg
and eternal,
devourers,
as
emotive
described
sound," is that of a cry, or a "howl," of a suf
"pure
its movement
its impersonal physical
with
victim.36
Life,
processes,
fering
a divided and often indifferent world?that
into which Gins
world
through
was
it can be
cast?is
the only way
intolerable. Hence,
unwillingly
berg
a "vision":
borne is by seeing it through Naomi's eyes?as
all years my birth a dream
broken shoe the vast highschool
(p. 36, my italics).
caw
caw
caw
caw
caw New York
caw all Visions
the bus the
of the Lord
a dream in the mind of an omnipotent
its agonies,
life is merely
if not selfhood. Yet it is the
Lord?a
thought that, it seems, offers safety,
are stressed
that
of this divinity which
("great Eye
threatening
qualities
stares on All," "Grinder of giant Beyonds"?p.
36) and it is clear that this
in
is ominous
his threat to devour,
"Lord," with his powerful
glance and
the
deific
is.
In
all
Naomi
those
fact,
ways
poem's
figures?the
precisely
into a single figure, "the Naomi,"
Lord?dissolve
glorious muse, omnipotent
"fatal Mama."
who is the "Origin/Death"?the
in the poem is a kind of formal ten
conflict
A key result of the psychic
and visionary modes, Ginsberg was ad
sion. In seeking to link confessional
a
"Howl" and that would prove
vancing
poetic project that had begun with
one for contemporary
and
to be a generative
poetry. Yet autobiographical
are at odds with each other in "Kaddish." If Part II con
motives
mystical
into powerful
"release of particulars"
fronts us with a relentless
narrative,
Whatever
104
strive to chant those particulars
into
all remaining
sections of the poem
on
at
two
that
counts.
In
fails
the
first
Vision?a
least
dream,
strategy
place,
a sur
the need of the poet to get 'out of his head' in many
respects signals
the memories
render to, rather than coming to terms with,
of Part II. In
readers will,
I think, leave the work more
addition, most
impressed with
sec
the psychic
of II than the sought resolutions
conflicts
of the closing
account
tions. Moreover,
in "How
of the poem's
Ginsberg's
composition
the
the
second
and
Kaddish Happened"
of
reveals
part
implies
centrality
that Ginsberg
felt that he was in some sense "defeated" by the poem?i.e.,
individual
sections
of "Kaddish" were written
spon
by Naomi.37 While
some of them in
moments
of "mad hallucination,"
drug-induced
taneously,
the writing
of these sections, the whole poem tak
long intervals separated
more
two
went:
than
the order of composition
first,
years. Significantly,
ing
a
IV
evocation
Naomi's
of
then
(the
stare),
year later I
part
mesmerizing
and II, then some indefinite period after this, V; no mention
is made
of
III. Most emphasis
is given in the essay to the writing
of II, which Gins
Part II
berg approached
yet felt he had to approach;
slowly, resistingly,
was written
no
in 20 straight hours of effort after a
some
of
night
sleep,
mescaline
and speed, listening to Ray Charles
records and chanting
aloud
from Shelley's
"Adonais" and the Hebrew
"Kaddish": Afterward,
passages
on to 7th Avenue
& across town to my
sunrise has its own cele
In the country getting up with the cows
brated hallucinatory
unreality.
Blakean
and birds hath
the same nature's
charm, in the megalopolis
a
even
a
hell vision,
hour is
if you're
milkman.
science-fiction
Phantom
streets out of Poe, familiar
bookstores
factories, unpopulated
nightclubs
groceries dead.38
I walked
Lower
out in early blue dawn
Side apartment?New
East
York before
implies that the poem hap
essay's title, "How 'Kaddish' Happened,"
from
the
to
his buried
self?a familiar
of
surfacing
depths
Ginsberg,
pened
claim of romantic poets but one that here carries the added
suggestion
resistant poet. At the same time
that the poem was thrust upon a somewhat
ex
account
of the poem depicts
the poet?via
of the writing
Ginsberg's
The
drugs, and careful selection of urban setting and suitably elegiac
himself
into vision, into
flaggelating
literary texts?deliberately
communing
to his divided
with his dead mother. Both versions, of course, are true?true
fear of and longing for the woman who gave him "mystic life." What Gins
haustion,
sees when
at dawn
is the
seen
city
a
is
it
and
also
of loss
eyes;
through Naomi Ginsberg's
landscape
her: a hell vision of unbearable
?what
life looks like to him without
iso
environment.
lation in a cold, threatening
berg
he wanders
down
7th Avenue
terrified
105
a draft of the entire poem,
tells us,
Ginsberg
finally getting down
even
he waited
another year before
less seek
much
typing the manuscript,
too messy
he
too
The
and
massive,
seemed,
recalls,
poem
ing publication.
on an unconscious
to reach an audience,
that
level
too private
suggesting
communication
the writing
of the poem may have been an act of private
the poet and his "muse," like the letter he had received
between
from her
too
In
all
after
her
death.
case,
"Kaddish,"
any
just
successfully
recreating
After
and inaccessibility
of its subject, seemed
size, disorder,
its author.
voice of Louis Ginsberg,
In these self-doubts we can hear the internalized
feared
that
that
the side of Ginsberg
identification
with his mother's way of
in a private vision, with
leave him, like her, trapped
seeing things would
"no road that goes elsewhere." At this point, Ginsberg,
showing that he may
from
he
sat
the
than
father
liked to admit,
have derived more
strength
the overwhelming
to have "defeated"
to the
the poem "shapely."39 If he
"patient scholar's task" of making
to
the
medium
father's
"dead"
back to life by infusing
bring
began by trying
of his mother,
it was his commitment
to poetry
the visions
it with
that
a road that did
turned Ginsberg
back toward the world,
span the
opened
external
vision
and
between
gap
private
reality.
down
stresses in his account of the
himself
Ginsberg
composi
to
is the need
tion
go "all the way out" in order to capture a
an emotional
and creative thrust that would be stifled
"continuous
impulse,"
in a more orderly work.40 In his view, poetic
(and human)
energy can only
out
"dead
of reality
of
the
forms"
one's
be generated
going
by
skull?beyond
and back to the Origin, the mother, who turns out to be Death. On a human
a kind of defeat, at least the defeat of
level such regressive
longings mark
for a life of one's own. Yet "defeat like that is
the quest for independence,
states.
good for poetry," Ginsberg
Of
course, what
of "Kaddish"
?you
go so far out you don't
with what's been done before
poetry-universe.
Williams.
That's
know what
lose touch
you're doing, you
wind
up creating a new
by anyone, you
saith Pound, "Invention,"
said W. C.
"Make It New,"
on your
so
the "Tradition"?a
complete
you're
fuck-up
own.41
Such defeat does not guarantee
good poetry; but in the literary atmosphere
was
of the late 1950s?dominated
by poetry that
self-consciously
impersonal
of
established
boundaries
and traditionalistic?Ginsberg's
released
breaking
a new life into contemporary
American
poetry.
For help in writing this essay I am indebted
Darby, both of Berkeley, California.
106
to Dr. Felix Ocko
and Margaret
NOTES
1Robert
cites
Creeley
new
the
sense
of
in "Howl"
form
in his
to The
"Introduction
New Writing in the USA" A Quick Graph (San Francisco, 1970), pp. 44-45 as do Gal
way Kinnell in "The Poetics of the Physical World/* Iowa Review, II (Summer 1971),
115-16, and Adrienne Rich, "Talking with Adrienne Rich," The Ohio Review, XIII (Fall
1971), 28-46.
2 All of these
journals are part of the Allen Ginsberg Archives at Columbia University.
from
Quotations
in the
material
in
period
7
Ginsberg's
are made
collection
and Columbia
University.
Ginsberg
3
from San Francisco
Starting
4
Allen
Jane Kramer,
Ginsberg
5
42.
Ibid.,
p.
6 See
in
1953-56"
"Notebook,
(New
York,
in America
the
Allen
with
the
kind
27.
1967),
p.
(New
York,
1970),
Archives
Ginsberg
of Allen
permission
pp.
for
39-40.
on
information
this
life.
Entry for April 20, 1955 in "Notebook 1953-56."
8 Allen
Ginsberg
in America,
42.
p.
*
Young Man Luther (New York, 1958), p. 103.
10AKen
Ginsberg in America, pp. 150-51.
11 Go
(New
York,
1952),
108.
p.
The
statement
about
is made
accuracy
in Holmes'
Nothing More to Declare (New York, 1967), p. 56.
12Louis
Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1945, in the Allen Ginsberg Archives.
All
subsequent
14 Louis
Ginsberg
15Louis
Ginsberg
16Louis
Ginsberg
17 Louis
Ginsberg
is also
cited
correspondence
13Louis
Ginsberg
from
the Archives.
to Allen Ginsberg, December
to Allen
12, 1955.
n.d.
Ginsberg,
to Allen Ginsberg, November 2, 1945.
to Allen Ginsberg, October 29, 1945.
to Allen
November
Ginsberg,
2,
1945.
18 Ibid.
19Louis
Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 10, 1958.
20 "Terse," in
Morning in Spring and Other Poems (New York, 1970), p. 119.
21 Louis
22 Louis
23 Ibid.
24 Louis
Ginsberg
November
Ginsberg,
to Allen
Ginsberg,
n.d.
Ginsberg
to Allen
Ginsberg,
March
25 Louis
Ginsberg
26 Louis
Ginsberg
27 Allen
Ginsberg
28 Paterson
News,
2$ Allen
Ginsberg
30 Allen
to Allen
Ginsberg
Ginsberg
to Louis
Monday,
to Louis
Morning
34 Kaddish
are made
35 "How
36
Ibid.,
Ginsberg,
Tallman
in Spring
and Other
and Other
Poems,
in the text.
'Kaddish'
p.
sometime
10,
in 1948).
1958.
3, 1947.
September
1969,
p. 4.
sometime
n.d.
(but probably
Ginsberg,
June 2,
Happened,"
(New
Poems,
(San
p.
in 1948).
September 3, 1947.
to Louis Ginsberg,
and Warren
Allen
1945.
probably
to Allen Ginsberg, May 27, 1956.
to Allen Ginsberg, July 11, 1948.
31 "Confrontation
Louis
with
Ginsberg's
are made
in the text.
references
sequent
32 "How
in The
'Kaddish*
Happened,*'
Donald
33
2,
(but
Poems,"
Poetics
York,
p. 93.
Francisco,
345.
346.
107
in
of
1973),
1961),
Morning
New
the
p.
p.
in Spring,
p.
American
Poetry,
11.
Sub
ed.
347.
13.
Subsequent
references
37 Ibid.
38
39
345.
Ibid.,
p.
Ibid.,
p. 346.
40lbid.
41 Ibid.
108