The English Literature Journal
Vol. 1, No. 4 (2014): 94-96
Article
Open Access
ISSN: 2348-3288
The Beat syndrome: Ginsberg the quintessential
Messiah of the 50's
Dr Geetanjali Joshi Mishra*
Lecturer, Amity University, Lucknow, India
*Corresponding author: Dr Geetanjali Joshi Mishra; e-mail: [email protected]
Received: 20 June 2014
Accepted: 23 June 2014
INTRODUCTION
Looking back at the 1950s it is evident that 50’s was
one of the most crucial decades of the 20th century, it
was everything but perfect, it was a broken era,
abundant with changes and preoccupied with the cold
hearted relentlessness of the Cold War which ignored
the regular American citizen. Forever in world’s history
50’s would be seen as the decade of the ‘hydrogen
jukeboxes’1, it would be seen as the era when common
reasoning was overshadowed by authority and
mounting tides of materialism that, fuelled by
consumerism, created a deceiving trap which engulfed
everything , right from religion to Psychoanalysis.
While on one hand one half of the world was
recuperating from the holocaust on the other America
was victorious and in tact after the horror of the Second
World War, it turned out to be not only the most
powerful nation on earth, but it had been unchained
from the paralyzing clutches of the great Depression of
the 1930s forever. This victory however did not last for
long, as America was soon occupied by the daunting
task of worldwide revival and the spread of Russian
communism. In order to stalk that dreadful ‘Red Tide’, a
frenzied pursuit for nuclear superiority started. Not
only at the international level, but also at home the 50s
brought a new wave of transformation, it was an era of
seductive compliance in which the middle class was
profusely educated and remunerated by vested
interests, the only price of personal and economic
refuge was a deferential acceptance of puritan ethics. In
a subversive way, however, the 50s was an era in which
recognized confines of human potential were
luminously revised by artists, poets, musicians,
psychologists and activists most of them were never
properly accredited. Collectively they contributed to a
consciousness-changing creativity that electrified the
times and aroused the demand for individual freedom.
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Online: 19 July 2014
In the disquieting ambiguity of the new millennium it’s
probing how the Beat Generation continued to haunt
the American psyche, particularly since in the 1950s
Beats seemed to be slightly more than a counterculture rebellion, a mutinous group of rebels, artists,
writers, poets, dropouts and communal explorers who,
after World War II, felt disenchanted with the swell of
materialism, thus Beat became a condition, a sweeping
rebellion that condemned the tedious observance of
consumerism.
Allen Ginsberg knew that to be Beat was to not only to
be vexed with the humdrum, the commonplace, and the
clichéd, but to be exhausted and worn out by failing to
live an honest life in a materialistic and technical world.
To be Beat was to create new rhythms in the mind - to
get beyond the ordinary rush of raw life where it was
possible to more than just live. It was this time and
society that Allen Ginsberg was the product of. And it is
to that end necessary to fathom the deep meaning of
Ginsberg’s environment and its impact upon his
personality and writings. In his search for definitions
Ginsberg explored the hollowness of the mighty
America; a hollowness that culminated in the dropping
of the atom bombs. Ginsberg treaded the path that was
laid before him by the very chaotic relationship among
his family. He could not help but feel that he was a true
son of America and that America was a true whore that
sold herself to the highest bidder only to be violated
and violate others. His personal trauma became
universal as the shared trauma of all the young
beatniks and those that opposed the dropping of the
atom bomb. In the eyes of Allen Ginsberg, the society he
faced was illusionary and de-individualizing, while the
state, the workplace, the media, and consumer culture
all appeared to stand in queue with the ‘square’ society
of McCarthy’s America.
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Geetanjali Joshi Mishra / The Eng Lit J. 2014, 1(4): 94-96
Talking about the crucial post war years and the impact
of the second world war on Ginsberg’s career, Jonah
Raskin, wrote in his book, ‘The American Scream’, “ like
many other writers around the world, Ginsberg turned
the atom bomb into an all inclusive metaphor.
Everywhere he looked he saw apocalypse and
atomization. Everything had been blown up. And
almost everywhere he looked he saw the Cold
War”2(Raskin,2005,xiv)Talking
about
Ginsberg’s
disillusionment and disappointment Raskin further
says that “the fact that he couldn’t read Howl and
‘America’ on primetime TV infuriated him. ‘I still can’t
go on CBS or NBC and say, ‘go fuck yourself with your
atom bomb,’ he complained. ‘America still doesn’t
understand. America is still trapped.’”( Raskin,2005,xv)
It wont be wrong to say that back in the 50’s Ginsberg
entertained the notion that America was a prison, the
land of the unfree. Everything in President
Eisenhower’s America seemed “to run on a routine of
unspiritualized mediocrity” he complained in his
journal. “Standardization and mechanization and
control of the individual psyche” seemed “a fait
accompli” (Raskin,2005,161) The arrival of the
television seemed to be the most alarming invention of
the modern world, for Ginsberg, it was an era of ‘silent
conformity’ resulting from the war and from the
universalization of the television.
Allen Ginsberg wrote ‘A Supermarket in California’
while living in Berkeley, California in 1955. It was
originally included as one of the ‘other poems’ in
Ginsberg’s 1956 publication of ‘Howl and Other Poems’
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. ‘A Supermarket in California’
is both an ode to Ginsberg’s poetic hero and major
influence, Walt Whitman, as well as an early
experimentation with many of the themes that would
dominate his work throughout his career. Ginsberg
dedicates the poem to Whitman, who is considered to
be America’s first original poet. The poem laments the
downfall of America and all its values; it talks about the
materialistic commodification of the modern western
world. The poem begins with Ginsberg’s invocation of
Whitman. Ginsberg enters the supermarket hoping to
find beauty in the natural products of the supermarket.
His hope is that he can look beyond the
commodification of modern society, but he is sad to see
that the world around him is blinded by materialism.
The poem is a typical meandering poem by Allen
Ginsberg about an everyday event, shopping in a
grocery store. However, he uses this seemingly simple
poem to get at some more complex issues, such as
consumerism and alienation in modern society. Using
the famous poet Walt Whitman as his guide, Ginsberg
shares what he sees and thinks on his shopping trip
with his reader:
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a
headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your
enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
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shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!3 (A Supermarket in
California,1-8)
Ginsberg describes the America he sees, a country
which has already mourned the death of what Matthew
Arnold called ‘love’ and ‘nature’ and what Nietzsche
called ‘Death of God’. He mourns American
consumerism by commenting how husbands and
women and in fact the whole family is busy in the
humdrum activity of shopping. This poem by Ginsberg
condemns both the lack of meaningful contact among
human beings and American consumerism, it laments
the loss of social life. Ginsberg doesn’t meet people here
at the supermarket; he only sees them, even the aisles
separate him from his fellow human beings. According
to Ginsberg as humans, we have lost meaningful contact
between shop owners and customers or even the
people who actually grow and produce our food. The
customers have no idea where the food comes from;
they are content simply to wander through the store.
They walk by each other in the supermarket and on
their way home but never have any meaningful
exchanges with each other. Ginsberg asks Whitman,
‘Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights not in the houses, we’ll
both be lonely’ (A Supermarket in California,23-24)
Even walking home, all they pass are automobiles and
silent houses. Ginsberg is asking Whitman in these
examples for some answers about humanity, but of
course Whitman, long-dead can provide none.
However, both parties know that Whitman’s dreams
are certainly not here. Whitman’s America is gone.
Tired of the American consumerism, Ginsberg mourns
the loss of ‘solitary streets’ and asks Whitman if they
will ‘stroll dreaming of the lost America of love’ he
concludes the poem by longing to be a part of
Whitman’s America and not of his own time.
Another poem by Ginsberg that talks about the
hollowness of the American society and the impact of
the 50’s in America can been seen his very famous
poem ‘America’. ‘America’ was written in 1956 during
Ginsberg's time in Berkeley, California and was
included in the original publication of ‘Howl and Other
Poems’. ‘America’ was one of the first widely read
literary statements of political unrest in the Post-World
War II United States. The poem paints scenarios from
world history, it talks about previous wars, Asian
Foreign policy and the nuclear bomb. The poem also
depicts national racial unrest and the fight with
communism that would characterize the Cold War
foreign policy positions of the United States in the
second half of the 20th century. Ginsberg was always
one of the most politically active members of the Beat
Poets and ‘America’ is both an introduction to
Ginsberg’s political thought as well as a broad
representation of views he would hold throughout his
life. Ginsberg broke almost all of the taboos of the
1950’s in his poem ‘America’, he “admitted that he was
a queer, that he smoked marijuana, that he had read
Karl Marx, and had been a communist, Moreover he
was not sorry”4 (Raskin,2005,183) ‘America’, was a
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lament for a country that had lost its way. In ‘America’,
Ginsberg holds a conversation with his home country
that he feels has abandoned its values of freedom and
free thought in favor of a militaristic security state that
punishes its artists, free spirits, and political radicals.
Ginsberg uses multiple forms, all while furthering his
experiment with the long line. One of the most original
forms he chose to use was the prophetic tradition of the
Old Testament in which prophets, having visions from
God, warned the people of their wayward faith and
foretold of destruction and captivity. In the same way,
Ginsberg prophesies and condemns the modernity of
‘America’, and predicts a spiritual and social
destruction. The poem starts with a very pessimistic
tone, wherein Ginsberg criticizes his own nation for
being insensitive and cruel, in a depressed and
exhausted mood Ginsberg begins the poem with the
following lines:
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty seven cents January 17,
1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.5(America, 1-5)
Ginsberg expresses his own hopelessness that his life
or work, or anyone's life, would mean anything within a
culture of censorship and oppression. He laments the
cultural poverty of the time, equating it to only a few
dollars and cents, and finds that he is not even able to
be himself in such a culture. The poem is an angry
lament, Ginsberg makes America seem like a lost lover,
someone that Ginsberg once loved and saw great
promise and potential in. Ginsberg is perhaps
remembering the great American dream and the
promise that America offered to its people. He asks
when America will once again become the land that it
once promised to be.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself
grave?(America 8-10)
through
the
Ginsberg’s obsession for a spiritually dead American
reaches its culmination in his ejaculatory work ‘Howl’.
It is in Howl that we see Ginsberg’s horrific description
of the modern American society. In the last part of
‘Howl’ Ginsberg compared America with ‘Moloch’.
Moloch -- originally an ancient Middle Eastern god of
sacrifice -- here represents the evil and unholy sacrifice
that Americans are forced to pay for their material
wealth and the pollution of society and nature caused
by war, and industrial progress. Moloch represents the
modern institutions of finance, war, industry, and
government that have conspired to destroy all good for
the sake of profit. Ginsberg's Moloch asks all individuals
to sacrifice their souls, their freedom, and even their
lives for a false patriotism and devotion. No one is
immune from the power of Moloch, not even Ginsberg
himself. He writes, making a self reference:
“Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I
am a consciousness / without a body!”6 ( Howl,25-26).
When Ginsberg suggests that Moloch entered his soul
early, he means that the values of industry, capitalism,
patriotism, etc. were engrained in his being from an
early age just as those same values become a part of the
lives of almost all Americans at some point. Resisting
Moloch is useless. All are a part of its consciousness. It
is the act of trying to disentangle one’s self from the
power of Moloch that drives one insane. The Best
minds of Ginsberg’s generation are, entangled in
Moloch’s power and they risk losing their own souls
and their own vision. Yet, by trying to escape the
cultural hegemony of Moloch, they can only turn to
lives of destruction: alcohol, drugs, or violence.
The poetry of Allen Ginsberg, along with that of the
other Beat Generation works, in this manner, was the
point of origin for the rebellion, protest, and cultural
upheaval that marked the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.
In his lifetime, Ginsberg was branded a ‘hippie’; his
poetry never went away from the facts of war and
violence thereto. Having never been naive about the
power of authorities and people his art assaulted,
Ginsberg knew the pain of rejection: he was thrown out
of Columbia, thought against owing to his sexuality; his
poetry was banned because of its dubious content.
Ginsberg was so manifestly exposed to an America that
had gone astray and though he thought to keep hope
for the country’s unique well being, his work invariably
depicted the less romantic realities of a beatnik life.
Among all the poets of the Beat generation, it is Allen
Ginsberg that remains the most respected and
controversial, poet of the modern era. His poetry
redefined both poetic form and social commentary.
Ginsberg’s Poems, published a few years after his death
in 1997, makes an artistic life that went far out to
stretch the structures and boundaries of his work in
terms of preference and taste to help identify a great
iconic unseen generation; one that opposed the
distinction of canons and rules in the mid-twentieth
century.
REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Ginsberg. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights
Bookstore,2006. Print.
Raskin, Jonah. American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the
Making of the Beat Generation. Berkley : University of California
Press,2005. Print.
Charters, Ann. The Portable Beat Reader. New York: Penguin
Books, 1992.Print.
Raskin, Jonah. American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the
Making of the Beat Generation. Berkley : University of California
Press,2005. Print.
Charters, Ann. The Portable Beat Reader. New York: Penguin
Books, 1992.Print.
Ginsberg. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights
Bookstore, 2006. Print.
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