the making of allen ginsberg
by Douglas Messerli
Allen Ginsberg Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, edited by Gordon Ball (New
York: Grove Press, 1977)
In March of 1952, at 26 years of
age, Allen Ginsberg could look back upon an active if checkered past:
suspension (for writing an “obscene” word on his dorm window); reinstatement
and graduation from Columbia University; close friendships with writers Neal
Cassady, Jack Kerouac,
“At 14 I was an introvert, an atheist, a Communist and a Jew….
“At 23…I was already a criminal, a despairing sinner, a dope fiend…
“At 26, I am shy, go out with girls, I write poetry, I am a freelance
literary agent and a registered democrat….”
The reader of the Journals is
thus greeted with what might be unexpected; this is no fiery rhetoric of a
revolutionary youth, but a mature voice from a poet who has already “come
through” a great many experiences, a poet oppressed by his own “inaction and
cowardice & conceit & cringing, running away…” who admits that “I want
to find a job,” and who asks, “What will I make
happen to my life?”
Only a decade later, when these journals end, Ginsberg had been
transformed—at least in the public consciousness—into a symbol of radical
youth, and, soon thereafter, would come to stand as the prophet of the drug
culture and mid-60s hippiedom.
What happened to Ginsberg in those ten years out of which came both his
great poems—Howl and Kaddish—cannot but be fascinating to
anyone interested in American cultural life. But for those seeking such
information, Ginsberg’s Journals may
seem to be a great disappointment. A collection of fragmentary descriptions
(mostly of dreams), incomplete poems, brief expositions and seemingly
unimportant facts, these journals seldom explain and even less often reflect
the public Ginsberg most of us want to know about.
However, Ginsberg is not being coy. As he had learned from the haiku,
“Never try to write of relations themselves.” And, in fact, these journals are
illuminating when this is taken into account—illuminating not so much in terms
of what happened to Ginsberg in a social or political context, but in terms of
the personality behind the cultural events.
This is not to say that the Journals
are merely introspective. All of the five notebooks published here deal with
some aspects of Ginsberg’s social and political actions. And two of the largest
notebooks, written on travels to Mexico and later to France, Tangier, Greece,
Israel and back to Africa, are often most effective in their lyrical poetry and
descriptive prose. Other notebooks, moreover, contain a wealth of literary and
political memorabilia, including a conversation with Ginsberg’s hometown poet
and friend, William Carlos Williams, brief descriptions of encounters with
Dylan Thomas, T. S. Eliot, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and, of course, vignettes of
Ginsberg’s relationships with close friends and lovers such as Corso, Cassady,
Orlovsky, and Kerouac.
But the importance of the journals lies in their revelation of
Ginsberg’s innermost perceptions and fears rather than in outward events. And
it is in the dream—and the dream made public through poetry—that Ginsberg comes
alive as an individual, as a compelling and compelled man. The most important
thing about dreams, Ginsberg explains, “is the existence in them of magical
emotions to which waking Consciousness is not ordinarily sentient.” What these
journals make clear is that above everything else, even political change, it
was this non-sentient emotion which in these years Ginsberg most sought. If, on
the one hand, like Ezra Pound, Ginsberg saw in language’s “worn out”
abstractions the need for “objective images” which when put haiku-style next to
one another made for new relationships in the universe, on the other hand
Ginsberg was (and is still) an avowed Romantic, a surrealist poet who through
the unconscious, attempts to uncover the mysteries of the universe present and
past.
What these journals reveal then is a poet trying to change objectively
the culture in which he lives, while simultaneously coming to terms with a self
that fears change and is constantly in search of the security of identity and
love. From the beginning of these journals to the last pages written in
Mombasa, Ginsberg’s dreams betray the conflict. The editor, Gordon Ball,
describes the pattern in terms of what he calls “The Room Dreams”: Ginsberg
dreams of finding himself in a strange room, building or street and attempts to
get back to a place of security. Associated with the dream is the presence of
an older male, often Ginsberg’s brother or close friend, or occasionally poet
Louis Ginsberg, the father himself. Always Ginsberg is confused or endangered
in these dreams and most often the safety or security he seeks is associated
with his past.
Not surprisingly, in the most political period represented in these
journals (January 4, 1959-March 16, 1961), in the period in which Ginsberg was
writing one of his most personal poems, Kaddish,
and at the same time was composing his political poems as represented in the
journals, the dreams increase (accompanied by heavier use of drugs) and are
filled with paranoiac fears of the police and the police state in which the
dreamer often finds himself. Again and again, the conflict is replayed; the
insecure individual must do nightly battle with the artist and his political
acts. Even the conscious artist is not free from the fight. As Ginsberg
observes at the end of his political poem “Subliminal”: “I shouldn’t waste my
time on America like this. It may be patriotic / but it isn’t good art. This is
a warning to you Futurists and you Mao Tse-tung….”
Ginsberg obviously found a middle ground in his role as prophet, as one
who could speak to the culture of its wrongs, but could also foretell the
future and with that knowledge protect himself from the change it brought. And
there is certainly enough evidence to believe that in his role of prophet
Ginsberg discovered his true self. The recent disclosures of the CIA and the
FBI show Ginsberg’s paranoia and political accusations often seem to have been
justified; moreover, Ginsberg’s October, 1959 description of presidential
candidate John F. Kennedy—“He has a hole in his back. Thru which Death will
enter.”—and his November, 1960 dream of Richard Nixon—in which Nixon is
described as “an abused prisoner alone in his breakfast nook nervously being
self-contained reading the papers”—all help the reader to believe in Ginsberg’s
prophetic powers.
Ultimately, however, the Ginsberg that is most convincing is the man:
the highly intelligent, self-questioning critic of his country who, perceiving
himself and his countrymen running head-long into destruction, desperately
seeks for a shared freedom and peace. This is a difficult book, often
unrewarding, and it has a few editorial problems—a confusion in the
introductory pages, an erratic use of footnotes and the lack of an index—but
for its utterly fascinating revelation of one of our most important poets it is
a remarkable work.
College Park, Maryland, September 1977
Reprinted from The Washington Post Book World, October 2, 1977.
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