The Body, The Mind, The Soul Is Holy

The use of the divine trinity through Allen Ginsberg’s Howl to create the common man as he should be

For some, a first time reading of Allen Ginsberg's most well known poem can be like an electrical shock. Purposefully nonsensical in parts, filled with vivid images meant to be understood at a glance, lines that seem to flow over the page twisting into two or three lines a piece, and all written in a voice that goes between energetic, hopeless, elevated, and slightly sarcastic “Howl” can be a very difficult work to fully grasp with just one read through, but certainly it has the power to leave behind a very definite impression. Readers may not be able to summarize right off the cuff all that transpired in the one hundred and twelve lines of the poem but are left with the definite impression that something happened and, if they could put their finger on just what it was, it seemed like it might be something important or else utterly madness sprouted by a crazed lunatic. Occasionally, no matter how many times read in review, it can be hard to tell which it truly is, and as confounding as that may be at times, it is also part of the poem's purpose. When “Howl” was originally published in 1956 it was unlike anything most people had ever read, and even now can be a frighteningly unfamiliar experience. Madness is simply part of it's message, one of the many experiences undergone by the various figures in the poem in order to reach a state of divinity.

“Howl” proposes that the sublime is not limited to gods or higher beings, that it is not just attainable by humans but is in fact part of their natural state of being. How Ginsberg goes uncovering this in “Howl” is part of what creates the works dense, circular narrative and intense moments of imagery. “Howl” breaks man does into a trinity – the body, the mind, the soul – and attempts then to connect each part back to it's natural state and strip away the culturally learned limitations on each in order to achieve a spiritual awakening.

Many of the stories surrounding the inspiration, creation and eventual publication of “Howl” have become common enough in literary circle and retold in so many an anthologies of contemporary poets as to have developed a somewhat mythic quality, heavily influenced and encouraged by the poet himself.

Inspired by other poets, most famously William Blake, Ginsberg hoped to capture in his work the voice of a modern American visionary. In a beat manifesto entitled The Literary Revolution in America, Ginsberg along with fellow poet Gregory Corso would write that America now had poets who would give an angelic voice to unimaginable dreams, a rather lofty promise but telling of how Ginsberg saw himself. In this same article the two poets recalled the now famous Six Gallery reading which, although only two years old at this point, already was turning into legend. “The reading was delivered by the poet, rather surprised at his own power,” it says in reference to the debut of “Howl” to the mostly drunk group of writers and friends.

“he read, driving forward with a strange ecstatic intensity, delivering a spiritual confession to an astounded audience – ending in tears which restored to American poetry the prophetic consciousness it had lost...”1.

As bold an assertion as this may seem, it shows the way in which Ginsberg saw poetry, and this poem in particular, as a spiritual experience. Therefore, in many ways the poem “Howl” serves as a physical personification meant to contain this divine energy, the style and language simply a way for readers to have access to it's supernatural intensity. Part of the way that Ginsberg has created the prophetic voice that resonates through out “Howl” is not only in the theme and language, but in how structure formation of the text. The body of the poem is divided into three sections (with a slightly later addition of the “Footnote

To Howl”), each with it's own meter, style, language devises, and even story elements. Yet while each section could be read separate from the others, the combination of the three allows access to the poet's fullest vision. So any attempt to explore the parts of the human exploited in the text must also reference that other crucial trinity of the poem.

The first section of “Howl”, often called the catalog due to it's stylistic similarities with the listed verse style of Walt Whitman, begins with something of a trick, because with no warning or set up the first line is actually the reveal. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” Ginsberg writes, and so leads the reader on a trip through various incident that may drive a man to insanity. The story is one of total destruction, at first without much reason, and while Ginsberg employees a number of literary techniques that may distort the precise meanings of certain lines, in place of logical sentences are left impressions of something visceral and damaged. Here the human get divided into three parts represented in various images and forms but mostly referred to as the classical trinity known as the body, the mind, and the spirit. All three are introduced within the imagery of the first three lines, but for the bulk

1Corso, Gregory, and Allen Ginsberg. “from The Literary Revolution in America.” Howl: 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Harper Perennial. 2006: 165-166. of the catalog the concentration stays on the body and mind. While “Howl” may be unconventional in many ways, the first four lines do essentially setup for the reader where the story will lead, and Ginsberg starts the narration by giving a purpose or at least current condition of the mind, body, and spiritual.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking

for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection

to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in

the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the

tops of cities contemplating jazz 2

Already Ginsberg revels that these angelheaded hipsters drive themselves not only to madness, but that they are dragging themselves through it, that they are in a state of hysterics, that their bodies are naked and starving, but not without purpose. Even before the ending of the first section where the energy and tone of the poem are more fully realized, already there is a clear statement of purpose in the search for something spiritual. After the first two lines where the words are nearly perverse and heavy with negative meaning the third suggests the sublime. Those who were said to be utterly destroyed are now called “angelheaded”, bringing to mind cherubs and innocents on top of the religious imagery. While before they were looking for what is assumed to be drugs, and Ginsberg punctuations are possible negative association towards drugs with the physicality of these naked bodies having to claw there way down dark streets, even throwing in the word angry to personify and even villainous these drugs, now they are in search of a connection to the heavens. In her study on Ginsberg and his use of language, Amy

Hungerford brings together a number of quotes from the poet on why he would rather people read his poetry and felt an immediately understanding rather than take time to form an intellectual response.

Hungerford goes on to argue that, “representational poetry often seems so obviously thematic” due to the

2 Ginsberg, Allen. Howl: 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Harper Perennial. 2006. use of supernatural language that Ginsberg needed in order to effect the conscious instead of outright persuade the reader. While the language may not be put together in a way that would be accepted by a grammar teacher, it has to be strong enough to suggest what it cannot out right say. So lines such as the third, which bring into the poem the mission of elevating to the sublime, must create in the reader a different reaction than those of the body and mind. Hungerford goes on to name a history of poets who have believed that the sounds in a poem must carry with it a specific sense3. One could postulate that each line of the catalog proper comes intoned in a way that suggests mind, body, or spirit. In the fourth line, for instance, Ginsberg's language stays calm and mystic, changing “negro streets” to “supernatural darkness” and taking the description of “starving hysterical naked” in the first passage and recalling it with softer terms in the phrase, “who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed” (lines 2, 4). The shock contained in the first couple of lines in how quickly the characters go from victims of madness and drugs to angelic figures with a higher purpose continues throughout the text, and as Hungerford suggestions the theme manifests itself very clearly even without an exact meaning. Already the spiritual has become to idea, and so the tone of those lines becomes softer, and so the catalog turns mostly to the attention of the mind body.

If any line best captures the story of the flesh the way the first line works for the mind, it would be the moment Ginsberg writes, “who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night / with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmare, alcohol and cock and endless balls.” (10-11) This two line description uses visceral language while calling back to the theme of the first section. These two lines, coming early in the catalog, mark a very important turning point in the energy of the poem for although there are five listed items that come before, this is the first that really delves into the role the body plays in this search for enlightenment. First, the language calls back to the theme of the sacred and tying it to physical acts. Fire has seen use in various religions being used to burn away sin or cleanse the soul, a power that is both destructive and holy. Along with turpentine, a flammable and bitter smelling oil, are here consumed which Ginsberg plays against others

3Hungerford, Amy. "Postmodern Supernaturalism: Ginsberg and the Search for a Supernatural Language." The Yale Journal of Criticism Vol 18.2 (2005): 269-298. who “purgatoried their torsos” (10). One of the clearest possible examples of language that fails to properly represent a concrete idea and at the same time leaves an obvious imprinted sense of itself. This is a statement of the bodies purpose within the catalog. Used in certain Judeo-Christian mythology, purgatory refers to an afterlife before heaven where the soul suffered so that it may one day elevate to

Heaven free from all human errors. With images of eating fire and 'purgatorying' their bodies, Ginsberg sets these figures up as people willing to take it upon themselves to destroy themselves in the present, suffering to find the divine in this life. Although purgatory has no real defined meaning when used as a verb, it is understood here to be on core with eating fire, drinking poison, and even death. It brings to mind the purging of the body, as well as the painful suffering undergone to perfect a soul. “Howl” may be an attempt to break from old conventions but, as Hungerford rightly points out, Ginsberg can never cut off words from their intellectual meaning and make them pure vibrations of feelings (279). Ginsberg cannot escape using words, so he uses words that are crude and earthy, the kind of words that jolt people who expect poetry to be a spiritual experience or at least mental. The mind will break down plenty in the later text, but here the focus is on showing the body. Gritty, simple words have a more vivid if not perverse association. More than this, shoving this pointedly unpoetical and crass fragment at the end colors the impression of the entire item, and since the energy of “Howl” depends heavily on sudden impressions, that changes the whole tone of both those verses and what follows. The last line feels less spiritually enlightened and more earthy, while the remaining catalog is now firmly set as a self induced earthly purgatory.

The violent nature of the self sacrifice of the flesh and mind allows Ginsberg to use visceral language to create a quick series of frenzied images in the minds of readers and helps strengthen impact of the poem's narrative, both in the first section and over all. As the catalog roles through a number of topics and characters in various states of physical or mental decay all “to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find Eternity” (line 60) it cumulative in a scene at the steps of a madhouse and the narrative returns to the first line, presenting the people from the catalog now apparently labeled by the institution as psychotic. In a moment just before the climax of the part one,

Ginsberg writes that they left the madhouse once only to “[return] year truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards” which makes a point of the physiology of insanity, that these men are not just insane but that they have gone and purposefully broken their bodies apart and that their madness has been corporeal. This just before the end of the section, a truly powerful build up beginning in the institutions and moving to the streets. In three words, “and who therefore” (73),

Ginsberg sets out to give meaning to the destruction of the catalog and lays out his inspiration for the poem in language heavily with divine imagery. Ginsberg refers to this as “confessing out the soul” (75) suggesting the poem comes from and is part of him, but a sublime part that is meant to “blow the suffering of America's naked mind for love” (77). In some way, then, this poem attempts replicate the self destruction of all it's secret heroes, the people whose actions and own works inspired Ginsberg, but if it does cause harm it is meant as an act of love, just as the figures in the catalog went through purgatory in order to cleanse their souls. All their personal sacrifice, Ginsberg claims, builds to this moment, “with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.” (78).

To get to the core life force, that part of the poem that is beyond physical, it's necessary that they drive themselves mad and butcher it from their own flesh, as if dividing the human up and picking away at each piece that is not part of the divine ideal.

If in part one the mind, body, and soul are torn apart with the flesh utterly destroyed in the name of the holy poem, it does not seem as if the second part has much potential room for forward narrative and, to a certain extent, it does not add new movement but returns to the original starting place of the poem, and this time focuses more heavily on matters of the mind. The first section implies that though the body has to be sacrificed for the spiritual, that the spirit must come from the body. For

Ginsberg, pleasure of the flesh are not sins that prevent spiritual awakening as many mainstream

Judea-Christian religions might preach, but necessary experiences that allows access to higher planes and thoughts outside the institution and so full spiritual awakening needs to come from living flesh. In part one the body is slaughtered. In section two, Ginsberg addresses intellectual imprisonment beginning with the question, “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? / Moloch!” (79-80). Using the image of a pagan God from the old testament, Ginsberg builds up a new myth of Moloch as something modern and mechanized and entirely inhuman. In an individual's quest to find spiritual meaning they must rely on personal, physical experiences , something Moloch can never achieve as it is describe as being made of “pure machinery” and “sexless hydrogen”, accumulating to the revel, “Moloch whose name is the Mind!” (line 83, 85). This is not quite a denouncement of the intellectual side of human nature as it may initially sound for as sex is used in section one, so is intellectual conversation and creative genius. What it does recall is one of the first lines of the catalog,

“who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,” (6). Now there is “Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war!” who is associated with mental faculties, and the connection is made between a university as an institute of education and Moloch as society, and thus inside every institute. Moloch removes the individual and the pleasure of flesh (“Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! / Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!”) and restricts the mind, reaching into the skull and removing imagination and self realization (87). In his own explanation to a contemporary literary critic Ginsberg says that, “Part II describes and rejects the Moloch of society which confounds and suppresses individual experience and forces the individual to consider himself mad if he does not reject his own deepest senses.” (154). Reflecting back, “the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness” which originally may be assumed a negative consequence, is now presented as a positive alternative to allowing Moloch control over body and mind. Better that they are concerned mad and perverted but able to uncover a higher spiritual experience than to allow Moloch utter control of their souls.

The ending of section two, though entirely changed stylistic, aligns with the end of the first part.

There is an escape from Moloch, the institution which entraps them and keeps them from “Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us”, just as before the poem is not gifted down to the poet from a higher being but from present every day human experience, and back into the streets (91). From here the poem takes another stylistic turn, as well as a change in the narrative story. In part three, Ginsberg declares that he is with his friend in Rockland, a psychiatric institution. In his study of the visionary element of

Ginsberg's poetry, John Quinn claims that this section comes at the end to strengthen the solidarity of the

Beat generation as visionaries, and that Ginsberg's use both here and in the catalog of acquaintance's divine experiences are meant to give the visionary quality of the poem credit in numbers4. This could be the case, and certainly the third section shows a great deal of solidarity between the two figures faced against institutionalize and the attempts by the staff there to force Carl to conform to the expectations of the ruling system, but the numbers also serve to question the definition of madness when so many individuals are not considered sane by the larger cultural machine. Ginsberg's connection with a fellow inmate of the system revels a very human relationship in a poem filled with intellectual sharing and sexual contact, but stressing the individuals or the outcome of these acts rather than any deeper friendship. Part three shows two men who have been declared insane, who have had their bodies abused, and yet manage to forge a relationship beyond that of flesh or mind trapped as they are by Moloch. There is something very serene about this section, and the repeated line “I'm with you in Rockland” creates the feeling of a close comradeship despite the horrors faced within the hospital.

In the middle of this section are a series of verses that capture the spirituality of this third portion of the poem:

I'm with you in Rockland

where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent

and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I'm with you in Rockland

where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body

again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void (105-106)

While Ginsberg will often slip in bits of humor to moments that feel overly serious so as to insure that, “the poem's tone is in this mixture of empathy and shrewdness” these lines near the center of the chant of spiritual solidarity against the great monster of Moloch come unhindered by that occasionally undercutting cynicism (124). Despite being trapped by the mental and physical confines of the madhouse, the soul is still praised as innocent and able to survive even the unauthorized break down of the body. It is not entirely free, though. Like the following sections, the ending of “Howl” comes with a climatic moment

4Quinn, Justin. “Coteries, Landscapes, and the Sublime in Allen Ginsberg.” Journal Of Modern Literature Vol 27.2 (Autumn, 2003): 193-206. of release and freedom from the institution, “our souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs” and in a moment the walls that trap the body and mind are said to be imaginary and collapse around them from this onslaught of holiness and they are free from the hospital, from Moloch, from war and from all culturally created, unnatural imprisonments (111). This line is cut with some amount of humor and has an almost silly energy to it, and it is only in the very last line that the poem seems to settle and go quiet. For right after this supposed escape Ginsberg repeats the phrase, “I'm with you in

Rockland,” adding now, “in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across

America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night” (112). Maybe this suggests a failure of the poem: Carl is not free, the walls of the tyrannical madhouse has not fallen. Perhaps it even hints that the brilliance of the escapes in the first two sections were exaggerated or temporary, not truly divine but only hints of what could be. Does it matter?

“Howl” sets out to be an awakening of natural human divinity, a state hidden by modern conventions that view individual pleasures are sinful, that call any thought outside the normative mad, and that would trap the soul in a machine. Ginsberg's attempt to redefine these experiences and recreate a more natural human state are the bases for a powerful piece of poetry that often takes a prophetic, divine voice but is still limited and faced with the boundaries of modern society. “Howl” works to deconstruct the human in an act against the mass assimilation that destroyed the chance of finding that holy inspiration, but fails, except through dreams and visions, to remove the human from the monster not as parts but as a whole and so the figures in “Howl” remain torn apart and sacrificed.