Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 188 UNNES International Conference on English Language Teaching, Literature, and Translation (ELTLT 2018) PERFORMING ANCIENT RELICS AS AN EVOCATION OF SPIRITUAL AND ECOLOGICAL AWARENESS IN ALLEN GINSBERG’S “PLUTONIAN ODE” AND GARY SNYDER’S “LOGGING 12” & “LOGGING 14” Henrikus Joko Yulianto English Department, Faculty of Languages and Arts State University of Semarang Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia [email protected] Abstract-the Beat Generation stands as a “subterranean” in many of his poems. Snyder expresses this myth in group of writers in the United States in the postwar era his poems “Logging”, “Hunting”, and “Burning” who engaged themselves with a spiritual vision (Myths & Texts 1978). Mythic aspects in their poems countering against individual’s material engrossment. not only immortalize their legacy, but also They express their “underground” literary activism substantiate perrenial natural landscapes and through jazz and Buddhist poetics that signify ecological views. Furthermore, their non-conformism to materialism minerals. In terms of their ancient qualities, these reveals their spiritual views as Beat vision. This embodies myths correspond with layers of human’s the insight into the nature of phenomena, the unconsciousness and with the meaning of the term interdependent relation between any form of life, and the “beat” as “a feeling toward a bedrock of evocation to conserve ecological resilience. Allen consciousness” (Holmes, 22). I argue that the Ginsberg and Gary Snyder are two Beat poets from the meaning of “bedrock of consciousness” here East and West Coast America who communicate their embodies ecological and spiritual aspects in terms of ecological views through the interrelatedness between the interconnectedness between “bedrock” as an one’s spiritual and material entities. This Beat insight ecological object and “consciousness” as a spiritual evokes individuals to control their penchant for extravagant material goods since this overconsumption aspect. In a word, the phrase suggests the would only wreak havoc on the natural environment. unconsciousness (one’s spiritual realm) or the very Ginsberg and Snyder’s poetics of mythologizing rawness or ‘wildness’ of the unconscious world plutonium and forest accordingly encourage anyone to (Snyder, 9-12). respect any form of life in one’s reliance on goods to The Beat Generation is a group of fulfill his/her daily necessities. “wayward” young American writers in the 1950s. The group originated from an informal talk of young Keywords: the Beat Generation, Beat vision, students of Columbia University, New York in the interdependent relation, ecological resilience early of 1940s. Since the group began in New York City, it was called the East Coast Beats (Charters, 1- I. INTRODUCTION 7). But the group further amalgamated with West Myths serve as materials and tradition that Coast writers during the mid-1950s and became an modern writers outlast in their works (Eliot, 37-39). all-around American group (Ibid., 187-190, 227-231). A poet of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg for The East Coast Beat progenitors include Jack instance, interweaves Gnosticism with Buddhism in Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Lucien Carr. Their his poems such as “Howl” and “Wichita Vortex friend a student at Harvard University, William S. Sutra.” In like manner, Ginsberg’s comrade, a San Burroughs joined them and they together commenced Fransiscan poet, Gary Snyder uses Buddhist nuances a subterranean life against the mainstream Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. 299 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 188 Americans. Another figure named Herbert Huncke, a lived in Rinko-in Shokoku-ji monastery in Kyoto. Times Square hustler introduced them to the word Therefore, he was not completely within the circle of “beat”. This term was actually popular among jazz the Beats though he kept doing regular musicians and hustlers in the era as a slang that correspondence with them (McKenzie, 140-157; means “down and out, or poor and exhausted.” Suiter, 192-194; Schneider, 51-95). Being born in Kerouac felt enchanted by the “melancholy sneer” San Francisco and grew up in Oregon in the West Huncke pronounced the word beat so that he used it Coast (Snyder, 611), Snyder is used to living in vast to name his group, Beat Generation. The word no natural landscapes. Accordingly, he tends to write longer meant exhausted and “at the bottom of the poems about the landscapes and natural life. Though world” but rather “characters of a special spirituality being somewhat distant from the Beats scholarship who didn’t gang up but were solitary Bartlebies with its bohemian but spiritually robust and staring out the dead wall window of our civilization.” ecologically visionary, Snyder’s poems reflect this They meant to create what they called a “New Vision spiritual and ecological shrewdness as Beat vision. of art”, which suggests “one’s way of looking at the world in a new light, to look at the world in a way II. METHODOLOGY that produces some meaning, to find values (Ginsberg, 25-30; Charters, xvii-xviii). Jack Kerouac This paper discusses Allen Ginsberg’s poem as the originator of the group along with Ginsberg “Plutonian Ode” and Gary Snyder’s “Logging 12” & and Carr (see Charters, 565-573) compares the word “Logging 14”. The analysis is focused on their use of beat with beato, an Italian word for beatific or “to be mythic images that I call “ancient relics” in these in a state of beatitude or in “a state of beatitude, like poems. The reason why I select Ginsberg and St. Francis who tried “love all life; to be utterly Snyder’s poems rather than other Beat writers’ is that sincere with everyone, practising endurance, kindness their poems especially “Plutonian Ode” and cultivating joy of arts (Ibid., 562-565). Kerouac’s “Logging 12” & “Logging 14” are some poems that notion exemplifies the Beats’ vision of any form of exemplify mythic “relics”, and these myths articulate life in the natural environment. ecological and spiritual views. The word relics here The term beat also corresponds with rhythm is analogous with “artifacts” or historical objects, of bebop as a modern jazz in the 1940s and early which refer to Ginsberg’s use of plutonium as long- 1950s. It is the music that revolutionalized standing mineral, of names of Gods and Goddesses. commercialized music of the earlier swing big bands Snyder portrays this mythic relic through natural (Charters, 555-559). Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other objects such as forests personified as Gods and Beat writers both male and female from the East and Goddesses. There are two questions that this paper West coasts were all fascinated with bebop as the discusses: first, how does Ginsberg and Snyder’s use new jazz (Charters, 227-231; 555-559; Grace & of mythic images in their poems signify Beat vision Johnson, 55-70; Allen, 36-40; Rexroth, 59-61; of spiritual empowerment?; second, how do Ginsberg Ginsberg, 31-42). Ginsberg, Kerouac, and the other and Snyder’s Beat poetics through their poems Beats were enchanted with the fast tempo and substantiate an evocation of ecological awareness? I dissonant tone of the music that suggest spontaneity. carried out this data analysis on the poetic texts and The spirit of this spontaneity signifies a revolution some books related to Beat scholarship and against more conventional and rhythmic pattern of Buddhism. earlier swing jazz. It also reacted against commercialism of the music and consumerism of mainstream Americans in the postwar era (see III. FINDING AND DISCUSSION Waring, 3-5; DeVeaux, 1-31; Belgrad, 179-195). Ginsberg and his friends similarly referred to the 1. Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder’s Use of notion of spontaneity in Buddhism as an Eastern Mythic Images as Beat Vision of Spiritual religion and spirituality in their search for a new Empowerment vision (see Fields, 195-224; Prothero, 1-20; Charters, 565-573). In view of Buddha-dharma or religious There are many scholarly works that discuss principles, this notion correlates with a bodhisattva’s writings of the Beat Generation. Yet, there is only a insight into the essence of phenomena as being empty few that examines Ginsberg’s “Plutonian Ode” and of self-nature (Fields, 210-211; Goddard, 247-249). Snyder’s “Logging 12” & “Logging 14”. Some of Gary Synder was not purely affiliated with them that are worth mentioning are The Poetry and Beat writers since the group originally came from Politics of Allen Ginsberg by Eliot Katz (2016) and A New York City (McKenzie, 141-143). In the mid- Place for Wayfaring: The Poetry and Prose of Gary 1950s, Snyder went to Japan to study Buddhism and Snyder by Patrick D. Murphy (2000). Meanwhile, 300 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research (ASSEHR), volume 188 two scholarly works Genesis, Structure, and Meaning of a pair of stanzas as the base of the structure of a in Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End poem” (The American College Dictionary; Miles, (Hunt, 2004) and A Sense of The Whole: Reading 154). Each strophe is composed of a somewhat Gary Snyder’s Mountains and Rivers Without End similar interlocking lines to those in “Howl” (Gonnerman, 2015) scrutinize Snyder’s poems from (Ginsberg, 1959). This typography represents blues’ his collection Mountains and Rivers Without End. call-and-response (Wald, 2), in which the fixed base Two scholarly articles that discuss Ginsberg and serves as ‘call’ and the indented or dangling lines as Snyder’s ecological views in general are “Modernist ‘response’ (Morgan, 138-139). The blank spaces after Looking: Surreal Impressions in the Poetry of Allen each of the lines or between one image and another Ginsberg” (Jackson, 2010) and “The Shaping of Gary such as that of the third strophe of Part I of this poem Snyder’s Ecological Consciousness” (Takahashi, – “for Death’s planet”, function as pauses in jazz 2002).