ABSTRACT This Thesis Is Concerned with an Investigation Which

ABSTRACT

This thesis is concerned with an investigation which compares and illuminates the structures and meanings in Allen Ginsberg's long poem Kaddish, of 1959, with the structures and meanings in fifteen combines (created between 1954 and 1960) of Robert Rauschenberg. The uses of space and metaphor, the varieties of these artists' manners of presentation, and viewpoints, the common environment from which the works spring, old traditions of narrative, repetition, and catalogues used in new traditional ways, other traditional aspects, and use of auto biography as found in these two artists' works have been discussed. These elements have been related to simple and complex, abstract and concrete images. The investigation proves in depth that there are many points of similarity between the .structures and meanings of these works, which are created in such different media, as well as similarities in the environments from which they spring. Little study has previously been concentrated in comparative criticism in such an intensive way on the works of two contemporary artists.

Name: Dean Cheshire.

Title of Thesis: Structure and Meaning in Ginsberg and Rauschenberg.

Department: English.

Degree: Master of Arts. Résumé

Dans cette thèse, nous avons tenté de comparer les structures et les significations du poème d'Allen Ginsberg, Kaddish (1959), à celles des quinze "combines" (créés entre 1954 et 1960) de Robert Rauschenberg, en éclairant les uns au moyen des autres. Nous avons examiné, succes- sivement, l'utilisation de l'espace et de la métaphore, les différents moyens employés pour présenter la réalité ainsi que la manière dont les oeuvres étaient perçues par les sens. Nous avons ensuite étudié le milieu populaire qui a donné naissance aux oeu vres du peintre et à celle du poète. Tous les deux utilisent les vieilles traditions du conte, la répétition, le "catalogue" et l'autobiographie d'une manière nouvelle ainsi que d'autres aspects traditionnels. Nous avons rapproché ces

éléments d'images simples, complexes, abstraites ou concrètes. Nous sommes arrivée à la conclusion qu'il y avait des ressemblances pro- fondes entre les structures et les significations de ces oeuvres, bien qu'elles fussent créées à partir de matériaux différents. Ce genre de critique comparée qui s'exerce sur les oeuvres d'un poète et d'un peintre contemporains est encore rare. Nom: Dean Cheshire. Titre de thèse: Structures et significations chez Ginsberg et Rauschenberg. Département: English. Degré: Master of Arts. STRUCTURE AND MEANING IN

GINSBERG AND RAUSCHENBERG

Dean Cheshire STRUCTURE AND MEANING IN

GINSBERG AND RAUSCHENBERG

Dean Cheshire

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies

and Research in partial fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Department of English,

Mc Gill University,

Montreal, Canada. February 1971.

@ Dean ~ heahire 1971 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1 would like to thank Professor R. Reichertz, who advised me in the preparation of this thesis, for the many hours that he has spent in discussing it with me and in reading it over. He has made many helpful suggestions which have been much appreciated. 1 would also like to thank ·Mrs. E. Coffey for her friendly interest and the time and effort that she put into taking all the photographs of the combines which appear here.

To my parents 1 would like to express my appreciation for their encouragement and support throughout. Lastly, but not at all least, 1 would like to thank Mrs. M. Blevins who' typed the whole

and was so helpful and patient throughout. Her high standards of execution and quick-thinking have averted several disasters- which would have marred the appearance of the typescript.

ii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page 1 INTRODUCTION...... 1

II SPACE/TIME AND METAPHOR...... 18

m VARIETIES IN MANNERS OF PRESENTATION AND IN VIEWPOINT. • • . • ...... 47

IV FORM, MEANING, AND ENVIRONMENTAL REALITY...... 59

v NARRATIVE, REPETITION, AND CATALOGUES RE LA TED TO TRADITION. . • . . . • . . • . 87

VI TRADITIONAL ASPECTS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY . 126

VII CONC LUSION ...... 154

END NOTES ... · ...... 178

BIBLIOGRAPHY . · ...... 188

ILLUSTRA TIONS. · ...... 193

iii ILLUSTRA TIONS (at the end of the book)

PLATE 1 CHARLENE, 1954 RAUSCHENBERG

TI UNTITLED, 1955

ID HYMNAL, 1955

IV BED, 1955

V REBUS, 1955

VI SMALL REBUS, 1956

VU STATE, 1958

vm CURFEW, 1958

IX ODALISK, 1955-58

X GIFT FOR APOLLO, 1959

XI 1'ROPHY l, 1959

xn CANYON, 1959

xm MONOGRAM, 1959

XIV BROADCAST, 1959

XV PILGRIM, 1960

XVI PAGE FROM BURROUGHS' ST. LOUIS JOURNAL BURROUGHS

iv CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Allen Ginsberg's poem Kaddish, written in 1959, and Robert

Rauschenberg's paintings, of about the same period, seem to have similarities despite the fact that they are works that employ dtlferent media for their expression. In this thesis 1 will analytically discuss and discursively review individu al elements of structure and meaning in Kaddish, comparing these with some elements in works of Rauschen berg. 1 hope to prove in doing this that there are many points of similarity, that, in fact, these two artists have got visions of our world which are very similar to one another. If we can find points of similarity in the meaning and structure between the arts we shall be able to view our world from a more unified position. 1 have started an inquiry into the relationship between the arts very simply with two arts-poetry and painting-created by two artists-Ginsberg and Rauschenberg-and have narrowed my discussion to one long work of Ginsberg's and fifteen works of Rauschenberg's which were executed at about the same time. 1 hope, by starting with two artists whose works, over this short period of time, appear to me to have many similarities, and by confining my attentions to only two artists, to prove extensively and conclusively that the works do indeed have 2 similarities when they are examined closely. In proving that these similarities do exist in spite of the different media used by the artists and the different personalities of the artists invol ved, 1 hope that a foundation of soUd information will be laid of analogies between two contemporary arts that later writers can build on to create a body of information relating to the analogies between the arts which will pro-

o vide a basis for the creation and criticism of the arts in unity result ing in the production of a more active appreciation of the arts in relation to each other, and the creation of a better understanding of each individual art.

In this Introduction 1 shall gi ve views of several authors concerning the relationship of the arts. 1 shall then gi ve a definition and explanation of what 1 mean by images in regard to Ginsberg' s and

Rauschenberg's works. In the following chapters 1 shall deal exten si vely with separate points of the relationship of images in and between these works as well as aspects of other relationships" that these works bear to each other. The first point to be dealt with will be one concerning the space/time aspect of these works. There are at least four types of what Ginsberg calls "gaps" of space/ time that

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg are using. These "gaps" provide the entrance for reader/ spectator participation. The images creating these "gaps" are either epiphoric or diaphoric in their relationships.

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg both use several manners of presentation. 0

In Ginsberg these are concerned with his use of different manners of 3

delivery. He uses narrative, dialogue, apostrophe, and prayer.

Rauschenberg in his different manners of presentation uses different

materials besides paint and canvas. He uses fabrics, wood, metal,

string, paper, and so on. He also employs different forms in pre

senting his images. There are photographs, reproductions from

magazines and newspapers, comic strips, drawings by children and

adults, reproductions of paintings by Old Masters, and writing by

children and adults, as weIl as printed signs or parts of letter s.

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg present different viewpoints through differ

ences of scale in size and through the different senses with which we

percei ve information. In this they are very close to sorne J apanese .. haikus that practise the same effect. The environment from which these works spring-the world which they express, and to which they

return for their appreciation-is the modern urban environment of

the common man. The forms that these works take are created by

the meaning, the content, that they are to convey. Both artists hope

that their works will not be artifices but part of the real world which

exists around them and us. Ginsberg attempts to create this impres

sion with his colloquial speech and Rauschenberg does the same thing

with the materials from our everyday world that he uses in his com

bines. They both intend to create a "lowll art of the people rather

than a "high" art that can be appreciated by only a small audience.

For this reason Ginsberg also uses everyday imagery in almost snap

shot like presentations of his world, and Rauschenberg uses actual 4 snapshots of friends and family as weIl as reproductions of photo graphs from the newspaper. Included in their everyday imagery is the mind of the mad-in Ginsberg's Kaddish-~d primitive-Iooking drawings by children and unskiIled adults as weIl as the writing of children-in Rauschenberg's work. Both artists desire to break down the barriers between art and life, to create a unity between these two, as 1 hope to create a unity in comparing their works. The everyday includes aspects of shock, lack of colour, the bizarre, and the exotic.

These last two are partly responsible for the elements of humour which crop up in both of these artists' works. The everyday for

Ginsberg in his youth included the poverty in which he lived and which he describes in Kaddish. Rauschenberg's work shares this poverty-bound aspect. While he was creating the se combines he lived in poverty and perhaps the materials that he used were chosen out of need rather than altogether out of the desire to use those particular materials. Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg use elements of narrative, repetition, and catalogue. Details in their works can exist on their own although their greater and total meaning is only discovered when they are related to the rest of the work. They both use images of the connected kind and of the contrasting kind. These last gi ve the air of ambiguity so necessary to the lUe of a work of art. A connection between two contrasting images may be made by a third image. In our first readings or viewings of the works we are led as the artist wishes us to be led. Afterwards we can take 5 matters more into our own hands and make connections and find meanings that the artist may not have known existed in his work.

The connections in the narratives are seldom created in a straight sequential Une; rather this linear quality gives way to a non sequential arrangement. There is the traditional element of repeti tion here but often there are untraditional elements in structure or concepts which go along with the traditional repetition. Catalogues, too, are used by both artists but usually they are cumulative cata logues, especially in the case of Kaddish, rather than the more traditional balanced catalogues. The catalogues are also often dense, which gives a character of insistence toward making a strong impres sion around or toward one point. Most of the time the catalogues are created with both concrete and abstract images. There are traditional elements, in both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, of structure and con cepts, but these traditional elements are often used in a personal and untraditional way. Spontaneity and chance have much to do with the creation of these works although th~y are a qualüied spontaneity and chance. Ginsberg's"breath" which results in the creation of a line of poetry can be compared to Rauschenberg's brush stroke which results in an image on the canvas. They are both autobiographical artists, although Ginsberg confesses to this and Rauschenberg more often chooses to deny it. The works also contain much of the impersonal or that which relates to all of us. This seems to put their works in a position midway between the very personal and the purely impersonal. 6

Lastly, they both are attempting to communicate with their fellow

man though they may sometimes deny this too.

A few scholars have begun to work on relationships between

the arts. Herbert Read, a poet, art critic, and literary critic him-

self, is one of these. He has drawn parallels between the literary

arts and the visual arts. In his book In Defence of Shelley and Other

Essays, of 1936, he has an essay entitled "Parallels in English Painting

and Poetry" in which he discusses the development of poetry and paint-

ing in England, supposing these arts to have many attributes in

common. He says that, "both arts have their roots in the same soil;

they suffer the same historical fate, the same economic and social .. conditions, even the same climate. Surely this wide community of

circumstances must result in some common features! And il we find,

in any gi ven period, wide differences between the level of achievement

of the two arts-if the, same 'conditions give rise to düferent results

then that too will be a subject worth investigation. 111 As weIl as actual

structural and thematic features Read considers the environment from

which these arts spring. This discussion of Read's also takes in the

fllevels of achievement, fi the importance that these works have acquired

in the eyes of the world.

Another scholar who has dealt with the analogies, or what he,

too, terms "parallelsfl sometimes, by which literature illuminates the

visual arts and vice versa, is Helmut A. Hatzfeld. In his article 7

"Literary Criticism through Art and Art Criticism through Literature, "

written in 1947, he says: "1 think the question has reached the stage

where the philological field-worker can buttress considerably the

empirical basis for the philosopher's construction of future parallels

between literature and art. ,,2 He also states, in this article, that

although there are parallels, mutual elucidation is not possible all of the time. At times the visual arts make form and meaning in literature

clearer and at other times lite rature makes form and meaning in the

visual arts clearer. This may seem something of a paradox but his point is that criticism in some directions in one art is further advanced in its inquiry than criticism in the same direction in another art and that the more advanced criticism in the one area in one art can lend

support to problems in that area that still remain in the other art.

Helmut Hatzfeld also states that, "the fundamental point to be absorbed, and one which guarantees that the forms selected shall be a meaningful expression of a similar spiritual root behind the related token in literature and art, is the principle of restriction to epochal parallels in history. The ambivalence of forms forbids a timeless comparison. ,,3

Wylie Sypher, in his two books Four Stages of Renaissance

Style and Rococo to Cubism; in Art and Literature, the first published in 1955 and the second in 1960, discusses some relationships and transformations in style of the visual arts and the literary arts of these periods. In the chapter on "The Analogy of Forms in Art" in 8

Four Stages of Renaissance Style Sypher says: "we cannot profit

fully by our late critical revolution until we gain sorne rapprochement

between our specialized, incisive art criticism and our specialized,

incisive literary criticism. To venture this rapprochement 1 should

prefer to abandon the notion of parallels and have recourse to that

more amen able , if less exact, term 'analogy. ,,,4 Perhaps the discus-

sion over the use of the word "parallels" or "analogies" is unnecessary

as the Oxford English Dictionary gi ves the meaning of one to define the .

other, and they both also mean "similar." Sypher is firmly convinced

that there is the possibility of relationships between the arts and

relationships between styles and history, as the changes in society

"are inevitably reflected in the emergence of new styles in the

arts ... ,,5 He thus considers the environment of prime importance

too.

These men have successfully compared the arts of at least

painting and literature. They follow the development of these arts

and compare them within certain chosen limitations by finding similar

elements of form and content in each. They also recognize the fact

that the environment from which these arts spring has much to do

with the sort of work that is produced.

AU of these writers realize the difficulties that beset the

critic who would relate the arts in criticism. René Wellek and

Austin Warren put clearly sorne of these difficulties which are to 9 be encountered by the visual art/literary critic. They do so with a certain amount of pessimism with regard to our present capabilities of carrying on such a comparative criticism:

the various arts-the plastic arts, literature, and music have each their indi vidual evolution, with a dtlferent tempo and a düferent internal structure of elements. No doubt they are in constant relationship with each other, but these relationships are not influences which start from one point and determine the evolution of the other arts; they have to be conceived rather as a complex scheme of dialectical relationships which work both ways, from one art to another and vice versa, and may be completely transformed within the art which they have entered. It is not a simple affair of a "time spirit" determining and permeating each and every art .... Only when we have evolved a successful system of ter ms for the analysis of literary works of art can we delimit literary periods, not as metaphysical entities dominated by a lltime spirit." Having established such outlines of strictly literary evolution, we then can ask the question whether this evolution is, in some way, similar to the similarly established evolution of the other arts. The answer will be, as we can see, not a fiat "yes" or lino." It will take the form of an intricate pattern of coincidences and di vergences rather than parallel Unes. 6

Wellek and Warren are not sa sanguine about our readiness to indulge in criticism which relates the arts. They also deny Read's idea that we can find para1lels between the arts and seem to believe that the environment-the "time spirit" -is not so essential for the forms and meanings that art works take as the other writers, and as l, believe it to be. This statement might be modüied if we knew that what they mean by "time spirit" is an all-embracing Zeitgeist. If that were made clear 1 agree that it is not one spirit that moves man to create 10

but many conflicting and comparative spirits which make up the

ambiguity of the environment. They, however, make. a very important

point clear when they say that none of the arts leads the way in struc-

tures and meanings for the other arts to follow but that there is an

interaction between all that can be observed whether or not the artists

responsible are conscious of each others' works. From the standpoint

of criticism, Hatzfeld says much the same thing when he states that at

times "art problems can be better elucidated by literature" and at other

times "literary problems can be made more transparent by a rapproche-

ment with art." Hatzfeld states, as do Wellek and Warren, that "these

rapprochements in both cases may be clarifications by similarity, or

clarifications by fundamental contradistinction. 1I7 Read also suggests, 4,...... 1 ,- that the result will be a pattern which presents like elements and

unlike elements, although he stresses like and unlike elements in the

"level of achievement" rather than elements of structure and meaning.

Herbert Re ad, Helmut Hatzfeld, and Wylie Sypher, as well as

others, such as Erwin Panofsky, Roman Jakobson, and Sergei Eisen-

stein, have made important starts, or have gone a good way, in the

direction of comparing the arts of poetry and painting to discover

similarities and differences. They have usually confined their atten-

ti~ns to works from historical periods rather than discussing contem-

porary works. Also, they have included only a few points about the

works of numbers of artists in the periods that they have chosen to 11

work with. Their work has been important in creating an atmosphere

in which comparative criticism can flourish. It is important that we

realize the collective unity of the world in periods other than our own.

However, selecting only a few points or sometimes only one from each

artist's work does not give us much scope in regarding what that artist

was creating, in relation to other artists' creations, and to the world

around him. There needs to be much work done with a concentrated

effort on indi vidual artists so that a clear picture of the complete

possibilities of integration can be had of each period in history. Taking

only a few points from a selected number of works means that the pos

sibilities of this sort of criticism have only been suggested. The field

is open to many others to complete the work that is offered by these

suggestions. My intention, in attempting to study only two artists

whose works discussed here cover only a limited period of time, is to see how far one can carry analogies (and here 1 am dealing with

similarities, as do the other writers most of the time, although they

declare for the possibility that differences will also clarüy the situation) throughout the two artists' works held up for inspection. 1 hope to

·prove that a much deeper study of works can bring forth even more information than that which we have acquired through the suggestions of the scholars who have already concerned themselves with compara tive criticism. 12

Little has been done in the field of contemporary works of art in the way of comparison. Wylie Sypher has come closest to this in his book which includes Cubism-Rococo to Cubism. It is necessary for us not only to become familiar with unities as they existed in historical works of art but we must also pay attention to unities as they exist around us today. Perhaps this is even more important than an attention to historical comparisons. The works that exist around us now directly or indirectly, through the mass media of communication, affect us. They are part of our present world. They help to form that world into some comprehensible shapes and influence the mass media by which they are likewise influenced. There is a give and take among the elements of our culture as there are analogies between the works of art that are produced in it and by it. The main problem involved in this sort of study is that analogies cannot be pushed to extremes. As logic becomes illogical when extremities are reached, so analogies no longer work when they are pushed too far. We must still remember that the objects between which we are forl!ling the analogies are made from distinctly different materials and that their appreciation depends on widely varied ways of perceiving. That we can form analogies at aIl from such widely different means of communication is matter enough for consideration.

1 have chosen in this thesis to direct my attention to a single poet and a single painter-Allen Ginsberg and Robert Rauschenberg- 13 who are working today and whose works, that 1 shaH discuss here, have been done a little more than a decade ago. If we are able to

show that works of art exist in depth in relation to each other, as weIl as to the world around them there is the possibility that artists

may either work together more often, having a conscious awareness of the commonality of their results, or that they may create new

means of expression, new arts, that will spring from the realization of the closeness with which those already existing arts are interrelated.

AIl of this will enable us to better understand our world. The more completely that we can relate to our world in a unüied way through images created by the imagination of man, the better grasp we shall have upon our situation as the inhabitants of that world. A close investigation, as 1 intend to undertake here, of two artists' works, created within a limited period of time, in relation to each other will,

1 hope, do much toward forwarding this ideal of creating unüied impressions in form, through art production and criticism, of the worId around us.

Before embarking on a close analysis in the comparison of

Ginsberg's Kaddish with some of the works of Rauschenberg of about the same period, 1 shall make clear what 1 mean when 1 speak of images in relation to the works of these two artists. Ezra Pound says that IIthe image has been defined as 'that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. tri 8 This is 14 a good definition of the images that appear in Ginsberg's and Rauschen- berg's works to be discussed here. Rauschenberg's and Ginsberg's images are sometimes concretE. and sometimes abstracto Rauschen- berg's concrete images are photographs, drawings, or reproductions of paintings, or three-dimensional objects such as stuffed birds; the abstract images are some abstract paint marks, some fabrics, and other materials. The abstract shapes can be either figures or ground, images or space, depending on their size, colour, tone, shape, and position in relation to the rest of the shapes. Sometimes abstract shapes operate as ground in relation to only part of the combine, but as images when related to the whole. Ginsberg's abstract concepts function as images in the same way that some of Rauschenberg's abstract brush strokes and materials do. Parts of letters and words, in their literary and visual aspects, are also one kind of image in

Rauschenberg's work. In relation to this Ginsberg is sometimes aware of the vi su al aspect of some of his Unes as he is in Part IV of Kaddish (as he says on the jacket of Atlantic record 4001) where the Unes form four pyramids.

Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg use simple images which can stand by themselves, but only give part of the meaning, and more complex images that are formed from groups of simple images which can stand as separate compositions, but also relate to the rest of the work, and only give forth an of their meaning when BO related. 15

These images, in Rauschenberg, appeal to the sense of sight (such as photographs and drawings) and to the sense of touch (such as materials and thick paint). In Ginsberg, they appeal mainly to the sense of sight, but there are sorne audio images, such as flthe tick of hospital's c1ock, fl9 sorne images appealing to the sense of smell, such as "with your nose of the smell of the pickles of Newarkfl (p. 34), sorne of the sense of taste, fleating the first poisonous tomatoes of Americafl (p. 8), which also holds connotations of dangerous love for tomatoes are fllove apples, fi sorne of the sense of touch flremembrance of electric shocksfl

(p. 13), and some curiously mixed images, such as flate grief at Bick- ford's all these years" (p. 24).

A complex image from Ginsberg, with several figures and actions in it, separated, by the space of dashes and a Une, from the next image, is:

they eat in the plum tree grove at the end of the meadow and find a cabin where a white-haired negro teaches the mystery of his rainbarrel-

(p. 29)

This is an unusually unified example of a complex image in Ginsberg.

More often his complex images are made up from simple images separated by dashes but contained within one line. Rauschenberg's photographs, or reproductions of paintings are complex images with the unity (not simple images separated by space) of the above example 16 from page 29 of Kaddish. They are complete compositions in themselves and yet contribute meaning and expression to, and combine in unitY with, ·the expression of the whole of the work.

Often Gi~sberg uses simple images, separated by the space of dashes, which result, however, in combining to form one complex image in spite of the dashes. One complex image is divided from the next complex image by being in a separate Une. An example of this type of structure is:

that causes the broken grass to be green, or the rock to break in grass-or the Sun to be constant to earth-Sun of all sunflowers and days on bright iron bridges-what shines on old hospitals-as on my yard-

(p. 31)

This presents a combination of simple images separated by dashes which, however, relate and thus work together as one complex image.

The next Une holds a new complex image:

Returning from San Francisco one night, Orlovsky in my room-Whalen in his peaceful chair-a telegram from Gene, Naomi dead-

(p. 31)

Rauschenberg usually uses simple or complex images, such as the child's drawing of a watch, in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) or the photographs of acrobats in the same combine, that either touch, on at least one of their sides, other concrete images, or touch a 17

small piece of figured material, or paint, that, because of its small

size, is not a space but an image, too, though an abstract one. They

tend, however, to be separated from each other, as Ginsberg's com-

plex images are by the lines in which they find themselves, either

through the different media in which they are presented, for example

a drawing and a photograph, or through the fact that one image is

abstract and the other concrete, or lastly, because of the hard edge

around one or both images which serves to contain it and to keep it

from mixing with others. This is true of the photographs of the acro

bats and the family in Small Rebus, 1956 where the complex image of

the photograph of the family has a white edge around it . .,.

.J;, In ways that 1 have here briefly described, the images,

structures, subject matter, and meanings of these works are similar.

They carry the same theme, although they use different media for its

expression. Their close relationship compels us to realize more

intensely than we could without such a relationship that we are living

in a common environment with common interests and experiences.

Neither Ginsberg nor Rauschenberg presents this information and this

feeling in the mode of a "highfl art but in a "low" art. They both

feel that this "low" art is part of their existence as natur al , organic

man, surrounded as much by the mechanical and the electrical of the

city around us as by the world of nature. Their intended public is

everyman and they have tried, in their different materials, but in 18 similar ways, to use meanings in which everyman is interested and forms that everyman can understand. A closer examination of these works will, 1 hope, point up more definitely the common traditions from which they spring and the message of the times which they have to communicate to everyone. This message will be reinforced if we find conclusive evidence in depth that two artists, who are working in such different media, express themselves in like terms and structures. CHAPTER n

SPACE/TIME AND METAPHOR

The structures of space/time that Ginsberg uses and those which Rauschenberg uses are related. They both emphasize a way of looking at the world which is fragmented-which consists of jumps from one thought, one image, or one event to the next.

The space is created by these jumps. It is a space akin to that which was used in Cubist paintings and collages. In a footnote to

The Yaga Letters, which shows that Ginsberg is aware of the Cubist ideas that inspire Rauschenberg's work, Ginsberg comments on instructions, given him by William Burroughs, to cut up a letter from Burroughs and arrange it in any way that Ginsberg chose:

IlBrion Gysin: an English painter, collaborator and friend of Burroughs from Tanger, who suggested to him the application of XX century painter's techniques-the collage-to written composition. . .. The pamphlets Minutes to Go (Two Cities Press, Paris, 1960) and The

Exterminator (Auerhahn Press, San Francisco, 1960) were prepared by Gy sin , Burroughs, Gregory Corso and others as graphie exposition of an immediate way out of temporal literary and phenomenological hang-ups through collage cut-up techniques. ,,1 The "temporal literary

19 20 and phenomenological hang-ups," traditional treatment of literary time and phenomena in space/Ume that Ginsberg speaks about here, are referred to by Allan Kaprow as habits from the past which he distin guishes from that which "is likely our experience tOday. ,,2 Kaprow is equally concerned that we must disown these "hang-ups, Il these "habits, Il which he feels we must replace II with the spirit of exploration and experiment. Il

There are at least three types of space/time, created between images within the lines of Ginsberg's poetry and in Rauschenberg's combines, which are analogous. The first type of fragmented space/ time that relates their work can be seen in almost any combine of

Rauschenberg's. In Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI),3 for instance, there are photographs of people and animals which constitute some of the concrete images. Actual space in the areas between them is composed of flat canvas and fairly flat fabrics, and certain painted areas which present various shallow depths. (Some fabrics, because of the size, colour, and tone of their surfaces, and some brush strokes, also qualify as images.) It takes time for the eye to pass through these abstract areas from image to image, which is an indication of that fact that Rauschenberg speaks of which is that painting is an art existing in time as well as in space or, as he puts it, IILooking also happens 4 in time. 11 In the same way Ginsberg speaks of the existence of space as weIl as of time in his poetry. He says in The Paris Review inter view that the idea he had was of "gaps in space and time through 21

images. JU . xtapose d • • . . ,,5 Ginsberg uses a development of this type

of space/time in Kaddish. Employing what he caUs "Unes," instead

of the traditional compartmentalized stanzas, he graphically defines

many of these spaces by the use of dashes through which it takes time to move, disjointedly, from one thought (image) to the next.

This occurs chiefly in the Proem and Narrative of Kaddish. An ex-

ample is:

On what wards-I walked there later, oft-old cata tonic ladies, grey as cloud or ash or walls-sit crooning over floorspace-Chairs-and the wrinkled hags acreep, accusing -begging my 13-year-old mercy-

(pp. 18-19)

The dashes create space/time here between otherwise fairly connected phrases-phrases that foUow one another more or less logically or are, at least, as close as Ginsberg ever cornes to logical sequence. The narrative is fragmented through the use of dashes though it is carried along with more unitY and mor~ quickly than if there had been periods in place of the dashes. Memory organizes the untraditional punctuation, and the somewhat disconnected aspects of this Une, into a unity . Sorne images in Rauschenberg's combine Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) are photographs, or reproductions of drawings or paintings, which gi ve us explicit images with meanings on several levels. These images are separated by spaces, which are composed of abstract paint areas or abstract areas made of other materials. By relating Rauschenberg' s 22

-.- concrete images separated by spaces to Ginsberg' s images we are ! better able to visualize Ginsberg"s concrete images with their surround-

ing space of dashes which help to dissociate them. We see each image

separated by the dashes as more definitely separated. Without the

spaces provided in the combine for a specific vi su al example we may

be more apt to dis regard the space-making quality of the dashes in

Ginsberg's work and connect directly sorne of the images, such as

"old catatonic ladies, grey as cloud or ash or walls-, Il to their

activity IIsit crooning over floorspace ... Il On the other hand, when

viewed in the light of the racehorse in his paddock and the jump from

this to the image of the man running the race, the images in the poetry

can be seen as two partly separated and emotionally independent images.

In the combine, the subject II racingll connects the two images. In the

poetry it is the 1I0id catatonic ladiesll who connect the images. We can

see these literary images more as separate entities, details in them-

selves as the photographs so obviously are, as well as being connected

to the rest of the work and each other to create the total impression,

when they are seen in the light of the combine.

Relating to the first type of space/time in Ginsberg's work is a second type of space/ time that Ginsberg designates as

"gaps. Il It is described by Ginsberg in the following statement to a reporter of The Paris Review. The II gapsll discussed here are not indicated by dashes but simply by the juxtaposition of words which create dissociated images. There is participa- 23 tion on the side of the reader as he goes through the process of unifying the dissociation and achieves a final unified whole. Ginsberg says that:

the last part of Howl was really an homage to art but also in specific terms an homage to Cézanne's method, in a sense 1 adapted what 1 could to writing; but that's a very complicated matter to explain. Except, putting· it very simply, that just as Cézanne doesn't use perspective lines to create space, but it' s a juxtaposition of one color against another color (that' sone element of his space), so, 1 had the idea, perhaps overrefined, that by the unexplain able, unexplained nonperspecti ve line, that is juXta position of one word against another, a ~ between the two words-like the space gap in the canvas there'd be a gap between the two words which the mind would fill in with the sensation of existence. . . . Or in the haïku, you have two distinct images, set side by side without drawing a connection, without drawing a logical connection between them; the Mind fills in this. . . this space....

Ginsberg is speaking here of Howl but we can apply a development of this type of space to Kaddish. In relating how Cézanne achieves his vision, Ginsberg is telling, also, how he achieves his own ends by juxtaposing, sometimes illogically, words and images, to create a fragmented space, instead of the masses and colour with which Cézanne had to deal. Cézanne is the forerunner of the Cubists and their collages. Their ideas of space are developed in the work of Rauschenberg.

Rauschenberg early used physically flat photographs, each of which had some visual depth, usually, and fairly flat areas of materials and paint, which often appear to have different depths from each other, or actually 24 do have different depths, one from the other. These images and areas relate to Cubist space. The Cubists, following Cézanne's lead, employed shallow perspectives of parts of images and colour and tone areas of ap~arent different shallow depths juxtaposed, preserving, how ever, the essential flatness of the canvas, to produce what Ginsberg calls "space gaps" through the unexpected juxtapositions. There is a unity 'discoverable in each of the works of Ginsberg and Rauschenberg under discussion here, but this unity grows out of the fragmented space from which these works are composed. The unity is made up of a combination of fragments which, when related by the mind and its memory, compose a new whole.

To a reporter of The Cottonwood Review Ginsberg says that:

"that's what l'm concerned with, the sudden shifts of thought; the sudden contradictions of mental acti vity, the shifts of thought which have a beautüul structure of their own, and if you try and eliminate those shifts and eliminate the rhythm of those shifts, you eliminate the music of thought and speech; and you eliminate the truthfulness of the way people communicate." 7 Although this interview from The

Cottonwood Review was he Id several years after the writing of Kaddish,

Ginsberg seems to have had in mind this idea of "shifts of thought" since at least the time of the writing of Howl and Kaddish. "Shifts of thought" operate through "space gaps," the "gaps" in Kaddish being formed sometimes by the juxtaposition of contrasting or dissociated 25 images and sometimes by related images with actual spaces between them. There are, then, at least two types of space/time "gaps" discernible in Kàddish and visible in Rauschenberg's work. First, there are those formed by dashes between the phrases, in Kaddish, or those formed by materials and paint in fairly fiat areas, of dtlferent shallow depths, between photographs, in Rauschenberg's works.

Second, there are those formed through dissociated images that are juxtaposed so that a new meaning is created when. we look at the combination of the two. The space is created by the difference of meaning carried by these images separately.

ln this second type of "space gap" discernible in Kaddish,

Ginsberg sometimes juxtaposes single words which create contrasting images. This second type of space is employed without dashes to mark the "gaps," which "gaps, fi however, as in Howl, are still a contributing factor. In relation to this Ginsberg says about Howl:

" the problem is then to reach the different parts of the mind, which are existing si multaneously , the düferent associations which are going on simultaneously, choosing elements from both: jazz, jukebox, and all that, and we have the jukebox from that; politics, hydrogen bomb, and we have the hydrogen of that, you see 'hydrogen jukebox. t And that actually compresses in one instant like a whole series of things.1I8

The Il gaps Il appearing in Kaddish are not quite the same as those created by the "hydrogen jukebox" type of juxtaposition but are a 26 development of this idea. A word image of this developed type that is to be found in Kaddish is IIthe flower burning in the Dayll (p. 7), where

"flowerll and IIburning" clash in an unexpected contrast which creates a IIshift of thought"; the living IIflower ll being representative of youth and life, and IIburningll relating to an end. Here we have II shifts of thoughtll which result from the juxtaposition of one thought against another with which it is not generally associated. Il Burningll is a verb whereas "hydrogenll is used in Howl as an adjective which explains some of the difference between these images. IIHydrogen" and "jukebox, Il both being nouns (flhydrogenll is here a noun doing service as an adjective) , are static. The noun "flower, Il is static too, but a new development, creating some of the difference between the two complete images, is introduced with the present participle of the verb-lIburningfl in this second image. IIHydrogen jukeboxll creates a static image through two dissociated words. The "flower burning" part of the image from

Kaddish results from two words also dissociated but movement is included in this resultant image because of the acti vitY suggested by

"burning. Il Both "hydrogen jukebox" and "flower burning" have a space created between two words which are only associated by their juxtaposition. However "flower burningll is a development of "hydrogen jukeboxll because of the additional motion in the image produced.

Rauschenberg creates dissociated parts of an image, something like the dissociated parts of "flower burning in the Day," when he drips 27 paint over the photograph of the child in State, 1958 (pl. VII). Again, he covers part of the photograph of the three acrobats in Small Rebus,

1956 (pl. VI) with a piece, in a red colour, of what appears to be a part of another photograph from which the subject has been torn and part of the white border remains. Abstract brush marks in yellow cover part of the photograph and the red. In each of these images the subject matter of the photographs that have figures is nearly dia metrically opposite to that which is suggested 'by the paint which is abstracto The dark abstract dr~ps of paint over the concrete child, in State, 1958, create bars which suggest fear related to the cosy, protective, circular, shadow effect which otherwise surrounds the child.

In Small Rebus, 1956, the abstract brush strokes and part of the torn photograph which is really just an area of red, are juxtaposed to the poised quality of the acrobats. The part of the red photograph without a subject .has a static quality. It pulsates forward and backward because of its red colour, or has "motion within itself, "( as Wassily Kandinsky suggests)9 but does not appear to be going anywhere. The abstract stroke of yellow has a head-on, rushing momentum-quite a different type of action from that of the acrobats whose arrested motions are contained within the limits of their apparatus. In the State, 1958 image of the child and black paint, the child appears to be halted while the dripped paint appears to roll slowly down, trapping him.

In the Small Rebus, 1956 image the acrobats appear to be able to move, though in a confined space, up and down and from side to side , 28

while the red area's movement is confined to pulsation forward and

back. The really dynamic movement is that from the yellow brush

mark which although in dry brush, and therefore somewhat transparent

and weakened, appears to rush into the middle of the poised acrobats.

flFlower" and flDayfl are both pretty static in quality" as are the child

in State, 1958, and the red part of a photograph in Small Rebus, 1956.

The different kinds of movement shown in Small Rebus, 1956

by the acrobats (poised) and the yellow brush mark (sweeping) that

rushes in to cover them, or stop them, makes us aware of some of

the possibilities of movement. The dribbled movement that is barring

the child, in State, 1958, presents another 'sort of motion. With this

experience of movement we can turn our attention to recognize the

movement in relation to the static which appears in the image "flower

burning in the Day." "Flower" and flDay" have a pulsating movement

in their character for flowers do grow, though slowly, and day does

change, though imperceptibly if we are watching for that change, and

the child can move, although that movement seems to be halted in

this photograph and there is left only the suggested slight movement

of the living, breathing, human being. This quality of slight movement

or the almost or apparent static is like the throbbing, pulsation of the

red. There is life there but it does not move anywhere obviously.

Whatever change and movement relates to the elements of red and the

elements of "flower" and IIDay" are, for purposes of minute to minute

';. recording, ni!. The contrast of moving and stationary unrelated 29 elements juxtaposed in the images in the combines makes us more perceptive of this quality as it occurs in the image of the IIflower burning in the Day" (which is an Apocalyptic rendition of themes of life and death); "burning" carrying the intensity of movement in relation to "flower" and nDay," which are, for all matters of discussion here, apparently static. One dissociation appears between the dark drips rolling over the helpless child in State, 1958 and other dissociations appear in the sWiftly, directionally moving abstract yellow stroke as compared to the poised acrobat s (or acrobats at least connected to a certain centre about which they turn) and the throbbing red patch.

These poised acrobats and the swiftly moving yellow, which dissociate themselves from the throbbing abstract red, give ur. varieties of move ment and static qualities which we can see appearing in the static and moving dissociation of the image "the flower burning in the Day." In the combines the image is created by the juxtaposition of opposites in motion and feeling. Part of the dissociation here also comes from the abstract brush strokes, to which it is hard to pin a meaning in con trast to some of the very concrete images of the photographs, although the photographs display other more abstract meanings as weIl. The concrete child is opposed to the abstract fear of the drips of paint, but also stands for such abstract qualities as youth, innocence, vulner ability, trust, tenderness, hope, and so on. The flower, too, stands for many things, the most concrete being the flower as flower, but it also stands for youth, love, beauty, and so on. The verb "burning" 30 must be juxtaposed with a noun, here "flower," to be completed, as the abstract dark drips must be juxtaposed with the photograph of the concrete image of the child to carry a more complete meaning. See- ing the abstract and concrete of the combines thus juxtaposed to create images, we have a clearer idea of how the verb, which has only part meaning until joined to the noun, and the noun create their completed image. "Day" adds to the completeness of this image by bringing to it qualities of light (of burning) and time (of youth of the flower) that in no way change the direction of the image but further extend it.

"Deathshead with Halo?" (p. 10) is another example of a "shift of thought" in Ginsberg's Kaddish. The whole line reads:

Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon - Deathshead with Halo? can you believe it? (p. 10)

Here Ginsberg appears to be making a succession of stabs toward getting at the essence of the moment. Near the beginning he is sure that he cannot tell, "Incapable to guess!" then he tries with "Not merely the yellow skull in the grave" and then again "or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon." With the shout (as heard on the Atlantic record

4001) of "Deathshead with Halo?" there is a tingling remembrance on the part of the audience of "skull"- the "Deathshead"- and "yellow."

"Yellow" seems to become associated with "ribbon"-perhaps the "Halo"- 31 which all works itself out in the question "Deathshead with Halo?" although Ginsberg is still not sure that this is the answer and he questions again with "can you believe it?" AssoCiating death with

"Halo" associates death with saintliness. "Deathhead" ("skull") does not usually, in our associations, wear a halo and this results in a

"shift of thought." Although the "Deathshead with Halo" image is positi ve, Ginsberg is not really sure whether this is what actually exists. He questions the implications of his own positive image with a question mark after "Halo." Literally the image is there but he questions whether the implications of this image are true. Ginsberg suggests, with the striking "Deathshead with Halo" image, that that which to us is fearful may gi ve rise to that which is full of glory.

By his question mark he wonders whether this is possible, but the suggestion remains with the image.

Another example of the second type of space/time, that Gins berg himself points out, is one which uses more words than the barely juxtaposed "hydrogen jukebox" and "flower burning, " it being two separate images which, juxtaposed, create a new feeling. Ginsberg himself puts it on the jacket of the Atlantic record number 4001 as follows: "The last three Hnes are among the best in the poem-the most dissociated, on the surface, but, given all the detail of the poem, quite coherent-I mean it's a very great jump from the broken shoe to the vast highschool caw caw-and in that gap's the whole Maya-Dream

Suchness of existence glimpsed." 10 The line which he is referring to 32 is that which reads: "the broken shoe the vast highschool caw caw all Visions / of the Lord" (p. 36).

The following passage from Ginsberg's Kaddish, illustrating a different development again of the second type of space/time "gap," shows a mounting dissociation in Ginsberg;'s thinking about Naomi.

This appears in the context of Ginsberg's reconstruction of his mother as muse, in Part IV. He is anatomizing her, as the EUzabethan's conventionally did. Here Naomi becomes quite surrealistic, with her body related to progressi vely more curious objects and ideas in Gins- berg's mind. It is a gradually more pronounced "shift of thought" between images as we progress down the pyramid of lines. with your sagging belly with your fear of Hitler with your mouth of bad short stories with your fingers of rotten mandolines with your arms of fat Paterson porches with your belly of strikes and smokestacks with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish War with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers with your nose of bad 1 ay with your nose of the smell of the .. pickles of Newark

(p. 34)

The first Une presents the personal and physical-"your sagging belly"- which is to carry through at the beginning of each of the following

Unes. The second line presents the impersonal invading the personal emotion-"your fear of Hitler." This becomes the environment of

Naomi in the second half of each of the following Unes. After the 33 first two lines this passage lists the very related association of the

"mouth" which tells the "bad short stories" and the "fingers" that play the "rotten mandolines. Il flArms" are sometimes "fat" but "fatfl here has been transferred from "arms" and applied to "Paterson porches" so that the association that they might have had is partIy destroyed and we gain it by a backward glance to the "arms. fi The next lines are linked by grammatical forms but separated by the images that they present. flYour belly of strikes and smokestacks" is even more unrelated than the previous line though there is a faint association in the fact that "bellyfl and flstrikes" are both related to human beings who have bellies and take part in "strikes." Perhaps empty bellies are even the reason for strikes. However, the word "smokestacksll enters the realm of the purely artificial and therefore is highly dissociated from the living, breathing, natural hum an being. When we approach the line flchin of Trotsky and the Spanish War" there seems to be no association left, for flyour chinfl relates definitely to Naomi's human body, but "Trotsky" is not connected in any way in this Une with Naomi's

"chinfl nor is the "Spanish War. fi There is a complete severance of meanings, between these images, one of which, the flchin," is very personal and the other two of which are the impersonal figure of a revolution seen from afar, and the flSpanish War" that, although a cause close to Naomi's heart, is not concrete like her chin. Ginsberg returns to association in the next Unes for the IIvoice" is "singing for" a Communist cause, the "overbroken workers" and relates back to the 34

~.- Communism of "Trotsky and the Spanish War." Through this passage

we see a progression from Une to Une of the less and less coherent

and the return at last to a tie of associations which binds together the

second to last Une quoted and relates to the Une which came just before

it, which within itself was without common associations; that is flvoice fl

relates to floverbroken workers fl because it is flsinging for fl them, but

it aIso relates to flchinfl (because it comes from the mouth which is so

close to the chin) and thus to flTrotsky and the Spanish War, fi which

in their turn, relate to the floverbroken workers," through the Communist

cause. The last Une quoted brings in both the lack of association-that

between "nosefl and 'bad layfl-and association farther on in the Une

between flnose fl and flthe smell of the pickles of Newark. fi The lack

of association here between such images as "belly" and fi strikes and

smokestacks," or between "chinfl and "Trotsky and the Spanish War"

is of a sUghtly different kind than that between "hydrogen jukebox."

The former images are related in a rhetoricaI statement "with your

. • . offl which is repeated throughout the passage and gi ves a formai

setting and grammatical connection for the contrasting images, the

"shüts of thought" (that are not so closely juxtaposed as are "hydrogen"

and "jukebox"). The "shifts of thought" occur, nevertheless, becoming

progressively more dissociated, although within this formai framework.

This passage builds to a climax in the impersonaI with "Trotsky and the

Spanish War" and returns to the human and personal with the words

''with your voice singing." 35

Ginsberg again shows shifts of differenees of kinds of thought, eontrasts stemming from "shifts of thought, fi in a third type of hybrid spaee/time whieh oceurs in such passages from Kaddish as "and my own imagination of a withered leaf-at dawnfl (p. 7). The "gap" here results both from the dashes which separate the thought, and the thoughts themselves- "withered leaf" and "dawn." In this third type of spaee/time there is related the spaee/time "gap" represented by two images that have little relationship one to the other, as weIl as the actual space separating these two images represented by a dash in Kaddish, and spaee composed of materials or paint in Rausehenberg's combines. In Rausehenberg's Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) there is the photographie image of the acrobats separated from the images of the maps (which inelude an abstraet line of paint over the eastern European map's surface) by the abstract shape of a dark striped transparent fabric and the background fabric, which represent actual spaee. The images of the aerobats and that of the elosest map-the European-are unrelated in graphic presentation and in the me. In graphie presentation

~ one is a mechanical drawing and the other is a photograph of pOised, but lively, youths. They are very different in theme also, for the closest map is of eastern Europe- Russia's stronghold-and the aerobats look like Ameriean youths, whieh view is substantiated by the faet that the shirt of the right hand youth bears the mark "PEN" whieh probably begins "PENNSYLVANIA," the rest of the word being hidden. The map of eastern Europe combines with a long drip of paint, and some shorter 36

ones, dark and light (naples yellow, white flesh colour), much like

the frightening drips that hover over the child in State, 1958 (pl. VII),

to form its complete image. Seeing the space composed of materials

between these two images in Small Rebus, 1956 and the dramatic

differences between the images in theme and graphie presentation, we

can appreciate to a greater extent the gulf between the words IIwithered

leafll-the end of the life of part of a tree, and the end of the seasons'

cycle-winter, when leaves are withered-and IIdawnll-the beginning of

the new day. Here, too, the visualization of the two images is differ-

ent, as is the graphie presentation of the photograph and the print of

the drawing of the map. There is the old and IIwitheredll object con-

trasted with the young and fresh time. The time factor is also, with

a little translation, represented here by the season-autumn or winter,

the end of a cycle of the tree's life-as well as the time of day-

IIdawn. Il In the combine we have two dissociated complex images

whose dissociation is increased by the actual space between them.

This points up the space, created by the dash, in the poem, that

separates the two dissociated images there. In the combine the two

images so dissociated can be connected by a third element which relates

to both-the map of the middle of the United States which touches the

map of Russia (and is in this way associated with it) and is associated

with the American youths. Looking at the poem we can al.so find a

third element to relate the two images. That third element is life and r' death, or rather the death and life elements relate to each other and 37 are portrayed in the death of the leaf and the new life portrayed by the "dawn."

A personal experience that 1 had, while working on the

"withered leaf-at dawn" image in relation to the Small Rebus, 1956 photograph of the acrobats and the maps of Russia and America, was that 1 did not fully realize, until 1 looked at the photograph and the drawings of the maps, that the image "withered leaf-at dawn" was . also made up of two forms of presentation-the "withered leaf" being a concrete object and "dawn" being an abstract element of time. This is one example of how the suggestions that are in the combines can make one look more closely at the poetry and find new elements in it in the comparison.

A variation of the first and third types of space/time is made when Ginsberg uses commas, to create less space than that created by the dashes, between related or unrelated images. Abstract images are sometimes juxtaposed to concrete which accounts for part of their dissociation. An example of some of this is the line:

. .. and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed- (p. 7) where "and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom

Russia," which aIl are abstract and related, are separated by the 38 sUght pause of a comma from what at first appears to be concrete and therefore partly unrelated to them, the "crumpled bed," but which turns into the abstract, too, (and is in this way related) in the next moment, for it "never existed." "Bed" is also related to "dream" because it is in bed that we usually dream. Commas and dashes pro vide the most common spatial "gaps" between images in the Proem and

Narrative of Kaddish. The "gaps" created by commas can be related to the smaller sizes of space/time "gaps" which Rauschenberg creates between images, sometimes concrete and sometimes abstracto An example of an abstract and a concrete image separated by a small space in Rauschenberg is the abstract Une of grey separated from the concrete red stamps in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI). Ginsberg occasionally uses the wider "gap" created by periods in the middle of his line, most obviously apparent in the Une which includes, as well as periods, an exclamation mark, a question mark, and a dash-almost the gamut of punctuation marks: 1 o Paterson lIgot home late that nite. Louis was worried. How could 1 be so-didn't 1 think? 1 shouldn't have left her. Mad in Lakewood. CalI the Doctor. Phone the home in the pines. Too late.

(p. 16) which punctuation marks depict very disjointed thinking and relate to the different sizes, some quite large, also, of actual space that Rauschen- berg uses between his images. 39

Phillip Wheelwright, in Metaphor and Reality, 11 calls com

pletely dissociated images, as sorne of Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's

are, diaphoric metaphors. By that he me ans that the parts of the

metaphor are unrelated semantically and function outside of normal

. associations, as music and abstract painting function generally outside

of normal associations. Ginsberg more often uses images that are

associated, though perhaps shocking in their associative meanings, as

are Wheelwright's epiphors; for example "head in an egg crate hospital

.•• freaked in the moon brain" (p. 10), where "egg crate" might con-

ceivably be similar to the shape of a modern "hospital." This phrase

works two ways as egg and head are also often related, in colloquial

language, meaning an intellectual. "Moon" and "brain" are often related

when speaking of lunatics who are said to suffer from moon madness.

An example of the way in which something like diaphoric metaphor

works in Rauschenberg is the tie and pail in Gift for Apollo, .,}959

(pl. X), whose juxtaposition recalls no ordinary association. The tie

is an article of apparel and ornamental' The pail is useful. It is

employed in household cleaning and like acti vities and is certainly not

worn, as the tie is not used to put anything into, or for cleaning. The

tie and pail can be connected to man' s existence through the door

which is part of a house within which both the tie and the pail operate.

Aiso in Ginsberg's Unes: "with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish

War / with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers"

(p. 34) there seems to be no direct relationship between "chin" and 40

"Trotsky and the Spanish Wax. Il However, there is an indirect relationship through a third element-the "voice"-as 1 have demonstrated above.

Two unrelated images axe both related to a third, here, the IIvoice ll singing of the Communist cause, that appears in the next line, which gives them something in common. We have, in these examples from

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, in the poem and in the combine, a condition of the association of two dtlferent worlds through a third world which - they both have in common. Of course Rauschenberg's abstract brush strokes and areas of mate rials , that do not define any paxticulax image that we can find exact associations for, act as diaphors also. Such brush strokes axe found in Canyon, 1959 (pl. XII). They do present an abstract feeling as do brush strokes in Abstract Expressionist paintings. For instance the black strokes, particularly those on the right of the combine, give a feeling of uneasiness and gloom, or feax, because of their tone quality and size. However, like Ginsberg's diaphors, mentioned above, they shape no definite image through their conjunctions until related to other parts of the combine-here, the photographic images, the stuffed eagle, the pillow and the lettered words. An example of something like epiphoric metaphor to be found in Rauschenberg's paintings can be seen in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI).

The photograph showing the bull fight and the photograph of the reproduction of the painting of the rape of Europa by the bull, in Small Rebus,

1956, have an inverse relationship to epiphor because they axe connected by the fact that there axe bulls in bath. ThUS similaxity is 41 included, though it is obvious similarity instead of implied, as it would be in true epiphor. Both bulls have mythical associations. Europa and the bull come at the dawn of a ci vilization-they relate to birth and new lUe. The bull here is a god and hero- Zeus-and represents power deified. In the bull fight, which continues in parts of our own civilization, the bull is the victim, the death sacrifice. It represents that brute force which must be subdued and the insurmountable forces of mortality. When the bull in the fight is related to the bull god it brings out the contrary aspects of immortality and mortality of civiliza tions and contrary aspects of power. The victim becomes the victor, the death -doomed bull of the bull fight· is introduced to this aspect in relation to the triumphant gode Conversely the bull fight brings the suggestion of death to the Zeus bull. We know that Zeus did not remain immortal forever. He lost bis power and influence through the years and at last faded out of the myths of the people. His triumph was not eternal as we might sense here if we had only the reproduction of the painting for our image and had not seen it so closely related to the bull of death in this combine of Rauschenberg's.

Fragmentation, and the resultant "gap, Il amount to parataxis according to Thomas F. Merrill. 12 Parataxis, in the Oxford English

Dictionary, is defined as the "placing of clauses etc. one after another, without words to indicate co-ordination or subordination. Il There seems to be an agreement that there is a jump between phrases invol ved which relates to some of Ginsberg's "gapS. Il Thomas F. Merrill, in Allen 42

Ginsberg, declares that Erich Auerbach, in Mimesis, bas given what

Merrill calls a "defense" of parataxis. 13 Auerbacb says, in Mimesis; that the difference between history and the legendary (myth) is that the legendary is "genera1ly quickly recognizable by Us composition. It runs fairly smoothly. ,,14 Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's work, through these artists' interest in autobiography, is connected more closely with history than it is with the legendary. The legendary does not have the

"gaps" between statements which lead the reader to fabricate on his own. The artist in the legendary is busy concocting a united whole which gives the events to the reader in a determined fashion and leaves no loop-holes for him to add to the story on his own. AU details are attended to. On the other hand, in the historical, information is not a1ways complete. The paratactic "gaps" which thus occur lead to speculation on the part of the reader or viewer. This quality of paratactic I gapS" seems to be a part of that art of recent times, such as the Happening, that allows itself to go along with nature instead of com- batting nature, as so much art in the West had done for so long during the time when it set up rules that were contrary to the designs of nature. It allows also for participation on the part of the reader or the spectator which is an aspect of much of today's art.

The structures and meanings of Rauschenberg's combines depend partly on the space/time "gaps, Il which create dissociations between the images that he presents. These "gaps" help to give us a new view of 43

these images. Our preparedness for normal associations is denied

and we are forced to look at these unusual expressions of the relation

ship of images with unusual spaces between them in a new light. Our usual experience with art works of the older traditions and our tradi tional interpretations of our everyday life do not prepare us for these images which are dissociated to some degree. We are jolted into a new view of life which view is supported by other untraditional aspects or aspects which appear as part of a new tradition here. The images in themselves are often quite ordinary, being taken mostly from maga zines and newspapers that we read and look at every day. The dis sociation created by actual and suggested space/time "gaps" in Rauschen berg's combines helps us to an appreciation, on a graphie level, of the

meaning of Ginsberg's images in the structure of Kaddish. Ginsberg uses space/time "gaps" also. Although his space/time is created between word images which are often very visual, they are not the actually graphically visual that Rauschenberg has to work with. We can, too, recognize in Ginsberg the same affinity, that Rauschenberg has, for the everyday. His space/time "gaps" are created between images of the ordinary objects, people, and activities that are around us and that we see portrayed on television, in the newspapers, and in magazines.

There are at least three kinds of space/ time in the structure of Rauschenberg's combines. There is that created by actual space between related images and the time that it takes to look from one to 44 the other. We gain a new view of the related images when we find them separated by this space/time. The disparate elements of our li ves are brought home forcefully in this way. In more traditional painting the images would be more related to each other and we would not have to jump through a space created in another material to get from one element of meaning to the other. Even related images in

Rauschenberg's combines become slightly dissociated, for we see them in two separate environments, each image being enclosed inside its own environment as two separate photographs are. Rauschenberg's space/ time "gaps" of this sort illuminate the space/time "gaps" between Ginsberg's images which appear in the same line. What we experience in looking through space and time in Rauschenberg' s combines to get from one image to the next, we also experience in reading Ginsberg's line of poetry that contains space/time "gaps" created by a dash between two associated images. Ginsberg's images are wrenched apart by this "gap" made by the dash, as Rauschenberg's are when they are separated by actual space.

. A second type of space/time "gap" that Rauschenberg uses is the gap created when two dissociated images are juxtaposed. Here the gap is created by the difference in meaning between the images struc turally related. The dissociation between these images strikes us more forcefully because of their juxtaposition. This dissociation we can see carried out in Ginsberg's work where he, while not working with graphie 45 images, nevertheless takes two images and juxtaposes them so that a startling third meaning is the result; or rather we have the premonition of a startling third meaning, for with this sort of dissociation we can never pin the meaning down. It is the relation between two images creating separate feelings which when thus brought together clamour to be resolved.

A third type of space/time "gap" is created in Rauschenberg's work by actual space separating dissociated images. The space, and each of the images, exist in different environments, ~ach of which is closed to the other two elements. Ginsberg draws meaning from the same kind of structure. His space/time IgapS" in this instance are created by dissociated images separated by dashes.

A fourth type of space/ time, which is really a variation of the first and third types, occurs when Rauschenberg uses different sizes of IgapS" between his images. The dilferent sizes of "gaps" relate to the pause required between Ginsberg's images by his placing of a comma, a question mark, an exclamation mark, or a period between verbal images instead of dashes.

The related images or parts of images are close to Phillip

Wheelwright's idea of epiphor in which the meaning of one part carries

"over onto" the meaning of the next. The unrelated images or parts of images are like Wheelwright's diaphor where meaning, though not a definite meaning, is obtained by the meaning of one part being juxta- 46 posed to another, which carries meaning "through" that other because of the juxtaposition. Most of Rauschenberg's and Ginsberg's images are of the epiphoric type, but they are both notable for the amount of diaphoric imagery that they mix with the epiphoric. Although abstract painting uses diaphoric imagery commonly and therefore Rauschenberg is doing nothing new in using it, he is doing something a little different when he mixes, in his personal way, the diaphoric with the epiphoric and Ginsberg is doing something out of the ordinary when he uses an unusual number of diaphoric relationships in Kaddish.

The types of space/ time that Rauschenberg and Ginsberg use create something like parataxis which encourages the audience to take part in recreating the art work by having to fiU in the "gaps" and relate the images partly on their own. After having seen the "gaps" created by Rauschenberg, visually and between visual images, we have a more thorough involvement with space. When we approach Ginsberg's works, which are different because of the different materials used, from those that are used in Rauschenberg's works, but similar in the structures, effects, and meanings that are created, we have a better appreciation of the "gaps" that Ginsberg too is creating in space/time. CHAPTER m

VARIETIES IN MANNERS OF PRESENTATION

AND IN VIEWPOINT

The structure of Ginsberg's work and that of Rauschenberg's is similar partly because Rauschenberg uses a variety of materials of different kinds, including paint, which relate to the variety of types of delivery to be found in Ginsberg's work. Ginsberg uses narrative form and catalogue when addressing his audience. Sometimes he brings in realistic dialogue as Rauschenberg uses real stuffed birds. The dialogue pertaining to Naomi is realistic because it presents a very close equivalent to the way in which a paranoid's mind works and thus the way in which such a person speaks. There is here evidence of the paranoid's imagined lofty position along with fears of public and pri vate figures, mixed indiscriminately, who are out to get her. It is, significantly, the private figure of Buba, the Grandmother, someone close to the family, who is, as paranoia would have it, the ringleader of this fanatic lot. AU three types of deli very-narrati ve, catalogue, and dialogue-are presented in the following:

47 48

'1 am a great woman-am truly a beautiful soul-and because of that they (Hitler, Grandma, Hearst, the Capitalists, Franco, Daily News, the 20's, Mussolini, the living dead) want to shut me up-Buba's the head of a spider network-'

(p. 26)

This realistic dialogue relates to Rauschenberg' s stuffed birds which are real birds, albeit dead and stuffed ones, incorporated into the work of art. Rauschenberg uses other three-dimensional objects attached to his canvases, also, such as the pail in Gift for Apollo, 1959 (pl. X) and the chair in Pilgrim, 1960 (pl. XV). By actually using three- dimensional shapes of ordinary objects Rauschenberg presents some objects which protrude from the canvas and carry their three-dimensional reality toward us. They come out from the picture plane and into the same space that the observer occupies in the room. This aspect of Rauschenberg's space is akin to accomplishments of Marcel Duchamp in the direction of a Dadaistic use of space, except for the fact that Duchamp did not usually attach his common, everyday, three-dimensional objects to canvases but used such objects as a shovel, or a bottle wash- ing rack, as pieces of sculpture. The use that both of these artists make of objects brings the everyday and common quality of these objects to the fore and jolts us into taking a new view of them. Both Duchamp and Rauschenberg are uniting art and everyday lUe by actually presenting the three-dimensional objects, that we find in our environment, as works of art. These common three-dimensional objects, that Rauschenberg uses, relate more easily than do the most naturalistic paintings to that 49 living reality which is ours because they partake of the same environment that we as humans do; they exist in the same actual space that we do. Rauschenberg, continuing from Duchamp's stance, has related these three-dimensional common objects to the world of the two- dimensional canvas. Ginsberg's dialogues have the same quality of immediate everyday experience related to bis narrative as Rauschen- berg's three-dimensional objects have which are related to the canvas. The dialogues are, by analogy, three-dimensional also. Perhaps Ginsberg's reality-producing dialogues are not quite so unusual as Rauschenberg's stuffed birds attached to the canvas, and therefore are not so upsetting to the unexpecting audience. They are also, perhaps, not quite so really a part of our world as are these birds. However, the birds are dead and stuffed, not living and mOving, and this brings them closer in analogy to the words on the paper which create the feeling of the real three-dimensional and spatial temporal world which is around us.

Another type of deli very that Ginsberg uses is apostrophe, a formal rhetorical device, with which he addresses his mother: o mother what have 1 left out o mother what have 1 forgotten o mother

(p. 34) 50

He also addresses God in a prayer, that he calls "Hymmnn, Il which

gi ves a meditative feeling and relates to some phrasing in the Hebrew

Mourner's Kaddish - "Blessed be he .••. Il

Rauschenberg's differences of kinds of presentation or delivery

can be seen in the variety of materials that he uses-fabrics, papers

of different sorts, photographs, wood, and the actual feathers and hair

which are on the stuffed animals that he incorporates. These are all

physically and visually different in kind from each other. An example

of difference in presentation occurs in Untitled, 1956 (pl. il). There

are the shüts from the photographs to the slightly volumed drawing of

the rooster, and from the rooster to the scrawled writing (which is

obviously childlike), and printed lettering, on the right, and then the

shift to the rosette which is composed of real material and has very

real volume. The images here-photographs, drawings, and so on

are contrasted in both their subject matter and the materials from

which they are composed. In Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) there can

be found photographs, stamps, different sorts of fabrics (patterned

and plain), a freehand drawing of a pocket watch, and a mechanically

drawn diagram. The subjects of the photographs themselves have

different cultural origins. Some of them are from everyday life

racing sports, the family-one is from an Old Master's painting and

one is the photograph of an archaeological specimen of a dead dog from Pompeii. The subjects of these photographs are also a comment

on civilization. For example, we are presented with the family group 51 of our immediate society. The form of the family group has run through all civilization from the beginning. There is, too, Europa and the bull, Zeus, with their attendant relations between man and

God and the origins of human life. The photograph of the dog from

Pompeii represents the death of a city which by analogy relates to the death of a civilization. AlI of these are presented to us in the familiar medium of the photographe Because some of these photographs are from magazines they relate esoteric work, such as the painting of

Europa and the bull, t 0 our everyday culture. The Baroque painting of Europa and the bull was once seen by the very few. Now any person can buy a print of it such as the one· that Rauschenberg uses in his combine.

The variety of kinds of materials, images, and methods of delivery allow these aspects to be lifted from their normal environments, their normal contexts, and to be presented in other contexts which helps to give them new meanings. The materials, images, and methods of deli very are wrenched from their usual everyday quality, by being taken from the surrounding environment and incorporated into a poem or painting. Incorporated in a new sufficiency they still relate to the ordinary man in the meanings which they present. Allan Kaprow intends this to be the direction of what occurs in his work done for

Happenings, where, he says that, through the use of chance, the tradi tional meanings and forms of materials become translatable into new 52 meanings and new forms by the new contexts in which they are placed.

Kaprow declares that it is easier for music to achieve this translation, for it seldom carries the common associations (that create epiphors) 1 which both the visual, as Kaprow says, (and the verbal, 1 add) have.

Kaprow hopes that, as in music today, where the twelve tone system of Schoenberg gave a new meaning to chords (so that John Cage can now place a C Major chard beside the noise of a buzz saw and this can be acceptable as a new sound relation) we shall be able to take materials-objects (and words)-in the years to come, and place them in new contexts in which they will lose their traditional meanings and instead will come to hold meanings of what their forms can do in these new contexts. 2 According to Kaprow, this is not possible today in the visual arts 3 but both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg are exploring in this direction in their placing of old forms and old mate rials in new contexts.

Ginsberg reminds us of his inspiration from haïkus, as weIl as from Cézanne, in The Paris Review interview, when he relates his notions of space/time in poetry to space/time in the haïku, and again in Cézanne's paintings. He says that: "the idea that 1 had was that gaps in space and time through images juxtaposed, just as in the haïku you get two images which the mind connects in a flash, and so that flash is the petite sensation Lof CézanneJ or the satori L awakening of ZenJ, perhaps, that the Zen haïkuists would speak of-if they speak of it like that. So, the poetic experience that Houseman talks about, the hair-standing-on-end or the hackles-rising, whatever it is, 53 visceral thing. ,,4 This partly explains Ginsberg's reason for using

contrasting images juxtaposed, which, because of their contrasts, are

separated by the "gaps in space and time. Il It also states what he thinks will emerge-that which actually does emerge-from this kind of composition. Rauschenberg's compositions, because of his similar uses of space/time and images, create a similar awareness, on the viewer's part, in the contrast of events which they present.

Some haikus take into account contrast of scale, contrast of size, representing "shifts of thought, Il through emphasizing some particularly small, and often overlooked, quality perceived through one sense that is brought into equal importance with something large and important, perceived through another sense. Matsui Basho's haïku

"Mountain Plum Blossoms" expresses this:

With the scent of plums on the mountain rgad-suddenly sunrise comes! where the "scent of plums," a delicate smell, relating to something small, becomes equal in importance to the sunrise, which it "suddenly" heralds, the purely visual and cosmic. The relation between "scent" and vision is unexpected. We do not usually associate the two senses in this manner. It is a relation of difference of scale in size combined with difference of viewpoint, for on one hand we have the sense of smell, one viewpoint, which is magnified in importance in relation to the sense of sight, the "sunrise," a second viewpoint. In Ginsberg's 54

Kaddish there is the wonderful line in Part m, which operates in something of the same way, but in the opposite direction, that is from triumph to despair, in the same moment, instead of delicate awareness to exaltation:

Creation glistening backwards to the same grave, size of universe, size of the tick of the hospital's clock on the archway over the white door-

(p. 33) where there is a juxtaposition of the immense and the visual, the

"universe, "which reduces in "size" to the minute and audio "tick of hospital's clock." By reducing here from immense to mi~ute instead of expanding from small to immense, as in the haiku, there is the feeling of despair suggested at the end of these lines of Ginsberg. A delicate balance is achieved in both images which trembles toward despair in Ginsberg and triumph in the haiku. In ·both the haïku and

Ginsberg' s line, scale is connected through the senses of the human being. In the haïku a third element is unstated. That to which both the immense and the minute are related, this third element, is life itself, the awareness and appreciation of living which is suggested by the "mountain road" which might be seen figuratively as the road of life. The third element that the senses relate to, in Ginsberg's Une, is stated explicitly. It is the "grave," the place of death. This aspect, death, is directly opposite to the haïku feeling for life. 55

~., .1 Rauschenberg represents a contrast in sCale, a change of size of juxtaposed images in some of his works. These juxtapositions of

sizes of images do not come about through a naturalistic perspective

of gradual change of size from front to back of the composition, but

sizes are juxtaposed in an a-rational, naturalistically unproportional

way. For example, there is the actual serviette and the photograph

of the baby in State, 1958 (pl. VU). The serviette is real and is

immense in relation to the size of the baby. This might give a per-

spective quality but the' 'Small photograph is at the bottom of the combine.

ln usual naturalistic perspective the relatively small, and thus distant

object would be closer to the middle, or at the top, of the work. AIso,

both of these, the serviette and the photograph of the baby, are presented

without perspective suggestions as to their surroundings in their separate

compositions. Only the relation o~ their size in juxtaposition hints at

the distance of these objects from us and this hint is counteracted by

the baby' s photograph being at the bottom of the work. There appears,

then, here, an a-rationally large serviette related to a tiny child with

no naturalistic perspective to explain rationally the difference in size.

ln Ginsberg's phrases Ilsize of universe, size of the tick of hospital's

clock," the temporal "tick of hospital' s clock, Il which image is based

on the audio sense, is juxtaposed to the spatial "size of universe"

which image is based on the sense of sight. Presentation to different

senses is also apparent in Rauschenberg's State, 1958, in which there ,~., ·f:... 56 is the slightly textured embroidery and paint on the serviette appealing to the sense of touch juxtaposed to a smooth photograph, the texture of which gives away none of the meaning of the image in the photograph and therefore appeaIs only to the eye. Besides the appeaI to different senses of these two objects, the photograph and the serviette, there is the a-rationaIity of the juxtaposition of the reaI (the serviette) with the copy of the reaI (the photograph of the baby).

A strong contrast of materials, which relates to a contrast between senses, is depicted in Rauschenberg's Untitled, 1959 (pl. II).

The contrast in senses in the haiku was between the sense of smell and the sense of vision, in Ginsberg's poem it was between the sense of sight and the sense of hearing. Here, in Rauschenberg's combine, the contrast of senses is between the sense of sight and the sense of touch (as it was in State, 1958). The photographs are smooth, but purely vi su ai , we are not tempted to touch them for we can find out nothing new about the images they contain through such tactile experi-" encing. However, the rosette and the thick paint offer a very different problem. They are tactile in their delineation as weIl as visuaI and perhaps in actuaIly touching them, as 1 am sure Rauschenberg would wish us to do, we have more appreciation of their quality than in just looking at them.

The similar structures in Ginsberg' s Kaddish and Rauschen- berg's combines of about the same period are partly due to the analogy 57 between the different materials (different manners of presentation) that Rauschenberg uses to form his combines and the different manners of deli very (which can also be termed manners of presentation) that Ginsberg uses to present his story. Realism is presented in Rauschenberg by his use of actual stuffed birds and other actual objects and materials. Gins- berg uses the actual language of the people in direct dialogues. They are three-dimensional, by analogy, as are the birds. Both are attached to the main body of the work, the birds to a flat canvas and the dialogues worked into the narrative. Ginsberg uses, also, apostrophe and prayer as weIl as narrative, as Rauschenberg uses different manners of presentation such as photographs, drawings, and actual materials, such as fabrics and wood, which are fairly flat and thus do ·not come quite so joltingly into the actual world of the spectator as do the stuffed birds.

Ginsberg relates his work to haïkus as weIl as to Cézanne' s work. We can see the same difference in sc ale in size in Ginsberg's

Kaddish that we see in sorne haïkus. This change of size sometimes relates, in both the haïkus and Kaddish, to a change in the sense through which we percei ve the change in size. In Rauschenberg, too, there are dramatic changes in scale which do not relate to a naturalistic perspective. We also see changes in the senses through which we percei ve his images.

Viewpoint changes (changes in scale and between the senses) and variety of methods of delivery, or materials used, in Ginsberg 58

> and Rauschenberg, give added contrast to the structures of their

works so that we cannot take any meaning for granted as being the

final answer, the final feeling, but all the contrasting parts unite in

the pattern at last ta create a depiction of ordinary life as it is lived

by all of us today. Allen Kaprow, in speaking of modern works of

art (music and the Happening, particularly, but we can apply his

remarks ta poetry and ta painting), says that although we are some-

times disoriented by the new views and new materials, or old materials

that are being used in new ways, that the artist employs today, it may

be that people, in the future, regarding these works will find that sorne

of these materials and views are not sa difficult to comprehend. We

may grow used ta them and be able ta accept them as a matter of

course. For us today, however, these works act ta present ta us

the trivial and important incidents, in ways ta which we are unaccus- tomed, and that we· sometimes do not notice in the passing of the days

and years. These incidents can become strikingly apparent to us when they are put into the framework of this poem or these paintings and

pointed up in this manner. CHAPTER IV

FORM, MEANING, AND ENVrnONMENTAL REALITY

Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg use the real world of the urban environment, in which they live, for the subject matter of their works. This real world, in the works of Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, is subject to the view of human beings and their emotions as we can see by Ginsberg's emotional outcries and Rauschenberg's emotional brush strokes. Their works are in this way unlike the works of the

Anti-novelists in France, such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, and the Pop artists, such as Tom Wesselmann, in America, who give a picture of a real, everyday world, also, but attempt to do so without displaying the intervening emotions of the human being, the artiste Robbe-Grillet tries to throw out traditions of literary form and metaphor and to present the object exactly as it is, with no sociological or psychological comment or implications. No human values interrupt the inspection of the surfaces of the objects and people that he depicts. In the same way Wesselmann presents the female nude, or fruit, or the interior of a room with an objective outlook. He does not strive for a human, flesh-and-blood quality in his nudes or the appleyness of his apples.

The nude and the apple are as mechanical-unfeeling and tasteless-

59 60 as the radio he paints beside them.

The forms, that both Kaddish and Rauschenberg's works, that are discussed here, take, derive from this emotional relation to the subject matter. 1 Neither Ginsberg nor Rauschenberg decides on a form and then fits the feelings and the meanings that he wants to convey into that form. Instead the form evolves as the work progresses in its creation. The materials used ând the feelings and meanings to be expressed shape the form. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg are following thus, whether consciously or unconsciously, the dictum of the

Nineteenth Century architect Louis Sullivan, that "form follows function. ,,2

Ralph Waldo "Emerson, also, in èhe Nineteenth Century, proclaimed that the form was created by the meaning and was not the guiding consideration in the making of the work of art. In his essay "The Poet" he says, "For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem-a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. ,,3 This ls much like the saying that the Twentieth Century poet,

Charles OIson, quotes from Robert Creeley: "FORM IS NEVER MORE

THAN AN EXTENSION OF CONTENT. ,,4 The· statements of Sullivan,

Emerson and Creeley indicate a support from other artists for the idea that is demonstrated in the works of Ginsberg and Rauschenberg that the form of a work of art is created from the exigencies of the 61 meaning.

The meaning, in itself, for Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, as well as for many other artists, is taken directly from the existing current environment of the artist and bis audience. F. O. Matthiessen, in discussing the Nineteenth Century sculptor and essayist Horatio

Greenough's ideas, comments on the fact that beautiful forms of common objects in the Nineteenth Century were shaped by the environment and the needs of that environment as well as the fact that that environment was the common everyday reality that the community experienced.

Matthiessen says that Greenough was, in his time: "aImost unique in discerning . • . the beauty of objects that had sprung out of an adaption of structure to the needs of common life-the New England farmhouse, the trotting-wagon, the clipper sbip. n5 Ginsberg and Rauschenberg now make use of the common things that are around them to gi ve life and form to their works. These works are shaped in the same naturaI manner as the farmhouses and the plows that Matthiessen speaks of.

"The needs of common life" are here expressed as they were in the structure of the common objects with which the early American surrounded himself.

Ralph WaIdo Emerson, also, pleaded for the relation of the work of art to the experience obtained in the world around the artist and around the artist's audience. In his essay "The Poet" he remarks that, "even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner 62 of living and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. fl6 Emerson continues, in the same essay, along the lines that the realities of the everyday should be the subject of the poet, and, by extension, the painter. He says that, flwe have yet had no genius in America, with tyrranous eyes, which knew the value of our incomparable materials and saw, in the barbarism and material- ism of the times, another carnival of the gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer. • •• Banks and tartifs, the newspaper and caucus, Methodism and Unitarianism, are fiat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy and 7 the temple of Delphi, and are as swiftly passing away. fi

In Emerson's day Walt Whitman answered this challenge by the use of city imagery in his poetry. Ginsberg is much influenced by

Whitman' s work which is shown by Ginsberg' s use of catalogues, that

Whitman had used, as well as his use of city imagery and the aspects of everyday life that attracted Whitman also. However, Ginsberg has more sympathy, as befits his age-the age which is heir to Dostoyev- sky's underground man-with the unheroical and the lowly. Whitman's characters are more often heroic and beautiful. ... Homosexuality, because of its invol vement with love, is considered, by Whitman, as a beauty among others. Ginsberg can regard homosexuality sometimes almost with an air of surfeit and guilt. This appears in the line: 63

Later a mortal avalanche, whole mountains of homosexu ality, Matterhorns of cock, Grand Canyons of asshole-weight on my melancholy head-

(p. 16)

Emerson, also, tried to follow verbal speech patterns in his work to revitalize writing which had lost energy in following an artificial diction in the Eighteenth Century. He used the oratorical as a model which is not quite the everyday speech patterns that Ginsberg reaches for but was a step in this direction. AIso, Emerson did not have quite the same view of the common as Ginsberg has, for he saw the common as being elevated, comparing the elements of the contemporary common to the heroes of ancient Greece as we can see by the above quotation from "The Poet. ri Ginsberg sees the common in its own light, simply as that which is about us everyday and helps us to live the lUe which ends in the triumph, of all our common possibilities, in death. Whit- man, following Emerson, used common imagery taken from the city, which he elevated. Ginsberg's poems have been influenced by this common city imagery, but not by their elevation in the way that Whit- man elevat ed them. Rauschenberg, too, is among the artists of today who are following the advice and example of these Nineteenth Century compatriots and are working in relation to their environment.

Art for Ginsberg and Rauschenberg does not consist of that which is separated from everyday lUe. As Tristan Tzara says, "Art has not the celestial and uni versal value that people like to attribute 64

to it. LUe is far more interesting. ,,8 Ginsberg and Rauschenberg do

not go the whole way of this Dadaistic statement, but they would both .

insist that lUe is indeed interesting and that it is in life that they find

the materials and meanings for their works. Art for them does not

exist in isolation from the human experience of living. It is a "low"

art, an art of the people, rather than a "high" art, one esoteric and

removed from the masses. They would certainly not agree with Clive

Bell when he says that, "to appreciate a work of art we need bring

with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions. Art transports us from the world of

man's activity to a world of esthetic exaltation. For a moment we are shut off from human interests; our anticipations and memories are

arrested; we are lifted above the stream of life. . .• Art...

inhabitLSJ a world with an intense and peculiar significance of its own; that Si"gnificance is unrelated to the signUicance of life. ,,9 AI- though Bell is talking here about the appreciation of art, and not about

its making, he does seem to be advocating an art that is esoteric and which, in the making, also, would be far removed from the ordinary concerns of everyday people. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg would be

more likely to agree with I. A. Richards when he says that there i s no essential difference between a poem and our ordinary activities, although there is a düference in the intensity of the experience. He says, in Principles of Literary Criticism, that, "when we look at a picture, or read a poem, or listen to music, we are not doing some- 65 thing quite unlike what we were doing on our way to the Gallery or when we dressed in the morning. The fashion in which the experience is caused in us is different, and as a rule the experience is more complex and, if we are successful, more unified. But our activity is not of a fundamentally different kind. ,,10 This is again from the viewpoint of the audience, but Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's comments, as to their intentions, gi ve us the same picture. They claim to be operating in the real world and they hope that the works that they create will not be works of artifice but a part of that real world. Ginsberg says, "1 am not trying to write "poetry. l'm not interested in poetry. l' m not interested in art." Il Rauschenberg' s comment along the same lines is: "it has ne ver bothered me a bit when people say that what l'm doing is not art. 1 don't think of myself as making art. ,,12

We can see for ourselves that the works of Ginsberg and

Rauschenberg are made from the real world. For instance Ginsberg usually abandons litarary language in favour of more colloquial speech

(though at other times he uses a very traditional, rhetorical language).

Ginsberg in using colloquial speech is following an American poetic tradition of abandoning literary form. Rauschenberg uses photographs of objects or people taken in everyday actions and situations. Examples of Ginsberg' s extremely colloquial speech are "my own visions unmen- tioned in this here Lament--" (p. 25), and, 66

1 later laying down life for him, moved to Manhattan followed him to college-Prayed on ferry to help mankind if admitted-vowed, the day 1 journeyed to Entrance Exam- by being honest revolutionary labor lawyer- ...

(p. 16) where personal pronouns and articles are left out to speed up the narrative and give a living quality to the poetry. Thomas Parkinson suggests, in his essay in -A Casebook ---on the Beat, that syntactical violations among other irregularities are attempts to "shüt from conventional idiom to actual, to increase the vocality of the verse. ,,13 Another quotation, which is an example of Ginsberg's use of colloquial dialogue, is:

'AlI right-put on your coat Mrs. -let's go-We have the wagon downstairs-you want to come with her to the station?'

(p. 28)

Although most of Ginsberg's narrative has a colloquial sound, these examples are exaggerated expression in this direction.

Lawrence Alloway tells of many of the present-day artists' outlook on the modern urban world in the following words: "as an alter- nati ve to an aesthetic that isolated visual art from life and from the other arts, there emerged L with Pop Art or a little beforeJ a new willingness to treat our whole culture as if it were art. This attitude opposed the elite, idealist and purist elements in eighteenth -to twentieth -century art theory. . . . Il 14 Alloway continues discussing the appreciation of the artist for the immediate environment in the folIow- 67

ing terms: "the mass media were entering the work of art and the

whole environment was being regarded reciprocally by the artist as

art, too. Il In keeping with the spirit of this philosophy, as stated by

Alloway, the poetry of Ginsberg and the combines of Rauschenberg are

not "high" art, as the objet d'art once was, with aesthetic meanings

and mate rials which cut it off from the real everyday world that is

around us as we go about our daily living. They take into account the

materials and the meanings of this real wor Id. This is indicated by

the dialogue, oral language, and subj ect matter that Ginsberg includes

in his poetry, or the concrete objects, photographs, comic strips,

lettering from packages and newspapers, and other materials, besides

paint, of which Rauschenberg makes use, that may not be aesthetically

beautiful in the old sense but which are contributed by the urban environ-

ment and are related ta a "low" art of the people. Some traditional

aesthetic rules have been laid aside in these combines and this pë)ètry.

The everyday and the urban environment is accepted as of value to

art. When the abjects or the dialogues are taken from their natural

environments they are reintegrated in the work of art so that the new

environment recalls in unexpected ways the everyday existence from which these words and images have been taken.

"High" art may be considered to be the esoteric art, with

aesthetic standards, that became especially strong in Europe with the coming of the Renaissance and has continued to our own day. It was 68

an art shared and admired by the very few-the nobles, the wealthy,

and the intellectuals. As opposed to this there has always been a IIlow ll

art, an art of the mass of the people. This "lowll art was provided for the people, in the Middle Ages, in the sculpture and stained glass windows of the churches. In primitive times it was provided by the

local potters and tool makers, and in our own time by the ad men working for television, magazines, billboards and newspapers, and so on, as weIl as the comic strip artists and the popular novelists who write an easily understood narrative with much realistic dialogue.

These are the artists today who appeal to the common taste. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg have tried to incorporate some of this material from popular media into their works. Ginsberg uses, often, the popular narrative and realistic dialogue-to which much of Kaddish is given over. His images and abstract thoughts are of the common life around him or what had been around his mother. An example of this sort of imagery is in the line: with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waist, and laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920

(p. 10) which is, or was, much like the common life of any not-too-weIl-to-do urbanite. Likewise Rauschenberg uses comic strips and a voting ad- vertisement bill in Rebus, 1955 (pl. V) as well as taking objects out 69

of the taxidermist's shop, as in Canyon, 1959 (pl. XU) and Odalisk,

1955-58 (pl. IX). He uses snapshots of family and friends around him (for instance, in Small Rebus, 1956LPI. VIJ, the family group), and magazine reproductions, which include popularized (by photography) reproductions of Old Masters (such as in Rebus, 1955 Cpl. vJ where Botticelli's Birth of Venus appears in reproduction, and in Charlene,

1954 [pl. il where many reproductions of art works are used). These

works of flhigh fl art, that Rauschenberg uses in reproduction, were once

the property of the very few but are now disseminated through maga-

zines, newspapers, and post cards and sold at every news stand.

Rauschenberg also uses lettering and the actual commercial package

flattened in Canyon, 1959 (pl. XIT) as well as actual signs taken from

the street such as CAUTION WATCH YOUR STEP in Trophy 1, 1959

(pl. XI). Along with a stuffed animal Rauschenberg uses worn out,

common objects from his world, such as the part of a shirt sleeve,

tennis ball, and he el of a shoe in Monogram, 1959 (pl. XIII). He also

uses common household objects such as the door and pail in Gilt for

Apollo, 1959 (pl. X), and the pillows in Canyon, 1959 (pL XIT) and

Odalisk, 1955-58 (pl. IX), and photographs from newspapers. AlI of these elements tie Rauschenberg's work in very much with the fllow fl

art of the masses which does not necessarily mean inferior art,' but is that art which can be appreciated by everybody. This art has a wider

appeal than that art which is called flhigh n art which is esoteric and directed at only a small audience. Neither Ginsberg nor Rauschenberg, 70 however, go as far in the direction of "low" ax.t as the Pop poets such as Ronald Gross who takes the lines for whole poems directly from advertisements, application forms and so on, or Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein who often presents a composition taken almost directly from comic strips and whose drawing reflects the nai ve quality which comic strip artists often produce in their work. Sorne adver- tising art is world-weary and uninspired. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg turn instead, sometimes, to more certainly fresh, directly primitive art-that of children, or untrained adults, or the mad. We see a child's drawing in Rebus, 1955 (pl. V). There is sorne childish writing in Untitled, 1955 (pl. n) and a child's or untrained adult's drawing of a watch in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI). Ginsberg seeks out, in Kaddish, the mind of madness and its child-like sense of relationships to which this derangement prompts the mind. An example is the line:

Naomi: 'And when we die we become an onion, a cabbage, a carrot, or a squash, a vegetable.' ...

(p. 23)

These aspects, of madness and children's drawings, are taken from traditions of modern psychological research.

In the relationships between the common images of the everyday that these two artists use there is still reserved a form which stems from traditional art and which they believe springs spontaneously to hand as they compose. Sometimes this traditional form is dilficult to 71 make out, and they never depend on it to carry the whole burden.

However, it does keep their works within the limits of certain tradi tions in art. That is to say that these works stem from images, which impress the people but they are held together by a form, often overlooked by the audience, which, if one considers the work closely, often relates it to some traditional streams of art, for instance

Romanticism. We shall see more of these two artists' use of the traditional in Chapters V and VI. However, their work is composed with the hope that it will be appreciated by the common man, for they intend it to communicate with all. The traditional aspects of some of the form need not be understood for these works to be enjoyed. They can be appreciated for their narrative and realistic qualities alone as well as in a deeper sense for their structural relation to the meaning.

Images of the everyday can be seen exhibi ted in Small Rebus,

1956 (pl. VI), among others of Rauschenberg's works. There he has included photographs of a family group, a gymnastic team, a man racing and a racehorse among the photographs of objects, animals, and people taken from our daily lives, as well as patterned and plain fabrics, stamps, a map, and so on. In Ginsberg's work the everyday can take the form of vignettes of his lUe and that of the characters about whom he is writing. There is the line which refers to a general kind of life experienced by anyone on the New York streets: "1 walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village. / downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, .•. " (p. 7). Then follow lines presenting his 72

c-- personal life. It is true that the things he alludes to, in these lines, have to do with tradition-the Hebrew Mourner's Kaddish, the blues,

and Shelley's poetry-but he shows himself making a very personal

(as Rauschenberg includes photographs of personal friends, for instance,

Merce Cunningham, and family, in his works) use of them-talking,

reading, and listening all night. The lines are:

. . . and l've been up all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the phonograph . • . And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud-.•.

(p. 7)

~, . Ginsberg, describing what he me ans in presenting the kind of feeling

of which this last quotation is an example, says, in The Paris Review: fil mean that's the way 1 began seeing poetry as the communication of

the particular experience-not just any experience but this experience. ,,15

The reality of the experience in the world around them is prominent in

both of these artists' worka.

Ginsberg's use of dialogue in his poetry, the direct utterance

of his characters, is not so much an imitation of nature as it is nature

itself. Both artists try to do away with imitation of things and in doing

this they use actual materials and objects from the real world. Rauschen-

berg's inclusion of actual stuffed birds and so on, usually attached out

side of the picture frame, is a method, as collage was intended to be 73 in the Cubists' works, of incorporating reality into the painting without imitating it. A concrete example of this in Rauschenberg's work is the chair that he attaches to the canvas in Pilgrim, 1960 (pl. XV), or

detritus that he takes from his world such as the tie and bucket in

Gift for Apollo, 1959 (pl. X). Rauschenberg's animals and objects

actually occupy space outside of the canvas area that usually forms their backgrounds, so that the objects and animals are really reaching out into the space that we occupy in our everyday reality. Tomkins quotes Rauschenberg as saying that he doesn 't "want the picture to look like something it isn't." He goes on to say: "1 want it to look like something it is. And 1 think a picture is more like the real world when it's made out of the real world. ,,16

These works of art break down the barriers between the work of art and life. Allen Kaprow suggests that traditional art does "not allow for breaking the barrier between art and life." 17 As Rauschen- berg says, "painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. 1 try to act in the gap between the two." 18 Henri Bergson, in "Laugh- ter," says something similar about comedy: "comedy lies midway between art and lUe. It is not disinterested as genuine art is. By organizing laughter comedy accepts social lUe as a natural environ- 19 ment. " Rauschenberg's and Ginsberg's works also accept "social lUe as a natural environment." It is that from which these works spring and in which the two artists hope their works will act. Whether their works are "genuine art," or not, does not concern them. 74

Another example of Rauschenberg's use of the real world, in his work, is the combine which is made, basically, out of his bed,

(pl. IV), the one on which he was used to sleep. The sheets and cover- let of this bed he put on stretchers instead of canvas one day when he had no canvas. To this he added, in the appropriate place, the pillow and its slip, and covered most of the whole with paint of different colours, and pencH scribblings. The effect is shocking. It looks like the scene of sorne murder, with blood complete and body just removed, but Rauschenberg had no intention of shocking anyone, whether by the use of actual bedding for his combine, by the associations of paint on bedding, or by the meaning that might be inferred from the dripped and brushed-on, bloody-Iooking paint itself. Rauschenberg has always rejected shock as an ingredient in his work. His concern is that shock does not last. Lewis Mumford parallels this idea when he says: Il works of art .•. do not hold one long if they are .•• merely shocking .... "20 The images in Rauschenberg's work which appear shocking are just part of the everyday reality. Rauschenberg says, in relation to the objects he uses: "I just liked working with these things as objects and 1 liked the fact that a picture could come out into the room.1I21 Ginsberg shows the same tendency to shock, though it is possible that he uses the quality of shock more intentionally than does Rauschenberg. Still, in his work, it is just a part of the happenings among people who are living around us. An example of shock in

Ginsberg's work that can be compared to Rauschenberg's scarred Bed, 75

1955 (pl. IV), is a line such as:

One night, sudden attack-her noise in the bathroom like croaking up her soul-convulsions and red vomit coming out of her mouth-diarrhea water exploding from her behind -on all fours in front of the toUet-urine running between her legs-Ieft retching on the tUe floor smeared with her black feces-unfainted-

(p. 22)

Su ch a violently shocking scene would not have appeared in autobiographical poetry even so short a time ago as fifteen years earlier.

We all know that there is material with shock value around us and in our own lives, but we usually prefer to overlook this behaviour and the existence of this shocking material in our environment. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg bring this sort of thing to the fore along with the rest of the environmental experiences. Like Ginsberg, we often try to flamnesiaize fl the shocking material of our environment, but both

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg seem to feel that it is best brought out into the open and digested.

Another aspect of the everyday in Rauschenberg is his use of colour after the painting Charlene, 1954 (pl. 1), which was the last of his red paintings. He says: fll'd begun to notice that when you were walking down the street, or were in a theater or in any group of people, the mass, no matter how colorful, never looked tonal. Some- body might be wearing a bright red tie or green shoes, but somehow such things were absorbed, and all you saw was a gener:11 no-color, 76 in which no tone stood out. 1 began trying to put this quality of pedestrian color into my paintings. ,,22 This quality of "no-color" is obvious in such combines as Hymnal, 1955 (pl. m), and Curfew, 1958

(pl. Vm), although Rauschenberg has returned to a more violent use of colour in his recent works. The lack of brilliance in colour of these above-mentioned combines is analogous to the whole of Kaddish in that it, too, is notable for its lack of interest in brilliant colour, and build-ups of colour. Colours are mentioned only about fourteen times in the whole work and then only singly, never in groups to build up the colour image. There are passages in which light and dark are expressed, but never do we get an image of brilliant colour. Light and dark sometimes have to do with immortal God and mortal poverty.

God is a contradiction composed of both light and dark. The question- able quality of the after -life is expressed in a line, which employs dark and light:

... In that Dark-that-in that God? a radiance? . A Lord in the Void? Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream?

(p. 10)

Later the immortal is expressed as"God's perfect Darkness" (p. 12).

None of this represents colour. It expresses rather radiant light related to darkness. Louis weeps in "dark rooms" (p. 24), the tone of poverty. When Ginsberg does use colours he does not build them to a brilliant effect but uses only one colour such as "pink nightgown" 77

(po 28), or he speaks of the sky as "an old blue place" (po 8), or the

"huge blue books" (po 20) from which Eugene studied, or he mentions

"dandelions" (po 29), but this brings to mind only one colour and he does not build further on this. He seldom actually says what colour the flowers are of which he sometimes speaks. An apparent exception to this is "Now wear your nakedness forever, white flowers in your

hair, .. 0 Il (p. 30) but then the flowers are "white," not coloured.

More often colours come to us from the drab surrounding conditions of madness joined with poverty such as the colours evoked by:

... a plate of cold fish-chopped raw cabbage dript with tapwater-smelly tomatoes-week-old health food-grated beets & carrots with leaky juice, ...

(p. 23) and a little later IIcold undercooked fish-pale red near the bones"

(po 24). Any colour that might be called up in the cataloguing of this food is not what one could calI colourful but represents drab tones, a sort of colourlessness that only increases the revulsion that we feel, and relates to the colourless rather than to the "colorful." Both artists work with a lack of colour but Rauschenberg also tries to eliminate tone, in which he is not successful, for he needs tone for the contrasts between image and image or image and space. Ginsberg uses violent

contrasts of tone, light and dark, readily and intentionally 0

As well as using the common and the colourless of the every day, both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg employ bizarre elements that can 78

be found mixed in with this very ordinary of the everyday. They are

able, through their composition, to keep these bizarre elements and

the ordinary in balance. For example, we can turn to a description

of Ginsberg's mother, Naomi, when mad, such as:

The enemies approach-what poisons? Tape recorders? FBI? Zhdanov hiding behind the counter? Trotsky mixing rat bacteria in the back of the store? Uncle Sam in Newark, plot ting deathly perfumes in the Negro district? Uncle Ephraim, drunk with murder in the politician's bar, scheming of Hague? ..

(p. 18)

Enemies have used poisons and tape recorders, and they have been

combatted by the F. B. 1. This is all quite normal. However, Zhdanov

'hiding behind the counter" and Trotsky "mixing rat bacteria in the back

of the store" are completely bizarre. The Une goes on mixing the

ordinary and the bizarre. The spirit of Uncle Sam could certainly be

in Newark but it is bizarre to imagine him "plotting deathly perfumes"

(sweet-smelling poisonous gases?). The near relation and pri vate,

concrete figure of Uncle Ephraim is bizarrely opposed to the public

and symbolic figure of Uncle Sam. Uncle Ephraim is not a murderer,

though to Naomi's deranged mind he may seem to be. In the same

way the following lines balance the ordinary and the bizarre:

May have heard radio gossip thru the wires in her head, controlled by 3 big sticks left in her back by gangsters in amnesia,. . •

..... (p. 21)

' .. 79

"Radio gossip" is ordinary enough and so are "gangsters," but related to "wires in her head" and "3 big sticks left in her back" they are bizarre. In Kaddish, the bizarre consists of the way that Naomi's paranoid mind twists the common of the everyday into a new and very frightening light. Rauschenberg's bizarre is not frightening but curious.

He has not got the theme of madness to deal with, unless it is the madness of this whole American civilization. Rauschenberg will chain a battered bucket to a board, an old door, on wheels from which there is suspended a green tie partly stained with paint; altogether a bizarre collection, when· assembled, of common objects in Gift for Apollo,

1959 (pl. X).

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg can also deal with the exotic in relation to the everyday and ordinary. We see Rauschenberg uSing, in Monogram, 1959 (pl. XllI), a stuffed angora (mohair) goat (the exotic), with a tire (the ordinary) from an automobile, encircling its middle.

The goat's face is daubed with paint, which is a strange place for paint to be, and it stands on a mixture of collage and paint that includes the ordinary heel of a shoe, a dirty old tennis ball, and a shirt sleeve.

We see Ginsberg using the exotic and the bizarre, mixed with the everyday, in his references to his mother's, and the rest of her family's, interest in Communism. For instance, there is a picture of Naomi at her school teaching: 80

Naomi reading patientIy, story out of a Communist fairy book-Tale of the Sudden Sweetness of The Dictator-For giveness of Warlocks-Armies Kissing-

(p. 16)

Naomi is reading in a perfectIy ordinary manner but there is exoticism

as well as a bizarre quality (the "Armies Kissing," for instance) in her

Communism and the fairy tale.

This leaning to the bizarre and the exotic, mixed with the

ordinary, develops into humour in some of Rauschenberg's works and

in some places in Kaddish. Often it occurs when we least expect it,

which jolts us from one frame of mind, perhaps a very serious or

up~etting one, to something lighter. Ginsberg sometimes has a kind

of black humour related to the evils of society. Rauschenberg's is

gentIer, more detached, and sometimes ironie. He makes his point

by innuendo, very often, but he is just as irreverent. In the middle

of the horrors of Naomi's madness Ginsberg will suddenly show this

madness from the so-called sane world's viewpoint. "So-called, " for he himself has declared in Kaddish that sanity is only "a trick of agree

ment" (p. 13). We see Naomi in a public predicament, and though it

is gruesome, we tend to la'.lgh; the proportions seem so violently mis-

aligned. The followin g represents the general tone:

Naomi at the prescription counter defending herself from the enemy-racks of children's books, douche bags, aspirins, 81

pots, blood-'Don't come near me-murderers 1 Keep away 1 Promise not to kill me l'

(p. 17)

There is gentle humour, too, in the following mad view of Naomi's

God. She says to Allen:

'Yesterday 1 saw God. What did he look like? Well, in the afternoon 1 climbed up a ladder-he has a cheap cabin in the country, like Monroe, NY the chicken farms in the wood. He was a lonely old man with a white beard. '1 cooked supper for him. 1 made him a nice supper lentil soup, vegetables, bread & butter-miltz-he sat down at the table and ate, he was sad. '1 told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there, What's the matter? Why don't you put a stop to it? '1 try, he said-That's all he could do, he looked tired. He's a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.'

(p. 23)

For Rauschenberg's humour we can look at Trophy!, 1959 (pl. XI).

There is a large official-Iooking printed sign which reads "WATCH

YOUR STEP, n that he has found and attached to his canvas over the photograph of a mounted policeman who is seen just tumbling off of his horse. Or we can look at the combine called Hymnal, 1955 (pl. m).

The name suggests the religious, but we find, in the actual combine, no hint of this; instead, in a space cut away near the top of the combine, there is part of a telephone directory of Manhattan, which expresses irony in relation to the title. Again, in State, 1958 (pl. VU), on the white serviette, which takes up most of the combine (and was probably stolen from the railway), there is embroidered "THROUGH 82

THE HEART OF THE SOUTH." We know that the south is mostly

black and that the white attitude to this has very little "he art" in it,

another .expression of irony by Rauschenberg. Humour is also shown

in Odalisk, 1955-58 (pl. IX), where he places a hen on top of a box which is resting on a post (perhaps part of the leg of a table) which in turn rests on a pillow, probably filled with birds' feathers. Some of the humour is in the contrast of this hen with the title Odalisk-

a harem beauty-expressing more irony.

The reality of the everyday is shown in the mate rials that

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg use. These are the materials of the ordinary which exist around them. Ginsberg uses the story of his

mother's madness and in so doing points up the poverty in which this occurred which made it so much more bleak for her children. He describes a typical environment in Eugene's living away from home while attending university and working his way through:

Him faraway, escaped to an Elevator in the Newark Library, his bottle daily milk on windowsill of $5 week furn room downtown at trolley tracks-

(p. 19)

Later Ginsberg speaks of the indi vi du al members of the family living out their lives in circumstances of poverty:

your voice at Edie weary of Gimbels coming home to broken radio-and Louis needing a poor divorce, he wants to get married soon-Eugene dreaming, hiding at 125 St., .•. (p. 27) 83

Rauschenberg also lived in poverty before he became known to the

world. He lived in loft buildings on Fulton, Pearl, and Front Streets, then on Broadway near Twelfth Street. In creating his combines many

of the materials and objects that he chose were not those that one might

buy but those that he found as he went about his daily living. He has

always accepted these objects for their own qualities and is surprised when others find them ugly. Although old clothes and old mate rials do not necessarily mean poverty-they seem to suggest, in Rauschenberg's work, that element, made more probable when we know that he was existing in a state of poverty at the time that he was creating these combines.

Bath Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, in their works, present interpretations of the everyday world that exists around us. They do this in similar ways with a considerable amount of e motion , unlike the

more objective Pop artists and Anti-novelists. In their interpretations of the everyday, Ginsberg and Rauschenberg consider that the meaning forms the structure. It is from the meanings that are to be expressed that the structures of tJtese works grow. The common everyday of the urban environment is made use of in materials, subject matter, and structure. One of Ginsberg' s uses of everyday forms, which contri- butes to the everyday quality of his structures, is the colloquial speech that appears in his work. An analogy, in Rauschenberg' s work, is his use of real, everyday materials other than paint and canvas, which he 84 picks up in the world around him. Neither of these artists are trying to create a IIhigh ll art. They are not even worried that their works may not be art at all. They use the common images of people and objects that they find around them. Ginsberg uses photographic-like images of these people and objects. Rauschenberg uses photographs or the real objects or materials themselves. They use images from the urban world around them often in forms first created by the mass media. Or they use images from a world which is not always con sidered in our impressions of our everyday life but which still exists around us, the world of the mad and the child's world. It is not necessary to know the traditions of art to appreciate these works for they communicate on the common grounds of the everyday. If one does know these older traditions one will find that Ginsberg and

Rauschenberg are aware of them too and use them, sometimes in new ways, to create their own works. Ginsberg uses tradition in a personal way, sometimes, but his wish is always to communicate the particular experience which, he believes, is yours and mine as well as his. Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg intend to break down the barriers between art and life that have traditionally existed. Some of the images that they use, though ordinary, are shocking. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg both allow this quality in a complete expression of the life around us. They realize that the shock quality does not last and cannot be depended on in itself to create the expression. They include it simply as a part of normal happenings which Ginsberg con- 85 fesses (on the jacket of Atlantic record 4001) that he, as weIl as we, sometimes tries to shut out. Both artists lack colour in their works of this period. Rauschenberg also tries to do away with tone but cannot manage it. Ginsberg happily uses tones in paradoxical rela tions to vivi.fy his work. Quotations from Ginsberg's work and the examples from Rauschenberg's work, as weIl as statements from both of these artists and from others, make it clear that the everyday-in many of its manifestations, including the forms that their works take, as weIl as bizarre qualities, the exotic, and the humorous found in them, and the poverty from which they sprang-is a part of the experi ence of these works both in their making and in their appreciation by an audience. Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg take materials and meanings from their environment, which for them happens to be the modern urban environment, and relate them by presenting these separate and familiar aspects of the everyday, that we too know, in a new whole.

The experiences from which these meanings are taken are of the every day man. The forms to which Ginsberg and Rauschenberg consign them in their works address themselves equally to this same everyday man.

There is no idea here of creating an esoteric work which is far re moved from common knowledge. If we put aside our expectations of the artistic and accept these works on their own terms we find that they become important and comprehensible as related to an everyday reality. That is not to say that they bear no relation to tradition. As we shall see, in Chapters V and VI, tradition plays an important part, 86 too, in both artists' works, but this tradition does not become all important. These works, so alike in meanings and structures, so dissimilar in media and techniques, can be understood on human terms in relation to our current experiences and the reality of our environment. When they are compared to each other they reinforce each other's expression and reaffirm the truth of their observations in relation to the everyday reality around us. CHAPTER V

NARRATIVE, REPETITION, AND

CATALOGUES RELATED TO TRADITION

A narrative quality appears frequently in the works of both

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg. Ginsberg says, in The Paris Review interview, that "narrative was 'Kaddish'. ,,1 In this respect, among others, Rauschenberg's work is unlike the earlier Abstract Expres- sionists' paintings, as weIl as unlike the contemporaneous Op Art and Hard Edge paintings. Rauschenberg makes his impression with more than shapes and colours. Each of the fragments, each detail, particularly each photograph and drawing, from which the whole is formed, contains part of the story. Such details as photographs and fabrics exist in their own right as weIl as being part of the whole.

In Rauschenberg' s work each small section has a right to a character of its own and is not completely devoured by the whole. Andrew

Forge says, in relation to Rauschenberg's work that: "details are not just small sections of the whole work: they yield special values, distinct from those of the whole work, although the larger meaning is unimagin able without them. ,,2 The details have a story to tell on their own and can be considered as having an existence outside of the main

87 88

narrative , but they also can be, and are, incorporated into the total

fabric of the work.

Despite the ability of some of their images to live a lUe of

their own, Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's total meaning is only to be

completely comprehended in the relationship of these images with the

rest of the text or the rest of the combine. One contrasts, or com-

pares, images, and series of images, in space and time from every

part of the poetry and from side to side and up and down in the com-

bines. In Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) for instance, no single image,

among the details, is definitive of the whole. We must have them all

before the narrative message is ambiguously told. Sorne of the images

... ,.. form complete compositions in themselves as weH as relating to the rest of the images. An example is the photograph of the family group

in Small Rebus, 1956. At times images contradict or contrast with

other images such as the dead dog with the life manilested by the acro-

bats and other sports events, which ambiguity suggests the whole gamut

of lUe and death. This is that ambiguity and paradox which Cleanth

Brooks suggests, throughout The Well Wrought Urn,3 is an integral

part of any work of art. AH of Rauschenberg's images build, at last,

to a final, unified story, retaining, however, the single parts, with

their ambiguities, as individual entities, as Rauschenberg desires. In

relation to ambiguity Lewis Mumford says that the significance of a

work of art, "must not be too obvious and definite, like a numerical

sign, which says precisely what i t means. On the contrary, it must 89

be a little ambiguous, a little mysterious; it must leave play for an

answering response, of an equally indeterminable kind, in the spectator

or listener, who thus participates in the creative act. ,,4 Contrast

among images where no single image is definiti ve is shown in Gins-

berg' s Kaddish in the line,

and no more of his sweetness and glass es , his high school decades, debts, loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands-

(p. 9)

which gives us varied individual images and contrasts "sweetness" and

"frightened telephone calls, Il but is also a combination which, by the

juxtapositions, relates the many-sided, but unified, story of Naomi's , .. madness. Some of the images, like some of the photographs in Small

Rebus, 1956, are also connected, such as "conception bedsll which

are often the result of "loves. Il The images here gain a new perspec-

tive by their juxtapositions. As Wheelwright says, "the whole of the

context is a pattern which gets much closer to conveying the meaning

of the reality than do single words or phrases. ,,5

Ginsberg can gi ve a whole line, which is a picture like a

photograph, and a complete composition in itself, that is a separate

experience from the rest of the poem. Yet that experience seems to

relate to his mother's story for it is in the context of his larger, more

....., fully known, experience that hers is contained: 90

... a Vision-anything more? It leaps about me, as 1 go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder, Seventh A venue, the battIements of window office buildings shouldering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant-and the sky above-an old blue place.

(p. 8).

This is a moment of experience within the bounds of the action of the entire poem. We see Rauschenberg doing this with his photographs which sometimes are complete compositions in themselves, and yet only act as one complex image, one part, of the whole work. The narrative, thus toId, is often made up of sharply separated parts which, however, through their organization, combine to form a unitY .

The !ine coming directIy after Ginsberg's above-quoted !ine, which gives its own picture, switches his thoughts to his mother's past experience mixed with his own present instead of isolating himself in the sort of dream quality he has experienced under the "old blue place. Il This next !ine is: or down the A venue to the South, to-as 1 walk toward the Lower East Side-where you walked 50 years ago, Uttle girl-from Russia, eating the first poisonous tomatoes of America-frightened on the dock-

(p. 8)

Here there is a sudden break in his own experience which ends with the word "tO-" and he then recalls bis mother's experience as he imagines it. This sudden break is as dramatic a change as are the clear edges, sometimes bordered in white, of some of Rauschenberg' s 91

photographs that cut them off from other images in the composition as

happens with the photograph of the family group in Small Rebus, 1956

(pl. VI). At other times Rauschenberg will soften this jolt by covering

or partially covering the edges of the photographic reproductions that

he uses, by painting over them or covering part of them with fabrics,

as he does in the Small Rebus, 1956 photograph of the acrobats. Some

of Ginsberg's lines slide more easily into one aDother and are more

easily connected, too, particularly in the Proem and the Narrative.

An example of such lines are:

and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma- ... And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of the gang? You shuddered at his face, 1 could hardly get you on-to New York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound-

(p. 13)

Each detail deals with only one aspect of the story and that

is often an aspect which is not easily or ordinarily related to the

other aspects which Ginsberg or Rauschenberg is presenting in the

poetry or combine, or is related in a curious way. In Trophy b 1959

(pl. XI) we see photographs, each with a story, sometimes connected

through an unexpected third element which functions as a correlator.

An example is the photograph of Merce Cunningham in dance position

which is related to the photograph of the mounted policeman fal1ing

off of his horse through the words "CAUTION WATCH YOUR STEP, " 92

because Cunningham and the policeman might be expected to be watch

ing theirs. In much the same way Ginsberg relates two thoughts

with a third in the lines: "with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish

War / with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers"

(p. 34), where "voice" relates to both "the decaying overbroken workers"

(which in turn relate to "Trotsky and the Spanish War" because of the

Communist cause involved in both cases) and "your chin" which is so

close to the mouth from which the "voice" issues. There is a shift

here from the solid and concrete "chin" which is visible and tangible,

as are the "overbroken workers," to the audio "voice," which is the

key element as there is a shift from the visual-two photographs of

people-in Trophy 1, 1959 (pl. XI) to the verbal statement-"CAUTION

WATCH YOUR STEP." However, in Rauschenberg's Trophy 1, 1959,

the banal prints of symbols of Christmas, a bell and part of a star,

create, by their inclusion in the work, a mystery, a kind of diaphoric

metaphor, for they seem not to be logically connected in meaning to

anything else that can be seen in this combine. They are, however,

structura1ly connected to other parts of the work through their colour

blue-which is repeated in other places in the combine. They partici pate in, and assist, the feeling given by the whole work. Likewise

some of Ginsberg's narrative and images are easily connectable to

each other. For instance there are the lines: 93

holy mother, now you smile on your love, your world is born anew, children run naked in the field spotted with dandelions,

(p. 29) which is a view of Naomi with her children when she was young and contrasts with the present of the history that Ginsberg is giving . There are other parts in Kaddish that retain a mystery in their relationships although t~ey contribute to the meaning of the whole. They are diaphoric in their lack of connection as are the mechanically drawn psychological diagram of how we sense a rose and the photograph of the runner, in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI). An example of this, in

Kaddish, is:

Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy-even in the Spring strange ghost thought-some Death-Sharp icicle in his hand-crowned with old roses-a dog for his eyes -cock of a sweatshbp-heart of electric irons.

(p. 11)

Here we must experience the whole of the !ine, and even more of the context of the poem before the total meaning comes across, though each of the images has its separate validity too. "Snowman's iCY" is connected with "spring, Il through the seasons, and icicle is also related to "Snowman's icy. Il "Ghost" and "Death" are related but aIter that the list in the catalogue is only related through the cataloguing itself, the structure. There is an overlap here for the cataloguing starts with "sharp icicle" which relat es back to "Snowman's 94 icy." The unrelated catalogue parts begin with "crowned."

Ginsberg also includes many more easily connectable examples of narrative. We know a great deal about the life of the persona, who represents his mother, by reading the poem. It is not as in Imagistic poems where the feeling is gi ven through objects nakedly presented and the story is left for us to construct, if we will, on our own. Gins- berg's poetry, then, often gi ves a clear account, in his own way, using space/time "gaps," of the personae's relations to the experiences which they undergo. In these places the experience which the reader has, on first reading the poem, is more clear-cut and sequentially logical.

An example of fairly logical linear association in the presentation of events is the following half line where the persona, Elanor, holds the images together as it is to her that the actions are addressed and the result of these actions is the effect on Elanor.

But started kicking Elanor, and Elanor had heart trouble -came upstairs and asked her about Spydom for hours, Elanor frazzled. . . .

(p. 26)

However, the rest of the tine is a jump, in space and time, to:

"Max away at office, accounting for cigar stores / till at night" (p. 26).

Raus~henberg's Rebus, 1955 (pl. V) and Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) are perhaps the closest that Rauschenberg comes, in his work, to linear narrative. They present a line optically. However they usually cannot be read in the normal sequence of a linear story. We move 95 forward and backward, up and down, along the length and breadth, taking in this photograph and that brush stroke, jumping some images, moving on, and comparing, achieving at last a synthesis from the assortment of images, materials and paint -feelings displayed. Like- wise when Ginsberg indicates that he is going to write a history, "still haven't written your history" (p. 13), we prepare for a straight linear development of circumstances and events which, with the intervention of "gaps," sometimes occurs. An example of this straight linear development in a narrative line is:

Once locked herself in with razor or iodine-could hear her cough in tears at sink-Lou broke through glass green painted door, we pulled her out to the bedroom.

(p. 22)

Narrative poetry in a straight sequential Une is one of the most ancient of manners in which poetry has been written. The story told by a painting also has a venerable lineage. However, both Ginsberg and

Rauschenberg often twist this normal linear type of narrative into one which is temporally non-sequential, or which contrasts unexpected bits of narrative one with the other which are apt to concern ·different subjects or people, as Ginsberg does by switching from Eugene to tlthe man of Evangel" to Louis in the line:

Then have sorne chicken soup, Eugene. The Man of Evangel wails in front of City Hall. And this year Lou has poetic loves of suburb middle-age- ..•

(p. 20) 96 which shows a change in the personae, actions, and experiences involved.

This is a development of the technique that Flaubert used in the market scene in Madame Bovary. However, Ginsberg collapses his scene into one Une. Flaubert takes much longer to present his view. We are carried sWiftly, in this line. in Kaddish, from one persona to the next in almost the same moment. Rauschenberg's paintings, such as Small

Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI), cause the eye, at the introductory viewing, to pass from one image to the next, but not in a straight sequential line from left to right. The eye is caught first by one image at the top right (the racer) and next another (in which the actors are different and are performing somewhat different actions, as are Europa and the bull) at the left hand side, and continues scanning in this sequentially fragmented and logically fragmented way.

Sometimes, to hold the fragmented sequences together, both

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg use repetition in their works. Repetition is most clearly seen in Kaddish in "Hymmnn" after Part II, and in

Part IV. The repetition in itself of Il Blessed is He, Il or "Blessed be

He," is in an old tradition. It is what cornes between these repetitions that is in a newer tradition •. Analogically, in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI), the repetition of sorne oval shapes (the watch and the psychologie al diagram for instance) is traditional, but the fact that the renditions of these two shapes are from different sources in our environment-the watch being a child'sdrawing.and the diagram being a mechanically drawn scientific diagram, is in a new tradition. Starting with the 97

reiteration of "0 mother" the repetition in Ginsberg's IIHymmnnll progresses into repeated IIfarewellll s, then to a catalogue of parts of the body beginning with the repeated word II with. Il Half way through this section we arrive at IIwith your eyes," and this continues, through the history of Naomi, from "with your eyes of

Russia" to a culminating: with your eyes alone with your eyes with your eyes with your Death full of Flowers

(p. 35) which brings us to the climax of this catalogue-IIDeath"-and returns us to youth and love with the word Il Flowers," which as weIl suggest the funereal.

The catalogues, here, build into four pyramids. Ginsberg himself is aware of the visual image of the pyramids that he creates with words in Part IV as he mentions on the jacket of the record of

Kaddish. 6 There are three pyramids in this part standing upright, one on top of the other, and a fourth that is a mirror image of the third and stands upside down. 1 am reminded that the pyramid was the ceremonial tomb in Egypt. Kaddish is concerned with death and the four pyramids may represent four attempts by Ginsberg to bury

Naomi and the associations that her memory evokes. The Egyptian 98

pharoahs were buried deep within the pyramide Ginsberg buries Naomi in four separate pyramids, one built under the other. The first and topmost pyramid concerns Ginsberg's expression of "farewell" to Naomi and sorne of the personal physical qualities of Naomi to whom he is thus bidding "farewell. Il In the second pyramid he buries her physical self along with sorne of the concepts with which he connects her. In the third pyramid, which goes even deeper, he tries again to bury the single insistent physical aspect of her "eyes, Il which are also, tradi tionally, supposed to show forth the soul, with the impersonal and then with a mixture of personal, and familial, and the impersonal. AIl of this traditional burial in the upright pyramids only results in the memory of a kind of de:sperate attempt, on the part of Naomi, to escape every thing by "running naked out of the apartment screaming into the hall."

This is not a satisfactory conclusion, so against all tradition Ginsberg turns the burial pyramid upside down and, with the same insistence on

"eyes" (soul), he continues through a memory of her illness and all the physical results of this until in this mirror reflection of the tradi tional tomb he sees only her soul "with your eyes alone. Il Balancing this on two lines that serve as a kind of supporting column (that are also the apexes of the fourth, upside-down pyramid and the beginning of a new fifth pyramid) that are purely soul, "with your eyes, Il he ends on a solid base having made his own personal imitation (mirror image) of an Egyptian pyramide This solid base is "with your Death full of 99

Flowers," those emblems of death, but also emblems of youth and

beauty and love. Naomi's death is a paradox, a death full of life,

as her life was a paradox, a life full of death-the terrifying, isolating,

and stultifying experiences of madness. Repetition here helps to

bring her reality home to Ginsberg, the reality of what she was to him. Death is both the end and the beginning. The base "with your

Death full of Flowers" begins a new upright pyramid which does not need to be finished for we have arrived at a satisfactory conclusion.

In this way the beginning of the new forms the base for the old, which old supports the weight of tradition (the three upright pyramids) and which itself is a new view (being upside-down) of this old tradition.

We see Ginsberg, here, playing with visual images made out of words as George Herbert did in his "Easter Wings" and "Altar," and as

Apollinaire did with his Calligrammes. It relates Kaddish to the more visual concerns of Rauschenberg., as Rauschenberg's works relate to Ginsberg's literary concerns when he includes such elements as printed signs which find their way into the Pop poetry of

Ronald Gross.

On page 30, repeating "The Horror" brings home to Gins berg, again, the reality of his mother' s state and what she meant for him at that moment. In "Hymmnn" the prayer follows traditional synagogue chanted pray ers and the repetition of "Blessed" brings out the realities of God who is "Blessed" in many things and in many 100

ways. In Part m Ginsberg again goes over his mother's life in a quick review. After the blessings of God we see her again-a re

minder of what she was to Ginsberg then. He realizes that his notion

of Naomi is inadequate and descriptive of flonlyfl part of the real

Naomi. Her activities are related to a repeated "only," and, for

a paradoxical moment, hope seems to sink, for the fi grave " is the

flsize fl of the fluniverse" but at the same time it is the flsize of the tick of hospital's clockfl (p. 33). This last partial defeat of hope is reinforced with new hope as Ginsberg repeats to himself what his mother was in Part IV and in Part V there is a wonderful resurgence of hope and understanding as we see the blackness of death of the earthly flesh, represented by the crow's vOice, rising in a cry with the blackness (" moves in a black cloud" CP. 3q]) of that God who is perfectIy fi Blessed" in all things earthly and heavenly . flCaw caw" turns into "all Visions of the Lordfl and we are satisfied that the "Lord fi triumphs in the end and takes with him the earthly.

Examining Rauschenberg's Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) we discover that there are several ways of looking at it depending, largely, on the amount of experience that the spectator has had with different sorts of painting. According to that experience he will look at abstract shapes, photographie images, or colours first. The concentration of images and colour is on the right. 1 shall take my own experience of 101

the reproduction of the combine as one example of a w~y of looking at it. In spite of the classical idea of left-to-right orientation7 1 look first at the splash of red and the splash of black, at the right of this

combine, just under the runner, because of their violent contrast. Next

1 look at the runner because he is so close to this area. These three

-the areas of red and black and the image of the runner-start the whole series of images which relate to life (the red) and death (the black) in competition (the runner), which the other images, we discover later, support. My eye is then caught by a series of coloured swatches of material that divide the combine in half and are emphasized by the line of white running through them from right to left, the blue line, running through the bottom of the photograph of the runner and extending to the left of the combine, and the dash of yellow, in a line, that carries my eye to the left also. Hurrying over the bull fight, and not remarking the drawing of the watch because of its faint tone and colour contrasts, my eye drops to the reproduction of the painting of Europa and the bull. From there it drops further through the part figure of an acrobat, not really taking him in, and is carried by a line, made by a string, to the bottom of the canvas where it is caught up, again, by the grey tangle of Ab- stract Expressionistic brush stroke which carries my eye across the white area at th'e bottom left. This brush stroke changes to a harder, but just as involved, black line which connects to a splash 102

of naples yellow (naples yellow is the traditional colour used for living white flesh, which perhaps here stands for human life) over black (which traditiona1ly relates to death, or, it may be that the naples yellow and black relate to the dominance of white flesh over black flesh in America and also in the Soviet west for the naples yellow and black paint drip over the map of western Russia and her satellites), and 1 am carried through this to the acrobats and their li vely motions and spend some time enjoying this and the photograph of the family group that is isolated because of the white border around it, which blocks the movement toward the right, as there is nothing to the right of it but space, and nothing in the photograph that points into this space. My eye then passes from this show of lUe down through the acrobats' rope to the photograph of the dead dog from Pompeii. This relates images from the present and the past by their juxtaposition. It jolts us into an accommodation of the past within the present. Ginsberg also uses time contrasts, although his times are not so distant from one another. Three times-present, future, and past-occur in at least one part of the Narrative of Kaddish:

12 riding the bus at nite thru New Jersey, have left Naomi to Parcae in Lakewood's haunted house-Ieft to my own fate bus-sunk in a seat-all violins broken-my heart sore in my ribs-mind was empty-Would she were safe in her coffin- 109

Or back at Normal School in Newark, studying up on America in a black skirt-winter on the street without lunch -a penny a pickle-home at night to take care of Elallor in the bedroom-

(p. 15)

In Rauschenberg's Small Rebus, 1956, the two times are related by the splash of yellow, to the left of the dog, that partly covers both the acrobats' photograph and that of the dog. In Ginsberg's lines the times are connectee! by the fact that they are all part of Ginsberg's thinking of that one moment. Next, in Small Rebus, 1956, 1 return upward, through the acrobatst rope, to the photograph of the racehorse, obscured slightly by a transparent blue material, and return, through the runner, on a second round, taking in, this time more carefully, the bull fight and noticing the watch, for the first time, to the left of it. 1 drop down, then, through Europa and the bull, to pay more attention to the part of the acrobat who has now become more interesting because of my experience with the acrobats on the right.

The grey Abstract Expressionist line carries me again toward the right but 1 notice now the black and white photograph, and the red stamps to the right of it, as weIl as a mysterious photograph to the right again, which looks like dandelion heads in seed growing on the moon. On this second time around, as 1 pass through the cluster of images on the lower right, 1 notice the mechanical drawing of a psychological diagram, and can stop to read the fact that it explains how we are able to experience a rose through the senses and the memory. 104

(This is al so how we are able to experience this combine.) A third

journey round the combine brings in abstract details of flowered cloth,

striped cloth, various abstract shapes, besides the ones mentioned,

and the maps of the middle part of the United States and of western

Russia and her satellites which register very indistinctly, because of their lack of colour and tone contrasts against the light brown and grey background. 1 also notice, for the first time, two identical prints set

side by side of a swan with its head cut off by the swatches of material running from right to left above it. Probably one of the reasons for

my noticing first the runner and the reproduction of the Europa painting is that they balance each other on either side and at the two opposite ends, of the line of coloured swatches of material that divides the com bine in two.

This combine seems to centre around life as it is li ved in

America. The runner represents a sport common to children and adults. It also symbolizes that race of life that we all rune This runner is pictured as being alone. He is either winning or losing, we are not sure which, but the other runners are out of sight. His separation, in solitude, from the watching masses and the judges of the race is emphasized by his being circled with black paint (a mark of death). He is also running on a circular track. Our lives are judged, and there are others watching, as we go through the race of lUe. Aiso the race is circular (as is the track) for we start and finish it at the same point-oblivion. The red and black patches, 10·5

which first· caught my eye, are now more certainly representative of

life and death. On the third time around, in looking at the combine,

we see that the abstract shape of black-death-is on a faded, flowered

material, representing youth faded into old age. It is an old, worn

out, aged death. Vigorous lUe and old age-the red and the faded flowered fabric-are connected by a dirty green abstract shape-the

passing from vigorous life to old age, the connection between these two. The combination of yellow-red (lUe) and black (death) gives this green-brown colour. Vigorous life and old age are constantly con nected as well as beginning and ending an experience-that of living.

The red blood of life, or accident and resultant death, is closely

connected to the suggested strokes of pure white -the virginal which is here tenuous-that travels through the coloured swatches of fabrics to Europa and the bull. The Europa and the bull myth concerns the belief of man in a god hero and the start of new life. Europa gave her name to the continent of Europe and America was peopled mainly by Europeans. The actual conquest of Europa, by the bull, is far from American thought today, but hero worship of one kind or another is still prevalent and so is conquest. The vital dash of grey-vital in movement, though subdued in tone-recalls the ordinary and the every day, which brings me back to sports in the li vely motions of the acrobats. A frame behind the acrobats (the acrobats represent vitality, poise, and agility in life, or are a symbol for the artist for the acro-· bat has been used to represent such by E. E. Cummings, Lawrence 10'6

Ferlinghetti and others) carries me to the bottom of the photograph of

a typical American family in a rural setting. This looks like the good

quiet lUe of concord in contrast to the competition of the sports. How

ever this euphoria is short-lived for 1 return, through an acrobat's leg,

to the acrobats' rope and descend to the dead dog and through its dead

leg, which continues the direction of the acrobats' rope, to the bottom

of the combine. Here my eye meets the dog's other leg which returns

me through the contorted dog's body to the splash of yellow paint (a

highly nervous colour, or one of preparation for change from movement

to the stationary, related to the unstable amber between green" go" and

red "stop" signs) to the left of the doge This dog is in a contorted

position of sudden death, through accident, and is in strong contrast,

in his contortion and death, to the li vely poised movements of the acro

bats. The dead dog, found in Pompeii, represents the death of a city

and, by analogy, a civilization. On the second time round the combine,

1 notice the racehorse covered with blue. It is related to races (lUe)

as is the runner. The racehorse is noted for its high-strung nerves

and its speed. It is an aristocrat and is here slightly in the shade.

Its blue blood is emphasized through the transparent blue cloth which

also serves to partly shut it out from the rest of the combine. This

blue is echoed in the blue Une 1 travel on the second time round in the

combine and the blue strips of fabric at the left of the canvas. The

swatches of fabric cutting the combine in half from right to left perhaps represent stages through lUe. They are many coloured, but an of the 107 same size. Their importance is due to tone and colour contrasts, experiential intensities of different descriptions, indicating apparent dtlferences in importance, though they are not different in actual size.

Passing again through them, my eye comes to rest on another sport, this time one alien to America, highly stylized and myth-ridden. Here we have the victim bull-power subdued-instead of the victor-the

Zeus bull just below. Beside this photograph is a child's notion of time-a watch with no hands (represented by a child's drawing). Time is circular and no moment is chosen as being most important. Having noticed this aspect of timelessness juxtaposed to death, we can inter pret Zeus, Europa, and the cherub in the reproduction of that painting as representing both eternal life-victorious power-which they at first suggest, and final ignoble death, which this myth has suffered in the imagination of the people. Even the god dies at last. 1 am reminded of the secular by the suggestion of part of an acrobatie figure relating to the group of three on the other side of the combine. 1 see only haU of him, his hands are where his feet should be. He is walking on his hands-a very topsy turvy state of affairs (that which is on the bottom should be on top). This side of the combine is not the adult

American view but an exotic and myth-laden view-through the two bulls-or a romantic, child's view-through the watch. The American bourgeois view is brought back with our return to the right hand side through the postage stamps which are signüicantly three cent stamps in red-the number of the Trinity and the colour of blood. Through 108 the symbolization in postage stamps-utilitarian and secular-it is a far cry from the truly religious. Although this combine takes in life its beginnings, through Europa, its middle, through the family and the

acrobats, and its end, through the dead dog and the bull in the bull fight, where death is imminent-there is nothing of the specifically religious. It is obviously about America. There are the American postage stamps and the map of America. The images in the combine represent some combined views of the American experience. It takes in the mystical too-the flowerlike, fuzzy objects on the stems that seem to inhabit the moon. The anemic map, the middle part of

America, is juxtaposed to an equally anemic map of western Russia and her satellites, which is covered with a splash of black and partly obscured by a transparent black-and-white striped clotho Threat and death lurk over Russia with lack of energy (anemic colour) and purity

(white). The dog and the bull in the bull fight represent sudden death of that which was once lively and full of life-sustaining blood. The diagram, explaining a psychological fact of our experience of a rose, brings in the scientific aspect of the American life which certainly does not dominate in this view. Significantly it is a rose-symbol of love, perfection, and youthful lUe-the experience of which the diagram explains. 1 notice, also, at last, the two faintly-toned swans without heads. These perhaps are, again, the Zeus figure and serve to rein force the myth of Zeus and Europa. The swan is the form in which

Zeus took Leda. Europa may stand for Leda in this combine. Zeus 109 here is a double figure, gliding on lifeless waters, without a head.

Perhaps this represents religion as it is for many of us today. The important theme is seen through sports, representing competition.

It strongly emphasizes the competitive way of life with the suggestions of racing, bull fighting and acrobaties. Physical well-being, suggested by the sports, is balanced by the suggestions of death. There is also the warmth of family union and company. The li vely aspect is what the average American mind of today concentrates on. However, in this combine, there is, also, a realistic balance created by the death that waits for aIl life.

In looking at Small Rebus, 1956, one can start perhaps from other places than that from which 1 started. One might start at the left, conforming to the theory concerning the viewing of Abstract

Expressionist paintings, which is that the eye always starts at the left-middle of the work. However, wherever one starts, the eye is first guided by the lines and materials as 1 have described them.

Perhaps others would notice other images on the way around and not wait, for instance, until the second time round, to notice the blue racehorse. They might notice Europa and the bull first, which would make it appear, in the beginning, that religion and power were the guiding themes instead of secular life, death, and competition.

However, after looking at these images in the secular context of the rest, the first impression would be corrected to a more secular 110 interpretation for the whole. For an emphatic, unified, experience the combine seems to require that we start with the black and red paint shapes as 1 did. Of course, when one has become a little familiar with the work there are the associations which come to us with the contrast or comparison of the images sorne of which are not directly juxtaposed. Rauschenberg, then, guides us, particularly on our first viewing of the combine, in the way that he wants us to look at his work. After we have come to know the work better, we are freer to proceed on our own, making our own discoveries of contrasts and comparisons, sorne of which the painter perhaps never thought of, for there is much in every work of art that the artist is unaware that he is expressing and it is left to the audience to pick out and relate the impressions it recei ves in new ways or ways particularly persona! to it because of the private experiences which are yet somehow shared, too, for we are all flesh and blood, living creatures, thinking and feeling our way through the same experiences, very nearly, when we consider our lives and the li ves of those that we know around us, as a whole. Memory plays a large part in our subsequent enjoyment of the work of art that we have come to know.

It is a memory that is both of the experiences and images that the artist suggests and of our own personal experiences which we relate to the work of art. 8

In the beginning Ginsberg, too, guides us through Kaddish. In the first reading we move as he wants us to move, not knowing 111 what we shall find coming after and not being familiar enough with what we have already read for it to become, except in a few places, associated with the images we are at the moment reading. On second reading we become more familiar with the images and are more free to associate as we choose both those images that come before the place that we have got to in our reading and those images that we know come after. In the narrative of both Rauschenberg and Ginsberg, we are at first pretty completely directed in our movements by the artist. On a second and a third and more readings, and looking, we know both the direction in which the author is taking us and we have more freedom to associate images that are particularly striking to us personally as a result of our past experiences.

In Kaddish, at first there is a mixture of Ginsberg's own experiences and of Naomi's-"Your time-and mine" (p. 7). This continues, with emphasis, first on Ginsberg's experiences and then on Naomi's until the end of the first part. Here, also, is introduced

Elanor, Naomi 's sister, Max and Louis who stand for the other people who will appear later in the Narrative. There is, here, in the first part, a remembrance of life and death, but death still holds fears and Ginsberg finds it necessary to beg Death to "stay thy phantoms!"

(p. 12).

ln the Narrative part we are carried forward with the story, which in some places refers to past history, recalling Naomi's girl- 112 hood, or looks ahead to Ginsberg's later life. AlI this either straight forward movement or backward and forward movement we are obliged to follow at first, as we do not know the story weIl enough to make

Many associations between the different parts on our own. We have not yet gained the freedom to associate on our own, ôr even to understand at ail completely the juxtapositions which Ginsberg makes for us. As we begin to know the work better we begin to notice the different characters involved and can more easily connect their stories and the parts that they play in Naomi's and Ginsberg's lives. These dif ferent characters are anaIogous to the different characters (animais as weIl as people) that appear in the photographs of Rauschenberg and through which the story is told. They play their parts in gi ving us the gist of the theme. We notice different levels in Ginsberg of life and death, of acceptance of death-in Part V-and fear of death-at the end of Part I-of the romanticaIly idealistically beautüul in life such as Naomi sitting among the flowers with her children (p. 29) and the shocking-Naomi's fit in the bathroom (p. 22). There are life and death themes aIso in Rauschenberg's Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) and there is the fear of death theme with the combat between man and bull, and the contorted death of the dog. There is a strong affirma tion of life in both works. The red colour and li vely actions of sorne of Rauschenberg's figures, and the very lively actions that Naomi takes part in-though some of them are mad-such as her defence of her life at the "prescription counter" and her fear that death might be the result 113

of this (p. 17). A strong affirmation of the family and the ideal

happy life is seen in Naomi sitting among the flowers and the children

(p. 29), as Rauschenberg shows a family group, happily smiling and

contented, in country scenery. In both of these works, images are

juxtaposed to give the story, which construction 1 have discussed in

Chapter II on space/time II gapS. Il

The different characters bring in minor and major themes.

In Rauschenberg's Small Rebus, 1956 view of America, the first

theme is life and death, with the competition involved in the many

sports, coming a close second. In Ginsberg, the first theme is the

madness of Naomi and how it affected her American family, and

particularly Ginsberg himself. Close to this runs the theme of the

acceptance of life and death and what it meant in relation to the life

of this mad woman; how her life and death struck her family. Gins

berg' s main images work together and are often played together,

juxtaposed. Some of the main images are the eyes-of God and

man-the eyes that see the light, the sun, the Vision; eyes laughing

and eyes weeping. Then there is the darkness, in which the eyes

see, or do not see, of poverty and of God. Flowers too are related

to this vision. There are the flowers of happiness and innocence as

ll in the IIsummer fields Il (p. 9), and flowers of death- with you!' Death full of Flowersll (p. 35); the flowers are dandelions (p. 29)-wild and

sunny-or they are IIwhitell (p. 30)-pure and innocent-or they are the lIold rosesll (p. 11) that crown the doctor Death. These old roses 114 relate to the worn out, the message of love (as Christ's) worn out, the perfection of blossoming youth worn out. So that flowers are both for the living and the dead as darkness is for God and for poverty.

Light is for the life-giving sun, God, and also bathes the "Key" to life's meaning left to the living (which Ginsberg suggests, on the Atlantic record jacket 4001, is to be "found at last in ourself"), but is also the "flower burning' in the. Day fi (p. 7)-the death of the flower in youth and the flwhite sun" (pure sun) that at last shines over the dead- "over grave stonesfl (p. 36). Through all this are the eyes that see the mad ness and the life and death that are involved. These are the eyes that experience everything. The eyes of God-the intelligence in the heav enly eternal seen from the dream which is life-"an eye in the black cloud in a dream?" (p. 10). They are the eyes of Eugene (p. 19) and Louis (p. 24) weeping from human sadness and loneliness, and they are the varieties of eyes that are related to Naomi in Part IV that go through aU the hopeful, sad, terrible and frightening experi ences from Communism to the hospital, stroke, and eventual death.

These eyes at last end in "with your Death full of Flowers" (p. 35).

In Part V, which marks the end of the whole experience, we return to Ginsberg's eye and the Lord who is a flgreat Eye that stares on

AlI and moves in a black cloud" (p. 36). It is an eye of light ("In that Dark-that-in that God? a radiance? fi CP. lq]) that comes from a place too dark to be understood by humans. This is like the para dox of the acceptance of Death where there is still fullness of lUe. 115

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg both depend, sometimes, on the dynamic effect of the cumulative power of their imagery. Ginsberg' s effects are often produced through his variety of cumulative cataloguing which bears an analogy to Rauschenberg's images which end in one climacteric image. One of Ginsberg's catalogues, in the Proem, that uses rep'etition, also, and occupies several lines, shows particularly weIl a culmination to a climax (which also employs an untraditional use of repetition) is: then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what? toward Newark- toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand churned ice cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards- Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school, and learning to be mad, in a dream what is this life? Toward the Key in the window- •.•

(p. 8)

Ginsberg repeats here a single word, which is in an old tradition, but the word that he chooses to repeat is, firstly, not an image but a preposition. Secondly, after the first question and answer, each time that "toward" is mentioned a new catalogue is opened up.

"Toward" has the function of jolting us (which is untraditional) from one stream of thought into another, which is, however, related, and carries the reminiscences forward to a climax. Through aIl the home-made and ordinary Naomi struggles to fllearning to be mad, fi to fla dreamfl and at last flToward the Key. fi The lines, from this 116

culmination in catalogue to a climax, move down again to another cul-

mination, but of a different sort this time, for the culmination is not

triumphal at the last, but desperate:

. . . and the great Key lays its head of light on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the sidewalk-in a single vast beam, moving, as 1 walk down First toward the Yiddish Theater-and the place of poverty

(p. 8)

Repetition, though an old traditional element of style, is used in new traditional ways by both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg.

Rauschenberg uses the old traditional repetition of tone, white, in a new traditional way in Odalisk, 1955-58 (pl. IX). Traditional painters used a repetition of colour, or tones, on the canvas. Rauschen- berg not only repeats his tone on the canvas but outside of the canvas

as weIl-on the post, on the piIlow, and on the hen. Ginsberg repeats in "Hymmnn" the words "Blt.lssed is He I" Each time that the exclamation is repeated we have been through another association with "He" and our idea of Him consequently has changed. Thus:

Magnified Lauded Exalted the Name of the Holy One Blessed is He 1 In the house in Newark Blessed is He 1 In the madhouse Blessed is He 1 In the house of Death Blessed is He 1 Blessed be He in homosexuality! Blessed be He in Paranoia 1 • • •

(p. 32) 117

The shock that we experience with "Blessed be He in homosexuality 1" after "Magnilied Lauded Exalted," is lessened by our gradual approach to this through various houses, each one more disturbing than the one

ll before-"the house in Newark , Il "the madhouse , " IIthe house of Death and then Ginsberg changes "Blessed is He" to the subjunctive and more correct (in a wish), less colloquial form, "Blessed be He, which stresses the traditional, as we approach the very untraditional, when related to

"Blessed, Il "homosexuality" and "Paranoia. '.' In these Unes the signili- cance of "Blessed" and "He" changes. We begin with a "He" that is

"Magnified Lauded and Exalted" as we should expect Him to be. This turns into a "He" related to the dreary "house in Newark" where Naomi once lived, then to an even worse "house" the "madhouse" and at last, at the end of this Une, we are brought to what might be the worst

"house" of all, the "house of Death," which is still related to "Blessed is He." Having got to this terrible point, we are not so shocked when

"He" is "Blessed .•• in homosexuality, " from which Allen suffers, and "Blessed .•. in Paranoia," which is what Naomi suffers from, so that we have Him running the gamut of being "Blessed" in the most high and "Blessedll in the low, the change coming gradually through the three types of houses. This is partially analagous to Rauschenberg's repetitions such as thos~ that appear in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) where the body of Europa is not repeated by another body, or: fully- drawn object, as it would be traditionally, but by an abst~·act tine.

This is repetition in an untraditional way for an abstract stroke existing 118 in one space environment is made to parallel, and thus repeat, the fully-painted body which exists in another world. Another repetition in Small Rebus, 1956 is the vertical abstract stroke that parallels the acrobats' rope on the right and one of the forelegs of the dead dog from Pompeii. These three-the abstract brush stroke, the acrobats' rope, and the dead dog's leg-come from three different worlds, and exist in three different space environments. It is untraditional to relate such different entities by repetition, though the idea of repetition in itself is traditional-paintings have always had coherence through the repetition of the direction of an arm and leg or fold of clothing, for instance, within the same composition, that are related through similar ity in direction. AIso, Rauschenberg repeats letters and part letters.

These appear in such paintings as Trophy..!, 1959 (pl. XI). These letters achieve a culmination (as do Ginsberg's catalogues which include an aspect of repetition, sometimes) in the complete phrase "CAUTION

WATCH YOUR STEP."

Ginsberg takes his catalogues from the tradition of Whitman but he carries this tradition further so that it becomes untraditional.

Though his balanced catalogues are traditional, most of his catalogues are cumulative which is untraditional. Balanced catalogues, too, can be found in Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's work. In Kaddish, though they do not appear nearly as frequently as do the cumulative cata logues, there is the part of the line: 119

. . . And you're out, Death let you out, Death had the Mercy, you're done with your century, done with God, done with the path thru it Done with yourself at last-. . .

(p. 9)

This is an example of a line which in developing the Narrative cata-

logues this experience rather than more traditional images. The photo-

graphs on the front of the Odalisk box do not reach a climax either

(that is reserved for the white which culminates in the hen). Instead

they present a balanced catalogue of separate images which includes

the heterogeneous mixture of a harp, a drawing of a figure by Michel-

engelo, two nudists, the portrait of an elderly lady, part of a comic

strip, and so on . ..

Earlier painters, such as the Little Dutch Masters, depended

on an accumulation of details and images in the same environment to

make up their paintings. These details and images included people,

doors, windows, brooms, animals, baskets, crockery, and so on.

They are analogous to the balanced catalogues of Whitman and earlier

poets. Rauschenberg uses photographs, drawings, and paintings, not of

details usually, which is traditional, but of whole compositions, often,

which is untraditional. These are generally compositions in photo-

graphs or drawings or reproductions of paintings used in a balanced

catalogue fashion. However, he also uses objects such as the white

pillow, the white post, and the culminating white hen on top of the

combine Odalisk, 1955-58 (pl. IX) which altogether act as a cumulative 120 catalogue accompanied by repetition of the white.

Ginsberg often achieves energy in his poetry through the tightness of his catalogues. He is following, thus, Charles Olson's counsel when OIson says, following a dictum of Edward Dahlberg,

"ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO

A FURTHER' PERCEPTION. ,,9 We can see him using this characteristic of denseness of catalogue in Kaddish in the line which begins loosely enough with a traditional contrast between lion and lamb but then turns to a cataloguing of strong, individual, physical images which lead to the portrayal of an abstraction-flbraintricked Implacability. fi

Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul-and the lamb, the soul, in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce hunger-hair and teeth-and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin, braintricked Implacability.

(p. 9)

Such a work as Odalisk, 1955-58 (pl. IX) shows Rauschenberg using the tight catalogue quality that is so evident in Ginsberg' s work. This catalogue is made up of photographs which coyer nearly all of the available space on the front surface of the box of Odalisk, each with its own message. One is cal'ried through these catalogues, moving with great rapidity over the suggestions of society and humanity which make it up. These catalogues are composed of images or concepts which follow quickly one on the other, or groups of photographs that fill the available space on the canvas and act as catalogues do, in 121 poetry, to build up the information and experience by bringing in the images in different lights, qUickly, one after the other, again and again, until the experience is complet ely revealed.

William Carlos Williams, who greatly influenced Ginsberg in the early part of his career, says, in the poem "A Sort of a Song, " that there are "No ideas / but in things." 10 The poet should render rather than tell. Physical objects properly arranged in the sequence of the poem could calI up associations which would convey the feeling that the poet wanted to communicate. This is in line with Williams

Imagistic preoccupations. Ginsberg has taken this idea ~d in Kaddish uses it when he created catalogues of ordinary physical objects which conjure up the feeling of the moment that he intends to convey. An example of cataloguing of such physical objects, which contribute to the feeling of the moment, is the line:

Ride 3 hours thru tunnels past all American industry, Bayonne preparing for World War II, tanks, gas fields, soda factories, diners, locomotive roundhouse fortress-into piney woods New Jersey Indians-calm towns-Iong roads thru sandy tree fields-

(pp. 13-14) which gives a picture of America, both the city and the country.

Another example, showing the human rather than man's artefacts, is this picture, which is just as concrete, of Naomi at the hospital: 122

... loose dress on her skeleton face sunk, old! ~thered--cheek of crone- One hand stiff-heaviness of forties & menopause re duced by one he art stroke, lame now-wrinkles--a scar on her head, the lobotomy- ...

(p. 29)

A prominent part in Rauschenberg's catalogues is played by photographs or drawings of objects or persons, or actual stuffed animals.

Abstract brush strokes and fabrics are not the main devices for telling

~e story but simply help to shore up these photographs, drawings, and objects and contribute to the feeling that they present. Relating to this are Rauschenberg' s Rebus collages, among others of his works. The

Oxford English Dictionary meaning of "rebus" is "enigmatic representation of name, word, etc. by pictures etc. suggesting syllables." Here

Rauschenberg demonstrates clearly his concern with IIthings"--the photographs and dra~ngs which can be seen are pro minent in his work. Just as Rauschenberg uses abstract brush strokes and pieces of material, which are analogous to Ginsberg's abstract concepts, to contribute to the expression of the concrete objects, for instance in Small Rebus, '1956

(pl. VI), so Ginsberg sometimes uses abstract images mixed with concrete images in his catalogues and elsewhere. An example of such cataloguing of concrete and abstract images is the following:

AH the accumulations of life, that wear us out-clocks, bodies, consciousness, shoe, breasts-begotten sons-your Com munism-'Paranoia' into hospitals.

(p. 11) 123

"Clocks, bodies, tI tlshoe, breaststl and tlbegotten sonstl are all concrete but they are supported by the abstract of tlconsciousness, tI tlyour Com- munism, tI and n'Paranoia'" appearing in their midst.

The details in Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's works present wholes in themselves. They can often stand alone as complete entities.

However, their meanings change, usually, when they are combined with other images of the works to form a complete pattern. Sometimes these images even contradict, or contrast with, each other but the ambiguity thus presented is necessary to the unity and the truthfulness of the expression, in relation to life, of the whole. We find sorne of

Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's images connected as well as sorne that are dissociated. They sometimes present single pictures of experiences that are common to all of us. These single pictures are sometimes very clear-cut, in their separation from other images, and at other times have their edges obscured, so that they run into other images and carry easily through from one to the other. Sometimes the disconnected images are connected in a curious way by a third element that is common to both. The narrative used by Ginsberg and Rauschen- berg is seldom of the straight linear variety. (Ginsberg uses the straight linear quality more often than does Rauschenberg.) It is more usually non-sequential, jumping in different directions from one unconnected image to the next, or dealing with several different images in the same moment. of time. Narrative is an important method for both of these 124 artists in the expressions of their surrounding environment. On first reading or looking at these images the reader/ spectator is led very much by the artist who composed the work. After sorne experience with the work the audience can create relationships more on its own and discover in the poetry and the. combines meanings which the author did not know that he had put there. In this way each member of the audience makes use of his own background of experiences in life, as well as his experiences with other art works, in order to gain an appreciation of what is before him. Narrative is combined with repeti tions and catalogues of images both concrete and abstracto The cata logues prove to be of both the balanced type, that is more traditional

(which is generally the case with Rauschenberg although Rauschenberg's catalogues are often made up of different complete compositions con tained in separate photographs, which is untraditional, that added together compose a catalogue), and the cumulative type (of which Gins berg makes great use). The repetition in both Ginsberg and Rauschen berg is often untraditional as Ginsberg uses very different images with words that are repeated and progresses sometimes from the conventional expression of word associations to very unconventional expressions. Rauschenberg uses repetitions of tones on different objects that make up his combines which is a very untraditional way to use this sort of repetition. He does much the same thing with repetition of line, re peating lines from different images in very different environments in his combines. Catalogues are, also, in both of these artists' works, 125

often very dense. It is partly this tightness of catalogue that gi ves

the combined images of the poetry and the combines their power.

The construction resulting from the use of narrative, repetition,

and catalogues of different kinds helps to gi ve variety to this poem and,

at the same time, to tie the work together into a unity through these

recognizable elements of style. By analogy these constructions can

be found in Rauschenberg' s combines and we see them forming a unity

from what, when we analyse them, are disparate parts. Attending to

the past and yet thinking very much in the present, Ginsberg's and

Rauschenberg's works support each other by using structural elements

such as narrative, repetition and catalogue in both traditional and new '..... ways. These elements through their structures give unity to the works,

through their tradition keep this unitY related to former works of art,

and, through Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's new inventions for these

elements, describe IHe for us as it is today and point toward ways

that they and other artists can explore in the future. CHAPTERVI

TRADITIONAL ASPECTS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg both concern themselves with tradi

tional aspects in their works. Indicating an interest in tradition is

Ginsberg's ubiquitous use of the Bible and Judaism as references. At

the beginning of Kaddish he refers to Judaism and Buddhism-two reli

gions which he respects. On the night before he wrote most of Kaddish,

Ginsberg states early in Kaddish, he was "reading the Kaddish aloud"

(p. 7). He ties this Hebrew Mourner's Kaddish in with his own view of

tlDeath" which is "that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem or the Buddhist Book of Answers-"

(p. 7). Another reference to religion concerns the Evangelist who represents the unorthodox in relation to Paterson City Hall which is in the centre of the political traditions of Capitalism. The City Hall

stands on "Market Street" (a place of commerce). It lS a fake, a replica of the Lyons, France, City Hall. It is also a flMoloch tower, fi reminding us of the ancient Egyptian god Moloch and his habit of devour ing children in his fiery maw. Inside the City Hall is aIl the tradition of Capitalistic politics:

126 127

wÏIIgS, balcony & scrol1work portais, gateway to the giant city clock, secret map room full of Hawthorne-dark Debs in the Board of Tax-Rembrandt smoking in the gloom-

(p. 19) ln contrast to this is the IIlone Evangelistll who IIpreached madly for

3 decades, hard-haired, cracked and true to his mean Bible. Il He preached another message than the philosophy followed by Capitalistic politics. He was an outsider, as Ginsberg is an outsider, so that

Ginsberg, in part, identifies with him, though Ginsberg's message is not the IImeanll one of the Evangelist. Ginsberg says that Ithe raved like 1 would rave!1 (itaIics mine) in the printed version of Kaddish

(p. 20). However, on the record he makes the comparison not just a desired possibility but certain. He says there, IIhe raved like 1 do rave ... 1 (italics mine), and Ginsberg then shows his alliance with the

Evangelist against the City politics by crying IIDeath on City Hall. Il

The IIlone Evangelistll crying in the wilderness, the wilderness of the modern city, as Ginsberg is crying, interprets the Bible in contemporary terms; he gives the message from the Old Testament: IIchalked

Prepare to Meet Thy God on civic pavelt (p. 20), and the testimony of the New Testament, again in common ter ms: IIGod is Love on the railroad overpass concretell (p. 20).

Ginsberg takes a look at organized religion in condemnation of it in the part of the line: "and a priest dreaming of pigs on an ancient cltif? Il (p. 18). In Naomi's dilemma at the drugstore even the priest, who is supposed to know better than most the difficulties that the human 128 spirit encounters, sits staring abstractedly, thinking of something tri vial indicated by an ignominious animal at the edge of death in days gone by.

This priest, representing conventional religion, has no relation to the present that swirls so passionately around him. Another reference to things religious and, specificaIly, to the Bible, are the Hnes: once long-tressed Naomi of Bible- or Ruth who wept in America-Rebecca aged in Newark -David remembering his Harp, now lawyer at Yale or Svul Avrum-Israel Abraham-myself-to sing in the wilderness toward God-Q Elohim! - •..

(p. 31) where Ginsberg connects various members of his family, including himself, with Biblical figures as weIl as suggesting Keats's "Ruth" who,

"sick for home, / • . . stood in tears amid the alien corn; .•. " 2 An aspect of tradition which can be recognized in Kaddish and that cornes from the synagogue is the Mourner's Kaddish, the traditional Hebrew prayer of mourning after the burial of the dead. Ginsberg names his own poem Kaddish and divides it into six parts (if one includes "Hymmnn" as a separate part) just as the Hebrew Mourner's Kaddish is divided into six parts. He uses a part of the actual litany, quoting the original

Hebrew, when he says in the poem:

Yisborach, v'yistabach, v'yispoar, v'yisroman, v'yisnaseh, v'yishador, v'yishalleh, v'yishallol, sh'meh d'kudsho, b'rich hu.

(p. 24)

Thomas Merrill gives the translation of this as "May God remember 129 the soul of our honored mother who is gone to her repose. fl3

Ginsberg also brings in tradition at the beginning of Kaddish . when he mentions the blues that Ray Charles was singing on the phono- graphe The blues, traditionally songs of a hard llie, grief, and death, forecast part of the spirit in which Kaddish is written-the desolation of despair. However, this spirit lifts in triumph relative to the despair, as do Shelley's fllast triumphant stanzas" (p. 7) of flAdonais, fi in certain parts of Kaddish. There is a constant alternation from despair to triumph and back again starting half way through Part m and continuing in this alternating fashion to the end of Part m, page 33. IIf The key is in the sunlight at the window'" is joyful and full of hope and freedom, but the next instant the window has bars-l!fin the bar~n-which brings the cOlûinement of a prison. Following this cornes another triumphant image:'1t the key is in the sunlight.'" The next line brings another drop to despair and gloom: "only to have come to that dark night on iron bed by stroke when / the sun gone down on Long Island • • • fi and then cornes a shtlt to a glimmer of hope again: and the vast Atlantic roars outsi de the great calI of Being to its own to come back out of the Nightmare-divided creation- ••.

Here we feel division working within ourselves because of the constant alternation from hope to despair and back again. The tine continues in despair: "with her head Iain on a pillow of the hospital to die. Il Part m continues in this state of alternation to the end, where Creation 130

glistens,

... backwards to the same grave, size of universe, size of the tick of the hospitaPs clock on the archway over the white door-

(p. 33)

Here there is a momentary, breathless balance between the' inexpres-

sibly huge and li vely, in its organicism, and the infinitely tiny and

mechanical; of Life-"Creation"-returning from whence it came, return-

ing to the unknown-Death, "the same grave." This momentary balance ends Part -m.

The reference to "Adonais' last triumphant stanzas" in the Proem,

page 7, recalls the introductory quotation to Kaddish from Shelley's

"Adonais." This line from Shelley's poem is lit Die , / If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek f'" (p. 1). These stanzas of Shelley's

also include, "Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; ... ,,4' which very. clearly relates to the feeling that Ginsberg intends to convey

at the end of Kaddish. Shelley's "last triumphant stanzas," then, relate the beginning of Kaddish, where that phrase appears, to the end, which is triumphant: "caw caw aIl visions of the Lord / Lord Lord Lord ... "

(p. 36). The mention of Shelley's "Adonais" also helps us to place

Ginsberg's work in the elegiac tradition.

Another indication of tradition in Ginsberg's work is the poetic wording that he uses, though infrequently, so that when it occurs it 131 jolts us into a new look at the work. Such poetic wording is found in the Narrative of Kaddish. For example, Ginsberg uses "oft" (p. 18) or "cap 0' ornament" (p. 19). More reference to tradition by Ginsberg comes with his occasional use of alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhyme, which jolts one out of the fragmented narrative quality into something that is very tightly tied together. An example is:

Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, married dreamed, mortal changed-Ass and face done with murder.

(p. 11) which Ginsberg says (in the explanation of Kaddish that he wrote for the Atlantic Recording Corporation and which appears on the jacket of

Atlantic record 4001) is: "a death prayer imitating the rhythms of the

Hebrew Kaddish .••• " The line starts with a murmur of "m" s and

"n" s-"magnifice.nt- - -' -mourned- -no -more '-marred" and later "Mind-- behi~d," "married drea,!!!,ed, ,!!!,ortal ch~ed" and at last "do!!,e" and "murder." The second word starts a harsher roll of "i"" s to contrast with the hypnotizing quality of the "m" s and "n" s-"mourned, Il "more, marred-' " "heart-' Il "married- dreamed- , mortal."- "R" comes in with the final "m" in ".!!!,.urder" emphasizing the contrast in this climax. Between these consonants in consonance come the vowels in assonance, some of which lead to rhyme. There is also the graduation of the assonance fromL&J in "m~nificent"- to ["Q] in "mourned- no-- more" tOL~rJ in "marred" and "heart." After this comes the internal rhyme of 132

"mind behind," and that of "married dreamed" and the last shocking slant rhyme, from LoJ to Lelin "ass and face" and the return to slanting assonance from theLA.J in "done" to the two L a-J sounds in "murder. " The similarities produced by assonance, consonance, and rhyme tend to tie this 1ine tightly together and at the same time to turn it into a hypnotic chant which partly dissolves through the harsh con trasts of the "r" s riding in on the "rh Il s with which the 1ine begins. The harshness is increased with the shocking near juxtaposition of "ass" and "face" -the shock increased through the slant rhyme-and the whole line ends near, and yet far, from the murmuring "magnificent" with which it began by repeating the murmur of the "m" at first but coming down harshly on the two "rlls of "murder" at the very last. The whole

Une represents an extreme structure in an old tradition and is surprising both as to the extremities to which this tradition is carried and in the fact that Ginsberg very seldom uses a pile-up of assonance, consonance, alliteration, and rhyme as he does here so that when we read it we are jolted into a new frame of mind in relation to the work as a whole-which new frame of mind is related to a change from a very loose and fragmented juxtaposition of images and information to a Une which is tightly tied together and thus in a completely different tradition from much of the rest of the poem and yet connects with such parts of the poem as the ritual chant tradition of IIHymmnn" and the repetitions of Part IV. One of Rauschenberg's chief relations to tradition (the Romantic tradition here) is the generally large and emotionally handled brush 133 strokes that he uses in between, and sometimes to cover parts of, the photographs and materials in his combines. He also balances colours, tones, textures, and images in very satisfying and traditional ways in aIl of bis works. For instance, at the top of Trophy 1, 1959 (pl. XI) there is a quite smooth, light-toned area on the left which serves as a background for a dark piece of the letter "E" or "F" and two rectangular dark shapes, one large and one small (in relation to the size of the light area here), which represent positive shapes figures or images. This light area, creating a background for the dark letter and the two dark rectangles,· in turn has a background created for it by a medium -light textured area behind it which is larger again. Ali this light in the top left balances the very light, moderately smaIl area, at the top right which is composed partly of the light tone in the black and white photographe The photograph is of Merce Cunning ham whose dark tights balance the dark part of a letter and rect.angles at the left and help to bring the figure of Cunningham forward because they exist as a small dark figure on a light ground. Some light seeps around under the photograph of Cunningham in a very light-toned texture.

Light tones on the right in the photograph and the light-toned texture below the photograph make a part frame for the photograph in which

Cunningham is the positive figure. The area farthest back in this top part of the combine is the darker part of the floor and baseboard near the middle of the Cunningham photographe This is because of the per specti ve suggested by the slanting angle and the changing tones of the 134

floor. We can see, then, that Rauschenberg's balances of images,

tone, and texture are in an old tradition. However, when we approach

a contemplation of his space we find much that is in a new tradition

stemming from the Cubists.

Above the figure of Cunningham is a small transparent cloth

which is white with black polka dots. It is placed over another larger

transparent blue cloth which covers part of the Cunningham photograph

too and does not allow Cunningham to come forward as much as he

otherwise might although he is a positive shape. The fact that his

shirt and skin are much the same tone as the background wall of the photograph keeps him at a distance from us, also. This polka-dotted

cloth covers what appears to be a bill, or check, pushing it into the

background a little too. Although it is small and is a positive figure,

it mingles with the tone of the transparent cloth that covers it and so

almost disappears into the same distance as that at which this cloth

appears to be from us. Above this, again, and seemingly closer to

the spectator, is a dripped stroke of light over dark paint which is held

back by the same transparent blue cloth that covers Cunningham. An

ambiguity is created here as this light fights to come forward because

of the shadow, under it, of dark brushed paint which gi ves the light

paint a three- dimensional effect. Ali this light and slightly darker-

toned colour, which is mostly blue, on the right, balance in an old traditional way the white and some blue on the left. Between these two areas containing light and dark tones is a dark area which should 135

provide the background for the lighter' ones as it is large, appearing.

to be connected under the blue cloth on the right to the rectangle of

dark at the upper right hand corner and also appearing to be connected

to sorne dark at the upper left. However, the fact that this area is

partly textured and contains a figure-making sleeve of a shirt, which

is dark or covered with the same dark paint, appears to bring this

area, fighting against its desire to retreat into the background because

of its large size and contrasting ton~s with the forward-moving lights, forward, too. Thus, although there are suggestions of depth here, due to the perspective quality of the floor in the photograph and the strongly

contrasting tones of images with the spaces around them, these sugges tions of depth are contradicted by effects' created to deny this depth and

return the attention to the surface. The image which cornes closest to the eye, seeming to jut out from the surface much farther than its actual three-dimensional shape might appear to allow because of this

actual, though limited, third dimension, is the streak of bright blue paint, curved on the dark, to the left of the Cunningham photograph, which is a streak of paint squirted directly from the tube onto the canvas. Partly because it is of an unmixed colour and a complete abstract shape in itself, being completely separated from the tones

and colours which directly surround it, it seems to be suspended in

space in front of the canvas, much as Rauschenberg's objects, that he uses in other combines, are actually in the space in front of the canvas. Rudolf Arnheim, presenting the ambiguity of space as it is 136 found in sorne modern paintings, states the philosophy of space which guides the creation of this fairly new tradition of spacial qualities. He says that "various perceptual factors may work with, and against, each other. " He continues:

these -factors are proportioned in such a way that the result is fluctuating and ambiguous. This effect is welcomed by some modern artists-for example, by Picasso and Braque in their cubist pictures-because it undermines the material solidity of the visual world. The old masters, who wished to enhance solidity, preferred compositions that, although not forgoing the counterpoint of antagonistic factors, added up to a system of clearly defined dominances. There was no doubt as to the particular location of each unit in the system of depth planes. 5

Arnheim, here, represents to us a basic difference between the old tradition of the handling of space and the new. Rauschenberg, as 1 have mentioned earlier, was much influenced by the works of the Cubists and it is not at all surprising to find him developing their complex and ambiguous notion"s of space and thus following in this new tradition.

ln relatiim to tradition, again, Rauschenberg occasionally, also, refers to former works by master painters, through the use of reproductions of their paintings in bis combines, such as the reproduction of

Europa and the bull, in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) and the reproduction of Botticelli's Birth of Venus, in Rebus, 1955 (pl. V). Apart from this, he will use reproductions of more obscure, but traditional in style, works such as the reproduction of the painting of dogs, or wol ves, in

Curfew, 1958 (pl. VIII). He also uses pieces of comic strips, as in 137

Charlene, 1954 (pl. 1) and Rebus, 1955 (pl. V), which are drawn from elements of the new tradition of Pop culture of the modern everyday life. Newspaper pictures and lettering, as found in State, 1958 (pl VU) and Broadcast, 1959 (pl. XIV) are par~ of the same tradition. Again,

Many of Rauschenberg's works begin on the traditionally fiat canvas, even though they sometimes sprout appendages, which make them into combines, before they are finished.

The interest that Ginsberg and Rauschenberg show in tradition is obvious in their preoccupation with spontaneity, that important aspect of Dadaistic poetry and painting which Ginsberg and Rauschenberg have developed in their own ways. This is an attitude which Tristan

Tzara recommended in his Dada Painters and Poets. He says there:

IIWhat we want now is spontaneity. Not because it is better or more beautiful than anything else. But because everything that issues freely from ourselves, without the intervention of speculative ideas, represents 6 us . . . 11 Ginsberg does intend thus to represent himself and his emotions. Although Rauschenberg claims that he does not want to express his personality ,his 'works, none the less, are unmistakably his, and part of their distincti veness must spring from some inner source which is persona!. In "Notes from Howl and Other Poemsll Ginsberg says: III suddenly turned aside in San Francisco, unemployment com- pensation leisure to follow my romantic inspiration-Hebraic-Melvillian bardic breath. 1I7 Here we have Ginsberg confessing to the following of three traditions-the Romantic, Hebrew works, and Melville's works 138

which Ginsberg considers are in the "bardic Il tradition, and therefore have an impersonal quality. The tradition of "romantic inspiration Il is a kind of qualified spontaneity which is spoken of by Wordsworth in the

Il Preface to the Second Edition of the Lyrical Ballads. Il He says there:

"for all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. 118 The interest in spontaneity is tied up with th"e effort to represent immediacy. William Burroughs writes that, "there is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of ... Lthe writer's.7 senses at the moment of writing. 1 am a recording instrument. .. 1 do 9 not presume to impose 'story' 'plot' 'continuity. trt

There is considerable ambivalence in Ginsberg's and Rauschen- berg's statements concerning how much spontaneity operates in the creation of their works. Ginsberg describes, on the jacket of the

Atlantic record number 4001, dated March 20, 1966, how he wrote Kaddish. Here we see that spontaneity concludes with thoughtful re working: "First writing on Kaddish was in Paris '58, several pages of part IV which set forth a new variation on the litany form used earlier in Howl-a graduated lengthening of the response lines, so that the

Howl litany looks like a big pyramid on the page. Kaddish IV looks like three little pyramids sitting one on top of another, plus an upside down pyramid mlrror-reflected at the bottom of the series. Il Here we 139 see Ginsberg involved with the actual visual pattern that the typed words make on the page. (This relates to Rauschenberg's preoccupation with the visual.) The appearance of the type-written page is related to· the emotional quality that these words arouse. Ginsberg goes on: "Consid- ered as breath, it me ans the vocal reader has to build up the feeling- utterance three times to a climax, and then, as coda, diminish the utterance to shorter and shorter sob." Following this he describes his process of working on this part of Kaddis;h, which certainly belies some of his protests concerning something very like spontaneity which have been recorded elsewhere (in The Paris Review, page 313). He says further on on the jacket cover of the Atlantic record of Kaddish:

"The first mess of composition had all the se elements [the pyramida1J,

1 later cut it down to look neat and exact." Later in this same statement he discusses how he experienced reading the Mourner's Kaddish and listening to Ray Charles' records, as he describes in Part 1 of

Kaddish. He also cOlÛesses here to taking marijuana and meta amphetamine that night. Then telling of the actual writing, he says, he returned home, and: "I wrote on several pages till l'd reached a climax, covering fragmentary recollections of key scenes with my mother ending with a death-prayer imitating the rhythms of the Hebrew

Kaddish....lMagnificent, mourned no more, etc. III Here he acknowledges two of the traditions from which Kaddish springs-the blues of Ray

Charles, and the Hebrew Mourner's Kaddish itself, part of which he actua1ly uses in the Hebrew later on in Kaddish. Continuing he says: 140

"But then 1 realized that 1 hadn't go ne back and told the whole family- self-tale-my own one-and-only eternal child-youth memories which no one else could know-in all its eccentric detail. 1 realized that it would seem odd to others, but family odd, that is to say familiar- everybody has crazy cousins and aunts and brothers." Here he relates his work to all of us and declares that there is much of the everyday that concerns all of us in Kaddish. He continues:

80 1 started over again into narrative-"this is release of particularsfl-and went back chronologically, sketching in broken paragraphs all the first recollections that rose in my heart-details Pd thought of once, twice often before-embarrassing scenes Pd ha1f amnesiaized-hackle rising scenes of the long black beard around the vagina Images that were central to my own existence such as the mass of scars on my mother's plump belly-all archetypes. Possibly subjective archetypes, but archetype is archetype, and properly articulated subjective archetype is universal.

Jung would probably not allow the word subjective in relation to archetype but Ginsberg seems to mean here that his personal experiences

(or anyone else's) are related to other people's personal experiences through a common denominator of racial experience and common personal experiences, producing the possibility of the representation of archetypal form and meaning. Thus autobiography in Ginsberg be- cornes common to all. In The Cottonwood Review Ginsberg, relating his experiences to others, says: ''l'm interested like in producing the contents of my consciousness in a succinct accurate way, trusting that the contents of my consciousness, as the contents of anybody else's 141 consciousness, have symmetry and form and rhythm and structure and-Iack-of-Iogic like anybody else's, like the whole universe, in facto ,,10 The writing of Kaddish was partly the result of this spontaneous creative urge. He continues on the record jacket discussing the composition of Kaddish:

1 sat at same desk from six AM Saturday to ten PM Sunday night writing on without moving my mind from theme except for trips to the bathroom, cups of coffee and boiled egg handed into my room by Peter Orlovsky (Peter the nurse watching over his beloved madman) and a few dexadrine tablets to renew impulse. After the twentieth hour attention wandered the writing became more diffuse, dissociations more difficult to cohere, the unworldly messianic spurts more awkward, but 1 persevered till completing the chronological task. 1 got the last detail recorded including my mother's death telegram. 1 could go back later and clean it up.

Here he is confessing that, though spontaneity carried through the first spurt, there was more labour later on of a more orderly and exacting kind. He describes his mingled feelings of satisfaction and discourage- ment on first looking at the Narrative of which he says: IIthe continuous impulse was there messy as it was •••• " Then he describes how he arrived at Part V: "Standing on a streetcorner one dusk another variation of the litany form came to me-alternation of Lord Lord and Caw

Caw ending with a line of pure Lord Lord Lord Caw Caw Caw-pure emoti ve sound-and 1 went home and filled in that form with associational data. " The poem was typed, he says, after a year away, in which he took a trip to South America: III had to cut down and stitch together the last sections of the narrative-didn't have to change the expression, 142

but did have to fit it together where it lapsed into abstract bathos or

got mixed in time or changed track too often." Ginsberg also gives

a summary in The Paris Review interview of the experience of writing

Kaddish and his reasons for using drugs, as weIl as the spontaneous method of writing at least part of Kaddish. He says:

Drugs were useful for exploring perception, sense perception, and exploring different possibilities and modes of consciousness, and eJEPloring the different versions of petites sensations L Cézanne's expressioI.!l, and useful then for composing, sometimes, while under the influence. . .. "Kaddish" was written with amphetamine injections. An insertion of amphetamine plus a little bit of morphine, plus some Dexedrine later on to keep me going, because it was all in one long sitting. From a Saturday morn to a Sunday night. The amphetamine gi ves a peculiar metaphysical tinge to things, also. Space-outs. It doesn't interfere too much there because 1 wasn't habituated to' it, 1 was just taking it that one weekend. It didn't interfere too much with the emotional charge that cornes through. 11

Ginsberg has shown himself against using the ',l.TOrd spontaneity in relation to his work. In The Cottonwood Review he says:

It's not really even spontaneous; 1 either write it and it's there, as a record of that passage of time, a cut of time-and that's something 1 learned from Kerouac, who is a genius at that, and like unalter able advanced into an area where what he has written he has written, and therefore how can he change it? ln other words, if 1 walk down the street, how can 1 go back and retrace my steps and say 1 walked a different way? so it's trying to cover the traces of mental activity or covy~ what seems to be embarras sing or too revealing.

This seems to declare that he simply writes the way he is but it also 143 declares that he does not make changes which we have seen that he has admitted to on the jacket of the record, of 1966, which was issued a year earlier than The Cottonwood Review article.

Some of Rauschenberg's ide as relate to spontaneity also. He says: "l'm opposed to the whole idea of conception-execution-of getting an idea of a picture and then carrying it out. l've always felt as though, whatever l've done, the method was always closer to a collaboration with materials than to any kind of conscious manipulation and control." 13 The unconscious is what he depends on, he says, for his creativity. He does, however, think about and work over paintings and combines. For instance, it took him three years to achieve Odalisl; 1955-58 (pl. IX). Aiso there is the fact that he has created two works almost exactly alike, Factum 1, 1957 and Factum.!!, 1957, in order to undo the fable of the Abstract

Expressionists of the necessity, in order to exploit vital forces, of spontaneous action. This seems to belie activity in the direction of spontaneity and chance on Rauschenberg's part. Yet when he is actually working on a painting, there is much of the spontaneous and dependence on chance in his actions. Calvin Tomkins describes Rauschenberg at work:

After a moment or so he got up and crossed the room and stood in front of the painting with the signpost and contemplated it for some time. There was something about it that bothered him. He had put in three red and-white stop signs near the bottom of the canvas, and they were somehow refusing to work with the other images. He picked up a rag, poured turpentine over it, and started to scrub away at an area of red near the 144

.Ô

centre. A few drops of turpentine dribbled. down th~ canvas, passing through one of the four bird-in-flight images. Rauschenberg shifted his attention to the bird, rubbing it with the rag until it was blurred and indis tinct. 111

This is a clear indication of his spontaneous collaboration with materials

and accidents that occur, and, thus, his dependence, at least some of

the time, on chance.

Allan Kaprow discusses the use of chance in his book Assemblage,

Environments ~ Happenings. For him it does not mean absalute chance.

There is always the choice of the artist that operates in the field of

chance and which guides the eventual outcome. As he says:

using Chance is a personal act no matter how much it attempts to be otherwise, for a priori, it is used, not simply given in to. Used responsibly, that is to say, with the artist acting as censor when an impos sible or impractical instruction turns up and, above all, staying awake ta what is taking place, the results can often be astonishing. Used stupidly, Chance will reduce to another confining academism. After all, the shock of playing around with chance operations wears off, they seem much like using an electronic computor: the answers are always dependent on what information and biases are fed into the system in the first place. 15

Rauschenberg has denied that he uses chance: nI don't believe in chance

any more than 1 believe in anything else. . •. With me, it's much more a matter of just accepting whatever happens, accepting aIl these ele-

ments from the outside and then trying to work with them in a sort of free collaboration. That' s what makes painting an- adventure, which is what it is for me ... 16 However, Rauschenberg's relation ta the work 145 which he is in the process of painting seems to involve chance (and this chance, according to Kaprow, involves the personal), for instance, the moment when the paint drips accidentally from the red onto the birds causing Rauschenberg to turn his attention to them.

Ginsberg, in discussing spontaneity, or something very like it, says that in Howl and in Kaddish: "1 wasn't really working with a classi cal unit, 1 was working with my own neural impulses and writing im pulses. See, the difference is between someone sitting down to write a poem in a definite preconceived metrical pattern and filling in that pattern, and someone working with his physiological movements and arriving at the pattern, and perhaps even arri ving at a pattern which might even have a name, or might even have a classical usage, but arri ving at it organically rather th~ synthetically. . .. " 17 Ginsberg here indicates that traditional forms-a "pattern" which "might even have a classical usage"-are spontaneously achieved, also. This ties in with his earlier declaration on the jacket of the Atlantic record that he depends on some sort of archetypal forms and expressions, and that these archetypes create the possibility of communicating with others.

Marshall McLuhan would say that the electronic computer (which Kaprow speaks of) is related to the organic "neural impulses," that Ginsberg talks of here, for McLuhan has called electric circuitry "an extension of the central nervous system." 18 Kaprow declares that one can only get out .of the computer what has been programmed in. Ginsberg can only get out of his "neural impulses" those experiences that have been 146

"programmed in" as he proves in Kaddish by presenting his own experi

ences of his mother.

Although Ginsberg denies spontaneity and Rauschenberg denies

chance, they both indicate or claim the opposite as well, that is, that

their works are founded on spontaneity and chance (the sort of chance

that Kaprow speaks of), and, at least in their original forms, their

works seem to have been produced by both qualified spontaneity and

qualified chance if we pay attention to what Ginsberg says of the way

that he works (his arri ving at the "Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw"

expression was through chance) and what Calvin Tomkins observes of

the way that Rauschenberg paints. The reality seems to be that spon .. taneity and chance are at work first in their creations and that a more

thoughtful re-evaluation (which qualifies the spontaneity and Chance)

.brings changes in their works after the first spontaneous-and-chance

created urges have worn off.

Ginsberg describes, in "Notes from Howl and Other Poems,"

his use of the short line, that he employs in Empty Mirror, that

relates to Rauschenberg's use of the short brush stroke: "By 1955 1 wrote poetry adapted from prose seeds, journals L which brings in the confessional and autobiographical aspect of his writings], scratchings,

arranged by phrasing or breath groups into Uttle short-Une patterns

according to ideas of measure of American speech l'd picked up from

W. C. Williams' imagist preoccupations. ,,19 Many of the early poems 147

in Empty Mirror have the short Une that Ginsberg speaks of here.

Then, in 1956, in Howl, Ginsberg used a longer Une. This develop

ment relates to the development of Rauschenberg' s brush stroke. The

relation of brush stroke to breath and the resultant Une occurs from

the fact that both the arm movement, controlling the brush stroke which

leaves a mark on the canvas, and the breath, controlling the Unes of

words, are physiologically based. The breath results in words which

form a Une of meaning or an image. The various breaths form various

Unes which make up the narrative or expression and contain the images.

The marks on the canvas, from the arm movement controlling the brush

stroke, also, when combined, form images-always abstract in the case

of Rauschenberg's paintings, for the concrete images are made up of

.]Y photographs, reproductions of other artists' paintings, and so on. Gins-

berg's images, formed from his breath Une, are either abstract or

concrete. In earUer paintings, such as Charlene, 1954 (pl. 1), Rauschen-

berg' s brush stroke is short and less free than in some later paintings

such as Broadcast·, 1.959 (pl. XIV) or even Bed, 1955 (pl. IV). Broad-

cast' s large, free brush strokes were especially designed to relate to

the sound of radios that were incorporated inta the painting. In some

later paintings, such as Canyon, 1959 (pl. XU), there is a combination

of the smaller brush strokes with the free larger brush strokes. The

longer, freer brush stroke relates to Ginsberg's long "breath." They

both stem from the physiological; the free brush stroke from the swing

of the arm and the "breath" deep from the lungs. When Ginsberg writes 148

Kaddish he has changed again. This time, as he says: "the Proem to

Kaddish (NY 1959 work)-finally, free composition, the long line break

ing up within itself into short staccato breath units-natations of one

spontaneous phrase after another linked within the line by dàshes mostly:

the long line now perhaps a variable stanzaic unit, measuring groups of

related ideas, marking them-a method of notation. Ending with a hymn

in rhythm similar to the synagogue death lament. Passing into dactyllic?

says Williams? Perhaps not: at least the ear hears itself in Promethian

natural measure, not in mechanical count of accent. 1I20 The feeling is

still large and generous, not truncated as it was in the earlier poems,

and more controlled perhaps than in Howl. Certainly the long line .. fragmented into short phrases expresses very well the emotionally frag mented and ambivalent attitude that Ginsberg holds, until the end of

Kaddish, in relation to his experiences of his mother.

Because of the basic spontaneity in the origin of the works of

both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, they find much of their subject matter

in autobiography. In Ginsberg this turns into confessional poetry.

Rauschenberg does not so much speak of his pri vate life and troubles

as use materials which emanate from that pri vate life because these

are the materials close st to hand and, he feels, most fitting for his

work, rather than something new. 80 Rauschenberg will use old pieces

of clothing, such as the tie in Gin for Apollo, 1959 (pl. X), or an old

umbrella, as in Charlene, 1954 (pl. 1), or what appear to be family photographs, as in 8mall Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI) or photographs of friends, 149 as Merce Cunningham, in Trophy l, 1959 (pl. XI). These, though unintentionally, confess his surroundings and his way of life. As Andrew

Forge remarks: "the collage material itself has a domestic and retrospec tive ring. Tattered fabrics, brocades and papers evoke the tangled detritus of generations. ,,21 Ginsberg declares that: "everything 1 write is in one way or another autobiographical or present consciousness at the time of writing. ,,22 Forge quotes Rauschenberg as saying in relation to the autobiographical, that painting is "a vehicle that will report what you did and what happened to you. ,,23 Thomas Merrill suggests that,

"the classical notion of the poet as maker seems -(luite beside the point here; what is suggested, rather, is the concept of the poet as diarist, an idea no doubt directly attributable to Walt Whitman. ,,24

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg take different stances in relation to the idea that their works are autobiographical. Rauschenberg sometimes denies this, he is against his personal taste having anything to do with his work. He says, III don't want a painting to be just an expression of my personality. 1 feel it ought to be better ~an that .... ,,25 Gins berg would agree with the statement that his work was better th an , and more than just an expression of, his personality. Although Rauschenberg often insists on this impersonal attitude, as his works have grown in self-confidence over the years they have' become more his works than ever, that is, that it is easier than ever to tell a Rauschenberg from other paintings, so that, although he declares for the impersonal, his paintings are actually very personal indeed. They are not at all inter- 150

changeable with the works of others, as are sorne of Picasoo's and Braque's

early (ca. 1911) Cubist paintings, which were so like one another.

Ginsberg's work, on the other hand, is self-confessed1y steeped

in the personal. He says that, "it's the ability to commit to writing,

to write, ~he same way that you ... are. . .. the self-confidence of

someone who knows that he's really alive, and that his existence is just

as good as any other subj ect matter." 26 His interest in IIbardic breath"

seems, in sorne ways, to deny this affirmation of the personal, so that

we have Rauschenberg, who usually denies that his work is personal

and yet whose work is very personal indeed, and Ginsberg, who empha

sizes the personal aspect of his poetry and yet at the same time refers

to his line as a IIbardic breath" and' his meaning and form as archetypal.

The two artists seem to start from opposite poles, in the question of t.he personal, and to meet in the middle, between the two points, where their likeness can best be seen.

For both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, autobiography turns into

communication which, as Kenneth Rexroth says, is the basis of art's

reason for being: IIthe problem of poetry is the problem of communica 27 tion itself. n Kenneth Rexroth goes on to say, in the same essay, that,

"no avant garde American poet accepts the I.A. Richards-Valéry thesis that a poem is an end in itself, an anonymous machine for providing aesthetic experience. An believe in poetry as communication, statement from one person to another. ,,28 Ginsberg sometimes makes statements 151

which appear to be completely self-centered, such as when the Inter-

viewer from The Cottonwood Review asked him why he wrote and he

said, "because Pm lonesome. 1 want to get laid. ,,29 Again he says,

in ,Kaddish, "wrote hymns to the mad-Work of the merciful Lord of

Poetry" (p. 31). On the other hand he also makes statements that sug-

gest that he is interested in communication as well as a sort of confes-

sional self,-psychoanalysis:

the thing 1 understood from Blake was that it was possible to transmit a message through time which could reach the enlightened, that poetry had a definite effect, it wasn't just pretty, or just beautiful, as 1 had understood pretty beauty before-it was something basic to human existance, or it reached something, it reached the bottom of human existence. But anyway the impression 1 got was that it was like a kind of time machine thr('~~Jh which he could transmit, Blake ~, could transmit, his basic consciousness and communi cate it to somebody else after he was dead-in other words, build a time machine. 30

At first we may think that "the enlightenedn are a very esoteric group

but in the next breath he reassures us that nit was something basic to

human existence" that Blake wanted to communicate, as does Ginsberg.

Rauschenberg denies, in places, that he is trying to communicate.

Instead he declares that he is just playing agame with himself. He says:

nI do what 1 do because 1 want to, because painting is the best way l've

found to get along with myself. And it's always the moment of doing it

that counts. When a painting is finished it's already something l've done,

no longer something l'm doing, and it's not so interesting any more. 1

think 1 can keep on playing this game indefinitely. And it is a game- 152

everything 1 do seems to have sorne of that in it. The point is 1 just

paint in order to learn something new about painting, and everything 1

learn always resolves itself into two or three pictures. ,,31 Again he

says, "1 certainly didn't have any interest in trying to improve the world through paintings. ,,32 And again, "1 dontt want to reform the

world, 1 just want to live in it. ,,33 However, Rauschenberg sometimes

seems to contradict these statements, or perhaps the following remark

is just another aspect of the total picture. He says that he wants to

make people restless: "if you don't change your mind about something when you confront a picture you've not seen before, either you're a stubborn fool or the.painting is not very good. ,,34 Ginsberg's remark

relating to this is: "1 have no formal ideology at all; the se ideas 1 present to people to make them think about themselves. ,,35 Most often

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg show, and declare, that it is to their com mon fellow man that they address themsel ves and it is by him that they wish to be heard and seen.

There are traditional aspects in the works of both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, such as reference to other art works or traditional works such as the Bible and the blues, reference to everyday traditions such as comic strips and newspapers. There are also references to tradition through elements of structure-such as some poetic phrasing, in Ginsberg, alliteration, rhyme, consonance and assonance. There is traditional balance to be found in Rauschenberg' s work as well as space in a new tradition. Rauschenberg depends on a brush stroke that he 153

inherits from Abstract Expressionism and the Romantics. Both Gins-

.. " berg and Rauschenberg depend on spontaneity and chance, to sorne

extent, and make declarations relating to this. However, they also

declare, or show, that their works depend on a good deal of thoughtful

rearrangement after the first intuitive, creative urges are spent. The

feeling that these works present, and the forms that they take, develop

from the tradition of the purely abstract or the more epigrammatic

works, such as Abstract Expressionism and Imagism. However, Gins-

berg's and Rauschenberg's works de al , in an extensive and intensive

way, with images relating to the ultimate depths' of material and spiritual

human existence, rather than purely abstract qualities of the spiritual

and emotional that Abstract Expressionism deals with, or the psycho-

logical experiences such as those that are presented by Op Art, or the

more abbreviated views presented in Imagistic poetry. There is mystery

and graphic-often narrative-delineation, involvement in life and death,

human power and weakness, to be found in Ginsberg's Kaddish and

Rauschenberg' s works of about the same periode Through manipulation

of images and spatial elements we are led to the consideration of the

basics of our existence in works that do not deny traditions but use

them and develop from them in original ways. CHAPTER vu

CONCLUSION

Ginsberg' s Kaddish, in its interpretation of the life around us, sheds new light on that life as it is expressed in Rauschenberg's com bines of about the same period. The combines perform the same service for the poetry, allowing us to see our world interpreted through very different media but resulting, at last, in similar expressions of those realities that exist around us and that wait for the poets, and the painters, and other artists to translate them into living form-through our interpretations-and eternal form-in relation to the people who will read and see them in the future. The poetry and the combines, inspired by the world around us and responding to this life, when taken together make up a more complete picture of our environment.

The messages that the poetry and the combines carry are mes sages about a common world, an everyday world that is similar for most of us. They reinforce each other's statements by using forms and meanings which have analogies with each other, that can be pointed out by anyone who is aware of these forms in the two media. They are both pressing home the point that life is made up of numbers of acti vities that exist only in relation to one another when the mind makes that

154 155 relation. Ginsberg and Rauschenberg are helping us to do this with their works which interpret this lack of continuity. in structures that encourage us to make connections. We must interpret the incidents and the environments, the meanings, of our lives through works such as these if we are to live intelligently and in a ci vilized way as mature human beings.

These two artists combine simple and complex images in space/ time to make sensible form of the everyday environment. Sorne of the images that Ginsberg and Rauschenberg use are concrete and display the artists' interest in things; Ginsberg and Rauschenberg present these images rather than tell about them. Others are abstract, such as the concepts that Ginsberg uses and the analogous abstract brush strokes and materials that Rauschenberg uses. Usually we find these two sorts of images employed together in Ginsberg' s and Rauschenberg' s works. The images presented in these works are sometimes contradictory. Many sides of life and its opposite, death, are presented, as weIl as cont:radtctionsin many smaller details. This serves, in both artists' works, to give the many-sided view which is so essential to a true revelation of the life that is ours. When we see Rauschenberg presenting contradictory or unrelated images we obtain a clearer view .. ' of the same thing as it is presented in Kaddish.

Similarities in structure and meaning in Ginsberg' s Kaddish and

Rauschenberg's combines of about the same period are many. They 156 both use several different kinds of space/time "gaps." Their works encourage the reader/ spectator to participate. Images in both types of work are sometimes akin to epiphoric metaphor and sometimes to a more diaphoric type of metaphor. The space/time "gaps" help to create a kind of parataxis in the works. Ginsberg's manners of delivery and

Rauschenberg's different kinds of materials (i. e., their manners of presentation) have analogies. They both help to create a real world in the art works instead of an imitation of the real world. Different viewPoints· . are expressed by both artists through differences in scale and differences in sense reception, or the images which are recei ved through the various senses. Both artists take the forms of their works from the content or meanings that they wish to express. These mean ings and that content are of the common, everyday world that exists around us. Ginsberg uses much colloquial speech which creates the effect of immediacy necessary to this type of reality. Rauschenberg presents real materials besides paint, and real stuffed animals. Both artists use elements of the everyday. These sometimes prove shocking, and often their works lack colour. As well, the two artists mix elements of the bizarre and the exotic with the everyday which leads to elements of humour appearing in their works. Poverty is expressed by both.

Details in the poetry and in the combines can stand on their own as well as being capable of incorporation into the body of the work and serving there to enlarge the experience. Some of the images that the two artists present are contradictory, which shows the aspects of the 157

many-sidedness of the life around us portrayed thus in these works.

Some of the images are also cut off from each other, while others are

connected, which helps us to see incidents from our lives as they appear

to the mind, cut off from one another or connected. Sometimes the

diaphoric or unconnected images relate to each other structurally, or

through a third element. Narrative in these works is never in a straight

linear movement. They are thus closer to the experience of life that we

recei ve from memory and expectation. In both artists' works we are,

at first viewing, or reading, led in the direction that the artist indi

cates that we follow. However, after some familiarity with the works,

we are more able to follow a direction, through the works, of our own

choosing. Both artists use traditional elements but often in untraditional

"" ways. For instance, they use repetition and catalogues; the catalogues

are balanced or cumulative. Sometlmes these catalogues are very dense.

The traditions come from the synagogue or former works of art or from

the common, everyday modern life. Spontaneity is an important part of

the creation of these works, and with it chance, but bOth are qualified.

Ginsberg' s f'breatb, If resulting in a Une of poetry, has an analogy to

Rauschenberg's arm movement which results in a brush stroke-a Une

or a shape of paint. Spontaneity of composition results from the fact

that both artists use autobiographical materials in their works. They

both declare for, or their actions show, personal and impersonal quali

ties in their works. This leads us to believe that the works exist

somewhere in the middle between the very personal and the totally 158 impersonal. Lastly, both artists want their works to communicate with others. Some structures in one art help us to see and to under

stand the analogous structures in the other art; some structures in the combines remind us of structures found in the poetry and some struc tures in the poetry remind us of structures found in the combines, and each interprets, through its own medium, the environment.

In their use of space/time "gaps" Ginsberg and Rauschenberg present in similar ways images that are sometimes concrete and some times abstracto These images relate to the narrative which both are interested in using to present their message. This narrative concerns the basics of our existence-life and death. Ginsberg presents his own life with his mad mother, particularizing in the narrative by presenting her actions in this state, . the reactions of her relatives to her condi tion, her eventual death, and its result on Ginsberg. Rauschenberg presents life too, the common life of all of us, depicted in photographs, reproductions of paintings, and so on, which work as narrative as do the pictures in comic strips. This common life we can see in Small

Rebus, 1956, (pl. VI), for example. Here we find ordinary man rUnning, balancing, fighting, smiling, while extraordinary man, -the godlike-is seen in the bull carrying off Europa, and the headless swans. The aristocratic is portrayed in the racehorse beneath his transparent blue cloth, the blue blood represented by the cloth which diminishes the tone contrasts and, thus, the vitality of this photograph. We have here, too, death, in the dead dog shown il!l his last paroxysm, in which he has 159 remained for two thousand years, and the imminent death which awaits the power of the bull. Death, as shown by these photographs, is as real today as it was two thousand years ago. Ginsberg believes that his story of his mad mother is much the same thing that all of us experience, for, as he says on the inside of the record jacket (Atlantic

4001), we all have "crazy cousins and aunts and brothers." These two artists do not deal in the esoteric that lifts them above the average man.

Instead, they take the events of this life and form them into aesthetic wholes that can be understood by everyone. Their art demands reader participation for we must put the images together before we arrive at the meaning of the narrative as a whole. We must work our way through this poem and these combines to achieve a unity that can only be found when the elements of these works mix in the mind of the spectator to gi ve their message to the culture to which they belong.

Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's images act sometimes as epiphoric metaphors. We can find a relation between them or their parts. This relation is hidden, as in true epiphoric metaphor, in Ginsberg's work.

In Rauschenberg's work the connection is overt but has an analogy to the literary form. We find that most of the images in Ginsbe rg are of this epiphoric kind. In Rauschenberg's work, because of his fre quent use of abstract brush strokes and the abstract meanings of materials, other than paint, that he uses, there is often found, too, diaphoric meta phor or something which is analogous to it. Here the meaning is not clear, even when the abstract images are juxtaposed, unless they are 160 juxtaposed with concrete images of photographs or real objects which can return us to the epiphor and we have then a mixture of epiphor and diaphor as we sometimes find it in Ginsberg' s work. A connection is occasionally made between two unrelated images by a third image which relates to them both, often in a curious way.

Because of Ginsberg's and Rauschenberg's use of space/time

"gaps" their works have a structure analogous to parataxis. It is this quality that gives, in both artists' works, the opportunity for the audience to come to conclusions on its own, starting, of course, from the images presented by the artists.

Manners of deli very in Ginsberg are parallel to the kinds of materials that Rauschenberg uses in his works. Both can be considered as manners of presentation. Although the works of both artists are in spired by the real world, they are not imitations of that real world, as Aristotle would have it that all art is. They are that real world itself taken from the normal contexts and reincorporated into new con texts which are just as common, in themselves, though unusual for that particular dialogue or those particular materials. As weIl as dialogue

Ginsberg uses apostrophe, prayer, and narrative, all stemming from the real world. There is the apostrophe of older works of art and the synagogue, prayer of the synagogue, and narrative from magazines or cheap paper back stories of the everyday. Rauschenberg presents to us stuffed animals attached to his canvases, which help us to interpret our 161 world and come directly, themsel ves, from that world. Rauschenberg also uses, in bis combines, drawings and writing from our ordinary world. There are the drawings made by children or unskilled adults

(as weIl as the reproductions of drawings by Old Masters). There is writing produced by children, on scraps of paper, and there is print from actual signs that he has picked up in the street.

We see the world from many different viewpoints in both Gins berg's work and Rauschenberg's. These viewpoints have to do with changes in scale that do not depend on a naturalistic perspective or any logical means of change, or they are changes in the senses throug h which we percei ve the images. Ginsberg depends largely on the visual sense for the communication of his images. Rauschenberg interprets his world mostly through the visual also, although the tactile sense comes an important second-the tactile quality of his animals' haïr and birds' feathers, of the textures of his païnt and different materials.

Ginsberg also brings in all the other senses to a lesser extent, making us aware that we perceive the world in many different ways. Ginsberg's images, portrayed in words but imagined visually, are as clear as the photographs that Rauschenberg uses and are analogous to them. Through words we have as clear a picture of the objects as we have through the photographs and drawings. Words, of course, are only symbols of objects, but photographs too only stand for objects. Emerson would argue that all was symbol, the natural object, too, being a symbol of the greater Gad. 162

Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg take the forms of their work from the meanings which they express. This follows a modern school of thought that originated in the Nineteenth Century and was declared then by Louis Sullivan, the architect, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Horatio

Greenough, sculptor and essayist, as weIl as by Charles OIson in the

Twentieth Century. Aiso these works are inspired by the everyday and the ordinary that exist around us. This was also expressed as an important direction by Emerson and Walt Whitman ..

Ginsberg' s speech is colloquial unless he is shaping his images on forms of prayer or other tradition al aspects of rhetoric. It is col loquial sometimes to an exaggerated degree. This colloquial quality helps the immediacy of the real which he is presenting, for it is the real speech of everyday man that Ginsberg intends to convey just as Wordsworth made an effort in the same direction with his Romantic poetry. Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams tried doing much the same thing to reach an effect of everyday diction. This is one of the ways in which Ginsberg is invol ving himself with the environment around him and using it to further his poetry. Lawrence Alloway sug gests that many artists have attempted to do this in the Twentieth Century by using elements of mass media communications and the every day environment, such as Rauschenberg does with his comic strips or pictures placed in relation to each other to be read something like comic strips, and his objects and mate rials taken from the everyday. Gins berg does the same thing with his dialogue, narrative, and colloquial language, taken from mass media magazines and television shows and 163 the language of the everyday. Both artists present pictures, verbally or visually, of their immediate environment, as Rauschenberg uses photographs of family and friends and Ginsberg uses images and acti vi ties picked from his own life to express certain situations and feelings.

They both are breaking down the barri ers between art and life and are not worried that their works May not be considered as "genuine art. Il

Elements of the everyday that appear in Ginsberg' s and Rauschen berg's work are shock and lack of colour. We see so much bright artificial colour in our everyday li ves that we become numbed to all but the Most exaggerated colour qualities. Rauschenberg and Ginsberg show this quality of numbness to colour. When we see Ginsberg gi ving little place to colour in his work and a 'lack of regard for colour in

Rauschenberg, or an actual attempt to do without tone, too, on Rauschen berg's part, we have an interpretation of the world which shows lack of a vi sual stimulus to which we too have become numbed. Colour never takes an important place in Kaddish. This lack of colour from two angles interprets our lives for us and makes us realize that the world that we live in, though carrying possibilities of colour recognition, has numbed us to the effects of natural colour through the glaring colour that has been used commercially so often that it ceases ta be remark able. Both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg mix the bizarre with the everyday and the exotic with the everyday. They each also display a very good sense of humour. Poverty is a part of the ordinary life around us that is expressed in the works of Ginsberg and Rauschenberg. Kaddish 164

is set in scenes of po verty . Rauschenberg was living in poverty at the

time that he was creating the combines that have been discussed in this

study. The reason that Rauschenberg chose to use old objects in his

combines, instead of new objects that he might have bought, was, prob-

ably, that they were cheaper and more readily available to him. Aiso

they were a part of the world that he knew weIl and he seems very much

at ease with them. He does not think that these old obj ects are ugly

but accepts them as part of his surroundings. It is possible that

Rauschenberg is displayi~g the poverty, which was of his own surround-

ings at the time, through old object s which are a part of the life of

the poor.

Details that appear in both of these artists' works have meaning

when taken by themsel ves. These details are of images which are

either concrete or abstracto The passages formed from simple images,

verbally, can create complex images. Photographs, that are also often

complex images, when they are composed of more than one subject,

are generally able to stand on their own merit. These details have

, meaning when taken by themsel ves. However, the meaning that they

add to, and obtain from, their relation to the rest of the work is more

important for the total picture of life as we live it than that which they

have when they stand alone. The pattern of 'the whole gives the many

sided view which makes up the reality and the unitY of these works.

We can see Ginsberg's images, such as pictures of his mother when

she was young, sitting on the grass "crowned with flowers,''surroundeà 165 by her cbildren before she was ill (p. 29), in relation to another happy family picture presented to us by Rauschenberg, in Small Rebus, 1956

(pl. VI). Other images of life and death in Small Rebus and other combines relate to images that Ginsberg presents of his mother's life and death and of bis own and his relatives lives under the strain of her madness.

Sometimes images, in Ginsberg's work, are completely cut off, by the Une structure, from other images. In other cases they are continued from one Une to another or several images are related in the same line without "gaps" to cut them off from each other. These complex images, too, can have very clear edges, very clear stages of stopping and starting. We see this happening in Rauschenberg's combines, also, when he cuts off one image from the next by leaving the white border on some of his photographs, that of the family group in

Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI), for example, thus effectively separating them from the rest of the work. In other cases Ginsberg will continue the flow of meaning from line to line, or even where there are "gaps" between the images, composed of dashes, the images themselves are fairly related, thus lessening the "gaps" and creating a complex image from the total of the details. When Rauschenberg allows brush strokes to pass over the edges of his photographs, or materials, to obscure sharp edges, he is doing something analogous to Ginsberg's undefined outUne of images. Some of the incidents of our lives are also run one into the other so that where the incidents stop and where they start 166

becorne confused in our minds.

When images seem to have only a diaphoric quality it can some

times be found that they relate to each other structurally even though

their meanings, on the surface, are unrelated. This helps to relate

them to the work as a whole. Meanings that seem unrelated in life,

and separate objects, can be connected in a work of art. Structure is

that which the work of art possesses that our lives do not. Our lives

are amorphous. They are the raw material out of which the art is

created which will help us to sorne sort of form and meaning from and

for the day to day life t hat often seems so confused and meaningless

in itself.

Although both Ginsberg and Rauschenberg employ narrati ve they use this narrative quality not in a straight linear fashion but move their

images forward and backward in time, or up and down on the canvas,

so that the eye and the mind cannot follow in a straight sequential line

but must move with the images from one side to the other, or backward

and forward in time. This is at least true in the first reading and look

ing at the works. In looking at a combine by Rauschenberg, Sma11 Rebus,

1956 (pl. VI), for example, or reading Kaddish, we at first follow the

directions that the artist indicates that we move in. We accept his images as they appear and his time sequences and space "gaps." A

second and third reading, and looking, give us a still clearer picture

as the artist presents it. Then, when we have become a little more 167 familiar with the work, we are able to branch out on our own and to create from the given images relations which the artist perhaps has not thought of. We are not so completely guided by the artist. We are more free to move about as we choose, but Ginsberg and Rauschenberg never encourage us at any time to move directIy along in a sequential manner. This is a development of the philosophy that our lives are not orderly affairs. When we live them we live them sequentially in time but many unrelated events are presented side by side as we move along in life. However, much of our attention is taken up in reliving or looking to the future, and this, memory or expectation, gives events to us in any but a linear sequential fashion. Though we live sequentially in time the mind does not work that way and it is with the portrayal of the activities of the mind that much of Twentieth Century art concerns itself. Among such art works are those of Ginsberg and Rauschenberg.

When we see Rauschenberg encouraging us to jump from one side of his work to the other and up and down in it we see more readily that Gins berg also is dealing with a forward and backward movement in time in

Kaddish. His narrative, like Rauschenberg' s, is not linear.

These two artists use the traditional element of repetition though they both use it in untraditional ways. Ginsberg uses repetitions, as in hymns or prayers, which is quite traditional in itself, but he adds a personal note to this when he introduces unconventional gradations of meanings following repeated' words or phrases. Rauschenberg uses repetition in an untraditional way, too. He repeats lines coming from 168 different environments, such as from a reproduction of a painting, or a photograph, or an abstract !ine, in the space of the combine. He also repeats colours on different objects outside of the surface of the canvas. An air of discovering the new in the meaning around us, of seeing things in ways that are different from those ways in which things were seen in the past, and yet related to this, is what is achieved by both of these artists in their use of repetition.

Catalogues are also used by both of these artists. Although more of a literary term than one used in relation to painting, we can see analogies in catalogue types that relate the combines to the poetry.

These catalogues are balanced in most cases in the work of Rauschen- berg where the build-up of photographs, or other images and materials, does not lead to a climax but presents the many facets of life as it is lived around us. In Ginsberg's work these catalogues are not in the older literary tradition of balanced catalogues but tend to be cumulative.

In both artists' works, the catalogues are of both àbstract and concrete images. Some are entirely concrete but more often they are mixed-

Ginsberg's with concepts as weIl as concrete images and Rauschenberg's with abstract brush strokes and materials (which are analogous to Gins- berg's concepts) as weIl as the concrete images displayed in the photographs and so on that he uses. Sometimes both catalogues and repetitions are used together. Catalogues of the objects and concerns of the life around us give us images that strongly assure us that it is really our lives with which these artists are dealing. Dense catalogues help for- 169 ward this feeling for the reality of things in our lives as well as for the reality of concepts. The images sometimes come thick and fast on one another so that we are inundated in both cases-in the poetry and in the combines-with pro of of the world around us, structured in these works but still existing and recognizable as ours.

Tradition plays a part in the works of both of these artists.

Ginsberg uses traditions from literature, the synagogue, and from the everyday, modern life-the narrative form found in magazines and cheap pocket books and dialogue from films and television shows. Rauschen berg also uses traditions from painting as well as from the everyday modern life-comic strips, magazine reproductions, newspapers, signs, children's drawings, and so on. Traditions are part of all our lives, whether we recognize them or not. There are traditional ways of seeing and doing things that have been changing through the ages and yet can still be. traced pretty far back in time. By using traditions from the same sources, such as from the modern communications media such as television and film, or traditions from art of the past, Rauschenberg's works make more clear the similar traditions that .Ginsberg uses.

Spontaneity is part of the tradition which these artists inherit from Dadaism and this tradition, with reservations, might be considered to go back to Romanticism, for the Romantics, such as Wordsworth, felt that their inspiration was spontaneous even though their works were often carefully worked over after this first inspiration. Both spontaneity 170

and chance, as used by Ginsberg and Rauschenberg, are also qualified.

They are not just hit or miss. The works of Ginsberg and Rauschen berg recei ve some thoughtful care too. Tristan Tzara, the expounder of Dadaism, suggests that spontaneity best represents ourselves. Gins

berg desires so to represent himself in his work, he declares in more than one place. Rauschenberg does not want this personal statement, he has said, but his works nevertheless seem very personal. They are

a kind of autobiography of the moment of making as weIl as indicating

much about Rauschenberg's life. The obvious spontaneity gives a free dom to the works which they could not gain otherwise. These works

are statements made in the heat of the moment and culled over after ward, by the artist, for their significance. The spontaneity produces

some of the traditional form, possibly' influenced by the training that these artists have had, or, perhaps, as. Ginsberg would like to believe, because that form is inherent in our human minds; in the minds of all of us he declares and not just in those of artist s, though it would appear that the artist has more urge to express this form than others who make no such contribution but can still appreciate, through this common source of structure, the works that Ginsberg and Rauschenberg are producing.

Ginsberg' s breath, which results in a Une of poetry, is related to Rauschenberg's movement of the arm which results in a brush stroke

(a line or shape of paint on the canvas). They both spring from the physiological and leave their imprints on the paper or the canvas in words and phrases, or Unes and shapes. In Kaddish and in Rauschen- 171 berg's combines of this period, the long is combined with the short so that Ginsberg' s images are formed by short phrases often separated by

"gaps" of dashes and related in long Unes. In Rauschenberg's qombines of around 1959, such as Canyon, 1959 (pl. XII), he often uses long and short brush strokes combined to form the images on the canvas. The long line and the long brush stroke have a freedom about them which is parUy controlled by the shorter units-the short phrase in the long Une, and the short brush stroke mingled with the long, to form the abstract images.

Spontaneity results parUy from the fact that Ginsberg and

Rauschenberg use autobiographical material in their works. Ginsberg is an avowedly confessional poet. Rauschenberg, though more reluctant to credit anything personal with the creation of his works, still presents much that is personal in them. Examples of these personal elements are the parts of old clothes that he uses in his works, the photographs of family and friends, and the objects that were probably lying about his studio, the old pail and the door, for instance, in Gift for Apollo, 1959

(pl. X). In spite of this obvious personal impulse on Rauschenberg' s part, he declares for impersonality in his works. Ginsberg, though often insisting on the personal quality of his poetry, also declares that he has a Itbardic breath," that his works are in the genre of prophesies, and that the representation of his form and meaning may be archetypal. 172

Both artists declare for communication in their works and as we look at them we realize that this ambition has been fulfilled. They do communicate to those who are willing to look at them with an unpre judiced eye in the light of the environment which surrounds us and the relations that they bear to works that have been created in previous ages.

The scope of this thesis might be broadened, and the thesis supported, by considering the other side of tradition-the Classical.

Ginsberg and Rauschenberg both work in a Romantic tradition but the

Romantic and the Classical traditions have often existed side by side in a culture. Sometimes one seems to take the lead and to be more important for that culture than the other. Today it appears that both traditions claim a following. They seem equally important. An example of more Classical work might be found in John Crowe Ransom's or Allen

Tate' s poetry. For corresponding paintings we might turn to those of the Hard Edge painters such as Ad Reinhardt or Josef Albers. It may be that similarities of form and meaning could be found, in this poetry and this painting in a more Classical tradition as we have found them in the more Romantic works of Ginsberg and Rauschenberg.

Other arts might be included in this inquiry to still further broaden the investigations of this thesis. We might discover that all the arts that exist today -film, poetry, prose, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, drama, and dance have similarities in relation to each 173

other and prove to be either in a Romantic or a Classical tradition.

If we could disco ver this it would gi ve a unity to our perception of the

arts and create an atmosphere in which these arts might more easily

work together, which has been the aspiration of some artists of late.

Under the se circumstances, our total picture of our world would be

more complete. The interrelationships would bring a better understand-

ing of ail the arts and thus of the environment, for the arts, like images,

are better understood within the pattern of the whole that they help to

create than when each one is considered separately.

Another direction of inquiry which would prove more narrow,

but fruitful, nevertheless, would be a discussion of the works of artists

who create in two or more media. A common example of an artist

such as this is the poet/painter, or painter/poet. Michelangelo was a -----painter/poet and so was William Blake. In more recent times we have such artists as Kenneth Patchen who writes poetry and creates paintings,

integrating the two. One of his books which includes integrated poetry

and painting might be considered to disco ver how the poetry and the

painting support each other in meaning and in structure. Again, poets

and painters have long taken an interest in each other's work. The

works of a poet whose poetry has been illustrated by a painter might be

considered to discover what the similarities of structure and meaning

are that they incorporate in their consideration of the one vision.

Another point of departure might be to consider those writers of the Twentieth Century, or an earlier Century, who have written about 174

painting or any of the other arts, and its effects on poetry in regard to structure and meaning. Such an inquiry might consider only English

speaking writers such as Ezra Pound and T.E. Hulme of the Vorticist

movement in England, or the scope might be broadened again to include writers in other languages such as French and German. Such writers

might include Apollinaire and Rainer Maria Rilke among others. If this kind of inquiry were made, conclusions could be drawn as to how much the painting or other arts of the times, and former times, had affected these writers, and the theories that they formed from their associations with such paintings in regard to the paintings themselves, as Apollinaire did with Cubism or the theories that they evolved concerning their own work which related to the paintings. This sort of enquiry can be car ried on with reference to any age. 1 have contained the enquiry of this thesis within a short period of the Twentieth Century and related it to only two artists, because the Twentieth Century affects us today more dramatically and because there has been very Uttle work done on the relationship between the arts of this century. 1 have considered only two artists because it seemed that the point could be made most force fully by considering at first just two artists whose works have very obvious similiarities.

Based on these findings, and other works which consider the problem ,of the relationship between the arts, a course for students might be launched in which the arts we re considered in relation to each other. A good way to accomplish this would be for the students to work 175 r practically in more than one art, and in more than one medium, to create works of their own, the meanings and structures of which they

could consider in relation to each other and to works of other students

as well as to the works of accepted artists. In this way -the students

would begin to comprehend more completely the meaning of the arts in

their totaIity and the relation of the arts to the life around them. Such

an enterprise could be gi ven a historicaI slant by studying art as it

relates to the societies in other periods of history than the modern.

If this were done in relation to the art s of today and our own environ-

ment, a very clear understanding of the world around us, and the place

of human beings in it would be acquired by the students. This idea is

related to John Dewey's project method for children, except that in this

case the students concerned would be older than the children starti ng

with Dewey's projects. Su ch work could be started with students of

twelve years old, that is to say as soon as they were able to form con-

cepts. It could be continued to the second year of university. The

emphasis would be on the reality of the situations around us as inter-

preted through aesthetic forms which gi ve order to the surrounding

environment. An understanding of structures and meanings of different

arts would gi ve students a more complete idea of the ci vilizations that

man has created for himself in the face of, and in cooperation with,

nature. It would lead to a less confused idea of the mechanical and

electricaI world that man has created to live in and aIso of that natural

and organically growing environment which is closer to the production 176

and the life of the arts than is the mechanic~ world, which, in opposi

tion to this life, consists of inert matter often transformed int 0 unlikely

shapes. We must rise above the practical world that we have created

and learn to use it to shorten labour but not to let it interfere with our

enjoyment of the real possibilities of our 'existence which stillspring from man and are gi ven expression through the arts.

The impression that one recei ves, on reading Ginsberg' s Kaddish

and on looking at Rauschenberg's works of about the same period, is that these works interpret the world around us, the meanings, through different media, but in much the same structural way. When we analyze the works, we see that indeed their structures and meanings are similar and spring from similar sources. The environment, as interpreted through the two different minds and sensitivities of Ginsberg and Rauschen berg, and through the different media, is comprehended more completely than when each artist~s work is considered separately. These artists' works stem from the one enormous experience of our being ali ve and attempting to understand oursel ves and our surroundings. Seeing the world interpreted by two or more different arts so similarly, such as those represented by Ginsberg' s and Rauschenberg' s works, gi ves us a wider understanding of that world and a fuller knowledge of what actually makes up the environment. Having seen images shaped through photo graphs, paint, and other materials, we have a clearer picture of the images that Ginsberg is presenting in words. Having experienced the interpretation of details through words to form simple and complex 177

.. images, we perceive more in the simple and complex images, made

up of Many details, of which we May not have been so aware, that

Rauschenberg presents. The separate elements of the Many images in

this poetry and these combines combine to form wholes from which the

meaning springs. When related to each other, they help to translate

the world into something more comprehensible than it would be without

these similar expressions. Our common environment, made comprehen

sible graphically and verbally, by these arts, becomes more completely

a part of our lives, and our experiences are enlarged, through the sup

port that this poetry and these combines gi ve to one another in their

technically separate, but similar, structurally and .meaning-wise,

interpretations of that environment. END NOTES - Chapter 1

Introduction

1 In Defence of Shelley and Other Essays (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936), p. 226.

2 "Literary Criticism through Art and Art Criticism through Literature," JAAC, 6, No. 1 (1947-48), 1-21.

3 Ibid., p. 13.

4 Four stag)es of Renaissance Style (New York: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1955, p. 6.

5 Ibid., p. 7.

6 Theory of Literature, 3rd ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), pp. 134-35.

7 Hatzfeld, p. 21.

8 "Vorticism," in Gaudier-Brzeska, rev. ed. (New York: New Directions Books, 1970), p. 86, n.

9 Kaddish (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1961), p. 33. An quotations from Ginsberg's Kaddish cited in this thesis are from the above edition. Page numbers referring to quotations from that work are placed in brackets in the body of the work following the quotations.

178 179

END NOTES - Chapter il

Space/ Time and Metaphor

1 William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, The ~ Letters (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963), p. 60, n. Concrete poetry has also taken advantage of something of the same idea, although not influenced by Burroughs. Burroughs himself uses something like this technique, that he recommends to Ginsberg, in his "cutups." He says, in The Paris Review (introd. Alfred Kazin !New York: Viking Press, 196V:, p. 153 ), that: "of course when ..Jou tnink of it 'The ~aste Land' was-the first great cutup collage and Lreferring to Dadaism../ Tristan Tzara had done a bit along the same lines." An example of a Burroughs' flcutupll can be seen in Plate XVI.

2 Assemblage, Environments.!. Happenings (n. p. : Abrams, n. d.), p. 208.

3 The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning of flrebus fl as "enigmatic representation of name, word, etc., by pictures etc. suggesting its syllables. fi Rauschenberg does not seem to be using the word in its strictly literal meaning, for his images do not suggest actual syllables but rather a conglomeration of meanings, each one of which might be regarded, in a broad sense, as a syllable of the whole. 4 . Andrew Forge, Rauschenberg (n. p.: Abrams, n. d.), p. 117. Monroe C. Beardsley states, in relation to this, that "just as it takes time to listen to a musical composition, so it takes time to see a painti~ ... Il (Aesthetics {ftew York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1958J, p. 88.) Sergei Eisenstein, earlier in the century, in discussing what he calls a flshooting-script" of Leonardo da Vinci's-a written project for a painting that Leonardo never undertook-states that, "the description is not a chaos but is executed in accordance with features that are characteristic rather of the 'temporal' than of the 'spatial.'" (The Film Sense f}sew York: Harcourt, Brace & World, !nc., 1947J pp.28-29.) Eisenstein continues a little later in the same book: IIhere we see a brilliant example of how, in the apparently static simul taneous 'co-existence' of details in an immobile picture, there has yet been applied exactly the same montage selection, there is exactly the Same ordered succession in the juxtaposition of details, as in those arts that include the time factor." (Eisenstein, p. 30.)

5 Thomas Clark, "Allen Ginsberg," The Paris Review, introd. Alfred Kazin (New York: Viking Press, 1967), p. 297. 180

(End Notes - Chap. fi)

6 Ibid., p. 295.

7 William Knief, "Ginsberg, n The Cottonwood Review, ed. William Knief, 1, No. 2 (1966), n. pag:-

8 The Paris Review, p. 296.

9 Concerning the Spiritual in Art, transe Michael Sadlier et al., rev. ed. (New York: George Wittenborn, Inc., 1947), p. 62.

10 Allen Ginsberg, Allen Ginsberg Reads Kaddish, (New York: Atlantic Recording Company, Atlantic Verbum Series 4001, 1966).

- 11 Metaphor and Reality (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 71-80.

12 Allen Ginsberg (New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1969), p. 48.

13 Ibid., p. 48.

14 Mimesis, transe Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), p. 19.

END NOTES - Chapter m

Varieties in Manners of Presentation and in Viewpoint

1 ,Kaprow, p. 200.

2 Ibid., p. 202. Phillip Wheelwright says that in poetry flit is almost impossible to find good examples of pure diaphor that are not tri vial for diaphor does its best work in combination, not alone." (Wheelwright, p. 80.) That is to say that where there is complete dissociation between images in poetry no meaning can be grasped. 181

(End Notes - Chap.m)

Kaprow would probably argue that these images are, perhaps, only dissociated for us today, and will not be to those who read them in the years to come. This is his stance, at any rate, in regard to music and the materials used in Happenings, as we see from the above statement from page 202 of his book.

3 Ibid., p. 201.

4 The Paris Review, p. 297.

5 "Mountain Plum Blossoms," An Introduction to Haïku, transe Harold G. Henderson (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1958), p. 49.

END NOTES - Chapter IV

Form, Meaning, and Environmental Reality

1 Ginsberg's work is, perhaps, on the whole more emotional than Rauschenberg's. Rauschenberg's photographs are often presented without emotion though they can arouse emotion in the spectator through their subject matter, as in the photograph of the family group in Small Rebus, 1956 (pl. VI). This feeling is fortified by the emotional Abstract Expressionistic brush strokes that Rauschenberg often uses between photographic and other types of images.

2 This belief was uttered in America, even before SulU van' s time, by Horatio Greenough, a sculptor and essayist of note, a man who worked with both words and the visual himself. He wrote that, "instead of forcing the functions of every sort of building into one general form, adopting an outward shape for the sake of the eye or of association, without reference to the inner distribution, let us begin from the heart as a nucleus, and work outwards." (F. O. Matthiessen, "The Organic Principle, Horatio Greeno~h," The American Renaissance [London: Oxford University Press, 1968.../, p. 144.) Elsewhere Matthiessen quotes Greenough as saying that there was an unalterable need for, "the adaption of the forms and magnitude of structures to the climate they are exposed to, and the offices for which they are intended." (Ibid., p. 149.) 182

(End Notes - Chap. IV)

3 Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet, Il in Selected Essays, Leêture,s,and Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. R. E. Spiller (New York: Washington Square Press Inc., 1965), pp. 10-11.

4 Charles OIson, UProjective Verse, Il The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960), p. 387.

5 Matthiessen, pp. 144-45.

6 Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 8.

7 Ibid., p. 25.

8 Tristan Tzara, "Dada Painters and Poets, Il transe R. Motherwell, The Modern Tradition, ed. Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson Jr-:-(New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 599.

9 Art (1914; rpt. Dublin: Grey Arrow Edition, 1961), pp. 36-37.

10 p'rlnClp . 1 es ..2.- f L·t1 erary C rI·t·· ICI sm (N ew y or:k H arcour, t Brace & World, Inc., 1925), pp. 16-17.

Il The Cottonwood Review, n. page

12 Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors (New York: The Viking Press, 1965), p. 236. --

13 "Phenomenon or Generation," A Casebook on the Beat, ed. Thomas Parkinson (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1961):-p. 287-.-

14 "Popular culture and Pop Art, Il Studio International, 178 (July/August, 1969), 17-21.

15 The Paris Review, p. 307.

16 Tonùtins, pp. 193-94. 183

(End Notes - Chap. IV)

17 Kaprow, p. 193.

18 Tomkins, p. 193.

19 "Laughter," trans. Presses Universitaire de France, Comedy, introd. Wylie Sypher (New York: Doubleday Anchor, Inc., 1956), p. 171.

20 Art and Technics (1952; rpt. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960~p~7.

21 .Tomkins, pp. 217-18. Although Rauschenberg speaks of "picturelt here, he has usually titled such works "combines."

22 Ibid., p. 215.

END NOTES - Chapter V

Narrative, Repetition, and

Catalogues Related to Tradition

1 The Paris Review, p. 317.

2 Forge, pp. 141-45.

3 The WeIl Wrought Urn (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc~1947). -

4 Mumford, p. 27.

5 Wheelwright, p. 161.

6 Ginsberg, Atlantic record 4001.

7 David M. Robb and J. J. Garrison, Art in the Western World (New York: Harper, 1942), p. 746. -- -- 184

(End Notes - Chap. V)

8 Monroe Beardsley supports the idea that we are free, when we know the work well, tq. make comparisons and contrasts on our own. . In discussing our relationship to music and painting he says: And though that seeing-a-painting process is not so fully controlled as musical audition, it has some of the same characteristics: contrast, and a cumulative intensity based upon the recall and synthesizing of earlier stages. On the other hand, though the early bars of the music, once past, cannot be gone back to, like a part of the painting Land this proves equally true for such a long poem as Kaddish in which we cannot hope to experience all the parts at once except through memoryJ, yet to one who knows the music well all its parts are available for contemplation and comparison, and the having of them helps to give significance to every part that is heard, the parts-to-come to the parts-gone-by, just as the parts-gone-by to the parts-to-come LBeardsley, p. 8B!. Sergei Eisenstein, in discussing one's movement through a painting suggests that the artist controls the movement of the spectator' seye. 1 agree with this entirely in relation to our first experiences with a work, but it seems to me that Beardsley is closer to the truth of what happens when we have become familiar with the work of art. Eisen stein says, about Leonardo's description of a painting that was never undertaken: flUnquestionably though, Leonardo's exceedingly sequential description fulfills the task not of merely listing the details, but of outlining the trajectory of the future movement of the attention over the surface of the canvasfl (Eisenstein, p. 30).

9 "Projective Verse," Poetry New York No. 3 (1950), rpt. in The New American Poetry, pp. 387 -88.

10 fiA Sort of a Song," Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams (1949; rpt. New York: New Directions Publishing Company, 1963), p. 108. 185

END NOTES - Chapter VI

Traditional Aspects and Autobiography

1 Atlantic record 4001.

2 John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale" VIT. 66-67, English Romantic Writers, ed. David Perkins (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967), p. 1185.

3 Merrill, p. 110.

4 . Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Adonais" LIT. 461, English Romantic Writers, p. 1053.

5 Art and Visual Perception (1954; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), p. 226.

6 The Modern Tradition, p. 599.

7 The New American Poetry, p. 415.

8 English RomanticWriters, p. 321.

9 William Burroughs in The New Writing in the U.S.A., p. 20, as quoted by Merrill, p. 71.

10 The Cotionwood Review, n. pag.

Il The Paris Review, p. 313.

12 The Cottonwood Review, n. pag.

13 Tomkins, p. 204.

14 Ibid., pp. 236-37.

15 Kaprow, p. 181. 186

(End Notes - Chap. VI)

16 Tonùdns, p. 231.

17 The Paris Review, p. 283.

18 Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage (New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1967), p:40. - --

19 The New American Poetry, pp. 414-15.

20 Ibid., p. 417.

21 Forge, p. 20.

22 Richard Kostelanetz, "Ginsberg Makes the World Scene, " New York Times. VI, 11 July, 1965, p. 30.

23 Forge, p. 15.

24 Merrill, p. 43.

25 Tonùdns, p. 204.

26 The Paris Review, p. 289.

27 "Disengagement: the Art of the Beat Generation," New World Writing, No. !!. (New York: The New American Library~957), rpt. in A. Casebook ~ the Beat, p. 188.

28 Ibid., p. 191.

29 The Cottonwood Review, n. pag.

30 The Paris Review, p. 291.

31 Tonùdns, p. 236.

32 Ibid., p. 210. 187

(End Notes - Chap. VI)

33 Ibid., p. 227.

34 Ibid., p. 216.

35 Kostelanetz, p. 27. BIBLIOGRAPHY

List' of Works Consulted

A Casebook on the Beat. Ed. Thomas Parkinson. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1961.

Alloway, Lawrence. "Popular culture and Pop Art," Studio Inter- national, 178 (July/August 1969), 17-22. --

An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashô to Shiki. Trans. Harold G. Henderson. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1958.

Anthology of Concrete Poetry. Ed. Emmett Williams. New York: Something Else Press, Inc., 1967.

Apollinaire, Guillaume. Calligrammes. Paris: Gallimard, 1925.

Arnheim, Rudolf. Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creati ve Eye. 1954; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton:' Princeton University Press, 1953.

Bell, Clive. Art. 1914; rpt. Dublin: Grey Arrow Edition, 1961.

Beardsley, Monroe, C. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Wo rld , Inc., 1958.

Bergson, Henri. fI Laughter ," Comedy. Introd. Wylie Sypher, transe by arrangement with Presses Universitaire de France. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1956.

Brooks, Cleanth. Modern Poetry and the Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.

___-=-~. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1947.

188 189

Burroughs, William, et al. Minutes to Go. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968.

___--::=-=-=-_ and Allen Ginsberg. The ~ Letters. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963.

Cage, John. Silence. Cambridge, Mass.: The M. 1. T. Press, 1969.

Eisenstein, Sergei. The Film Sense. Ed. transe Jay Leyda. 1942; rpt. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1947.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Robert E. Spiller. New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1965.

English Romantic Writers. Ed. David Perkins. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967.

Finch, Christopher. Pop Art: Object and Image. London: Studio Vista, 1968.

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Mœurs de Province. 1857; rpt. Paris: Editions de Cluny, 1943. f Forge, Andrew. Rauschenberg. n. p. : Abrams, n. d.

Francis, W. Nelson. Th~ Structure of American English. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1954.

Frank, Joseph. "Spatial Form in Modern Literature, Il Sewanee Review, 53 (1945), Part l, 221-40; Part II, 433-56; Part m, 643-53. Ginsberg, Allen. Empty Mirror. New York: Totem Press in association with Corinth Books, 1961.

. Howl and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights --""'---:Bo=-o-:"ks, 1956-.-

. Kaddish and Other Poems. San Francisco: City Lights -----:Bo=-o-:"ks, 1961. -

Ginsberg, Louis. Morning in Spring and Other Poems. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1970.

Gross, Ronald. Pop Poems. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. 190

Hatzfeld, Helmut A. "Literary Criticism through Art and Art Criticism through Literature," JAAC, 6, No. 1 (1947-48), 1-21.

Herbert, George. The Selected Poetry of George Herbert. Ed. Joseph H. Summers. Toronto: Signet Classic Poetry Series, 1967.

Jakobson, Roman. "On the Verbal Art of William Blake and Other Poet-Painters, " Linguistic Inquiry. 1, No. 1 (1970), 3-23.

_ Johnson, Ellen H. "The Image Duplicators-Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, and Warhol," Canadian Art, January 1966, pp. 12-19.

Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Trans. Michael Sadleir et al. Rev. ed. New York: George Wittenborn, Inc., 1947.

Kaprow, Allan. Assemblage, Environments, & Happenings. n. p. : Abrams, n. d.

Kirby, Michael. Happenings. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1965 .

. Kostelanetz, Richard. "Ginsberg Makes the World Scene," The New York Times VI~ 11 July, 1965, pp. 23-23, 27 -28, 30, 32-33.

Kramer, Jane. Allen Ginsberg in America. New York: Vintage Books, 1968.

Matthiessen, F.O. The American Renaissance. London: Oxford Uni versity Press, 1968.

McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. New York: Bantam Books, Inc., 1967.

Merrill, Thomas F. Allen Ginsberg. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969.

MUmford, Lewis. Art and Technics. 1952; rpt. New york: Columbia University Press, 1960.

Panofsky, Erwin. Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company ;-1957.

Pop Art. Ed. Lucy Lippard. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966.

Pound, Ezra. Gaudier-Brzeska. Rev. ed. New York: New Directions Books, 1970. 191

Read, Herbert. In Defence of Shelley and Other Essays. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1936.

Richards, 1. A. Principles of Literary Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1925.

Rose, Barbara. American Art since 1900: A Critical History. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967.-

Rosenberg, Harold. The Anxious Object: Art Today and Its Audience. New York: The New American Library, 1964-.- --

Rosenthal, M. L. The New Poets: American and British Poetry since World War II. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Rublowsky, John. Pop Art. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1965.

Swenson, G. R. flRauschenberg Paints a Picture, Il Art News, 62, No. 2 (1963), 44-47, 65-67.

Sypher, Wylie. Four Stages of Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and Literature 1400-1700. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 195r---

Rococo to Cubism in Art and Literature: Transformations in Style, in Art and Literatüre1rom the 18th to the 20th Century. New York: Vintage Books, 1960·.

The Beat Scene. Ed. Elias Wilentz. New York: Corinth Books, Inc., - --1960.

The Cottonwood Review. Ed. William Knief. 1, No. 2 (1966), n. page

The Imagist Poem: Modern Poetry in Miniature: An Anthology of the Finest Imagist Poems. Ed. William Pratt. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1963.

The Modern Tradition: Background of Modern Literature. Eds. Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson Jr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. The New American Arts. Ed. Richard Kostelanetz. New York: Collier - --BookS, 1965:-- .

The New American Poetry. Ed. Donald M. Allen. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1960. 192

The Paris Review: Writers at Work. Third Series. Introd. Alfred Kazin. New York: Viking Press, 1967.

Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride and the Bachelors: The Heretical Courtship in Modern Art. New York: The Viking Press, 1965.

Wasserman, Earl R. The Subtler Language. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1959.

Watts, Alan W. Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1959.

Wellek, René and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature. 3rd ed., New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962.

Wheelwright, Phillip. Metaphor and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana Uni versity Press, 1967.

Whitman, Walt. The Portable Whitman. Introd. Mark Van Doren. New York: The Viking Press, 1945.

Williams, William Carlos. Selected Poems. 1949; rpt. New York: New Directions, 1963. 'J ' "

' ....

' " .. , .

·it.~,",: . ":.:, ,1'~~1;;:" ,l}~.....r;~, , , )/1»:-' ~. ' , .i\.'~>è':-~ii~' r ' ,

'li"• ft..

" ---.1· -- -.~ ,~.~;}J .. "~I .. , 1 " )'

P.,- j"

."";" ...... :.-

,[ .~. . . , ,:PLAD·l ... ;.' cIiARLÈBB, 1954. .... 'of"! > • ...

( - • .' - ; •

•

l-'LA'I'E l CHARL2NE, 1954

.. , •• • .~,

, . " t.' . 1:

-'.r· 1'~J~ "'~~~~~i~:, :~. fi J ('il~~ll!:" ~' '.'~~~';:. ,> ~·:;L ~"" 1. ' , , , ; ?~- , i ":'~'t.,1 - _ . ..:' ,......

! ", ,':: , '

'" ,

... .1 ...... _----

•• 1..

- ',',

• , i

. ,'".,······ , '.~ . •. . .:. .--.1. . -~11 '.~.

PLATE II UNTITLED, 1955 -

} .' ( ··-1· 1 '-\.

'1 ,. ,': '.': \

", .. -.-

',' , : "·1':\'·'·."··"····"""'1 ... ..;~; .,' ." / /. , '

••• :lY ',' •~'"'''''Y''' • _.;.

h ....

.: ,'~ j '1. 1.

',-j.. J~ i,

":Cii,;..'-. ,',' ~.-.-.:'~\.'.' .' . (

( ,.~-'-"--

_.,,

....

. ... _...... __ ... _ .. -_ ... __ ... _._._._. __ ... :::::s-

1 1 ," \

, - .... ,/ /.' . .' --' . , " .. ',. ...

. '. ~ :.'

.:....

J' ."';' .... rY 1 .{..... ~ ." /

. - ' ..•, /' '''''_' 'c ,','

1" . .,.:.'

. .- ....

.) ... .:.; ...... \ ... . . , ., .•

.-" ',.1

. ·f·

. .,. '. _:J

L i .\

. ~... ~ , 1 .. --

, :t-Lh.T~ III nYI\iNaL., , 1-.du~ 5

-.- ... •• ( t:·.. · .': 1· .... ,'( .. , .. , i. ,', '#1.\ ':: - ;'/;:~~,~ ,~<':"~_ •.,_ ••'" ....• '. "":":"~11'~" . . };.' . "'"''''''''''''''''''''';~''' .

.... 1 .

.....

,,',' . ---'-,, ....

....- ..... " ,

.'." .. ,("1 /, ';,1

: .....

,:,;'

J " "

i.'··

'.".1

• f .4 _ • . 'PLlTB· IV BED, "-1955 .

i. \.Ir'i j (.1 .. , .\ .~/ 1 . :.;. 1., ',';' ,',. ! '

,'" 1· ...._~_-:2,.'_"\ , L .1,;

.. ' ....

.;", -,.," .... \

._~._.' :\./' , ,\1>' \ .. .:.. ,' 'f ..

,',' ':"1 l

:'.'

,'.'

- ' ...; ',:,'

•., " . '

\ Il'

....

PLATE IV l)~l.J,.. 1~55 - ...... :...... -... _...... -- .....

\ ", \, :, ~,

....'- .

. \." 1 '·.'·.:L\!..:..r.:~~. - ,,, ,.'.. :.;

....

.' ,.'

~: .. / ,'" 'i', . ., '. '.'

,'"

-'--.. ,

. .(

_.~--

.\ .,

.',

,\ , 1· ...... / -·1 l'" 'Ln /. / .. /. /, .

~,~ :::

'.',

.....

--:->- .. ' _.J",_.\ '. ....

, 1 PLATE V rlEBUS, 195 _.. •• \ ' . '.'. 1 1

("". "

...

l "

_, ("' '. • 1 >:.9 VI ·~/.w.·REBtJS, 195_~·:· ;-. '.. ~ • 1 • ~" •• • ~ ....

.. -':-,\

-'i ~\ ----- . . fI,

\ ' '.... /' .•, .

. ,"

".'

_.. ' 1

PLATE VI SMALL REBUS, 1956

f, , ü , ...•... '"

'. ,:

, " - l

" -.

.' .

.....,. . ~~:~

--- ~------

" "

--J ·.' ....

. -----; .~--...... ,<

., .

. '

.~ . '. , ,

PLATE VII STATE, 1958

! " "

", ~

/ l,

,;.

"." '."

----".--" .-.....!:..!-•.

"""~" .. t"

(, • .. ,:." ..... , .

• 0

_~--;-_, __ ~ ___;~_~ ______o_o _ ...., •

.00

./ .r ____ _

.. ,"

'. '. ,._-:.~:."'~' ·"~".:.. ~~l.; _,_:;:. ;·(1····

.,\",.~' or '.' ""~, .. ,, .•.. 1. , • ~... , '!-..., ~ \0

01. ,. 00 ' 1 i ./

.; ....

.'1"

_.. ::: ... '" .. -

l n

" . r ,-.-.,

(. • . :~, '

,<. •

•. .

-.-/ .-./

1 - • PLATE IX ODALISK, 1955-58 • . ~ 1·

) c -.-

1 Il

1 •.••

1 .• ;~

o .C ' ..

., •. , •

/' '

-~-,- '

, ... iliAl _____ ,,-~,~ ~-..... ~ ...... i'" , -.' ~ _JMII 'l'.:j~. "~"J".~' - '..... , ,.. - , ,.' ~ ,c,.- . ..., .:... .

,.:t'f""" :~ .. ~ 0. " " ,~ ... , -; .-: .•: ...... j( . .,0;,' •~- '- :.t1' .- \ ..... fI:" PLATE X GIFT FOR A~OLLO, 1959

, '

. ',' ::, ., ~..

, -----""""1 'r ,"f~.. 1-, ".'. , ,

··.n. • §

, . ,

",.. ~ : .','

,...

.... ,. o ";

. .. . . " ~" . /.

- .. ..; .

/ l' - •

1 1 •

~_ ...... ,; • 00 • PLATE XI TRO~HY l, 1959

(

• 00 or .

1 •

,. 1 '.1 "~r-~', ,-'" ".

;.'~ ,-,' -- ,1 -=.1

1. ' .

PUB XII '. CAnO., 1969 • - -

, -l' ,.'

... • . " .... f' .

• ~LATE XII CANYON, 1~59 •

.. ' !~'-'"*"K"

l."

._---..~ ",

,A ;-~ ~~,., 'II' .... ' ~I.lf • 1 .. t: -1· • . ::;,fU~:;.. ~l:I'.,:,.. :" MOIOU, '19~9, j·1 ; ,,;;,.. • ... t" A" '. .. ~/ • • '. 'i ' ; ;',. :. ~ ... t.... "•••

" 'J .;.;,'.

,l,. , "', ,.

( \ 'ô ~.'" •

--; .' __~I l'".• ~-.!.. _~ .1,.. ..- l .i.~I 1.10 NO GRi1. n)... , l ~ 5 'd-

; r

... ,---

,----'-, " . _. ; \

. ' 1 1 .. C-

\ ..

;~1 'f';f· :#;::

.~.

y~......

• .,.--J' .':' , ...•.. " ,.. ,. ~\~. '"

~: ; .. " ... , / " ~ i.wJ -,','," .,~ . H""'I... , /'

'_ .. ~ • J

PLATE XIV BROADCAST, 1959

JI • -_._~--

.. _~2!0"-".

~'"' PLATE 'xy P~ôaI.,. lè~o < ( ,-~ '\ . ..) .. ;.

"'".

-11 ..

...... -;.

1 .

(' ••

- XV ~ILGRIM, PLATE 1960 - !. (

",l, (

""1 J

• -\

PUB XVI • /. - •

. .

•- ,

l, ••

PLATE XVI

l" r •