Masthead Logo The Iowa Review Volume 8 Article 33 Issue 2 Spring

1977 Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of "Howl" and "Kaddish" James Breslin

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Recommended Citation Breslin, James. "Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of "Howl" and "Kaddish"." The Iowa Review 8.2 (1977): 82-108. Web. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17077/0021-065X.2207

This Contents is brought to you for free and open access by Iowa Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in The oI wa Review by an authorized administrator of Iowa Research Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. more water of fresh ground rye, knead for about 20 minutes with and 3 small handfuls of salt. Flour hands and board and shape loaves. This should one make 6 loaves of 4-5 pounds. Bake at about 275? for to one-and-a-half hours.

Appendix II

CHARLOTTE'S WAG

? Sid Blum

CRITICISM / JAMES BRESLIN

Allen Ginsberg: The Origins of "Howl" and "Kaddish"

become aware of Allen Most literary people have probably first Ginsberg in self-elected and controversial role as through the media, his public figure a new has over and prophet of age. Ginsberg's public personality changed defiant and histrionic man of the fifties to the years?from the angry young activist of the sixties and the bearded and benign patriarch and political remained one that most seventies?but the personality has literary people of find hard to take seriously. Compare Ginsberg's reception with that 82

University of Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The Iowa Review ® www.jstor.org is a one Norman Mailer, another writer who also public figure and who, as like Ginsberg, wants to replace rational with magical thinking the mode of public discourse. Mailer's public appearances and his confessional writ ings characteristically begin by humiliating but end by promoting himself, and they have been enormously successful: Mailer's talents have been widely exaggerated, especially by academic critics, who already have pro duced several studies of his work. Mailer has succeeded because his theoriz on matters to no matter ing all from the digestive the political system, how or are a bizarre brutal the content, developed by kind of intellectualizing most even it is in literary people respect, when adopted (as Mailer) half as a in the spirit of the put-on. Ginsberg is at least intelligent, lot less brutal, and often a lot more self-aware, but the man who took off his clothes at a in Los Angeles poetry reading, who chanted "Om" during the gassings Grant Park at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and who has a experimented with wide variety of drugs, strikes those manning the liter as a more a to ary armchairs at best figure of fun or, likely, threat western as a his civilization. Ginsberg's role public figure has been part of attempt to reassert romantic as one it the role of the poet prophet; but result of has more been that his genuine literary talents and admirable personal quali ties have been obscured. It is true so the of has been too incon that, far, quality Ginsberg's writing as a sistent for him to rank major poet. Ginsberg writes often, quickly, and, as career too much his his has advanced, apparently without revision; cult some of spontaneity results in unevenness, but it also generates of the real a ex strengths of his writing. A poet like Eliot, carefully turning lifetime's a finished to create the perience into single volume of highly work, helped to write myth (dominant when Ginsberg began ) of the modern artist who, a in a literary revolutionary spite of himself, remained hard-working, disci an plined craftsman. Like many contemporary poets, Ginsberg, avowed seems more even revolutionary, much willing to risk imperfection, failure; an what he hopes to gain is honesty and immediacy of feeling, rather than a the finish of well-wrought work of art. When he is least successful, Gins as berg has drifted into the solipsism of purely private associations, he does or in the drug poems in Kaddish and Reality Sandwiches, he has fallen into of and characteristic of a the predictable patterns thought feeling polemi mo cist, as he does in much of his political poetry. But the really exciting come when he breaks to new orders in ments in reading Ginsberg through the poem and in self-understanding. "Howl" (1956), "Kaddish" (1959), and "Wales "The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express" (1963), Visitation" (1967) some from of some ?all poems of length, all evolving the pressures personal seem me main moments crisis?these poems to to be the such in Ginsberg's career.

83 most to Of these the powerful?and influential?appear be "Howl" and "Kaddish." Several poets have testified to the importance of Ginsberg's early an to poetry in establishing alternative the well-made symbolist poem that was fashionable in the fifties, and his early work does fuse two modes?the were confessional and the visionary?that to become important in the six a case can on ties.1 Not that for Ginsberg only be made historical grounds; both poems, given the intense and concentrated energy of their surrealistic creation a terrors language, their vivid of world of primitive and hallucinatory voice mer brilliance, their striking shifts of and mood, have genuine literary it. For a long time, their explosive poetic energy has been missed, partly a matter because of the distractions of "shocking" language and (drugs, madness, suicide, homosexuality, incest), but mainly because many readers, not ac still sympathetic to the kind of form found in these poems, have cused them of an absence of form. while Moreover, they achieve literary attain a form and public impact, these poems derive from deep, long-stand in stem ing private conflicts Ginsberg?conflicts that ultimately from his a ambivalent attachment to his mother, his difficulties in asserting separate, While is a independent personality. there progression of self-awareness from "Howl" (1956) to "Kaddish" (1959), both works seem to me to ex to pose rather than resolve these conflicts, though they make valiant efforts at such it is to areas resolution. Nevertheless, Ginsberg's ability probe these that of conflict largely explains their innovative energy and powerful ap peal. * <* *

sl messianic intense Allen Ginsberg is mystical and poet with suicidal a would-be artist whose most wishes and persistent self-doubts, spontaneous turn toward of sti spontaneous thoughts characteristically feelings being fled and inhibited?walled and bounded in?and thus toward longings for some death itself. To read the painful, apocalyptic deliverance?ultimately adolescence notebooks and journals that Ginsberg has kept from onwards a man with for but one who re is to encounter grandiose hopes himself, himself for his failures and who tends to assume that lentlessly flaggelates as in all his undertakings will end, just they have ended, disaster.2 Just the Indian reveal how this out published Journals (kept during 1962-63) amply serene is of wardly bard intrigued with failure and death, spending much are his time contemplating the ghats where the Indian dead cremated. and Lawrence Of the Ginsberg of the late fifties early sixties, Ferlinghetti he the word he remembers, "he is the flippy flesh made word / and speaks hears in his flesh / and the word is Death."3 To say all this is not to say manner is on it has that Ginsberg's public false but that, the contrary, been a hard-won. And poems like "Howl" and "Kaddish" have key place in the out of a time in his life when his evolution of his personality, developing 84 creative came into a impulses something like balance with his propensities for self-destruction. As Ginsberg himself tells it?a version of his life we should his career a approach skeptically?the story of literary and in way the real his life story of begin with his removal from New York to San Francisco in 1953. an "Howl" is not?contrary to popular impression?the work of angry man. wrote was young When he the poem, Ginsberg 30; in 1953, when he left family, friends and the established literary culture behind him in the was a East, he 27?being, like his friend Jack Kerouac, romantic wanderer it to sever ties. sees who found difficult family Ginsberg himself the 1953 west as a and of act: "It was like a journey crucial symbolic kind big proph Like I one season ecy, taking off for California. had passed of my life and was start over It was not as it time to all again."4 quite this easy and final, we shall west was a dramatic to loosen the see; but moving attempt parental from his grip?to free himself pressures created by mother's long history of illness as well as his acrimonious psychotic frequently relation with his west in a turn father. Going was, short, away from the threatening images of failure, disintegration, suffocation he associated with home?a gesture to an ward the future, toward life, attempt to start all over again as his own man. it is true that made Yet also Ginsberg this journey half looking back over as in return to his shoulder?just "Howl" he would the experience and emotions of his life in New York in the late forties and in Part III of the I'm with in ever poem ("Carl Solomon, you Rockland.") deny that he had is mistaken to a recreated left. It certainly imagine Ginsberg floating into on a in with San Francisco magic carpet, dressed long robes, flowing hair, a hand cymbals and "San Francisco Poetry Renaissance" banner. The Gins rancorous berg that emerged in "Howl"?Ginsberg the and somewhat seer?must in some sense have been but he was gloomy mystic there, ap at a parently hidden first beneath deferential and conventional exterior. more to a In fact, it would be accurate imagine him arriving in three-but an case. ton suit, striped tie, and attach? Soon after his arrival in San Fran was for a in market he cisco, Ginsberg looking job research, and quickly one. There was no reason he was found shouldn't?since this precisely the kind of work he had been doing back in New York. a Not long after he secured the job, Ginsberg became involved with an woman, with whom he eventually moved into apartment in San Fran Hill district. Life went in this cisco's posh Nob along style for several in a months the fall of 1953-until Ginsberg began seeing therapist at Lang a Dr. to find out ley-Porter Institute, Phillip Hicks, why neither the job nor woman to him. one the seemed satisfy According to Ginsberg, at point in his treatment, the doctor asked,

85 to I "What would you like do? What is your desire, really?" said, "Doctor, I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear, to but I really would like stop working forever?never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now?and do nothing to to but write poetry and have leisure spend the day outdoors and go museums see to someone? and friends. And I'd like keep living with even a maybe man?and explore relationships that way. And cultivate me. a my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in Just literary and quiet city-hermit existence." Then, he said, "Well, why don't you?"5

it In several interviews Ginsberg discusses this encounter, mythologizing start a new As Gins into The Great Breakthrough that allowed him to life. of unconventional berg tells it, the doctor's tolerant acceptance Ginsberg's end his desires encouraged self-acceptance and the of misguided attempts to in "Howl." the please his father?both of which, turn, generated So, story a goes, Ginsberg wrote report showing how his firm could replace him a went on to with computer; they fired him and he unemployment, free a this time he had met enjoy "quiet city-hermit existence." By already a the in Peter Orlofsky, then student living with painter Robert Lavigne North Beach, and Ginsberg's increasing involvement with Orlofsky dis woman was not fol turbed the he living with. The eventual result?again too the with Dr. Hicks?was that left lowing long after episode Ginsberg affluent Nob Hill for downtown Montgomery Street, to live with Orlofsky. And soon after these dramatic shifts in his life he began writing "Howl." account events a Yet Ginsberg's of these sounds suspiciously like fantasy a a he at time of magical cure, and reading of the journals kept the reveals even a that chronology has been transformed bit to promote the myth of at re the Breakthrough.6 Actually, Ginsberg continued to work his market or in search job for three four months after he moved in with Orlofsky and so as at far his journals reveal his mood the time, they suggest he felt de not while pressed, liberated, when he lost his job. Moreover, Ginsberg even strongly implies that his therapy (and the need for it) ended with his on in treat doctor's laying of hands, the journals indicate that he continued as as several the time in which ment, perhaps for long months, including "Howl" was written. Moreover, the lengthy and almost daily entries from late 1954, when he first met Orlofsky, show that Ginsberg entered into this same same relationship with the expectations of salvation and the premoni tions of disaster with which he then launched all his activities. An entry for 1955?written four months after he had started with Orlof April 20, living his mood at the and it was not one of emanci sky?vividly conveys time, pated self-acceptance: 86 Not can I writing enough what say?rapid exchange of events, jobloss, no me peterloss,?isolation, one I love loves no contact, the isolation loss as ?facing of Jack [Kerouac] and Bill [Burroughs] previous loss of contact with L?the myths held for the decade to fill time.7

an "Howl" does affirm its author's capacity to survive agonizing ordeal; yet the is poem charged with equally strong feelings of personal and literary most failure, isolation and, powerfully, loss, the feelings of this journal entry and many others like it. In fact, both "Howl" and "Kaddish" react to in loss precisely the way suggested in the journal?not by acceptance and the working through loss, but by idealizing, mythologizing, the lost object ("the myths held for the decade to fill time"). a more at In addition, careful look what Ginsberg tells of the transaction a one with his psychiatrist suggests different interpretation from the sup plied by Ginsberg himself. In this encounter, he has clearly transferred to as were con onto the doctor, speaking him if he speaking to his father, fessing his intimate feelings about work, about homosexuality, about "vis or ionary" hallucinatory experiences that he (like his mother) had experi his father of all he enced. He knows disapproves this, and disapproves him self of these impulses, but projects such criticism onto the doctor: "I don't to think you're going find this very healthy and clear." He expects to be is denounced, but what he hears what he always wanted to hear from his Permission is father?permission. not, however, the only possible interpre tation of the doctor's "Well, why don't you?"?a remark that could have led to examine Ginsberg his inhibitions and, ultimately, the origins of his wish as we shall es, all yearnings that, see, align him with the mother, against the father. The doctor, Ginsberg revealingly comments, gave him "the au so to to were thority, speak, be myself"?as if this authority external to him.8 men In Young Man Luther, Erik Erickson points out that young in a state as was of "identity diffusion," Ginsberg clearly at this time, often trans form into like a their therapy "something Jacob's struggle with the angel, a is to to wrestling for benediction which lead the patient's conviction that he is an as a seem alive person, and, such, has life before him."9 Ginsberg, a a ingly satisfied with "benediction" rather than fuller exploration of his wishes and fears, temporarily wrestles himself "free" from guilt?but remains the dependent upon authority of the forgiving father for permission to be himself. In this we can see some of the motives for exchange Ginsberg's own role the later adoption of the of tolerant, benign patriarch toward turns men younger people?while he himself continually toward older (from Martin Buber to Swami Shivananada) in search for reassurance that he does to a a own. indeed have the authority be himself, right to life of his 87 It should come as no across surprise that by virtue of moving the country and an in his accom acquiring idealized father figure doctor, Ginsberg had a a plished less than complete break with his past. Both the removal to "safe" distance and the context supportive of therapy probably helped him more to explore, rather than shed, the past, and it was the very insistence of his life as private the material for his poetry that pushed Ginsberg away as a from the predominant idea of the poem impersonal artifact and toward sense the as In of poem confessional outpouring. reality the Ginsberg of the late fifties manifests a to out on an powerful wish strike his own, along with fear of freedom. A asserts equally powerful poem like "Howl" angrily the "real" self of its author, the "angel-headed hipster" persecuted by social and the so with a kind paternal authority, and poem does of tormented exhilara a tion that suggests the release of long-repressed feelings. More cry of pain an to than of anger, "Kaddish," elegy for Ginsberg's mother, also seeks af firm a new and separate life for the poet. Yet for all of the rebelliousness of "Howl" and all the protestations of accepted loss in "Kaddish," both poems view as independent life (in the language of the journal) "isolation" and "loss." Independence and submission, struggling toward the future and being are drawn back into the past: such the conflicts that inform the best of we can see even more Ginsberg's poetry?in ways that clearly by examining the dynamics of his attachments to both his parents. met Louis or heard him read his at one Anyone who has Ginsberg poems with his son a of the joint readings he's given will have encountered short, man a sturdy well into his seventies, with large inquiring eyes and slightly At first he in his frowning, rather oppressed expression. glance seems, poems a a as well as his person, modest and mild man, very likely candidate for a man just that kindly, forgiving father that Ginsberg wished for, whose a to assert in weakness might be reluctance his authority rather than with Yet attitude of mutual which two men holding his sympathy. the respect the now has an truce if display toward each other the quality of uneasy which, is unlikely to break into open hostilities still filled with critical sniping from both sides. At least this is the impression created by Jane Kramer in her in in her a Allen Ginsberg America, especially report of Sunday morning to one conversation in Paterson, prior of their father/son reading perform ances. to Louis inquires if Allen has "some good clothes for the reading twits his son not home scolds him for not night," for being enough, writing in enough when away, denounces the lack of discipline Allen's life and to his fame. Allen poetry, and alludes uneasily son's greater himself, showing more than his father him perhaps discipline credits for, responds with gentle a more one tolerance, even when the issues become little charged. At point, after Allen's friend Maretta announces that her sadhana is hashish, Mr. Ginsberg asks, 88 a "What's with this Maretta? Why can't you bring home nice Jewish girl?" Ginsberg, laughing, threw up his hands. "For the love of God, Louis," a he said, "here for years you've been saying, 'Please, just bring home a now a girl for change,' and that I do, you want Jewish one?" an "You're such experimenter, Allen," Mr. Ginsberg said. "Tibetan Buddhist girl friends. Swamis, Drugs. All this talk from you about pot ?It's so Louis. So ecstatic. soul is outside I see elevating, " My my body. ? ultimate reality.' Mr. Ginsberg frowned. "You know what say? I say, "10 'Allen, take it easy.'

With Louis in his seventies and Allen nearing 40, the father still does not accept the son's style of independence, while the son's experimental style itself seems at as a to a arrived direct challenge the father's authority and test of his love. In this exchange the most sensitive and persistent issues two are between the touched on?family loyalty, drugs, homosexuality, vis ions of ultimate a manner a reality?in that suggests mollifying (here were more through humor) of conflicts that earlier expressed with much acrimony. In John Clellon Holmes' novel of the Beat Generation, Go?a book he he to as accurate as conver says tried make factually possible?the sations seem to between David Stofsky (Ginsberg) and his father repre sent on a the original clashes, ritualistically repeated much later Sunday morning in Paterson.

to When [Stofsky] got home, he announced his father that he had more a "visions," and when this brought forth little than pseudo-literary on was reaction, he appended, reckoning its effect, that he afraid he was same going mad. His father rewarded him with the sort of hys terical outburst that had seized him when, after several weeks of hesi tant an feelers, Stofsky had confessed his homosexuality. The two had was uneasy relationship anyway, at the bottom of which mutual dis were over trust, and when they together they invariably squabbled or as philosophical matters Stofsky's "evil companions of the city" ( his father called them ) .n

at an The Allen Ginsberg Archives Columbia contain incomplete but between and still quite extensive correspondence the father son, dating in to seventies. from Allen's days at Columbia the mid 1940s down the early is over to intricate heated Much of the correspondence given and often and debates. At a time when his still an under political, moral, literary son, was himself as a decadent graduate, self-consciously identifying and ardent as ly reading such advanced modern thinkers Gide, Spengler, Rimbaud, 89 and Baudelaire, Louis advised: "A little of the Greek ideal of moderation no can would do you harm, m'lad";12 and the father's perspective be briefly a a characterized as deliberate cultivation of moderate, well-balanced, prac to a tical approach life, though with decided tilt toward the cautionary in son. in a as his dealings with his Once while, the father explodes. As late 1955, with Allen nearing 30, Louis wrote: "All your vehement, vaporous, move me one vituperations of rebellion not jot. Your attitude is irrespon In a sible?and it stinks."13 much earlier letter, probably written during at ac Ginsberg's second year Columbia, the father proposes the safety of warns son commodation and against precisely those "deviant" routes his was to take up.

Even if normal values are rationalizations as well as abnormal ones, the latter, as normal values qua normal ones, result in a better and safer to a adjustment society and greater integration of the person. Accord ing to your blanket statement, you would bracket the rationalizations a or an insane as of homosexual person satisfactory for society and for the person. The homosexual and the insane person is a menace to him to self and society. Danger and disaster lie that way! Your clever verbal are are solutions incongruous with [the] reality of life. You developed intellectually; but, emotionally, you lag.14

In as in manner is his letters, his poetry, Louis Ginsberg's characteristically are on sententious; but his timeless truths often avowedly based either the or authority of his greater experience in the world appeals to the "safety" a of his position rather than its intrinsic value. The letters show genuine concern a to see son for troublesome son, but it is also easy how his might can at get the impression that the father holds that truth be arrived by re carefully examining both sides of every question, then coming down soundingly in favor of the status quo. The trouble with Allen's undergrad uate literary hero Rimbaud, his father tells him, is that the French poet sought "absolute moral values" rather than "adequate moral values."15 At same on about the time, just after reading Karl Shapiro's Essay Rime, Louis asserted that, of course, modern poets reject the "superstitions in religious mores con faith" and they detect the hypocricies beneath the surface of not to temporary society, BUT they should leap pessimistic conclusions: must they remain "clear-headed" enough (unlike Allen) to reject "dec as well and I adence" opt for "pragmatic values." "Concluding, say, Allen, seen suspend your judgment; walk balanced between the world and the unseen care one; and take of your health!"16 In fact, in the letter warning one against Rimbaud, Louis had pronounced that "must resign himself to or pragmatic values commit suicide."17 90 But was to a the son, who later solve the problem of values by adopting not to "religious faith," only refused suspend his judgment; he asserted radical views, declaring, for instance, all modern civilization corrupt and views a as disintegrating. Such the father dismisses, in key term, "off-bal ance."18 It is clear that each, questioning the other's love, questions the other's sense as of reality and demands that the other "see things I do." A sent to Louis in 1958 is as visionary poem judged "brilliantly myopic."19 In war their long cold political debate beginning in the late fifties, Allen is accused of distorted vision, which makes him too harsh on the United States and too on Soviet Russia. And in their easy ongoing literary argu ments, attitudes of parental caution again clash with adolescent egotism and The man conceives as a rebellion. older of poetry practical craft, gen erated emotion and vision by shaped by individual but designed to effect a immediate commuication with fairly wide audience and hence comfort on resources ably drawing traditional of technique and language. Louis a Ginsberg, steadfast traditionalist after 40 years of modernist experiment, verse likes "neat, / Exact, / Compact? / To file / My style / And pare son as we he can / It bare";20 but the who, shall see, feels only really in acts identify himself that shatter established boundaries (of self, of lit on means are more more erary form), insists poetic that ample, free?and more a on grandiose. In follow-up letter the Shapiro poem, Louis attacks verse as a modernist "willfully obscure," unnecessarily creating "gulf be a tween the poet and the intelligent reader."21 In his view, "the ideal of a to a more poem is that it give general meaning the many and deeper and to an in own complex experience the few," ideal enacted his practice.22 comments on Moreover, the letters frequently offer exchanged poems: Al verses are as as len's earliest often praised, but just often criticized too "knot "inchoate"?in a obscure.23 the is that ty," "impacted," word, Again message son his the should quit pretentious inaccessibility, his literary decadence, and accommodate himself to his audience. "Not bad advice," anyone who has read these poems might conclude, but it no doubt struck the young as are poet philistine old fogeyism. Allen's poems faulted, however, on deeper than stylistic grounds; their "false assumptions" about life are ques as A instance is a tioned well.24 key Louis Ginsberg's reaction to "Howl," in which his son to poem publicly admitted the very hallucinations, drug use, and homosexuality his father had warned him against. Significantly, a to not com Ginsberg sent copy of the poem his father too long after its as a pletion, if the poem, far from being simply pure and naked confession some of Ginsberg's inmost soul, made kind of hostile reference, and per an to the who with a bal haps appeal, " father," responded characteristically anced assessment. 'Howl,' he wrote, "is a wild, volcanic, troubled, extrav agant, turbulent, boisterous, unbridled outpouring, intermingling gems and 91 flashes of picturesque insight with slag and debris of scoriae matter. It a has violence; it has life; it has vitality. In my opinion, it is one-sided neurotic view it not of life; has enough glad, Whitmanian affirmations."25 The poem does have emotional force, vitality, BUT its vision of life is, again, off-balance, sick?"one-sided" and "neurotic" in its angry disillusion ment. In view of the deep, persistent, and often acrimonious conflicts between the two men, it is tempting to read "Moloch," the wrathful child-devouring as an deity of "Howl," angry representation of the father. But to derive a as from the poem picture of the author the essentially innocent victim of is to sadistic, persecutory authorities derive exactly the picture the author would like us to carry from the poem. "Howl" may be an honest confession at of Ginsberg's conscious feelings the time he wrote it, but many of the serve as a poem's rebellious attitudes actually defense against feelings that he is less or to is true able willing admit. It that Louis Ginsberg became the focus for of his son's many resentments, and while many of these griev ances from some really derived other sources, the anger also had genuine in as corres basis reality, did his criticisms of the social system. Even their more en pondence, where conflicts might be in abeyance than in personal a counters, reveals paternal vituperation and ultimatums?e.g., letter sent to Allen in the summer of 1948 which consisted simply of the sentence "Exor cise a reference to erotic to Neal," Ginsberg's attachment Neal Cassady at seems the time26?and the father to have insisted upon the son's successful as completion of college and his becoming, Allen put it, "a fine upstanding completely virile son."27 Moreover, the father often questions not just his a son's judgments but his very mental balance, sensitive issue given his mo ther's history of psychotic illness. as a severe Yet if Allen feared his father judge and angry persecutor, it is a also clear that he felt deep attachment and admiration for Louis Ginsberg, recurrent the origin of the image of the idealized, tender father in his was poetry. It his father, after all, who introduced Ginsberg to poetry and an area in literature, which Louis himself seemed to display real mastery and which his son was to make his own life's work. Moreover, Naomi was a was or even Ginsberg mother who often emotionally physically absent ?or a frighteningly present. As Louis Ginsberg remembers in memoir called "My Son the Poet,"

a shadow of sorrow fell on our In the early years of my marriage, a as family. My wife, Naomi, somehow developed neurosis, which, the a two or years went on, thickened into psychosis. She would spend a or three years in a sanitarium, then I'd take her out for half year a 92 me year. After that, ominous hints of her worsening condition made take her back.

Once, when he had decided to take her back to the hospital, she threatened, then attempted suicide, slashing her wrists in the bathroom.

and came out with at She opened [the door] blood oozing both wrists. were so I to They surface cuts, bandaged them and got her bed. The in their boys stood there, shivering night clothes, panic in their eyes. What traumas, I thought, might sink into them and burrow into their psyches.28

In view of Naomi Ginsberg's illness, apt to make her rigid in her expecta tions and in her is of her son's behavior unpredictable own, it likely that son as a to a her turned to his father refuge, hoping find both point of sta in a it is in bility the family and benign protector. And such yearnings for (and memories of) a tender attachment with a tolerant older male that we a find the beginnings of Ginsberg's later search for kind of maternal father, of the sort he felt he'd found in Dr. Hicks in San Francisco and in such lit mentors as and Blake. "The Father is erary Whitman merciful," Ginsberg ecstatically proclaims in "Transcription of Organ Music"; what he contin is some Christ-like ually seeks mild, accepting, saviour, who will protect him from the terrifying aspects of the mother and offer the tender accept ance that she does not. Seeking salvation from the father (rather than recon to even ciliation with him) inevitably led disappointment, but during the bristly period of his adolescence, Ginsberg clearly courted the older man's love and approval by striving to perform "good works." If Allen could con assessment one as demn his father's of of his short stories "a symptom of the smug normalcy of the bourgeois intellectual attitude," he assured his same was no father in the letter that he longer cutting classes, indeed was a dressing decorously (even wearing conservative black tie) and had to an the most re "started really get education, making of the College by turning unread to the library" all his volumes of Gide and Baudelaire.29 wrote a he was Similarly, when he few years later that postponing his final term at he that he was so in save Columbia, explained doing order to to start a course enough money psychoanalysis, earlier suggested by the me a father himself. "Don't worry about becoming permanent wastrel just as as because I'm trying to 'save my soul' scientifically possible," he wrote.30 to to father his Such yearnings yield the (or surrogate, the psychiatrist) also threaten Ginsberg, however real his attachment and his desire to For basic of the please. Ginsberg's image father, during adolescence and 93 is nor of early manhood, neither that of the powerful foe that the benign a protector, but that of timid, rather withdrawn man, one who, with his to cult of practicality and normality, has himself surrendered external pres sures not too and is thus finally feared because he is powerful, but because save son. he is not strong and certain enough to his The picture of Louis we an Ginsberg get in "Kaddish" is that of introverted, neglectful man, frightened, worried, and humiliated by his wife's paranoid hallucinations can but whose attention, it seems, only be caught by such apocalyptic means. In this view, mother and son are linked as victims of the father's is one weakness and neglect; the final impression of the father of ineffect uality, inconsequence: Naomi Ginsberg, the psychotic mother rather than as muse. the poet-father, is celebrated her son's Moreover, Louis Ginsberg was a literary intellectual and writer who taught English in the high in schools of Paterson and who published poems places like the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Herald-Tribune. What may have to a must seemed like impressive accomplishments very young boy have come with the increasing sophistication (and grandiosity) of adolescence, to a not signify singular lack of daring and ambition. It is too surprising, to in wrote therefore, find the introduction that Ginsberg to the father's re collection, Morning in Spring (1968), that beneath the affectionate spect with which the now world-famous son writes of his father, we should a hear persistent hints of disappointment. "Living generation with lyrics some stanzas in as wrought by my father, settle the memory perfected," sen Ginsberg opens.31 This (uncharacteristically) deliberate, well-formed tence an carefully defines attitude of respectful but hardly enthusiastic ad a contrast to miration, striking Ginsberg's frequently effusive praise of such own as of his contemporaries, like Jack Kerouac, who share his ultimate no sumptions. The son, remembering "some stanzas" but apparently whole on poems, is clearly not going out any critical limbs for the old man, whose well-balanced views are now turned back on him. As soon as Louis Gins is he is a W. C. Williams. berg" introduced, pitted (in losing battle) against Tn this mode perfection is basic,' W. C. Williams wrote, excusing himself for own idealised sent rejecting my iambic rhymes him for inspection." (p. was 11). Imitating Louis* idealized verses, Ginsberg went astray?until he saved a and more by bolder, successful guide. In fact, in the first three pages of the introduction, Ginsberg mentions Williams and Pound four times time an each, every making invidious comparison between their boldness and his father's timidity. Says Ginsberg of his father's kind of poetry:

I have resisted this mode as an anachronism in my own time?the verse anachronism of my own father writing the outworn of previous or century voices, reechoing the jaded music and faded effect senti 94 a own ment of that music in dream-life of his sidestreet under dying New the time that Paterson phantom elms of Paterson, Jersey?at very was to its itself (having been articulated very rock-strata foundations in and aboriginal waterfall voice W. C. Williams' epic) degenerating a into XX Century Mafia-Police-Bureaucracy-Race-War-Nightmare TV-Squawk suburb, (p. 14)

with an awareness While Williams dauntlessly combines primitive solidity of contemporary social reality, Louis Ginsberg neglects the present, timidly his street. It is not withdrawing into the "dream-life" of peaceful suburban as an an just that this establishes him irrelevant "anachronism," unreliable a man a cost of such with guide for young entering bewildering world; the even drawal is finally the loss of real autonomy and life. The father's guid a mere not own is ing voice is hollow, echo, his voice: Daddy nobody. All in the language associated with Louis Ginsberg this passage?"anachronism," as "outworn," "jaded," "faded," "dying phantom elms"?suggests death, if out him. The son a certain the life had been sapped of may take satisfac tion in such diminishing thoughts of that parental authority whose judg with ments he feared. Yet disappointment the defeated actual father gen erates the "Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus" of "Howl," the "Lord4' of such as an poems "Kaddish," "Laughing Gas" and "Magic Psalm"?all fantasies of can heal the writer. dur all-powerful father whose strength and direct So, ing the early phase of Ginsberg's career, the earthly father, whose "failure" son to a the anxiously seeks avoid for himself, becomes negative model, source ironic for the bardic grandiosity, literary experimentation and dar ing self-exposures that characterize his son's poetry starting with "Howl." to in was to In fact, what Ginsberg appears have done 1955 take up his father's medium of communication (poetry) and, declaring it hollow and dead, transformed it by infusing it with the hallucinatory visions and hu man vulnerability of his mother. ? ? ? ? ?

"You still haven't finished with your mother." Elise Cowen to Allen Ginsberg, after typing the manuscript to "Kaddish."32 "If only you knew How your poet son, Allen, Raves over the world, Crazed for love of you!" a Louis Ginsberg, "To Mother Buried."33

with his father is that he often One reason for Ginsberg's disenchantment man looked at the older through the terrified?and rancorous?eyes of his 95 In the on mother. examining kind of grip Naomi Ginsberg had her son's is a feelings the key document "Kaddish," confessional/visionary/elegaic in five in which in at poem parts Ginsberg (like Sylvia Plath "Daddy") to to tempts transform literature into therapeutic magic: exorcise the ghost of a two parental influence. Neither of the poems, for all their literary in brilliance, succeeds delivering the poet from the agonizing conflicts in the comes that generate the work first place, although Ginsberg closer. a "Daddy" may heighten hatred into form of hard eloquence, but the poem is trans pure anger and destruction, with the renounced father simply a a formed from god-like to satanic figure: Plath, whose father died when was was never to she just nine, able make the crucial step of perceiving as a a In con him human rather than mythical figure. "Kaddish" Ginsberg fronts his anger at his mother's abstraction from life, her abandonment of in him madness, his disgust with her careless physical habits, his fascina manner tion with her sexually seductive with him, his guilt about his treat ment of her during her breakdowns?"Kaddish" lays bare all these feelings to a and then proceeds declaration of love for Naomi Ginsberg. In the poem as announces at start a there is, Ginsberg the of Part II, "release of particu is with and lars," and Naomi Ginsberg encountered elaborate moving speci as a it true ficity, complex human figure.34 Yet is also that by the end Gins not berg has resolved his divided feelings about his "fatal Mama" (p. 27) as as us much he claims; the poem tempts to think, like certain forms of ther to out is to in apy, that get feelings resolve them. But fact the poem, far an from moving toward idealization of the mother, culminates with apothe a osis of death (as release from the agonizing conflicts of life) and yearn ing for fusion with this lost parent. a Communist from the time Naomi Ginsberg, member of the Party of her her life was in from authorities such as youth, believed danger political as as Hitler, Roosevelt, and the F.B.I, well family figures, notably her an mother and her husband. Her fears characteristically concerned in some vasion of her self by external, invisible, and malevolent agency that and her: its under could subtly creep inside possess poison gas filtering way means of the door, the manipulation of her thoughts by three bars inserted one in her back and wired to her brain by the F.B.I, during of her stays in seems to understand these fantasies of the hospital. In "Kaddish" Ginsberg as extensions of sexual fears political persecution and, though Ginsberg a himself never says so, it would be natural for young boy to equate these some In fears of violation with assault by the father. any case, Naomi Gins was the dark side of what her son calls her "mad idealism" berg's paranoia intense for the the the Ideal evident (p. 24), her yearning Pure, Beautiful, innocence her in her nostalgia for the of her girlhood, political utopianism her to write Communist her (which inspired fairy tales?p. 16), alternately 96 on in some dreamy and paranoid paintings ("Humans sitting the grass summers and Camp No-Worry yore?saints with droopy faces long-ill-fitting her romantic on the mandoline pants"?p. 25), songs played ("Last night me was it in the the nightingale woke / Last night when all still / sang on As a must have golden moonlight / from the wintry hill"). boy Ginsberg her admired her intensity, been awed by the loftiness of idealism, and shared her fears of the father's "assaults." her Yet both the fears and the longings of Naomi Ginsberg dissociated from immediate emotional realities; what made her admirable also made her even son distant, bewildering, terrifying?and made her angry. She, too, Naomi neglected Allen. "I will think nothing but beautiful thoughts," says son in "Kaddish," and she tells her of seeing God the day before: "I cooked I a nice & supper for him. made him supper?lentil soup, vegetables, bread . . butter?miltz. ."At that very moment she is serving Allen "a plate of cold raw fish?chopped cabbage dript with tapwater?smelly tomatoes?week-old ... nausea health food I can't eat it for sometimes" (p. 2). "Kaddish" fre to meals. Naomi was not Al quently refers such nausea-inspiring providing a son on len with true sustenance: cannot live beautiful thoughts alone. care was Moreover, not only did his mother fail to take of him, Ginsberg care forced at crucial points in her illness to take of her. In Allen's version at least, his father and older brother evaded the reality and responsibilities son of Naomi's madness, thus leaving the youngest with the excrutiating with her illness. Both times she was practical problems of dealing hospital was one to to a ized during Ginsberg's lifetime, he the who had take her two rest home or, worse, call the police for help. The first of these episodes was 12. At that of took place when Ginsberg just exactly delicate point transition between boyhood and manhood, between home and the world, were on independence and responsibility thrust him, leaving him frightened, resentful, uncertain, and tormented with guilt. At that time, when his mother started hallucinating "a mystical assassin from Newark" (p. 13), so ner Ginsberg, who had stayed home from school because she seemed vous a a and distraught, called doctor, who recommended rest home. After a one rest long, humiliating bus ride, after being thrown out of home (be cause Naomi hid in the closet and demanded a blood transfusion), Allen in an on next finally left her alone attic room, got the bus home and "lay to my head back in the last seat, depressed?the worst yet come??abandon was ing her, rode in torpor?I only 12."

at nite New have left Naomi to Parcae in 12 riding the bus thru Jersey, Lakewood's haunted house?left to my own fate?sunk in a seat?all sore in was she violins broken?my heart my ribs?mind empty?Would were safe in her coffin?(p. 15) 97 at to The sequence of feeling here?from guilt abandoning her, pity for his own to to isolated fate, exhaustion and apathy and finally the wish that she to his would die?reveals Ginsberg's desire be relieved of mother and the in worst was conflicts she triggers him. And the yet to come; that night,

at the telephone rang 2AM?Emergency?she'd gone mad?Naomi hid ing under the bed screaming bugs of Mussolini?Help! Louis! Buba! Fascists! Death!?the landlady frightened?old fag attendent screaming back at her (p. 17).

his father for her Ginsberg, who had already been criticized by leaving to a there, asks himself, "my fault, delivering her solitude?" It's possible it was not some question: Ginsberg nowhere says exactly why he left her, on es thing he had to do, he describes himself sitting her bed "waiting to stresses cape," and has wished her dead. The situation, filled with painful even an must a for adult, have seemed unbearably complex for boy of 12. was Later, visiting her in the hospital, Ginsberg confronted with Naomi "begging my 13-year-old boy mercy," saying

me went 'Take home'?I alone sometimes looking for the lost Naomi, taking Shock?and I'd say, "No, you're crazy Mama,?Trust the Drs." -(p. 19),

as and still later, just before her last hospitalization in the late forties, own Naomi imagines herself hounded by Louis and her mother,

'?No wires in the room!'?I'm yelling at her?last ditch, Eugene listen can ing on the bed?what he do to escape that fatal Mama?'You've been away from Louis for years already?Grandma's too old to walk?' once me one We're all alive at then?even & Gene & Naomi in myth ological Cousinesque room?screaming at each other in the Forever?I in Columbia jacket, she half undressed. I saw banging against her head which Radios, Sticks, Hitlers?the gamut of Hallucinations?for real?her own universe?no road that goes not even a elsewhere?to my own?No America, world?(pp. 26-27)

in Even at this point much later adolescence, Ginsberg emphasizes the way a his mother's madness removed her into private, hallucinatory world ( "her in own universe") where, beyond all hysterical screaming, she remained accessible ("no road that goes nowhere"). In her madness Naomi tri but abandoned her de umphantly transcended reality, son, who, similarly was left in the of serted by his father and brother, position asserting reality, 98 her over to those angrily denying the validity of her visions and delivering In a very authorities?doctors and police?she most feared. situation filled stresses In with exhausting Ginsberg reacted with remarkable strength. "Kaddish" he asks, "Louis what happened to your heart then?"?when he was out confronted with his terrified wife shrieking that he had called the was not "poison cops": "Have you been killed by Naomi's ecstacy?" Allen a certain in but he suspected hardness his strength, this intensifying the in must "if I guilt already latent the situation; "It's my fault," he have felt, to to had loved my mother more, this wouldn't have happened her?and an was me." As adolescent, Ginsberg left alone, searching for that "lost as a Naomi" who had nurtured him young boy, fearing those ecstatic hal to lucinations of the "fatal Mama" that seemed kill all feeling between to in transcen them, and yet longing join her the dramatic intensity and dence of her madness. view From the retrospective point of of the adult poet, the ideal way to handle this excruciating situation would be to accept a certain amount of as to anger and vindictiveness natural, emphasize the positive strength and so view a amount tenderness that Ginsberg did show and to certain of as a is no means "hardness" prerequisite for self-survival; but this by what we in find "Kaddish," where unresolved feelings of guilt prompt the poet to maneuver exorcise her spirit and be rid of her at last?a that breaks down, even however, in view of his stronger desire to return and fuse with her in sources we can see in a death. The deepest of this longing crucial passage of "Kaddish":

was to me come to One time I thought she trying make lay her?flirting on herself at sink?lay back huge bed that filled most of the room, dress scars up round her hips, big slash of hair, of operations, pancreas, belly wounds, abortions, appendix, stitching of incisions pulling down in the fat like hideous thick zippers?ragged long lips between her legs ?What, even, smell of asshole? I was cold?later revolted a little, not a to much?seemed perhaps good idea try?know the Monster of the Beginning Womb?Perhaps?that way. Would she care? She needs a lover, (p. 24)

seems a revelation of an incest wish and a At first glance this passage daring But we shockingly realistic description of the mother's body. what really see one to at here is how post-Freudian writer, pretending be open and ease awareness as a about incestuous desire, affects sophisticated defense intense and anxieties. The lines are against longings charged with feelings to that the poet, far from "confessing out," appears eager deny. Ginsberg's more assumes an tone of voice is noticeably defensive than frank: he atti 99 act into a rude of detached superiority toward the scene?idealizing the Monster of the mythical / psychological experiment ("know the Beginning more for his mother's emotional than his: Womb") performed gratification "She needs a lover." All of the sexual initiative is attributed to Naomi, al innocent in to view himself as a lowing her son, his sophistication, superior, re liberated, and compassionate individual, beyond conventional moral to a to one straints and thus willing and able give little help of his friends. to Holding himself above this emotionally charged situation, Ginsberg seeks attraction his mother?as well as deny both the powerful he feels toward as soon as on the fears he experiences he imagines the possibility of acting on on cut it. The persistent emphasis scars, particularly wounds made by an an ting, suggests association between the female body and mutilation, association frequent among male homosexuals who, perceiving the woman's as a man at a body the castrated body of and frightened the prospect of are more similar fate for themselves, comfortable with sexual partners who also have penises. Immediately following the passage I have quoted, Gins berg dramatically shifts the subject, inserting first the Hebrew words of the "Kaddish" (a mourning ritual) and then turning to the story of his father. is as It if the very thought of incestuous wishes immediately provoked thoughts of death and the presence of the father, who might administer son most in just that punishment his fears. In fact, Part I of "Kaddish" as a Naomi is lamented victim who "fought the knife?lost / Cut down" by a a in heartless father wielding "sharp icicle" (pp. 10-11). Yet his recollec seem tion of incestuous yearnings, Ginsberg's deepest fears inspired less by suc Louis than by Naomi herself. When he does turn to his father in the ceeding lines, he presents his most poignant picture of Louis: "hurt with 20 years Naomi's mad idealism"?father and son linked as victims of the all Naomi's womb is as "mon powerful mother (p. 24). Moreover, imagined our a ster" and images throughout the poem reenforce suspicion that it is monster. his devouring In Part IV Ginsberg speaks of mother's pubic hair as a "beard" (a trite image of which he is inordinately fond)?as if her were a and in Part on his last visit to his mother vagina mouth (p. 34); II, the door as a on the other side of in the hospital, he imagines "crotch," which lies death. The quotation of the Hebrew words of the "Kaddish" sug on association of incest with death. It is gest, the deepest level, Ginsberg's as if, were he to get too close to his mother, she would swallow him up? himself from her either. In as in though he can't finally separate "Kaddish," the is one of versus all of Ginsberg's earlier poetry, conflict separation unity. is never but an and Separation independence always absolute, sterile, frus as in where all members of the are trating isolation, the passage family at each other with each of them locked in a hysterically screaming yet pri so vate world of his or her own, incommunicado. The separation is radical 100 mere or that it cannot be resolved by verbal emotional communication own so to ("her universe?no road that goes elsewhere"); Ginsberg longs a be delivered from this agonizing isolation by kind of self-annihilating fus we can his incest ion with the mother. From this point of view understand uous as to his see desires expressing Ginsberg's wish get inside mother and as in is to things she does. The progression of Ginsberg's early career, fact, a ward closer and closer identification with her paranoid politics, her hal even lucinatory visions, her physical sloppiness and sexual "looseness." In "Kaddish"?as in "Howl"?absolute isolation alternates with absolute fusion, each poem seeking "resolution" in spiritual transcendence, apoca a in lyptic vision, total fusion that could only be realized the static perfec comes to tion of death. As "Kaddish" proceeds, it less and less accept the loss of Naomi, more and more to yearn for union with her in death or, while as own. life remains, to incorporate her vision the poet's "Die / If thou woulds't be with that which thou dost seek," says Shelley in the lines from not "Adonais" that Ginsberg significantly chose for his epigraph. The poem as only celebrates death deliverance from the frightening and frustrating as separateness of human life; it also identifies Naomi the source of that sense vision of death. In this rich Naomi is Allen's inspiration, his "muse."

muse me the suck first O glorious that bore from womb, gave me whose mystic life & taught talk and music, from pained head I first took Vision Tortured and beaten in the skull?What mad hallucinations of the damned that drive me out of my own skull to seek for O for all Eternity till I find Peace Thee, Poetry?and on humankind call the Origin Death which is the mother of the universe! (pp. 29-30 )

moves from a celebration In just these few lines, Ginsberg characteristically as to of her hold on of his mother "glorious muse" thoughts suffocating him, once so that in the end she is conflated with Death, at feared and sought. Naomi was not the scar At first Ginsberg asserts that the real overweight, woman in a room of a lunatic the mother of red, lonely locked asylum?but him his earliest memories who fed physically and spiritually: "gave suck me an so com first mystic life & taught talk and music"?creating intimacy to see with her Yet such union of mother and son plete that he seemed eyes. her vision of is and her life has its threatening aspect; things "pained," sug son out is a kind gests to her that the only way of suffering through of into immolation in it?by being pained "Vision." Such destructive-redemp are derive tive gestures repeated throughout Ginsberg's poetry, and they a the need to find ex not just from self-punishing masochism, but from 101 extreme to of the periences enough, painful enough, shatter the boundaries in separate self. In this passage the modifying phrase "tortured and beaten to the skull" floats free of any precise referrent, allowing it to refer both in moments Naomi and Allen, joined in suffering, those when they "lose it is such union is hard to their head." Her suffering, appears, his. Yet if so me bear, is separation: the curious phrase, "bore from the womb," makes as were cast out at it sound if he from her unwillingly birth. And this kind to a own reason of resistance life of his is yet another why Ginsberg himself is "tortured and beaten in the skull"?i.e., tortured and defeated when a sentence as locked in the skull of private consciousness. Here, that began an to as we to con apostrophe Naomi "glorious muse" and which expect as some to to a tinue form of prayer her breaks off frame question ("What a never as mad hallucinations," etc.), question that in turn is completed it turns an to to into agonized and helpless cry: what drives him be like her, lose his head in "mad hallucinations" like her own! The answer is that both her presence and her absence drive him out of his skull: when near, she ab once sorbs him into her vision; but separated, he is driven to return, and the can return is only way he by sharing her vision?by fusing with her. Either a route ends in kind of death for the separate personality, but Death itself as a (now his muse) is affirmed release from the frustrating boundaries of as a the self, and allowing peaceful and final merge with the mother. During his mother's seizures the adolescent Ginsberg had tried to break a through to her by asserting realistic point of view ("'No wires in the a room!'?I'm yelling at her"), line of approach that ended in rage, frustra tion, hysteria. But Ginsberg closes the long autobiographical Part II of a one "Kaddish" by recollecting moment of communication with Naomi, a that came, "mystically," just after her death. While living in cottage in Berkeley in 1957, having (he hoped) left familial strifes behind him in the East, Ginsberg dreamed of his mother's spirit?"that, thru life, in what form or near it stood in that body, ashen manic, gone beyond joy? / its death? with eyes?was my own love in its form, the Naomi, my mother on earth wrote a wrote to still" and 'long letter" declaring this love "& hymns the A a mad." few days later he received telegram from his brother, informing him two a of his mother's death; and days after that, he got letter from his mother, the first he'd had from her in several years?a prophecy (seemingly) ma from beyond the grave. The letter wonderfully mixes conventional ternal advice with cryptic visionary utterances:

in is in the at the 'The key is the window, the key sunlight window? is in I have the key?Get married Allen don't take drugs?the key the bars, in the sunlight in the window/ 102 The to the is key, according mother, coventionality: "Get married Allen don't take But in Part III on drugs." of the poem Ginsberg picks up the letter's visionary metaphors, the image of the flash of light that frees the self from the locked the con room, pained head?the prison of solitary sciousness.

in at in is The key is the sunlight the window the bars the key in the sunlight,' to come to on only have that dark night iron bed by stroke when sun on the gone down Long Island vast roars and the Atlantic outside the great call of Being to its own come out to back of the Nightmare?divided creation?with her head on a to lain pillow of the hospital die ?in one one in last glimpse?all Earth everlasting Light the fam iliar blackout?no tears for this vision? But that be left sun the key should behind?at the window?the key in the can light-to the living?that take that slice of light in hand?and turn the door?and look back see same Creation glistening backwards to the grave, size of universe, size on over of the tick of the hospital's clock the archway the white door? (p. 33)

for Naomi Ginsberg, inmate of asylums many years now, victim of shock treatments in and strokes, locked alone her room, further isolated by her in a on an a a madness, lies "dark night" "iron bed" like prisoner, kind of not ex prisoner of life. As Ginsberg makes clear, it is just the harrowing periences of her life that make it nightmarish, it is the very condition of a living in bounded, physical being?"divided creation"?that creates the "Nightmare." In the midst of all this, Naomi is pained into vision, has her to glimpse of "everlasting Light," finds the key the locked self. Yet the key, as see as a Ginsberg interprets it, is to physical life, its ordeals, unreal, dream ?as as brief and insignificant the tick of the hospital clock. The vision does as a or a a not open, in Whitman Blake, harmonizing of physical and spir it mo itual; rather opts for the apocalyptic, the purely transcendent. The moment ment of vision, here, is the of death; and death is the key, releas us a ing from the nightmare of fleshly (and thus divided) existence. two In "Kaddish" 's last sections, Ginsberg shifts from detailed narrative to more in long "broken paragraphs" shorter, intense liturgical chants which attempt to let go of the memory of Naomi and accept her loss.35 Yet the means which comes to terms with her death is very by Ginsberg by identi as his own that vision life as which she had on fying very of death imposed 103 utters to him from his earliest years. Section IV "farewell" Naomi Ginsberg are of by cataloguing parts of her body, aspects of her life, that expressive were in review. As her ordeal?as if her life passing before his mind final on the list proceeds, Ginsberg focuses her eyes: "with your eyes of shock / with of with your eyes of lobotomy / with your eyes of divorce / your eyes stroke / with your eyes alone / with your eyes / with your eyes" (p. 35). a to into is Her eyes convey kind of mute, helpless suffering and look them in the force to become transfixed, paralyzed by her vision; fact, emotional of this section is not toward a "farewell," but to show the poet mesmerized the of his mother. The final likewise by Medusa-like glance poem's section, as liturgical in manner, similarly depicts Ginsberg helplessly transfixed by as a to the memory of his mother. Section V begins visit Naomi's grave and crows in caw proceeds by alternating the cries of the cemetery ("caw caw") a The crows evoke with religious chant ("Lord Lord Lord"). decomposi tion, the inevitable fate of life in the flesh, while the "Lord" is intended to an can ac define eternal perspective within which such cruel realities be caw caw caw cepted. But the poem's final line?"Lord Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw crow Lord Lord Lord" (p. 36)?conflates and Lord, temporal as once and eternal, devourers, and the effect of the line, which Ginsberg as emotive is a or a a suf described "pure sound," that of cry, "howl," of with its its movement fering victim.36 Life, impersonal physical processes, a into through divided and often indifferent world?that world which Gins was it can be berg unwillingly cast?is intolerable. Hence, the only way it a "vision": borne is by seeing through Naomi's eyes?as

caw caw caw caw all years my birth a dream New York the bus the caw caw Visions broken shoe the vast highschool all of the Lord (p. 36, my italics). a in mind of an Whatever its agonies, life is merely dream the omnipotent if not selfhood. Yet it is the Lord?a thought that, it seems, offers safety, this which are stressed that threatening qualities of divinity ("great Eye it is that this stares on All," "Grinder of giant Beyonds"?p. 36) and clear and his threat to is ominous in "Lord," with his powerful glance devour, Naomi is. In all the deific precisely those ways fact, poem's figures?the into a "the glorious muse, omnipotent Lord?dissolve single figure, Naomi," "fatal Mama." who is the "Origin/Death"?the in the is a kind of formal ten A key result of the psychic conflict poem to and was ad sion. In seeking link confessional visionary modes, Ginsberg a "Howl" and that would vancing poetic project that had begun with prove a one Yet and to be generative for contemporary poetry. autobiographical motives are at with each other in "Kaddish." If Part II con mystical odds a into fronts us with relentless "release of particulars" powerful narrative, 104 all remaining sections of the poem strive to chant those particulars into on dream, Vision?a strategy that fails at least two counts. In the first place, a sur the need of the poet to get 'out of his head' in many respects signals render to, rather than coming to terms with, the memories of Part II. In more addition, most readers will, I think, leave the work impressed with II the sec the psychic conflicts of than sought resolutions of the closing tions. account Moreover, Ginsberg's of the poem's composition in "How Kaddish Happened" implies the centrality of the second part and reveals was in some sense that Ginsberg felt that he "defeated" by the poem?i.e., were by Naomi.37 While individual sections of "Kaddish" written spon some in moments taneously, of them drug-induced of "mad hallucination," long intervals separated the writing of these sections, the whole poem tak more ing than two years. Significantly, the order of composition went: first, a part IV (the evocation of Naomi's mesmerizing stare), then year later I some no and II, then indefinite period after this, V; mention is made of in III. Most emphasis is given the essay to the writing of II, which Gins berg approached slowly, resistingly, yet felt he had to approach; Part II was written in 20 hours of effort after a of no some straight night sleep, mescaline and to Charles speed, listening Ray records and chanting aloud passages from Shelley's "Adonais" and the Hebrew "Kaddish": Afterward,

on across I walked out in early blue dawn to 7th Avenue & town to my Lower East Side apartment?New York before sunrise has its own cele brated hallucinatory unreality. In the country getting up with the cows in same and birds hath Blakean charm, the megalopolis the nature's a even a hour is science-fiction hell vision, if you're milkman. Phantom streets out factories, unpopulated of Poe, familiar nightclubs bookstores groceries dead.38

The essay's title, "How 'Kaddish' Happened," implies that the poem hap from the pened to Ginsberg, surfacing depths of his buried self?a familiar one claim of romantic poets but that here carries the added suggestion a that the poem was thrust upon somewhat resistant poet. At the same time ex Ginsberg's account of the writing of the poem depicts the poet?via and selection urban haustion, drugs, careful of setting and suitably elegiac himself into literary texts?deliberately flaggelating vision, into communing with his dead mother. Both versions, of course, are true?true to his divided woman him fear of and longing for the who gave "mystic life." What Gins sees Avenue at is seen berg when he wanders down 7th dawn the city terrified and it is a through Naomi Ginsberg's eyes; also landscape of loss ?what life looks like to him without her: a hell vision of unbearable iso a environment. lation in cold, threatening 105 a After finally getting down draft of the entire poem, Ginsberg tells us, even he waited another year before typing the manuscript, much less seek too ing publication. The poem seemed, he recalls, too massive, messy and an on an too private to reach audience, suggesting that unconscious level an the writing of the poem may have been act of private communication between the poet and his "muse," like the letter he had received from her just after her death. In any case, "Kaddish," all too successfully recreating its the overwhelming size, disorder, and inaccessibility of subject, seemed to have "defeated" its author. we can In these self-doubts hear the internalized voice of Louis Ginsberg, the side of Ginsberg that feared that identification with his mother's way of a seeing things would leave him, like her, trapped in private vision, with "no road that goes elsewhere." At this point, Ginsberg, showing that he may more have derived strength from the father than he liked to admit, sat to down the "patient scholar's task" of making the poem "shapely."39 If he to the medium to life began by trying bring father's "dead" back by infusing was it with the visions of his mother, it his commitment to poetry that a turned Ginsberg back toward the world, opened road that did span the gap between private vision and external reality. stresses in account Of course, what Ginsberg himself his of the composi to a tion of "Kaddish" is the need go "all the way out" in order to capture an "continuous impulse," emotional and creative thrust that would be stifled a more work.40 In his can in orderly view, poetic (and human) energy only out be generated by going of one's skull?beyond the "dead forms" of reality and back to the Origin, the mother, who turns out to be Death. On a human a level such regressive longings mark kind of defeat, at least the defeat of a own. the quest for independence, for life of one's Yet "defeat like that is states. good for poetry," Ginsberg

so far out don't know what lose touch ?you go you you're doing, you a new with what's been done before by anyone, you wind up creating poetry-universe. "Make It New," saith Pound, "Invention," said W. C. so on Williams. That's the "Tradition"?a complete fuck-up you're your own.41

Such defeat does not guarantee good poetry; but in the literary atmosphere was of the late 1950s?dominated by poetry that self-consciously impersonal and traditionalistic?Ginsberg's breaking of established boundaries released a new life into contemporary American poetry.

I am to For help in writing this essay indebted Dr. Felix Ocko and Margaret Darby, both of Berkeley, California. 106 NOTES

1 cites new sense in in Robert Creeley the of form "Howl" his "Introduction to The New Writing in the USA" A Quick Graph (San Francisco, 1970), pp. 44-45 as do Gal way Kinnell in "The Poetics of the Physical World/* Iowa Review, II (Summer 1971), 115-16, and Adrienne Rich, "Talking with Adrienne Rich," The Ohio Review, XIII (Fall 1971), 28-46. 2 All of these journals are part of the Allen Ginsberg Archives at Columbia University. from in are Quotations material the collection made with the kind permission of Allen Ginsberg and Columbia University. 3 Starting from San Francisco (New York, 1967), p. 27. 4 in America Jane Kramer, Allen Ginsberg (New York, 1970), pp. 39-40. 5 Ibid., p. 42. 6 in on See "Notebook, 1953-56" the Allen Ginsberg Archives for information this in life. period Ginsberg's 7 Entry for April 20, 1955 in "Notebook 1953-56." 8 in Allen Ginsberg America, p. 42. * Young Man Luther (New York, 1958), p. 103. 10 AKen Ginsberg in America, pp. 150-51. 11 Go (New York, 1952), p. 108. The statement about accuracy is made in Holmes' Nothing More to Declare (New York, 1967), p. 56. 12 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, August 8, 1945, in the Allen Ginsberg Archives. is All subsequent correspondence cited also from the Archives. 13 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, December 12, 1955. 14 to Allen n.d. Louis Ginsberg Ginsberg, 15 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, November 2, 1945. 16 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, October 29, 1945. 17 to Allen November 1945. Louis Ginsberg Ginsberg, 2, 18 Ibid. 19 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, March 10, 1958. 20 "Terse," inMorning in Spring and Other Poems (New York, 1970), p. 119. 21 to Allen November 1945. Louis Ginsberg Ginsberg, 2, 22 sometime in Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, n.d. (but probably 1948). 23 Ibid. 24 to Louis Ginsberg Allen Ginsberg, March 10, 1958. 25 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, May 27, 1956. 26 Louis Ginsberg to Allen Ginsberg, July 11, 1948. 27 to Louis 1947. Allen Ginsberg Ginsberg, September 3, 28 4. Paterson News, Monday, June 2, 1969, p. 2$ Louis n.d. sometime in Allen Ginsberg to Ginsberg, (but probably 1948). 30 Allen Ginsberg to Louis Ginsberg, September 3, 1947. 31 in in 11. "Confrontation with Louis Ginsberg's Poems," Morning Spring, p. Sub sequent references are made in the text. 32 "How 'Kaddish* Happened,*' in The Poetics of the New American Poetry, ed. Donald Allen and Warren Tallman (New York, 1973), p. 347. 33 Morning in Spring and Other Poems, p. 93. 34 Kaddish and Other Poems, (San Francisco, 1961), p. 13. Subsequent references are made in the text. 35 "How 'Kaddish' Happened," p. 345. 36 Ibid., p. 346. 107 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid., p. 345. 39 Ibid., p. 346. 40lbid. 41 Ibid.

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