Power and CulturePoli 110J 08

The teeth and excrement of this life

Howl• 1957 Obscenity trial in San Francisco– "filthy, vulgar, obscene, and disgusting language.”– Judge: “Would there be any freedom of press or

speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?”

• 2007 Obscenity fear– Pacifica radio planned to broadcast in order to

commemorate 50th anniversary of Howl’s protection under First Amendment

– But feared fines from the FCC, put it online– Differing basis of censorship: public morals vs.

“offensiveness” and affordability of free speech

Reading poetry

• Poetry is the art of arranging words in the maximally powerful order

• Look up any references that you don’t understand– Poetry derives a part of its power from allusion to

other sources

• Don’t ask what it MEANS, ask what it DOES– Poetry is art, not a secret code

Howl

• Clear American identity– Influence of Walt

Whitman– Similar mystical and

political concerns• Brotherhood, spirituality,

equality, repression, sexuality

• The title– What is a howl?

Background• 1926-1997• “Beat” poet• Ginsberg’s mother, Naomi Livergant Ginsberg– Politically radical and mentally unwell, hugely influential

on Ginsberg’s life & work– His other most famous poem, “Kaddish”, written at her

death• Carl Solomon– Ginsberg met him in a mental institution during a period

when each was briefly institutionalized. Formed lifelong friendship.

Part I• “I saw the best minds of my generation

destroyed by madness”– Who are the best? What is meant by “best minds”?

What does it mean that they are the ones destroyed?• Reflected in word choice: the use of coarse language in high

art– Frames all of part I of the poem

• Who…– The actions of part I are those of these destroyed

minds, efforts to escape and transcend.• Ironically, those most despised by society at large are in fact

its best

Transcendence

• A spiritual overcoming of the world in which we find ourselves– To reject and vault above the material world, to

access some higher spiritual good (union with God, truth, salvation, true self, enlightenment)

– Emphasized in the mystical aspects of many world religions

Transcendence

• Modes of transcendence– Spirituality – Humiliation of the flesh – Sex – Drugs– Art– Violation of taboo

Transcendence

• Over a world of power, materialism, and time:• “Who threw their watches off the roof / to

cast their vote for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks / fell on their heads every day for the next decade” (16)– Desperate attempts to transcend end in failure

• “…or were run down by the / drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality” (16)– What could be more crudely real than that?

• “Who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism…” (18)– Carl Solomon– Is this not a better appreciation of Dada than a

lecture?– Beauty and meaning in art that transcend rational

analysis– Resistance against the dominance of unreason by

the rational

• ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and / now you’re really in the total animal soup of / time—

• “an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone / cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio” (20)

• “with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered / out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand / years.” (20)

Howl pt. I

• “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”

• Transcendence• Failure & destruction

Howl, pt. II

• What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? (21)– “the best minds of my generation”– Inhuman, monstrous– Crudely material, vs. the spirit

Moloch!

• Rashi, 12th c. French rabbi & commentator:– “Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and

they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved.”

Moloch!

• Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.”• A divine commandment to disdain• Worship of Moloch equated to profaning the name of

God.• Cannibal-god of the Canaanites, the enemies of the

children of Israel– The enemies of the few, the chosen, the faithful

• Idolatry and abomination

• Also a reference to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), which depicts industrial society itself as Moloch, a concept that Ginsberg expands in pt. II

• Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness!– Brute materialism– Repression– Cannibal– Blasphemy, unholy– Loveless, sexless

• “They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven!” (22)– The best minds of my generation– Failed attempt, not to themselves transcend, but

to elevate the profane into transcendent holiness– “Heaven which exists and is everywhere around

us!”• The transcendent is not fantasy, it is as real as the

material brutality that has displaced it

• Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! / gone down the American river!– “down the river”• Betrayed, cheated: “sold down the river” refers to the

way in which difficult slaves in the Northern slave states would be sold into harsher conditions in the South

• Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole / boatload of sensitive bullshit!– Un-rational aspects of human existence, bringing

meaning to life– A sincere embrace of what the calculating,

materialistic Moloch deems a “boatload of sensitive bullshit”

• “They bade farewell! / They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! / carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

Part III

• “Pyramidal” structure: lengthening responses to “I’m with you in Rockland” structure

• Rockland a mental institution– Real institution Columbia Presbyterian

Psychological Institute– What is suggested by the name of Rockland?

• But even there there is love & friendship

I’m with you in Rockland

• where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul / is innocent and immortal it should never die / ungodly in an armed madhouse– The spiritual elevated over the material• But it can be killed

– Ungodly armed madhouse sounds a lot like Moloch• The asylum is the world in microcosm

I’m with you in Rockland

• where you accuse your doctors of insanity and / plan the Hebrew socialist revolution against the / fascist national Golgotha– Inversion: inmates in charges of the asylum• Though Solomon is “madder than I am”

– Plans of the ultimate victory of the few, the holy, and the oppressed

– Moloch = “fascist national Golgotha”• The place of the skull• Martyrdom & crucifixion

I’m with you in Rockland

• where you will split the heavens of Long Island / and resurrect your living human Jesus from the / superhuman tomb– Emergence of the transcendence into the mundane– Superhumanity equated with death, the tomb

• The Chief of Police, the image, and the tomb

– Life and the miracle of resurrection are properties of the human• Resurrection the definitive triumph of the spiritual and

divine over the material world

I’m with you in Rockland

• where we wake up electrified out of the coma / by our own souls’ airplanes…– Fantasies of the final triumph of the soul over the

material world, vision of what that world would look like

– O victory forget your underwear we’re/ free

I’m with you in Rockland

• in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- /journey on the highways across America in tears / to the door of my cottage in the Western night– In Rockland the only consolation is memory and

imagination– Though the speaker is with Solomon in Rockland, they

are not physically present to each other– Though some small comfort is possible, the speaker

remains within the godless, armed madhouse

Footnote to Howl

• A footnote– Separate from, below the text– Either• Provides clarification for the text• Provides additional understanding and context for the

text that are not strictly needed in the text itself

Footnote to Howl

• Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! – Radical tonal shift, from sadness and solitude,

futility and self-destruction, cannibal-gods and insane asylums to ecstatic recognition of universal holiness

– Holiness =/= sacredness• Holiness is the mark of the presence and/or favor of

God

Footnote to Howl

• The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! / The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand / and asshole holy!– Continues theme that the despised are in fact the

elevated– But begins to attack the duality present in the

poem so far, as both the spiritual and the material are presented as of like holiness

Footnote to Howl

• Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the / clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy / the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!– Fifth International– Unity of opposites– Sacredness present even in the most profane

Footnote to Howl

• Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! / bodies! suffering! magnanimity!– Holiness here is achieved, as the “best minds” failed

to do– Not in transcendence, but in immanence– Not “lifting Moloch to Heaven,” but recognizing the

“Angel in Moloch”• Not elevating the earthly into the divine, but recognizing the

presence of divinity in the mundane. The world, good and bad, spiritual and material, is itself holy.