... over the summer. I wrote this for another class (America and Americans) but I thought it was applicable so here it is. (On a side note, I don't think this is the final version of the essay I wrote, but it's the latest copy that I have...)
William Lawrence
America and Americans
The Art of Howling
Fifty years ago, Alan Ginsberg wrote his “Howl” for freedom. He howled at his country, and at it's politics, he howled at his compatriots, and at their enlightenment. He howled at himself, at Carl Solomon, and at the Divine Eternity. Howl is of protest and understanding, commitment and separation. It is as if he is howling “America, I am you, but you are not me!”
The astonishing first lines of the poem portray a nation of haggard intellectuals, broken but illuminated, crawling to salvation. He speaks of individual deeds and beatific ideals, of drug binges and spiritual realizations and orgies and alcohol and “cock and endless balls” (10). He tells us of freedom, and of the people who experience it. He points out how our society limits our freedoms by teaching us to live up to some vague ideals imposed by and for someone nobody will ever meet. By stating the obscene in such a passionate way he shows us that these acts of madness are really just acute acts of total freedom... of the American dream.
What is the American dream if not freedom? And freedom of all things! The ideals of freedom stand firm throughout howl, in religion, in love, and in sexual particularity. Ginsberg's open admittance of homosexuality and sodomy brought the poem much scorn, but as an open and honest act of freedom his words prevailed. The importance of freedom of sexual choice and freedom of religious choice is immeasurable - neither is tangible, but nothing drives a man (or woman) in a more profound way.
When I say the poem received a certain amount of scorn, of course I'm referencing the legal happenings that led to Farlinghetti's arrest and subsequent release. Howl was, and still is too provocative, as we've proved recently by refusing to air a recording on the 50th anniversary of the poem for fear of divine (FCC) retribution. The strong views expressed in the poem were let off the legal hook by being approved as scholarly, not trashy, and well within first amendment rights. This case was a very well defined victory in the beat culture, and is talked about rather frequently... which makes one wonder why we are scared to flex those same rights fifty years later.
The first part of the poem is all about glorifying what would otherwise be considered sin, and engrossing the reader in a world where only freedom matters. By the second section of the poem Ginsberg howls: “...Moloch! Moloch the loveless!” At his readers, “Moloch the incomprehensible prison!” (21) Moloch is the demon that sacrifices children. Moloch is America. He sums up what America is to him and his peers then, as a list of complaints. Though his words are firm he speaks of it in a dissociative manner, not linking himself to Moloch. The greatest minds of his generation is what America really is to him, even though the indomitable machine of our policy rends our nation's public and private image.
Moloch is then very metaphorically lifted to heaven on the hard work and sacrifice of its victims, and a river of American dreams flows out and away. He screams of dreams committing suicide and of his mad generation. In the last few lines (of part two) he howls in despair at the dream Moloch has professed to take away – similar in intensity to his ecstatic Holy footnote in which he praises everything.
Ginsberg admits to being mad (though not as mad as Carl Solomon) in the third section. Carl Solomon was a mental patient, and though not an Author in his own right when he met Ginsberg, Ginsberg obviously thought very highly of him and he was considered quite the intellectual. He basically points at Carl Solomon and says “this is what America can do to you!” He equates Solomon's dementia with the general hysteria in the nation at large, with his mom's dementia, with his own dementia. Where America is his bedfellow, and keeps him up all night coughing.
Howl is about the American struggle. About how stifling the government is even if the country is free. It's about what the true cost of freedom is – nothing is free. It's about solitude and injustice, rights and reason – it's a test of American logic and faith, and spittle on the machines turning cogs. The footnote then, is a simple declaration of love for and interconnectedness with everything in his world. From the magical to the mundane, the downtrodden to the seraphim, everything is holy. It's as if he's making amends and tying up loose ends, he even switches to using real names instead of unique deeds to define characters.
He praises the world, and all the places the beats felt at home. He praises the understanding of identity (“Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles”(28)), and hipsters and drugs and jazz. He praises his American dream. He even praises skyscrapers and the “vast lamb of the middle class,” (28) no matter how sarcastic it's backed by fifteen times Holy and three times poetic segments of angst. He might not agree with everything that is going on in the country, but he agrees with, and praises the founding principles. We need to get back to what makes our nation great... it's Freedom.
The land of the free and the home of the brave. Are we really either anymore? Do we have the freedom to do as we please, without being treated as terrorists, in light of the government's response to events of terror? Do we have the bravery to stand up to what our country does wrong, and speak openly of it, as Ginsberg did in this historical poem? Are we afraid to point out the social injustices our nation is committing? The torture, the war on terror... the war of blood and oil... will we be able to stop any of it? It is so easy to blame the government, and blame politicians, and blame big business and the wealthy, but if we don't stand for what we believe then who will? Do we retain enough of the freedom to fight, as Ginsberg fought?
Do we, as a whole country, remember the meaning of democracy? These are the questions that come to my mind fifty-something years later, when I read this inspired poem. I also wonder if my generation will ever meet someone who is as truly patriotic, brave and free as Alan Ginsberg was.
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1 comment:
Will...I like how your piece addresses the grand scale of Ginsberg's poems. "Howl" is so often described as Whitmanesque, and of course, there's plenty of recourse to Blake's works, which were cosmic in scope. It's interesting, then, how all the divine imagery - Moloch, for instance - gets mixed in or becomes symbol for current realities. You mention, for example, that we might think of "Moloch" as America...a really persuasive argument. I'm thinking of the line, "Moloch in whom I sit lonely." But what's astounding about AG's works is how they operate at both the cosmic and mundane levels - Moloch might refer to both America and the legendary child-eater.
On a related note, some food for thought: I often wonder about how AG uses the individual and individual peoples in the poem at the same time he makes large-sweeping observations about general freedom. What, in other words, is the relationship between the speakers' friends, Carl Solomon, etc., and the whole cosmos - since both are addressed heavily in the poem?
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