Feb. 10: Allen Ginsberg Day 2: "Kaddish" and Related Poems

On June 9, 1956, not long before the publication of Howl and Other Poems, Allen Ginsberg's mother, Naomi (shown at left during her courtship with Ginsberg's father, Louis), passed away.  Her life had not been easy, marked by both mental illness (including numerous long stays in institutions and jarring therapies including electro-shock and insulin shock), further complicated in later years by a stroke.  Moreover, as a Russian immigrant to this country, and one-time fervent participant in Communist youth groups, her paranoia was stoked by the McCarthy-era witch hunts.  

Ginsberg was particularly close to his mother, having been there during her first major mental breakdown (as a teenager, he oversaw her commitment) and continuing to look after her while her then-ex-husband and older son Eugene could (or would) not.  Particularly due to his time in Rockland, and the social pressures he felt during his twenties and thirties (including his disagreement with societal norms of the 1950s), he feared that her mental illness had been passed down to him.  While he felt a sense of relief that her suffering was over, her death also felt unresolved to him, particularly since at her burial there were not enough men present for a proper minyan (Kerouac and Ginsberg's lover, Peter Orlovsky, weren't Jewish and not counted towards the ten men needed), therefore they could not pray the Kaddish, the traditional funeral prayer.

The day after the funeral, Ginsberg received a letter from his mother in the mail, sent right before her death, which responded to the copy of "Howl" he had recently sent her.  It mixed prophetic statements with motherly advice, saying, "The key is in the window, the key is in the sunlight at the window — I have the key — Get married Allen don't take drugs — the key is in the bars, in the sunlight in the window."  His brother, Eugene, received a similar note, saying, "God's informers come to my bed, and God himself I saw in the sky. The sunshine showed too, a key on the side of the window for me to get out. The yellow of the sunshine, also showed the key on the side of the window."  Taking these statements as a starting point, along with the unsaid funeral prayer, Ginsberg sought to write an epic religious poem that would both properly mourn his mother, and also tell the complete and unvarnished story of her life, and "Kaddish," two years in the making, is the realization of those goals.


The other major bit of information that you should know behind today's readings concerns Ginsberg's first visit to Europe.  While he'd been saving up some money to travel, he was happily surprised to discover that his mother had left him a thousand dollars, and with this he was able to undertake this journey, and continue traveling through Tangiers and Greece to India and Japan.  "Kaddish" was largely written in Paris, and many of Ginsberg's other poems of this period reflect his broadened horizons.  One key sequence of events takes place in 1965, when he travels to Cuba, where he causes a political ruckus and is swiftly deported to Prague, where he is crowned the "King of May" (or "Kral Majales," as in the poem which documents this event), causes a political ruckus and is deported once more.  During this period, Ginsberg not only rises to international cultural prominence, but also sees the development of his politics, reflecting the instincts that once made him want to be a labor lawyer.


Here's our reading list for Thursday, with streaming audio links where available:

• Wrote This Last Night (174): MP3 
• Death to Van Gogh's Ear (175): MP3
• The Lion for Real (182): MP3
• To Aunt Rose (192): MP3
• American Change (194)
• Back in Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square (196)
• My Sad Self (209): MP3
  

• Kaddish (217-235, don't stop reading at the "Hymmnn" section, it keeps going)

1. Introduction to Kaddish (2:40): MP3
2. "Kaddish I" (10:11): MP3
3. "Kaddish II" (36:43): MP3
4. "Kaddish - Hymmnn" (1:37): MP3
5. "Kaddish - III" (1:46): MP3
6. "Kaddish - IV" (2:17): MP3
7. "Kaddish - V" (1:57): MP3

• Psalm IV (246)
• The End (267): MP3
• This Form of Life Needs Sex (292)   
• Nov. 23, 1963: Alone (341)
• I Am a Victim of Telephone (352): MP3
• Kral Majales (361): MP3
• Who Be Kind To (367): MP3
• Portland Coliseum (373)
• First Party at Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels (382): MP3

And here are a few supplementary links:

• Levi Asher writes on "Kaddish" on his site, LitKicks, a very early Beat resource online (this article was written in 1994, for example) [links]
• A review of the reissued Kaddish and Other Poems in Zeek [link]
• An illustrated version of "This Form of Life Needs Sex," from Salon, 1997 [link]
• Footage from the May Day 1965 parade in Prague, including Ginsberg's coronation as King of May (or Kral Majales in the native parlance) [link]

Ginsberg reads "Kral Majales" at City Lights Books, with Neal Cassady by his side (from the same session we watched in class two weeks ago)