Está en la página 1de 14

Análisis de Ginsberg, Allen Aullido.

Condiciones de la producción del texto


“La hegemonía constituye todo un cuerpo de prácticas y expectativas en relación con la
totalidad de la vida: nuestros sentidos y dosis de energía, las percepciones definidas que
tenemos de nosotros mismos y de nuestro mundo. Es un vívido sistema de significados
y valores –fundamentales y constitutivos- que en la medida en que son experimentados
como prácticas parecen confirmarse recíprocamente. Por lo tanto es un sentido de la
realidad para la mayoría de las gentes de la sociedad, un sentido de lo absoluto debido a
la realidad experimentada más allá de la cual la movilización de la mayoría de los
miembros de la sociedad –en la mayor parte de las áreas de sus vidas- se torna
sumamente difícil. Es decir que, en el sentido más firme, es una ‘cultura’, pero una
cultura que debe ser considerada asimismo como la vívida dominación y subordinación
de clases particulares” (Williams, 1988: 132).
“Una hegemonía dada es siempre un proceso” (Williams, 1988: 134).
“La parte más difícil e interesante de todo análisis cultural, en las sociedades complejas,
es la que procura comprender lo hegemónico en sus procesos activos y formativos, pero
también en sus procesos de transformación. Las obras de arte, debido a su carácter
fundamental y general, son con frecuencia especialmente importantes como fuentes de
esta compleja evidencia” (Williams, 1988: 135).
“Formaciones: los movimientos y tendencias efectivos, en la vida intelectual y artística,
que tienen una influencia significativa y a veces decisiva sobre el desarrollo activo de
una cultura y que presentan una relación variable y a veces solapada con las
instituciones formales” (Williams, 1988: 140).
“Las formaciones son más reconocibles como tendencias y movimientos conscientes
(literarios, artísticos, filosóficos o científicos) que normalmente pueden ser distinguidos
de sus producciones formativas.(...) dentro de una aparente hegemonía, que puede ser
fácilmente descrita de un modo general, no sólo existen formaciones alternativas y en
oposición (...) sino también dentro de las que pueden reconocerse como formaciones
dominantes, variantes que resisten toda reducción simple a alguna función hegemónica
generalizada” (Williams, 1988: 141-142).
“...las complejas interrelaciones que existen entre los movimientos y tendencias, tanto
dentro como más allá de una dominación efectiva y específica. (...) cómo se relacionan
en el proceso cultural total” (Williams, 1988: 143).
“Lo residual, por definición, ha sido formado efectivamente en el pasado, pero todavía
se halla en actividad dentro del proceso cultural” (Williams, 1988: 144).
“Por ‘emergente’ quiero significar, en primer término, los nuevos significados y valores,
nuevas prácticas, nuevas relaciones y tipos de relaciones que se crean continuamente.
Sin embargo, resulta excepcionalmente difícil distinguir entre los elementos que
constituyen efectivamente una nueva fase de cultura dominante (...) y los elementos que
son esencialmente alternativos o de oposición a ella: en este sentido emergente antes
que simplemente nuevo” (Williams, 1988: 149).
“Tales cambios pueden ser definidos como cambios en las estructuras del sentir”
(Williams, 1988: 154).

1
“Estamos hablando de los elementos característicos de impulso, restricción y tono;
elementos especialmente afectivos de la conciencia y las relaciones, y no sentimiento
contra pensamiento, sino pensamiento tal como es sentido y sentimiento tal como es
pensado; una conciencia práctica de tipo presente, dentro de una continuidad viviente e
interrelacionada. En consecuencia estamos definiendo estos elementos como una
‘estructura’: como un grupo con redaciones internas específicas, entrelazadas y a la vez
en tensión. Sin embargo, también estamos definiendo una experiencia social que todavía
se halla en proceso. (...) ... una estructura del sentir es una hipótesis cultural derivada de
los intentos por comprender tales elementos y sus conexiones con una generación o un
período, con permanente necesidad de retornar interactivamente a tal evidencia.”
(Williams, 1988: 155).
“Las estructuras del sentir pueden ser definidas como experiencias sociales en solución,
a diferencia de otras formaciones semánticas sociales que han sido precipitadas y
resultan más evidente y más inmediatamente aprovechables. No todo el arte, en modo
alguno, se relaciona con una estructura del sentimiento contemporánea. Las formaciones
efectivas de la mayor parte del verdadero arte se relacionan con formaciones sociales
que ya son manifiestas, dominantes o residuales, y es originariamente con las
formaciones emergentes (aunque a menudo en forma de una perturbación o una
modificación dentro de las antiguas formas) con las que la estructura del sentimiento se
relaciona como solución” (Williams, 1988: 157).
“Estados Unidos respondió con la Doctrina Truman, como se llamó a un discurso que
dio Truman al Congreso en la primavera de 1947, en el que pidió 400 millones de
dólares para ayudar militar y económicamente a Grecia y Turquía. Truman dijo que los
Estados Unidos debían ayudar a ‘los pueblos libres que están resistiendo intentos de
subyugación por parte de minorías armadas o por presiones del exterior’.” (Zinn, 1999:
379).
“El 22 de marzo de 1947, dos semanas después de presentar al país la Doctrina Truman
para Grecia y Turquía, Truman promulgó la Orden Ejecutiva 9835, iniciando un
programa para localizar ‘cualquier infiltración de personas desleales’ en el gobierno
norteamericano. Durante los cinco años siguientes, investigaron a unos seis millones de
funcionarios del gobiernos. Despidieron a unos 500 por ‘lealtad cuestionable’.” (Zinn,
1999: 382).
“La orden ejecutiva de Truman sobre la lealtad de 1947 exigió que el ministerio de
Justicia redactara una lista de organizaciones que le parecieran al dicho ministerio
‘totalitarias, fascistas, comunistas o subversivas, o que pretendieran alterar la forma de
gobierno de Estados Unidos con medios inconstitucionales’. Al determinar deslealtad,
se consideraría no sólo el ser miembro de cualquier organización de la lista del ministro
de Justicia, sino también ‘asociación solidaria’ con dichas organizaciones. En 1954 ya
había cientos de agrupaciones en la lista” (Zinn, 1999: 385).
“Toda la cultura estaba impregnada de anticomunismo” (Zinn, 1999: 388).
“La revolución de los negros, tanto del norte como del sur, llegó –como por sorpresa- en
las décadas de 1950 y 1960” (Zinn, 1999: 396).
“En los años sesenta y setenta, no sólo hubo un movimiento de mujeres, un movimiento
de presos y un movimiento indio. Hubo una revuelta general contra los entonces
opresivos, artificiales e incuestionables modos de vida. Esta revuelta afectaba a cada
aspecto de la vida personal: el parto, la niñez, el amor, el sexo, el matrimonio, la ropa, la

2
música, el arte, los deportes, el lenguaje, la comida, la vivienda, la religión, la literatura,
la muerte, las escuelas, etc.” (Zinn, 1999: 479).

El texto

Su primera lectura

“After readings by Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Phillip Whalen and a brief
intermission, Allen Ginsberg moved to the podium for his first public reading of
"Howl". A number of persons in attendance--including Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Snyder
and Whalen--had read “Howl” in Manuscript, but no one was prepared for the impact of
Allen’s dramatic reading of the poem. Allen had been drinking wine throughout the
evening and, by his own later admission, he was intoxicated by the time the lights
dimmed and he began his reading. Somewhat nervous, he started in a calm, quiet tone,
letting the poem’s words achieve their own impact, but before long he gained
confidence and began to sway rhythmically with the music of his poetry, responding to
the enthusiasm of the audience, which was transfixed by "Howl’s" powerful imagery.
Jack Kerouac, sitting at the edge of the platform, pounded in accompaniment on a wine
jug, shouting “GO!” at the end of each long line. The crowd quickly joined him in
punctuating Allen’s lines with shouts of encouragement, and Allen, inspired by the
intensity of the room, responded with an even greater flourish to his reading. By the
time he had concluded, he was in tears, as was Kenneth Rexroth. The audience erupted
in appreciation of the work, as if each person in attendance recognized that literary
history had been made.” Six Gallery Reading, San Francisco--October 13, 1955. Text
culled from Michael Schumcher’s excellent Dharma Lion -- A Biography of Allen
Ginsberg (St. Martin’s Press)

3
La censura ante su publicación

In the case of 'Howl,' a line about saintly


motorcyclists fucking somebody up the ass
did the trick. Moloch played his role to
perfection, confiscating 520 copies of the
City Lights Pocket Poets edition of 'Howl
and Other Poems' in March 1956. Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, the publisher of City Lights
Books, was arrested and bailed out by the ACLU, who led the legal defense. Nine
literary experts testified on the poem's behalf. Ferlinghetti later described the
prosecution's attempt at building a case:

The prosecution put only two 'expert witnesses' on the stand ­­  
both   very   lame   samples   of   academia   ­­   one   from   the   Catholic  
University of San Francisco and one a private elocution teacher, a  
beautiful woman, who said, 'You feel like you are going through  
the gutter when you have to read that stuff. I didn't linger on it too  
long,   I   assure   you.'   The   University   of   San   Francisco   instructor  
said: 'The literary value of the poem is negligible ... This poem is  
apparently   dedicated   to   a   long­dead   movement,   Dadaism,   and  
some late followers of Dadaism. And, therefore, the opportunity is  
long past for any significant literary contribution of this poem.' 

Ferlinghetti was found innocent of publishing obscene books and was quickly 
set free. 

El texto
“Aullido ante la infinita soledad en que vive cada ser humano en un mundo masificado.
En defnitiva, la contracara del despliegue optimista que había escrito en el siglo anterior
uno de los poetas más admirados por Ginsberg, Walt Whitman. En la entonación del
poema, Ginsberg buscaba remarcar, con los golpes rítmicos, una voz disfónica, salvaje,
la voz necesaria para rebelarse” (Cella, 1996: 256-257).

“Part I of "Howl" really began as an accident. Allen just sat down and began typing not
with the purpose of composing any serious masterpiece, but simply "stating [his]
imaginative sympathies, whatever they were worth" (Miles xii). He wrote for his own
enjoyment, playing around with his form and experimenting with the long line, always
thinking that it couldn't be published because of his word choices and because of the
"queer content [his] parents shouldn't see anyway" (Simpson 72). Ginsberg had mostly
used shorter lines in his previous poems but he was influenced by Jack Kerouac (with
his spontaneous prose) and the long saxophone choruses of jazz music. He had also
been reading Cezanne and Whitman about the time he composed "Howl".

The same day Ginsberg composed Part I, he also wrote what would become Part III. As
Part I was mainly devoted to the actions of many of his friends and his mother, not to

4
mention himself, who had been "destroyed by madness" (Kerouac and Burroughs not
included), Part III was dedicated specifically to Solomon. By stating "I'm with you in
Rockland", Ginsberg showed "active acceptance of the suffering soul of C. Solomon,
saying in effect I am still your amigo tho you are in trouble and think yourself in a
void..." (Eberhart and Ginsberg 20). Perhaps as he accepted Solomon, he also accepted
his mother.” Ami Kaeuffer

Estructura del poema: partes y tensiones

Parte 1

The poem is part Walt Whitman, part Old Testament hellfire ranting, and one­
hundred­percent performance art. The lines in the famous first part of the poem 
tumble over each other in long unbroken breaths, all adding to a single endless 
sentence:
Ginsberg is describing his fellow travellers,  the crazy, lonely members  of his 
community   of   misunderstood   poet   artists,   unpublished   novelists,   psychotics, 
radicals, pranksters, sexual deviants and junkies. At the time that he wrote this 
he'd seen several of his promising young friends broken or killed:
Se pueden diferenciar algunas “zonas de sentido” que organizan el conjunto:
• Los intelectuales marginales
• Las experiencias con drogas y alcohol
• Distintos tipos de búsquedas y viajes
• Sexualidades
• Comidas
• Distintos tipos de salidas espaciales y temporales
• Carl Solomon1 y la locura

1
Dedicado a Carl Solomon, born on March 30, 1928 in the Bronx, is mainly famous for having 
inspired the poem "Howl", rather than for any achievements of his own. He and Ginsberg met in 
a waiting room at a psychiatric hospital where Ginsberg was visiting his mother. Solomon was a 
regular there. Despite his mental problems he had a hyperactive intelligence, and was able to 
instruct Ginsberg (not exactly a dummy himself) on many literary points, despite the fact that 
Ginsberg   was   two   years   older.  

Carl   Solomon's   uncle   was   A.   A.   Wyn,   publisher   of   Ace   paperback   books.   Carl   worked 
intermittently for his uncle, and Ginsberg pleaded with Carl and his uncle to help publish his 
then­unpublishable   friends   William  S.   Burroughs   and   Jack   Kerouac.   Ace   Books   finally   used 
Burroughs'   first  novel,   'Junky,'   as   half   of   a   pulp   thriller  "Two   Books   In   One."   But   they  were 
among   the   many   publishers   who   turned   down   Kerouac's   'On   The   Road.'

Solomon was never a writer himself, although readers of "Howl" often assumed he was. Later in 

5
• Y por último la escritura misma del poema. Hay una cierta identificación con la
crucifixión “eli, eli...”
• El último verso conecta con la segunda parte
El uso de la anáfora. Posibles agrupaciones. La estructura de algunos versos. Parataxis.

Each of these describe real­life events by people Ginsberg knew, but the poem 
is   especially   dedicated   to   Carl   Solomon,   Ginsberg's   crazy­insane   hyper­
intellectual friend who he'd met in a mental hospital years before: 

It is Carl Solomon's insanity that drove Ginsberg to write this poem, especially 
because it reminded him of his mother's own unspeakable insanity (which he 
finally wrote about in 'Kaddish,' but here he can only say 'with mother finally 
******'). Carl's insanity also reminds him of himself:

Parte 2

One night he and Peter took peyote and walked around the streets of San Francisco
where they walked to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Allen could see the Hotel from his
window at home and thought it looked like a robot. But when he saw the hotel with
peyote-enhanced vision, he saw it as a monster. This monster he dubbed Moloch, "the
Canaanite fire god who was worshipped in a rite in which parents burned their children
in sacrifice" (Schumacher 206). He wandered around the streets and then went into a
cafeteria where he composed much of Part II of "Howl".
Ginsberg had recently been contemplating the fate of America, with its nuclear
weapons, the Korean War, and the coming of the Cold War. He wrote to Kerouac, "...are
we losing? Is the Fall of America upon us? The Great Fall we once prophesied?"
(Schumacher 209). The realistic possibility of parents sacrificing their children to the
American version of Moloch seemed terrifying to Ginsberg. This section provided the
link he needed between Parts I and III of "Howl".
The first part of the poem, the single long sentence, gives way to the second 
part, a long curse spit at Moloch, 'sphinx of cement and aluminum': 

According to biblical tradition, Moloch was a Canaanite idol to whom children 
had been sacrificed as burnt offerings. In Leviticus 18:21: 'You shall not give any 
of your children to devote them by fire to Molech, and so profane the name of 
your God; I am the Lord.' Moloch appears in the poetry of Milton and Coleridge. 
life he gave in and fulfilled the expectation by writing two book of elliptical, erudite and quaintly 
psychotic   short   essays,   "Mishap,   Perhaps"   in   1966   and   "More   Mishaps"   in   1968.   His 
"Emergency   Messages,"   more   in   the   same   vein,   was   published   in   1989.

It's interesting that Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg each travelled with a "doppelganger" ­­ a 
mirror image sidekick with less literary training but more "authenticity". Kerouac had the free­
spirited   charismatic   Neal   Cassady   and   Burrroughs   had   the   street   smart   true   junkie   Herbert 
Huncke. Ginsberg, who seemed to always inspire to the state of insanity, had Carl Solomon.

6
Ginsberg is cursing the false idols to which human beings are still sacrificed 
today.
Moloc es al mismo tiempo la esfinge igualmente carnicera que ha devorado a los
hipsters.
Hay una descripción del cuerpo de Moloc y de su alma. Su nombre es “Mente”, está
introyectado en el individuo: “penetró temprano en mi alma”. El poeta lo abandona.
Termina con una enumeración de cualidades. Visión babélica de Moloc.

Parte 3

and imagines Solomon behind the walls of the upstate New York psychiatric 
hospital. 

Vuelve el tema de la mitología cristiana bajo la forma de revolución/resurrección

Locura, comunismo, homosexualidad, enfermedad, Oeste y revolución son puestas en


un mismo campo semántico. Por el otro están la prisión, terapias, riqueza, ciudad,
crucifixión.

Parte 4

And finally, the last part of "Howl", the Footnote, was written on a bus Francisco. It is
for his mother who died in the mental hospital. Ginsberg said, "it says I loved her
anyway & that even in worst conditions life is holy" (Simpson 73).
This section is followed by a 'Footnote to Howl,' in which the name of Moloch is 
replaced by the word 'Holy': 

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!  
Holy!   Holy!   Holy!   Holy!   Holy!   Holy!   Holy!   Holy!  
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!  
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday  
is eternity! Everyman's an angel!

La escritura de Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg's Mind Writing Slogans

"First thought is best in art, second in other matters."


--William Blake

I Ground (situation, or primary perception)

1 "First Thought, Best Thought" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

7
2 "Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts.' -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

3 "The Mind must be loose." -John Adams

4 "One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception." -Charles
Olsen, "Projective Verse"

5 "My writing is a picture of the mind moving." -Phillip Whalen

6 Surprise Mind -Allen Ginsberg

7 "The Old pond, the frog jumps in, Kerplunk!" -Basho

8 "Magic is the total delight (appreciation) of chance." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

9 "Do I contradict myself?


very well, I contradict myself.
I am large. I contain multitudes." -Walt Whitman

10 "...What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in


literature?...Negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without
any irritable reaching after fact & reason" -John Keats

11 "Form is never more than an extension of content." -Robert Creely to Charles Olsen

12 "Form follows function." -Frank Loyd Wright

13 Ordinary Mind includes eternal perceptions -A.G.

14 "Nothing is better for being eternal


Nor so white as the white that dies of a day." -Louis Zukofsky

15 Notice what you notice -A.G.

16 Catch yourself thinking -A.G>

17 Observe what's vivid -A.G.

18 Vividness is self-selecting -A.G.

19 "Spots of Time" -William Wordsworth

20 If we don't show anyone we're free to write anything -A.G.

21 "My mind is open to itself." -Gelek Rinpoche

22 "Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound." -Charles Reznikoff

II Path (method or recognition)

8
23 "No ideas but in things."..."No ideas but in facts." -William Carlos Williams,

24 "Close to the nose." -W.C. Williams

25 Sight is where the eye hits." -Louis Zukofsky

26 "Clamp the mind down on objects." -W.C. Wiliams

27 "Direct treatment of the thing...(or object,)" -Ezra Pound

28 "Presentation, not reference." -Ezra Pound

29 "Give me a for instance." -Vernacular

30 "Show not tell." -Vernacular

31 "The natural object is always the adequate symbol." -Ezra Pound

32 "Things are symbols of themselves." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

33 "Labor well the minute particulars, take care of the little


ones
He who would do good for another must do it in minute
particulars
General Good is the plea of the Scoundrel Hypocrite and
Flatterer
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized
particulars." -William Blake

34 "And being old she put a skin/ on everything she said." -W.B. Yeats

35 "Don't think of words when you stop but to see the picture better." -Jack Kerouac

36 Details are the life of prose." -Jack Kerouac

37 Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best. -A.G.

38 "Economy of Words" -Ezra Pound

39 "Tailoring" -Gregory Corso

40 Maximum information, minimum number of syllables. -A.G.

41 Syntax condensed, sound is solid. -A.G.

42 Savor vowels, appreciate consonants. -A.G.

43 "Compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome" -Ezra


Pound

9
44 "...awareness...of the tone leading of the vowels." -Ezra Pound

45 "...an attempt to approximate classical quantitative meters..." -Ezra Pound

46 "Lower limit speech, upper limit song" -Louis Zukofsky

47 "Phanopoela, Melopoeia, Logopoela." -Ezra Pound

48 "Sight, Sound, Intellect." -Louis Zukofsky

49 "Only emotion objectified endures." -Louis Zukofsky

III Fruition (result or appreciation)

50 Spiritus = Breathing = Inspiration = Unobstructed Breath

51 "Alone with the Alone." -Plotinus

52 Sunyata (skt.) = Ku (Japanese) = Emptiness

53 "What's the sound of one hand clapping?" -Zen Koan

54 "What's the face you had before you were born?" -Zen Koan

55 Vipassana (skt.) = Clear Seeing

56 "Stop the world" -Carlos Casteneda

57 "The purpose of art is to stop time." -Bob Dylan

58 "The unspeakable visions of the individual." -J.K.

59 "I'm going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to try to listen
recklessly." -Chuang Tzu, (Tr. Burton Watson)

60 "Candor" -Whitman

61 "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." -W. Shakespeare

62 "Contact" -A Magazine, Nathaniel West & W.C. Williams, Eds.

63 "God appears & God is Light


To those poor souls who dwell in Night.
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day." -W. Blake

64 "Subject is known by what she sees." -A.G.

65 Others can measure their visions by what we see. -A.G.

10
66 Candor ends paranoia. -A.G.

67 "Willingness to be Fool." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

68 "Day & Night / you're all right." -Gregory Corso

69 Tyger: "Humility is Beatness." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A.G.

70 Lion: "Surprise Mind" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A.G.

71 Garuda: "Crazy Wisdom Outrageousness" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

72 Dragon: "Unborn Inscrutability" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

73 "To be men not destroyers" -Ezra Pound

74 "Speach synchronizes mind & body" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

76 "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" -Shelley

77 "Make it new" -Ezra Pound

78 "When the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake" -Plato

79 "Every third thought shall be my grave" -W. Shakespeare, The Tempest

80 "That in black ink love may still shine bright" -W. Shakespeare, Sonnets

81 "Only emotion endures" Ezra Pound

82 "Well while I'm here I'll


do the work-
and what's the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow." -A.G.

83 "...Kindness, sweetest
of the small notes
in the world's ache,
most modest & gentle
entered man before history
and became his daily
connection, let no man
tell you otherwise." -Carl Rakosi

84 "To diminish the mass of human and sentient sufferings." -Gelek Rinpoche

11
Naropa Institute, July 1992
New York, 5 March 1993
New York, 27 June 1993

Procedimientos

La referencia al jazz (Lester leaps in de Charlie Parker) en la versificación. Be-bop jazz:


un estilo de compleja estructura que surge en los años ’40. Se caracteriza por un
encadenamiento de acordes y una superposición de tonos. La melodía se sustituye por
una cascada de notas breves que brotan entre frases musicales entrecortadas.

One of the governing maxims of the Beat style of writing was


expressed by Allen Ginsberg when he paraphrased an old Zen
Buddhist philosophy in his words, "First thought, best thought."
Ginsberg called this improvisational technique applied to writing
"composing on the tongue," and it was used in one way or another by
many of the Beat writers. The rhythm, meter and length of verse was also
distinctly more similar to jazz music than it was to traditionally European styles. Ted
Joans, a poet and friend of the Beat authors, once said, "I could see that [Ginsberg] was
picking up the language and rhythm of jazz, that he wasn't following the European
tradition". Ginsberg fancied himself a poet in the style of a bebop musician because he
lengthened the poetic line to fit the length of his own breath, paused for air, and
launched another line, sometimes starting with the same word as the last line. Jazz
music is distinct in its stressing of the second and fourth beats, as in traditional African
music, as opposed to the stressing of the first and third beats, as in Western music. Beat
poetry frequently has a much looser, more syncopated rhythm, similar to jazz.

This technique is perhaps best exemplified in Ginsberg's classic poem 'Howl', which
was to Beat poetry what Kerouac's 'On the Road' was to Beat prose. "I depended on the
word 'who' to keep the beat, a base to keep measure, return to and take off again onto
another streak of invention," Ginsberg said in a 1959 essay about his approach to poetry.
The verbal technique of 'Howl' can easily be compared to a Charlie Parker song, in
which Parker plays a series of improvisational phrases upon the same theme, pausing
for breath and starting another. But Ginsberg said, "Lester Young, actually, is what I was
thinking about... 'Howl' is all "Lester Leaps In." And I got that from Kerouac. Or paid
attention to it on account of Kerouac, surely--he made me listen to it".
As Ginsberg said that 'Howl' was all "Lester Leaps In,".
Según Gregory Corso, “el servicio más importante de la generación beat a la poesía fue
la ruptura con la cadencia tradicional”. Procedimientos: uso del habla cotidiana, ritmo
bop, imágenes que mezclan realidad y delirio, alargamiento de vocales, utilización de
cortes inusuales en los versos
i. La referencia a la estética cézanniana

Moloch y otros símbolos y metáforas

Una mezcla del Moloc bíblico con la tradición miltoniana y el Leviatán de Hobbes.

12
The name of a heathen divinity whose worship figures largely in the later history of the kingdom of Judah. As the
national god of the Ammonites, he is known as "Milcom" (1 Kings 11:5,7), or "Malcam" ("Malcan" is an alternative
reading in 2 Samuel 12:30,31; compare Jeremiah 49:1,3; Zec 1:5, where the Revised Version margin reads "their
king"). The use of basileus, and archon, as a translation of the name by the Septuagint suggests that it may have been
originally the Hebrew word for "king," melekh. Molech is obtained from melekh by the substitution of the vowel
points of Hebrew bosheth, signifying "shame." From the obscure and difficult passage, Amos 5:26, the Revised
Version (British and American) has removed "your Moloch" and given "your king," but Septuagint had here
translated "Moloch," and from the Septuagint it found its way into the Ac (7:43), the only occurrence of the name in
the New Testament.

When we come to consider the nature of this worship it is remarkable how few details are given regarding it in
Scripture. The place where it was practiced from the days of Ahaz and Manasseh was the Valley of Hinnom where
Topheth stood, a huge altar-pyre for the burning of the sacrificial victims. There is no evidence connecting the
worship with the temple in Jerusalem. Ezekiel's vision of sun-worshippers in the temple is purely ideal (Ezekiel 8). A
priesthood is spoken of as attached to the services (Jeremiah 49:3; compare Zechariah 1:4,5). The victims offered to
the divinity were not burnt alive, but were killed as sacrifices, and then presented as burnt offerings. "To pass through
the fire" has been taken to mean a lustration or purification of the child by fire, not involving death. But the prophets
clearly speak of slaughter and sacrifice, and of high places built to burn the children in the fire as burnt offerings
(Jeremiah 19:5; Ezekiel 16:20,21).

The popular conception, molded for English readers largely by Milton's "Moloch, horrid king" as described in
Paradise Lost, Book I, is derived from the accounts given in late Latin and Greek writers, especially the account
which Diodorus Siculus gives in his History of the Carthaginian Kronos or Moloch. The image of Moloch was a
human figure with a bull's head and outstretched arms, ready to receive the children destined for sacrifice. The image
of metal was heated red hot by a fire kindled within, and the children laid on its arms rolled off into the fiery pit
below. In order to drown the cries of the victims, flutes were played, and drums were beaten; and mothers stood by
without tears or sobs, to give the impression of the voluntary character of the offering (see Rawlinson's Phoenicia,
113, for fuller details).

LEVIATHAN
by Thomas Hobbes

INTRODUCTION
NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by
the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated,
that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion
of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within,
why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves
by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For
what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many
strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the
whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet
further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature,
man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH,
or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though

13
of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection
and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an
artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the
magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial
joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the
sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty)
are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and
riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people's
salvation) its business; counsellors, by whom all things
needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity
and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition,
sickness; and civil war, death. Lastly, the pacts and covenants, by
which the parts of this body politic were at first made, set together,
and united, resemble that fiat, or the Let us make man, pronounced
by God in the Creation.

Moloch was a familiar figure who took on many forms, but he was still demanding
sacrifices of the generation’s children. He breathed the fire of plutonium, of warfare, of
racism, of misguided nationalism that led to mistrust and hatred.

Intertexualidad y contactos con otras poéticas


b. García Lorca
c. Whitman
d. Rimbaud
e. Blake
Ginsberg attempted to turn on every famous cultural figure in his address book, 
including   Willem   De   Kooning,   Franz   Kline,   Dizzy   Gillespie,   Thelonius   Monk, 
Robert Lowell and Jack Kerouac (whose cranky response sent Timothy Leary 
on his first bum trip).

Bibliografía
• Cella, Susana (1996) “Beat” en Para leer sin parar. Antología del lector joven. El
Ateneo. Buenos Aires.
• Williams, Raymond (1988) Marxismo y literatura. Península/Biblos. Barcelona.
• Zinn, Howard (1999) La otra historia de los Estados Unidos. Otras voces.
Hondarribia.

Sitios Web
www.learner.org/amerpass/index.html Sitio de enseñanza de literatura norteamericana
K-12
www.gbltq.com Sitio especializado en culturas de minorías sexuales. Tiene una sección
de literatura
http://www.litkicks.com/ Sitio sobre literatura norteamericana

14

También podría gustarte