dreniff’s Blog

The motif I decided to examine when re-reading Howl was that of the human body.

Textual evidence:

“purgatoried their torsos night after night / with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls” (p10)

“who burned cigarette holes in their arms” “fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists” (p13)

“who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully” “who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits” (p16)

There are more examples in first section of bodily mutilation. In the second part of the poem we get a description of a “Moloch” and its body:

“What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains” “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!”

Finally, the Footnote takes a less morbid picture of the human body:

“The sking is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!”

Howl is about the destruction of the sacred, and Ginsberg believes that the human body is sacred. The first section of the poem is about the mutilation of the bodily temple, the destruction of the sacred. The second section of the poem, where we get a description of Moloch, is about what is destroying the human body. Moloch is literally an idol from the Bible who was appeased through sacrifice, but in Ginsberg’s poem Moloch represents industrial civilization — that thing that not only dehumanizes us, but for many actually destroys bodily. In the footnote Ginsberg reveals his feelings about what has been destroyed, the human body. He sees the physical body as being just as holy as the soul in religion. It is sacriligious to destroy it, thus industrial society is an unholy abomination.

Loyalty is so important to the blue-collar, ethnic community that Miller portrays in his play because the immigrant community doesn’t get any help or support from outside; they must depend on each other for help. Suburbanites don’t need to worry about forming alliances with their neighbors, much less even know who their neighbors are, because they can feel secure that some outside force (police/feds/Jesus) will help them if they are ever in need. Immigrants, on the other hand, live out on the fringes of society, often seen as less American than the more WASP-y folks who populate this country, and because of that they must work together — their only allies are themselves, so loyalty to each other, to the community, is essential for survival.

Loyalty was an issue with Miller for obvious reasons (how pretentious of me… obvious only to those who know anything about Miller’s own life). He was outed by a friend, Elia Kazan, as a communist — so the breaking of trust is something Miller has experienced first hand, and I’m sure he has many complicated emotions about loyalty because of that experience. I can’t say I know why Kazan outed Miller, but his motives may be similar to Eddie’s, if Miller modeled Eddie after Kazan. Eddie has so much trouble with loyalty because his own selfish desires come into conflict with that one essential (for immigrant communities) value. His fear of losing Catherine to a man who is “not right” outweighs his obligation to be loyal to his kind. Eddie is a selfish bastard, ‘nough said.

Loyalty is something I still struggle with. I have no problem being loyal, but I’ve “suffered” (strong word, but it sounds good here) my fair share of relationships with people less than loyal. No one has ever cheated on me, but the last girl I dated before my current girlfriend straight up told me that she wanted to fuck other people. She still wanted to date me, but (excuse my language) my dick just wasn’t enough for her. I might have a weird definition of what a stable relationship looks like, but in my opinion both partners stay loyal to each other. I understand that monogamous relationships are “evil” and all that bullshit, but I’ve been conditioned (or imprinted… I’ll have to consult my Timothy Leary psych books) to want to have a relationship with only one person. I’m still dealing with that even in my current relationship — mostly because I’ve developed insecurities from the last relationship. I’ve become a more jealous person; I find it harder to trust, unfortunately. I’m working on it though. Anyway, that’s my experience with an “Eddie”.

Hemingway geniously distances his own prejudices from his short story “Indian Camp,” so that the reader only gets the characters’ perceptions. Asking the question, “Does “Indian Camp” depict Native Americans as being somehow primitive and/or authentic?” is misleading; instead we should be looking at whether Nick’s father, or Nick himself, perceive the Indians as being primitive and/or authentic. Nick’s father definitely views the Indians as being primitive, compared to himself and his kin. This is evident when Nick’s father tells Nick that the Indian mother’s screams are unimportant to him. He distances himself from the woman’s humanity, makes her an object to be ignored. The only way a person can ignore so much vocalized pain is to make the person in pain into a primitive, lower lifeform. It is easier to NOT have empathy for something below you (do you cry for dead ants?). Even Nick is disturbed by the woman’s screams, but his father easily brushes them aside, beyond his perceptions, beyond his emotions. Because the woman’s husband sees his wife as being human, because he loves her and respects her, he is much more deeply affected by her pain than Nick’s father. His suicide is testament to his feelings for the situation his wife is in.

Nick’s father lacks empathy for the woman giving birth. The husband does not.

All the sculptures in Gallery A can be viewed as Modernist works. Particularly Robert Chanler’s works, when considered in conjunction with the other pieces in the gallery, because he takes a very minimalist, abstract and non-European approach to his works. His prints are works of emotion; they are about more than just what the picture depicts. When looking at the Screen, Porcupine, you see porcupines in a forest, but because the image is more abstract than it is hyper-realistic, the viewer is allowed to fill in some gaps with emotions and memories they associate with those shapes and images. So Chanler’s image is more about human perception and feeling, the things associated with the sharp and harsh points of the porcupines and trees, than it is about porcupines grazing in a forest. By using Japanese strokes and Native American images, Chanler is ‘defamiliarizing’ the viewer. I would think that most people in 1913 would expect European art in an art exhibit, especially when a white man is doing the art, but Chanler defies those expectations — a very modernist thing to do.

Dasburg, a sculptor whose works appear in Gallery A aswell, also caught my attention. His works contain human anatomy and clear shapes… they aren’t too abstract, BUT they do exude a lot of human emotion. It seems like the point of the scultures are to invoke a certain feeling in the viewer, rather than depict something real. Lucifer for example doesn’t depict anything anyone has ever seen in their lives (unless under the influence of belladona), but it’s grotesqueness, something I feel like modernism enjoys depicting (see Virginia Woolf), forces the viewer to feel something… to look inside themselves and wonder, “what is it about this thing that frightens me?” Even White Slave and Euphemia Lamb challenge the viewer, forcing them to think about something. Modernist art is not a passive art, it is transactional. The viewer is forced to interact with it. With White Slave especially, because slavery is such a horrid part of our history and so closely tied to our national identity, it is hard not to feel something about it… and a white slave should bring home some uncomfortable feelings for the white viewers in 1913.

Like much of the audience in 1913, I went straight from Gallery A to the “Chamber of Horrors,” or Gallery I. This is the Cubist Room, where the weirdos reign supreme. I have been a huge fan of Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staricase, No. 2, mostly because I feel like it depicts what theorists believe the higher dimensions could potentially look like. Duchamp challenges his viewers, forces them to ask, “what constitutes art?” Does cubism constitute art? Can artwork just be a bunch of shapes on a canvas, as opposed to something like a Michaelangelo. Duchamp’s work is so abstract, so far away from realistic imagery, that the viewer MUST feel something when viewing it. Again, the audience is forced into an interactive relationship with the art because there is so much room for the viewer’s imagination to impose their own feelings and associations on the painting. That, to me, is a large part of the definition of modernist artwork. The artwork-viewer relationship is like a very intimate one.

Picabia does the same thing as Duchamp, only it could be argued that Picabia takes cubism to a whole different level. Where the viewer should be able to see figures in Duchamp’s work (read the title of the work first, then try to find the nude, the king, the queen, etc.), Picabia’s works are so abstract that the viewer would need quite a powerful imagination to find actual visual representations of the painting’s ‘topic’ in the painting. Picabia’s paintings should instead invoke the feeling of dances in spring, or rain, or paris. Again, the viewer is forced to bring something to the table when viewing these works. In my mind, this is the beauty of modernism.

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun -

Who’s life? Emily’s? Who is the speaker of this poem.

Had is the past tense of have and an auxiliary verb to the past tense stood, so the poem (so far) is a reflective poem. It is about the past.

The dashes surrounding ‘a Loaded Gun’ give dramatic pause, giving ‘a Loaded Gun’ extra weight when read within that line. The reader is supposed to notice the image of the loaded gun, maybe to shock or surprise the reader. The line is definitely an ominous foreshadowing for the rest of the poem. Whatever happens, it cannot  be good.

A loaded gun is a powerful metaphor that holds connotations of danger, revenge, mortality, murder, and a threat to life. Perhaps even suicide. If the speakers life stood as a loaded gun then somehow her life resembled a loaded gun, at least poetically. Could the speaker been on the verge of action, the way a loaded gun is on the verge of firing? Maybe the bullet in the chamber is unused potential in the speaker’s life…

In Corners – till a Day

The speaker is in a corner? Her life is in a corner? The gun is in a corner? For a day? Read on…

The Owner passed – identified -

The owner of what? I notice that the first verb of each line is capitalized. Why was the corner capitalized? Why is the Owner capitalized? Are they important? Is s/he the owner of the corner? Perhaps the speaker’s landlord… S/he passed the speaker, and it seems s/he didn’t notice the speaker but the speaker noticed and identified the Owner. Interesting. There seems to be a mysterious, and unfriendly, relationship between the Owner and the speaker.

And carried Me away –

The owner carried the speaker, capitalized, away somewhere. Well, now it really seems like the relationship between the speaker and owner is an unfriendly one. Carried her away where? To debtor’s prison?

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -

We being the Owner and the Speaker. Now I wonder if the Owner owns the speaker’s life in some way. They roam in the Sovereign Woods. Roam, to me, connotates a benign, even wonderful and adventurous action. Sovereign Woods, capitalized, would be a wood that holds supreme authority over it’s environment. A forest free from man’s influence?

And now We hunt the Doe -

Again, all nouns are capitalized. The Owner and the Speaker, roaming through the Sovereign Woods, hunt a Doe. With a loaded gun? Is the Doe a metaphor? Is she instead hunting something (like a Doe) with her life (like a loaded gun)?

And every time I speak for Him -

Him = the Owner. Read on…

The Mountains straight reply -

So if the Mountains are replying for Him, the Owner, perhaps the Owner isn’t a man. Maybe the Owner is Nature. Oh, that’s very Whitmanian. This makes sense to me, nature (or God… Pan?) being the Owner of the Speaker’s life, which stands a loaded gun. I wonder how they reply to the speaker…

And do I smile, such cordial light

So, in response to the Mountain’s reply, our Speaker smiles, reflecting a vital and sincere (?) light off of her teeth. The Speaker must feel a warm hearted, loving-kindness toward the Mountains/Owner if a straight reply causes her to smile light out of her face.

Upon the Valley glow -

Nature again, being given very heavenly qualities (a Valley glowing?) — Whitman? The Valley, capitalized like the Mountains and the Doe, seem to be a part of the Owner, whoever he is.

It is as a Vesuvian face

It = the Valley/Mountain/Doe/Owner…? has a Vesuvian face… a face that is either like a slow burning match or marked by sudden or violent outbursts. Perhaps the sudden and violent outbursts aren’t meant to be such a horrible thing, but instead glorious light (glow?) burst suddenly from it’s face. But then again the face is just a metaphor (it is as a … face). So it, whatever it is, is not really a face, but like one.

Had let its pleasure through -

So before there had been something blocking “its” pleasure from coming through, but now, with the Vesuvian face and the glowing Valleys, the pleasure has been let through. Through to who? To the speaker? Is the “it” life, letting life’s pleasure through to the speaker who had never felt it before?

And when at Night – Our good Day done -

Night, Day, and Our are all capitalized. Nouns again are holy figures, it seems. Anyway, this line basically says: our glorious day is over, and now it’s nighttime.

I guard My Master’s Head -

The Master = the Owner? The head is the seat of life and consciousness, so I can understand why that would be guarded over many other of the Owner/Master’s body parts. But why does it need to be guarded? And in what way is the Owner the speaker’s Master?

‘Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s

The Head or the Master is better than a large sea duck’s head (again capitalized)? How is the Master’s Head better than an Eider-Duck’s. Why is an Eider-Duck used in this line instead of any other animal with a head?

Deep Pillow – to have shared -

So it is obvious the Speaker and the Master are in a bedroom at night. Perhaps the master is a Loaded Gun, and the Head is some part of that gun, lying under her Deep Pillow? If it were it would make sense that she would share the pillow with the gun, it would make sense that she would protect it, and it would make sense that it would be better than an eider-duck’s head (which one would win in a shoot-out? One would fire flame and metal, the other would explode in a pink mist).

To foe of His – I’m deadly foe -

To the Master’s enemy, the Speaker is also a deadly enemy. So the Master and the Speaker are on one side. If the Master/Owner is the Loaded Gun, then it makes sense that whoever is being shot by the gun (the gun’s enemy) is also the shooter’s enemy (theoretically the speaker, who would fire the gun). And a deadly foe… well, in my opinion to be called a deadly anything requires power enough to kill efficiently and quickly. A person armed with a gun, and a grudge, would definitely fit that bill.

None stir the second time -

One shot, one kill. Two man enter, one man leave, this is Thunderdome. If you’re the speaker’s enemy, you don’t get a second chance after she attacks. Her enemies die the first time.

On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -

The Speaker’s Yellow Eye is a sign that she is going to kill you. Like the evil eye. Like a wolf’s yellow glare piercing through a wintery darkness, marking its prey. Beware if you are that whom she lays her Yellow Eye upon, it may mean certain death.

Or an emphatic Thumb -

If she lays a Thumb on you with emphasis, then the result is the same as if she lays her Yellow Eye on you. Perhaps her emphatic Thumb cocks the loaded gun, sealing your fate.

Though I than He – may longer live

So she will live longer than He… Is He the gun, which could possibly rust and become useless within her lifetime. Is He the Owner/Master, which could be nature or the gun… Is the He the person she has killed? Why does He not live as long as She?

He longer must – than I -

So even though she lives longer than He, He should/must live longer than Her. Is the He her life? I don’t understand. Why would He need to live longer than her? Is He a lover of hers? Is He something the firing of the gun destroys, such as innocence or other life? Nature?

For I have but the power to kill,

Obviously. But it sounds like the power to kill is the only power she possesses, when she says, “I have but…” So her life has no power, no meaning, apart from that damned, cursed Loaded Gun, which destroys He who should live longer than she, but was killed too soon because of her deadly weapon.

Without–the power to die–

So she has the power to kill, but she cannot die (at least by her own hands). I think that she killed her lover but cannot bring herself to commit suicide by the same loaded gun (or perhaps she only owned one bullet, which is now lodged in the brain of her dead lover. So all of her life becomes that loaded gun, nothing means anything anymore because she has killed He, the Master, the Owner. With such a tragic event, how else could she view her life? That loaded gun has engulfed her, made her a part of it. Now she stands over her dead lover, the man who owned and was master of her heart. Now she looks down at the gun in her hand, still smoldering from the barrel, and realizes that she has become that mindless, killing machine. That her life now stands as a Loaded Gun.

There seems to be multiple, optional themes running parallel to each other. On the one hand the poem could be read as being about unused potential finally fired off at the end, like a violent orgasm. Or it could be read as being a depressing, horrid turn of events — a killing of the beauty of life.

The “FLOOD-TIDE” and the “crowds of men and women” pose as “problems” for Whitman because he has yet to yoke with them. He is separated from them — on the outside looking in. Like the inbetweenness he experiences by physically being between two shores, Whitman is between individuality and the dissolution of his ego into all things. At the beginning of the poem he is on the cusp of merging his consciousness with the world around him. Early on in the poem Whitman realizes that he shares with everyone the very world he perceives. Many more will gaze upon the sky, sun, clouds, and river he enjoys at the time of the poem.

The boundaries between individuals, which posed a problem to Whitman in the beginning, are crossed by our similar experiences. This phenomena, this sharing of the world and of human experience, transcends time. “Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt” (23). Because he can share these things with people in his future, and beyond his physical death, Whitman feels like he himself is transcending time. “I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence; / I project myself – also I return – I am with you, and know how it is” (21-22). Whitman is with us because HE IS US. Whitman is the type of person to notice similarities rather than differences, so by identifying himself with all of human experience he seems to say that we should recognize ourselves as belonging to a single, common group: humanity, rather than as seperate people or tribes. This is how Whitman himself transcends time and space. Whitman becomes ALL of human experience, from the “guile, anger, lust” to the “friendly and proud” (75, 81).

The river, and the rest of his environs for that matter, too become a part of the unity Whitman describes because he is so confident that the river and the sky and the sun, etc., will be around as long as humans are. Therefore, they become a part of that human experience, the one thing that transcends all barriers. In a sense, we are in a very intimate relationship with our surroundings. We owning them, them owning us. Very symbiotic. In the end of the poem, Whitman has worked through the earlier problems of dis-connectedness. In the end, simply by shifting his perspective, he has become one with his race and his world.

The painting I chose is by Alex Grey and is called ‘Tantra’ and I chose it for this line (see link) because tantra is the spiritual art of love whereby two souls become one — “every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Man and man, woman and man, woman and woman are all one, all made up of the same life stuff. Tantra, and Alex Grey’s painting by that name, is about spiritually realizing that unity of body and soul Whitman is speaking about. As far as the contemporary experience, I think the painting (and Whitman’s line) speak to, and validate on an emotional level, the human desire to make a connection with others and to eventually ‘yoke’ with others.

When Emerson writes, “Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made” what he means is there is an established canon, not just in literature but in the writing and ideas of all academic fields, and rarely do colleges and scholars deviate from these works. For Emerson, and for the purpose of freeing creativity and imagination from institutional forged shackles, many of these works are trite tripe and trash. While having a sense of history is necessary as a foundation for creativity (Pablo Picasso had to learn how to paint before he could break the rules), the imagination is stifled if praise and imitation of important works are the sole activities of the scholar. William S. Burroughs, that drug-addicted homosexual occultist, is famous because he broke the rules. Granted, he knew how to write before he broke the rules, but he broke from tradition rather than imitated it. If Burroughs had merely imitated the “language which the field and work-yard made” then his work would read like a copy, like a novel living in the past.

There are two points that I think Emerson makes with the above quote: 1) that scholars need to curb their worship of literary idols and put more energy into creatively producing their own works of literature (for we are all potentially much greater than Shakespeare) and 2) that the very idea of “canon” is moot because what is considered essential literature is totally subjective and is always changing (the history of the way Moby Dick has been perceived by scholars evidences this). In Emerson’s time he thought it essential to break away from British culture (centuries of British art) so that American artists could come into their own. Emerson’s problem still exists today, only now the religious clinging to what few works are considered canonical literature and scholarly stigmatizes several innovative and GREAT works. Science fiction is ignored because it is genre fiction (never mind the genius of Gene Wolfe), comic books are considered childish and poorly written (the nerds triumphed when Alan Moore’s Watchmen made Times Magazine’s TOP 100 Novels Since 1923), and your favorite author will never get his/her book read in the classroom, so just give up.

Step one: form your own canon. Step two: deviate from it and create.

“Let us hear which will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you.”

I shouted with laughter and brandished my staff in frenzied gestures. I have no doubt my behaviour scared away any daemons who wished me harm. I continued in this way until I noticed a red light, like that cast from a fire. I paused and, with my acute sense of hearing, heard an unholy hymn. The tune was one I recognized from the choir of the village meeting-house, only this chorus consisted not of human voices but of the sounds of a mad wilderness. I cried out, but not even I could hear my cry above the grotesque harmony.

The choir’s roar died for a moment, so I ventured forward toward the origin of the ghastly music. I found an opening that appeared to be some sort of ritual space complete with stone altar. To my eyes it seemed the whole area was set aflame while shadows danced about.

“A grave and dark-clad company,” I uttered.

I recognized a few faces amongst the congregation, most of them church members, before madness flooded my mind and sent my heart pounding, pounding in my chest. I swear I saw even good old Deacon Gookin consorting with the Indians and the wretched. You may think me mad but I tell you I saw your mothers and grand-mothers, your priests and judges consorting with devilish fiends!

“But where is Faith?” I thought. I had hope she had escaped that frightful event.

Then another verse of the hymn arose and I swear I heard the forest itself cry out in harmony. The rock-altar exploded in flame and a garbed figure appeared.

“Bring forth the converts!” cried the figure, his voice rolled through the environs like a torrent.

His word seemed to beckon me. I remember seeing my father’s frame, calling me from beyond death, imploring me to consecrate my sins. A woman, perhaps my mother, urged me to turn back but I had no power to do so. I was under the garbed man’s spell. (I am not mad; if you had seen what I saw that night you would see the truth in my account.) Deacon Gookin seized me and led me to the fiery altar. Goody Cloyse and Martha Carrier, once both saintly but now both Whores of Babylon, brought a veiled female before me.

“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your race. Ye have found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!”

We turned and were surprised by the flash of flame light against the grinning faces of all the fiend worshipers.

“There,” resumed the sable form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshiping assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and how fair damsels — blush not, sweet ones — have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest to an infant’s funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power — than my power at its utmost — can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other.”

We looked into each others’ eyes, I beheld my Faith, she beheld me, both of us trembling upon that altar.

“Lo, there ye stand, my children,” said the figure. “Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.”

“Welcome,” repeated the worshipers in unison.

We stood together, husband and wife, on the cusp of the abyss. The garbed figure, whom I am still certain must have been the Devil himself, dipped his hand into a basin of blood to baptise us with. I looked upon Faith and feared for her immortal soul. I feared the pollution that would stain her purity forever.

“Faith! Faith!” I cried, “look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one.”

I do not know if Faith obeyed, for I immediately found myself in a quiet and calm forest, much different from the scene of the ritual. I do not know how, but I must have travelled some distance away from the evil Mass.

I am not mad, nor was I dreaming. Only something real could possibly haunt and torment me so.