Introduction: It's
55 years this year (1955-2010) since Ginsberg's Howl was published, and 45
years (1965-2010) since Grant's Lament was published. This article on
Ginsberg's Howl and Grant's Lament appears in print in Ron Dart's Spiders and Bees. In it, Dart brings to the forefront how two different 'jeremiads' are handled.
It is fifty years this autumn since the Beat Movement was
launched at Six Gallery in
San Francisco (October 13, 1955). Some of the American Beats from the East
Coast (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and the West Coast (Kenneth Rexroth,
Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti) met and read together at
this gathering. John Suiter rightly says, ‘The Six Gallery reading has sometimes been called the
first synthesis of the East and West Coast factions of the Beat Generation’ (p.148).
Kenneth
Rexroth had hiked to many of the peaks in the North Cascades in the 1920s. His
rambling and tramping tales are well told in An Autobiographical Novel (ch. 30). Gary Snyder worked on lookout
peaks (Crater and Sourdough Mountains) in 1952–1953, but he could not get work
in the North Cascades in 1954 because of his affiliations with unions and
anarchist left groups. These were the McCarthy years, and Snyder was a victim
of such a red scare. Philip Whalen worked on lookout peaks (Sauk and Sourdough
Mountains) in 1953–1955. Jack Kerouac, a year after the Six Gallery reading (1956), spent a summer on
Desolation Peak in the North Cascades. The Dharma Bums (1958), Lonesome Traveler (1960) and Desolation Angels (1965) all reflect much of what he saw
and experienced on Desolation Peak.
The Six Gallery reading of 1955 was, therefore, a pivotal event in bringing
together the ecological Beats of the West Coast and the Bop and Beat tradition
of the East Coast. Allen Ginsberg attended and participated in the Six
Gallery reading, and a
year later, Howl and Other Poems was published.
The
back cover of Howl, in the City Lights Books, says
Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems was originally published by City Lights
Books in the Fall of 1956. Subsequently seized by the U.S. Customs and the San
Francisco police, it was the subject of a long court trial at which a series of
poets and professors persuaded the courts that the book was not obscene. Over
30,000 copies have since been sold.
There is no doubt Howl created a commotion and stir in the San
Francisco area at the time.
Forty years have passed since George Grant’s Lament for a
Nation (1965) was
published. Lament for a Nation, like Howl, created strong reactions. Many in the New Left and
Counter-culture in Canada were drawn to Lament for a Nation. Many in the political centre and political
right in Canada were offended by what Grant was saying in Lament. Grant was fully aware of what he was
saying and doing at the time, and he knew that his criticisms of the American
empire (and the Canadian colonial and comprador class) would not be taken well
by the ruling establishment and high mucky-mucks at the time.
Lament has been called ‘a masterpiece of political meditation’, and Darrol Bryant sees it as a tract
for the times that stands within the Old Testament prophetic tradition of Lamentations. Kenneth Rexroth has argued, in
defending Ginsberg, his poetry stands ‘in the long Jewish Old Testament tradition of testimonial
poetry’. It is
significant to note that Grant in his 1970 Introduction to Lament for a
Nation refers twice
to the image and metaphor of Molech. Molech was seen by the Jewish people as a
devouring god that consumed and destroyed the life of one and all. Molech is a
central metaphor in Part II of Howl. Grant also refers to the Beats and the Counter-culture
in Lament for a Nation. Ginsberg and Grant seem, at first glance, to be lamenting and
howling against the same Molech. The American empire seemed to consume one and
all. The best and the brightest did their best to oppose and resist such a
monster and leviathan, but souls and bodies were required to feed the ravenous
appetite of such a beast. Was it possible to live a meaningful life without
bowing and genuflecting to Molech?
Howl
and Lament
for a Nation seem
to be on the same page and fighting the same enemy and opponent. But are they?
Ginsberg and Grant do agree on what they want to be free from. Do they agree on
what they want to be free for? It is by understanding this difference that we
will understand the different paths taken between American anarchism (and
Canadian devotees of such a tradition) and Canadian High Tory nationalism. The
different paths hiked do lead to quite distinctly different places on the
political spectrum. Let us, all too briefly, light and linger at Howl and Lament for a Nation to see how and why American anarchism
and Canadian nationalism, although seeming to have much in common at one level,
have less and less in common at more substantive levels.
It is significant to note, by way of beginning, to mention who Howl
and Lament
for a Nation are
dedicated to. Ginsberg offers up Howl to Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and
Neal Cassady; all three were East Coast Bop and Beat poets and activists. Howl
was written for
Carl Solomon, and William Carlos Williams wrote the Introduction. Kerouac is
very much in the lead in the dedication, and Ginsberg says, ‘Several phrases and the title of Howl
are taken from him’. We need to ask ourselves this simple
question if we ever hope to get a fix and feel for Ginsberg’s drift and
direction: what is the essence and core of the East Coast Bop and Beat ethos,
and how did Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady, Williams and Solomon embody
such an ideology? There tends to be six distinct points to be noted here: i)
individual feelings and emotions are paramount (reason and one-dimensional
science are the problem) ii) protest and rebellion against the American empire
and Puritanism are dominant, iii) uprootedness and unrootedness are welcomed—being
on the road becomes a new creed and dogma, iv) eclectic spirituality becomes
the new sacrament—a rather raw sexuality and spirituality are fused, v)
institutions (whether they are religious, political, cultural, economic) are
seen as the problem, and vi) anarchism is seen as the liberating way in opposition
to the authoritarian and repressive nature of all ideologies and institutions.
Liberty tends to trump order,
individuality repels the common good, equality of desires is held high, raw
experience banishes the wisdom of tradition, and spirituality is freed from the
bondage of shackles of religious dogmas and institutions. Needless to say, such
a position becomes its own ideology, creed and institution that cannot be
doubted and must be defended at all costs by its guardians and gatekeepers.
There
is no doubt that Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady embodied such a vision. Carolyn
Cassady dared to expose and question such an ideology in Off the Road: My
Years with Cassady, Kerouac and Gins- berg (1990). Even Kerouac was beginning to
ask substantive questions about the Beats and distance himself from them in the
early 1960s. He makes this quite clear in Lonesome Traveler (1960) when he said, ‘I am actually not Beat but a strange solitary crazy Catholic
mystic’, and with
the publication of Vanity of Duluoz (1968), Kerouac made it clear that much
of the Bop and Beat tradition was much more about a rather inflated vanity and
egoistic and indulgent individualism than anything else. But Kerouac still
remained the liberty-loving and solitary Catholic mystic. The American DNA and
genetic code of individualism was still his master and guru.
Grant
dedicated Lament for a Nation ‘To
Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson: Two Lovers Of Their Country: One Living and
One Dead’. Who were
Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson, and how, as Canadian lovers of their country,
were they different from Kerouac, Burroughs and Cassady? Derek Bedson, unlike
many of the Beats, had a strong commitment to the Anglican High Tory tradition
both in politics and religion. He was active in the Anglican Church of Canada
(ever the gadfly to its emerging liberalism) and he worked in the area of both
federal and provincial politics. Bedson, unlike the Beats, realized that both
political and religious institutions (although always imperfect), were
important means to work within for the common good of the nation and the
people. Society and the state (both have their distortions and demons) when
understood aright should and can work together, in an organic, just and ordered
way, for the commonweal.
The
philosophic tradition of liberalism, in either its American imperial form or
its Beat reactionary form, was about individuals using their liberty in a
unilateral way to undermine and deconstruct those things that, as people, we
share in common. Grant turned to Bedson as a true teacher and mentor who loved
his country. Judith Robinson was a feisty and fiery Red Tory who, as an
animated journalist, challenged both liberalism and the Liberal party in
Canada. In fact, her relentless assaults on the Liberal party led to the Royal
Canadian Military Police (RCMP) bloodhounds being turned on her in the 1950s.
Robinson thought the liberals were selling out Canada to the USA, and she would
have none of it. The Liberal party of St. Laurent and King were an anathema to
her. The American way (both in principle and fact) were something she had
little or no patience for. George Grant, therefore, when he dedicated Lament
for a Nation to
Derek Bedson and Judith Robinson knew what he was doing and saying.
Many
Canadians have, I suspect, heard of Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassady, Williams and
Burroughs. I question whether many have heard of Judith Robinson or Derek
Bedson. What does this tell us about our Canadian soul and how it has been
colonized by the American matrix?
There is little
doubt that Bedson, Robinson and Grant stood in a very different place on the
political and personal spectrum than Kerouac, Burroughs, Cassady and Ginsberg.
Both clans could agree that American imperialism, corporate capitalism,
consumerism, liberal bourgeois thought and Puritanism needed to be exposed and
undressed. There was no depth to them. They embodied Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’ or Miller’s ‘Wrong Dream’. Surely there was more to the good life
than defining and defending personal peace and happiness. In short, Canadian
High Tories and American Anarchist Beats do agree on the fact the patient is
ill and ailing. They have much in common in their diagnosis. But they have
quite a different way of healing the failing and faltering patient. The
prognosis takes Grant and Ginsberg down different paths and to different places.
What then is this different prognosis? Let us turn to Howl and Lament for a Nation to see what is seen. It is in this
different seeing we will come to understand some important differences at a root,
core and genetic, philosophic and practical level between Americans and
Canadians.
It
is fifty years since Howl was published. It is forty years since Lament for a Nation
was published. It
is at such remembering points we are offered the opportunity to see again what
animates and tends to define the True North from the empire to the south.
Howl
is divided into
three sections and a ‘Footnote
to Howl’. Section I opens with the memorable lines that none forget once heard
and read: ‘I saw the
best minds of my generation destroyed by madness’. The rest of the section is a
prose-poem that describes how these best minds were destroyed, and equally so,
how the artistic and visionary nature of such minds were bent and broken on the
anvil of the modern world. Section I is both tragic and sad, and the ruined and
wrecked lives are amply laid out for all to see to the most graphic and
poignant of ways. We might ask, as we read Section I, whether these are the
best minds (given their end points), but Ginsberg has told us these are the
best and the brightest, so we heed and hear.
Section II turns, in a penetrating manner, to the place that has
savaged such minds, and the potent image that speaks of such an alluring and
tempting place: Molech, Molech and Molech becomes the destructive and dominant
metaphor. The metaphor of Molech is unpacked and unraveled in a variety of
ways, but there is no doubt that the best minds are defeated victims of Molech,
and Molech will devour one and all. Who is Molech? Ginsberg makes this most
clear. It is all forms of tyranny and authority that brutalize and are callous
to the best minds. The USA is very much in the foreground, though.
Section
III presses home the point in a more urgent and not to be forgotten manner.
Section III is directed to Carl Solomon in Rockland. The political left is held
high and idealized, and the USA is seen as the place of repression and
destruction. The language is raw and graphic in Howl, and social reality is neatly and
crisply divided into a rather simplistic either-or way of looking at things. ‘Footnote to Howl’ walks the extra mile
to shout from the rooftops the Holy, Holy, Holy theme. All is holy and needs to
be seen as such. Ginsberg in this section is doing his best to fuse
spirituality and sexuality, street life with city life. Nothing should be seen
as unholy. All has goodness in and to it, and when this is seen, eternity is in
our midst.
There
are other poems in the Howl collection, also. ‘A Supermarket in California’ doffs the cap to Walt Whitman, and ‘Transcription of Organ Music’ takes the reader through and beyond the
purpose of organ music. The transcription and the organ are meant to walk the
attentive and alert to higher and deeper spiritual states. This poem points the
way to what such a fusion of spirituality and sensuality might look like. ‘Sunflower Sutra’ tells the tale of Ginsberg and Kerouac
as they see, through Blake’s sunflower, a sutra of insight in hard places. ‘America’ is a longer poem, and true to form,
turns on the USA. ‘In
the Baggage Room at Greyhound’, like other poems in the collection, take the reader into the
underground and underbelly of America. ‘An Asphodel’, ‘Song’, ‘Wild Orphan’ and ‘in
back of the real’ close
off this final section in Howl and Other Poems.
It
must be remembered that these poems were published in 1956. The USA was in the
thick of the Cold War, and anyone with the mildest sympathies with the left was
seen as communist. The raw sexual and sensual language that permeates and
pervades most of Howl and Other Poems is a frontal assault and attack on both
middle class bourgeois America and the Puritan ethos the shaped such an
ideology. Ginsberg, in short, was pulling no punches. He thought the best minds
in American had been driven mad by combination of the military industrial
complex, anti-communist thinking and Puritan and bourgeois ethics. He howled
against such a repressive way of being, and the state and police turned on him
for doing so. Howl (1956) and On the Road (1955) became sacred texts and Bibles
for the Beat generation, and Ginsberg became a high priest to such a generation
with his fusion of sensuality/spirituality, anarchist/protest politics and a
raw and in your face assault on middle class values. Howl became a lightning rod missive for those
who felt ill at ease with expectations laid on them they had no interest in.
Ginsberg’s Howl spoke
what many felt but had not yet put to words.
What are the points of concord and convergence between Grant’s Lament
for a Nation and
Ginsberg’s Howl,
and equally important, what are the points of discord and divergence?
The 1965 edition of Lament for a Nation is divided into seven chapters. It some
ways it is a prose/poem that deals with major political themes in Canada, and
between Canada and the USA. George Grant added an ‘Introduction’ in 1970, and
Sheila Grant (George’s wife) added an ‘Afterword’ in 1997. I will stick with
the 1965 edition of Lament for a Nation. I mentioned above that the very
language of lament conjures up for the reader the tradition of Jewish political
thought. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. The fact that Lament for a
Nation is divided
into seven chapters reminds the reader of the seven days of creation in the
Jewish tradition. The fact the seventh chapter is theological means that the
political reflections have a deeper source than merely politics.
Chapter
I in Lament deals with Diefenbaker’s defeat by Pearson in the 1963 election.
Grant saw this as a source of much concern, since Pearson was pro-American and
Diefenbaker was a thorn in Kennedy’s side. And, more worrisome for Grant, most
Canadians were overjoyed to have Pearson as the new Prime Minister of Canada.
What did this say about Canadian nationalism?
Chapter
II and III ponder both the follies and foolishness of Diefenbaker and his
nobility and heroism. Grant was no uncritical fan of Diefenbaker, but he did
think that Diefenbaker stood on principles, and his nationalist political
principles brought about his demise. Chapter IV touches on both liberalism and
the Liberal party in Canada, and why such a party has tended to dominate much
of Canadian political life (and the consequences for Canadian nationalism).
Chapters V and VI, consciously so, walks the reader into the
realms of political theory and political philosophy, and why at root and ground
level, Canadian conservatism (in its English and French forms) is almost the
opposite of American republican conservatism.
The fact that American liberalism (in its democratic and republican
forms) seeks to dominate the world raises for Grant a worrisome question. Is
there any way to oppose or resist this Molech? Is this, as Canadians, our fate
and necessity? What can we do given this stubborn fact? Chapter VII opens up a
dialogue about the between fate/necessity and the Good. How, as Canadians, can
we live from something higher than what seems to be our dominant fate? Is it
possible to get out of the matrix of American liberalism?
Lament
for a Nation has
been called a masterpiece, and it is for a variety of reasons. The tract for
the times moves from the facts of Canadian/American political history, to
Canadian/American political philosophy to theology. It is poignant and pungent
prose writing in the best tradition of political pamphlets.
How,
though, is Lament for a Nation similar and different from Howl, and what can these points of concord
and discord tell us about the differences between Canadian and American thought
and culture. There are five points of convergence, and five of divergence.
First, both Lament and Howl raise serious and substantive objections
about the American military industrial complex, the power elite in the USA and
the damage done by such an elite in various parts of the world.
Second,
both write in an intense, committed and accessible manner. Ginsberg can be raw,
crude and excessively graphic. Grant was much more polished, incisive and
delicately evocative. Grant and Ginsberg do communicate through plain and direct
speech, though, as participants in the tough issues of the time rather than as
detached and cool-headed observers. Both are on the ice. Neither is in the balcony
or bleachers.
Third,
both men were critical of the liberal bourgeois tradition and a form of
American Puritanism that justified such a smug view. Ginsberg rebelled against
this by indulging all sorts of desires and interests, whereas Grant rebelled
against the liberal bourgeois tradition by deepening and ordering his interests
and desires towards the highest and noblest things. Both could agree that Locke’s
‘life, liberty and estates’ and Nietzsche’s ‘last man’ were something they did
not want to be. They disagreed on the best path to hike when the Puritan-bourgeois-last
man was left behind. Plato is quite different from Whitman, Coleridge from
Blake. Grant was for the former, Ginsberg the latter. Allen Ginsberg sent me a
couple of letters in the late 1980s (Jan. 1, 1989 both Ginsberg and Grant
opposed the unilateralism of American military and corporate power. The
aggressive notion of liberty and rugged individualism that underwrote and
justified such a stance was abhorrent to both Grant and Ginsberg. But—and this
is the catch—Ginsberg used the same American notions of liberty and individualism
in his anarchist and protest approach as did the power elites. He applied such
principles in more of an anti-establishment and, of course, anti-authoritarian
way, but the notions of liberty, choice, individualism, protest, dissent were
all there.
Grant
saw through this charade. Ginsberg was just the other side of the corporate
elite. They just used their liberty and freedom in different ways, but neither
disagreed about the priority of the American vision and dream: life, liberty,
choice and individualism. Grant dared to question the very philosophic
principles of American liberalism, and as such, hiked a different path than
Ginsberg and the Beats. Canadian notions such as law, order and good government
take the curious and thoughtful to different places than life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Grant realized that when Canadians uncritically
genuflected to the American Beats, they were welcoming the American Trojan
horse into Canada is a more subtle way. There are more ways to be colonized
than mere military and economic pressures. The literary and cultural traditions
of the USA (the Beats) have done much to colonize many Canadians, and there
have been many Canadian cultural and literary compradors that have facilitated
such a process. Grant would have said No to Ginsberg for the simple reason that
Ginsberg was as much a devout and committed American, like a Noam Chomsky, as
the very Americans he howled against and opposed.
Fifth,
Grant was a much more sophisticated thinker than Ginsberg, and there is no
doubt that Lament for a Nation is a more substantive work than Howl. The level of political and
philosophical depth in Lament opens up vistas of thought that are just not there is Ginsberg
and Howl. Howl
never rises much
beyond rant and reaction, and sadly so, Ginsberg’s intellectual world tends to
polarize between the evil and nasty power elite and the good, pure and lovable
anarchist, Beat and protest types. It is a simplistic interpretation of reality
that Grant was much too wise to bow his uncritical head to. He saw too much,
and saw too far to worship at such a shrine and to such reactionary priests,
and he urged Canadians not to turn to such a comic book view of the world.
In sum, Ginsberg and Grant, at first glance, seem to have much
in common, but on deeper and further inspection, have little in common. Both
protest against many of the same things. Both agree on many of the things that
must be opposed. But by day’s end, the American Beat anarchism of Ginsberg is
quite different from the Canadian High Tory vision of George Grant. It is by
understanding such differences that we can see why and how the American and
Canadian traditions create and make for different national outlooks. It is somewhat
sad and tragic when Canadians know more about American models and take their
leads from such fashions than they do from their own kith and kind.