Rimbaud And Ginsberg
Rimbaud and Ginsberg as Modern Poets Anyone who has read a fair sampling of
modernist poetry or studied some representative visionary poets has found the
experience something of a revelation. Immediately exhilarating for some,
initially intimidating for others and, for all of us, a profound departure from
traditional literature. According to Rimbaud, for a poet to be absolutely modern
he must become a visionary and a poet makes himself a visionary through a long,
boundless and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love,
of suffering, of madness, he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all
poisons and preserves their quintessences. Rimbaud’s most notable work, A Season
in Hell is the perfect example of how his choice of lifestyle lent the necessary
experiences to be closer to God and ultimately creative poetry. Through the use
drugs and other devices, Rimbaud was able to unearth the core of his soul while
still being able to capture divine inspiration on paper before delirium set in.
Allen Ginsberg’s greatest work Howl is similar to A Season in Hell in that it
ultimately captures Ginsberg’s life experiences as the reader can but only grasp
the means by which such a seemingly chaotic life is conducive to ingenious
literature. Among the many similarities between these two poets, the first would
be that there was an absent father and a domineering mother. For most, this
situation would lead to a child trying to attain control over his surroundings.
For Ginsberg and Rimbaud, however, this family life helped create the starting
point for their need to understand their world around them. Both Ginsberg and
Rimbaud had many mentors in their early years.
Rimbaud’s relationship with Verlaine allowed him to express himself sexually and poetically thus giving him
the necessary material to fuel his disorganization of the senses. Among
Ginsberg’s many mentors, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burrows and Neil Cassidy, who
were equally obsessed with poetry, sex and drugs, helped him to develop his
literary voice. The similarities between Rimbaud’s use of absinthe and
Ginsberg’s experimentations with Benzedrine, marijuana and homosexually,
believed that he, like Rimbaud, was ultimately working toward a great poetic
vision which Kerouac called The New Vision. In literary terms, Ginsberg follows
in Rimbaud’s footsteps with the use of symbolism and free verse. From what we’ve
studied in class, the bulk of these poets’ works resemble a colorfully
adventurous diary documenting the adventures of two of literatures greatest
visionary poets. In William Carlos William’s introduction to Howl he writes
Allen Ginsberg, who has gone in his own body through the horrifying experiences
described from life in these pages. The wonder of the thing is not that he has
survived but that he, from the very depths, has found a fellow whom he can love.
And, in a statement, that could adequately describe Rimbaud’s work he writes
hold back the edges of your gowns, Ladies, we are going through hell. After a
Season in Hell and Howl, both poets mellowed out considerably and began to
travel the world. Rimbaud, finding his love of gunrunning in Africa and Ginsberg
finding his physical love, Peter Orlovsky. What can we, as the readers,
conceptualize about these poets’ life’s works? Why did Rimbaud give up writing?
Did he, perhaps, get so close to God that the light was too bright and he
decided to be content in a more mundane career. Did Ginsberg attain his own
level of expectations in his life’s work or did the events that led up to the
creation of Howl alter his future work? What we are left with in these poets’
great works is merely a glimpse, however haunting and beautiful, into two human
beings attempt to view life in the most spiritual light attainable. Ginsberg
writes: I high on laughing gas I’ve been here before The odd vibration of The
same old universe
The universe is a void In which there is a dream hole The
dream disappears The hole closes It’s the instant of going Into or coming out of
Existence that is Important-to catch on To the secret of the magic Box. When I
was fifteen years old, I discovered the book of Rimbaud’s work in my high school
library and was discouraged from reading it by a poet friend of mine twelve
years my senior. He, knowing that I took much of my reading to heart, thought
that Rimbaud’s chaotic view of the world would somehow corrupt my youth. What I
have learned in this class is that it is the experience of reading these poets’
works that allows one to safely live vicariously through the soul of the poet
and see the world in such a way they may have not known it existed. An example
of this, for me personally, was reading the Sunflower Sutra. I will never see a
sunflower without thinking of this poem and the way in which Ginsberg gives the
object of his affection such everlasting life. The modernist poets from Rimbaud
to Ginsberg and beyond give artistic license to all writers to test the
boundaries of their senses and unabashedly give account of their personal
experience of the beauty that surrounds each of us.
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