Conclusion

Wow, ok, this is it then. What can I say? It has been quite hard to read all the texts to be honest. I am a very slow reader, especially when I have to deliberate about the texts and need a dictionary at my side to even understand them like with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Communism isn’t one of my favourite topics to read about as well, which made it very difficult at some point between the two very long texts by Terry Eagleton and Henri Lefebvre. Especially the Lefebvre text. I still don’t know how I managed to read through it. But I have to say that I really appreciate the fact that we read these texts because I certainly wouldn’t have touched any of them by myself. Which would have been a shame, given the fact that I feel like I really learned a lot and changed my mind about some things, with Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ leading the way. I hated it at first because I just didn’t understand it. I thought why the hack doesn’t he just write it so that everyone can understand it. But the more often I read it and the deeper I got into researching things about it, the more I came to like it. Listening to the recording of Ginsberg reciting it played a major part in this process, as I thought the piece actually has a certain life, a spirit. I loved the Hickey text. Full stop. Loved it. And I really honestly hated the Lefebvre one. Nope, no conversion this time, sorry. Berman’s text about the Faustian story made me realised just how much I have actually gained from this blogs. Like I said, I knew Faust but realised, I actually didn’t. And then there was the Palladio-Corbusier moment when I realised that in fact the two buildings Colin Rowe was talking about had the same spatial relations. Never ever would I have compared anything of Palladio’s work to Le Corbusier’s. This really got me thinking which is good.  The texts really have been very different, from very hard to understand and a struggle to cope with to entertaining and pleasant. I realised that my preconceived idea of what communist writing would be like is in many aspects wrong and I feel that I have not only gained knowledge about various themes, I have also forced myself to see the whole picture and to not start a book by thinking ‘This is going to suck’ because then it usually does. Also, the very different style of writing at first was exceptionally difficult for me; I have never written a blog before and was stuck in this academic writing mode which I considered as being in my comfort zone. I didn’t think that writing in a non-academic way would be helpful at all but I was very wrong again. Having to speak my mind about themes that I was not comfortable with, that I did not really know anything about, was a real benefit for me I think, or at least I hope so. It helped to really concentrate on what is important to you and being able to write it down the way I think it would show my thoughts best. Being quite sarcastic myself I loved that I had the opportunity to express my eye-rolling moments in writing.

On Oswald Spenglers charts from 'Decline of the West'

The Oswald Spengler charts (this actually sounds like a movie title…oh well…) separate several different, important events throughout history. The tables place various different major events throughout history into four different categories named after the four seasons. The three tables are furthermore separated into subcategories. The first table for instant is about ‘contemporary spiritual epochs’.  The second table shows the ‘contemporary cultural epochs’ which are separated into three different groups, the ‘pre-cultural period’, ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’. The third and last of the tables deals with the Contemporary political epochs’ and is separated into the same three categories as table II.  He believed that culture is organic and therefore goes through different stages of rise and decline and that all of the past great cultures have passed through the same stages. An evolution in a way, evolved from one idea. This is where Faust comes back into play. A perpetual striving for something that cannot be achieved. The first chart is placing Feudal States as the government type into the spring section; it is the birth of the Culture’s principles of which religion evolves. It is characterized by a strong religious believe and ecclesiastical buildings such as cathedrals, Roman and Gothic design accrue. Just as all these principles work fine, reformation is on its way and people protest against the former principles. This is the age of Monarchies and Dynasties where a king holds absolute power. Religion starts to be looked at more critically and rationalistic. It is also a very productive time, with classical music, art and science at a totally different level. The next stage is the time of Napoleon where a non-noble becomes king for the first time, weakening his hitherto absolute power. We have arrived in the autumn section of the charts where the new form of government is democracy with only rational thought left. Materialism starts to control people’s lives and money becomes most important. The first big cities are build and there are many wars fought because of a voracity for money which basically is the same as power. People start questioning their traditions and atheism is spreading. Instead there is a strong believe and strive for rights, Human Rights, Women’s Rights etc. Cultures are starting to mix. In winter, finance-capitalism is abandoned and the new government type is called Caesarism. People now start to return to traditions, don’t care about politics anymore and leave the cities to live in the countryside. There is a natural hierarchy and an Imperium of ‘gradually-increasing crudity of despotism’. Architecture goes back to being massive and imperialistic.

According to this chart we are currently placed in autumn, awaiting a very brutal winter. Great outlook then. But I actually thought about this before. I think life is a circle and at some point we have made a 360 degree turn, catapulting us back to where we have come from. It does make sense, if you think about it. Cultures have for centuries risen and declined independently of each other. And if the (western) world is actually based on the Faustian story, to always strive for something that can’t be achieved, then we are in a loop, an infinite repetition of what has been, when we are thrown off the wheel of life like in Evelyn Waugh’s novel, where we always have to get back up and try it again, starting from where we have come from.

On the film 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand

I had previously watched Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead‘but have to admit that I forgot most of it because I was not really paying attention to it. I am not a big fan of black and white movies, not because they are black and white but because they tend to be a little static and lifeless. The actors in this film to me have no facial expressions and everything looks very staged. The story as such could have been told in about 30 minutes but that movie goes on and on and on aaand on for nearly 2 hours! Phew! I know some people were looking forward to this as it menat watching a movie rather than discussing texts but with final crits next week and so(!!!!) much to do before the holidays, it actually felt like it would last for ever and I did not really like it now that I have watched it for a second time; and actually paid attention this time, well…I kind of had to because I need to write about it but I also thought that I might change my mind and like it, as this has happened over the past few months with some of the previous texts. Unfortunately, it did not. The film is about the architect Howard Roak and his courage to stand by his work even in times of hardship. The movie starts with the expulsion of the young architect from his school for not following their, to him outdated, design traditions. He leaves to work for an architect in New York who he admires but who is not respected in the architecture world and finally retires completely bankrupt. At the same time one of Roaks’ former schoolmates, Peter Keating, starts a job at the renowned and successful architecture practice ‘Francon&Heyer’ and is able to become a partner very quickly ( well…and after causing Guy Francon’s partner Mr Heyer to have a stroke). Roak then opens his own little firm that he has to close down quite soon as he refuses to satisfy his clients’ design wishes. In order to stay financially solvent he takes up a job at a granite quarry in Connecticut where he meets the daughter of Guy Francon, Dominique, and is instantly attracted by her. Dominique, or Miss Francon as he calls her (numerous times, ohhh my god, at some point it got ridiculous, I stopped counting how often he actually says ‘Yes, Miss Francon’ in always the same tone), is bored by the mediocre architecture that surrounds her. She is also attracted by him as she fantasises about him and then destroys a granite panel in order for him to be called in to repair it. He does come in and looks at it but when the new panel arrives, a different worker arrives to install it, which makes her furious. This is actually one of the very rare scenes that I thought were actually funny. Roak later visits her again and rapes her which she kind of finds pleasure in thinking about it afterwards and searches for Roak in the quarry. But he had left. She leaves for New York as well and discovers Roak’s true identity when she realised that one of her favourite buildings was designed by him. They start dating in secret while she would try to destroy his career in public. The architecture critic Ellsworth Toohey starts to become famous for his view that architecture should be humble, he can be seen as the protagonist’s opponent. He hires a business man called Hopton Stoddard who he ordered to hire Roak in order to make him design a building for him only to sue him after it was finished. At the trial Dominique speaks up for Roak but he loses anyways and Dominique marries Peter Keating to punish herself for trying to help him. This is when Gail Wynand comes into play who publishes the newspaper ‘The Banner’ which would only say what the public wants to hear and the public would believe everything that paper publishes.  Wynand who has made fortunes with his newspaper is attracted by Dominique who he buys off her husband for promising him a contract. This is actually very disturbing I think, first the rape and the fact that she liked it and now someone buys a woman off her husband…Keating on the other hand wants Roak’s help with one of his housing projects. Roak agrees to design it for him under the condition that nothing of his design is changed and that everything gets build exactly like he intended it to look like. Of course this did not happen. He blows up the perfectly fine new construction and gets arrested without a struggle. During the trial he then explains that every man has to live up to his own principles and remain true to himself. He moans about how great creators like him pay the price for corrupt societies. He wins the trial and is found not guilty. He then marries Dominique and they lived happily ever after (ha,ha...). Wow ok, the summery got a bit longer than anticipated, so maybe the story could have been told in 45 minutes rather than 30, I give you that. This piece is actually quite the opposite of what we have read so far, Ayn Rand is a clear anti-communist, advocating individual rights. That is also demonstrated in her novel by the struggle of Roak to retain his individuality. He clearly is the hero of Rand’s book and he is the acting example of her political ideal and moral values, a stereotype. Roak at one point says that ‘invidual creators are the fountainhead of civilisation’ (hence the title I presume). In the end he is able to design to his own principles. And the moral of this story...well, I guess it is about the idea that individuals have to be selfish in a way and stand by their principles in order to be free. I don’t think that the world would work that way though. I f everyone would only strive after their own personal principles it would be total mayhem. Try to imagine, we would all be little Hadids and Le Corbusiers, giving a shit about context and history, just wrecking everything and then build our own little utopias. Nope, that’s not going to work. I mean don’t get me wrong, I do stand by my ideas as well and I think sometimes someone like Roak is needed to step forward and start something new, which will at first be declined and hated but after a while might become very famous and loved (there are many examples for this in our own little London, like the Gherkin for example). As an architect you got to have a love for what you do and you need to defend your design very often and it is important to stand by it, but not by all means. We design for someone, be it a private person, a family or a huge business, we design for them and we can’t completely ignore their wishes. They pay us to do something for them. They have the right to have a say. Of course you always have to stand by core principles of your design because this is your signature and they chose you because they like your style. Ok I do realise that this all sounds a bit odd probably. Don’t get me wrong, I do love to design and think my ideas are good most of the time but others might not and you simply can’t ignore other people. Even an architect is part of the society.

On Le Cobusier's 'City of Tormorrow' chapter 10

In the 10^th chapter, titled ‘Our technical equipment’, of the book ‘City of Tomorrow‘, Le Corbusier talks about the construction of a dam in the Alps. He starts off by describing the change from the individual to the collaborative, there is now a ‘solidarity of thought’ which means that

‘No longer can a piece of work result solely from the effort of an idividual’.

Corbusier seems to be very hyped by the fact that we have now a

                                          ‘possibility of a universal collaboration’

at our disposal.  He then talks about the construction of the barrage in quite some detail and the ‘mighty captains’ who oversee and direct the work. He describes them as

‘very normal gentlemen, just like yourselves; the notion that they represent a “new state of mind” would make them roar with laughter. If you praise them because of their work, they protest (…) If you talk of their splendid achievement, they take you for a fool’.

The fact that they do not realise their potential is upsetting him. When talking to them excitedly about how their plant is a

                                      ‘superb foretaste of an age fast approaching’

by revealing the ‘potentialities of a new epoch, and how that would help to rebuild Paris on a large scale, the men say that it would be a destruction of the historic, beautiful town for a new world that to them seems to be of considerably lower.

‘You mean the eight-hour day, jazz, the cinema, and girls who go about with everybody!’

This reminds me of Dave Hickey’s ‘At home in the neon’. The most important thing about this is the fact that Le Corbusier actually did plan to rebuild the centre of Paris. He believed in starting from scratch by knocking down entire parts of a city like Paris and shaping them according to his vision of what would work architecturally. Anyone else thinking of Zaha and her ‘Hadidopolis’ (I still love this word so much, always makes me smile because it is so absurd)? Trying to build an Utopian city that would mainly consist of skyscrapers, strictly for commercial use, is a perfect example of the Faustian Imperative. Well I guess from my previous blogs you can safely assume that I am VERY glad that this Utopian nightmare did not become true. How horrible and dreadful would that place be, I can only imagine how many more people would have been depressed by that concrete jungle. This reminds me of one of the paragraphs in ‘Howl’ that pretty much sums my thoughts up:

‘What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? (…) Moloch whose buildings are judgment! (…) Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! (…) Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!’

Le Corbusier really is like the character Professor Silenus in Evelyn Waugh’s book who thinks that

                                            ‘the only perfect building must be a factory’

and who hates all humans. In his text Le Corbusier says that

                                                    ‘man is petty and narrow-minded’

but ‘the barrage itself is magnificent’.  Thinking of his ‘Voisin’ plan for Paris and about his love for geometry and order through repetition, this actually reminds me of Lefebvre’s ‘The production of space’ not because it is similar but because it is the complete opposite of what he thinks. Lefebvre said that

‘repetition has everywhere defeated uniqueness,(…)the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and naturalness from the field‘.

 Indeed to build an Utopian idea of a city like that would defeat uniqueness. The centre of the city would become like a dead, cold machine that would destroy all naturalness but probably be heaven for someone like Le Corbusier. I certainly do not want to live in a ‘Corbusieropolis’ (sorry I couldn’t resist). But is this to say that one should not strive after the big ideas, the all-changing, never look back, start from scratch, utopian ideas? Wouldn’t most people actually be like Faust and sign the contract to get what they desire most or in this instance build their own little perfect world? But in order to do that you have to sell your soul, which means you do not care anymore about anything else than your work, which I think is a horrible thing. I for one started to study architecture primarily because I want to design and build something that people can live in, cherish and enjoy, as an architect you have the chance to build someone’s house, someone’s dream. Of course I have dreams and opinions on how I would like a city to be, but realizing these will not make everyone happy, of course you can’t win them all, but I think to build an entire city as one tiny human being, cannot possibly be a good idea. There are so many different kind of people living in a city, which for me makes it interesting, and I think a city should be just as diverse as its citizens, which is impossible if it is designed by one person.

On Evelyn Waugh's 'Decline and Fall'

Evelyn Waugh’s book ‘Decline and Fall’ was actually quite an entertaining piece to read (especially after all these rather long, end-of-the-world, rather difficult texts of the past weeks. The name obviously resembles the famous book ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ by Edward Gibbon. The character who is most interesting for us architects (in the being) is a man who calls himself Professor Silenus. Now, at first I actually thought this was a pun, a play with the sound of the word as it actually sounds a bit like ‘silliness’. This kind of fits the somewhat silly behaviour when he hasn’t moved for hours except for his arm and jaw that mimic the movements of eating a cookie although he had actually finished eating it by that time. But after doing some research I found out that the name is actually derived from Greek mythology in which Silenus was the tutor of Dionysus. Being the comrade and tutor of the god of wine meant that he was drunk very often and would then become very knowledgeable and wise (oops yeah quite the opposite of my first thought then…). This also fits as Professor Silenus has his bright moments too when talking about Paul’s life at Luna Park and how it is like

‘a great disc of polished wood that revolves quickly. At first you sit down and watch the others. They are all trying to sit in the wheel, and they keep getting flung off, and that makes them laugh, and you laugh too. It's great fun (…) But the whole point about the wheel is that you needn't get on it at all, if you don't want to. People get hold of ideas about life, and that makes them think they've got to join in the game, even if they don't enjoy it. It doesn't suit everyone’.

 This for me shows that Professor Silenus is quite a complex character. The protagonist however is Paul Pennyfeather, who at the beginning of the book is a twenty years old young man with quite strong morals, studying at the fictional Scone College in Oxford (Scone college, HA! I love all these names, for me this is classic English humour, love it! Although it does remind me of a classic German comedy show too, which you all probably won’t know anything about of course, but it is exactly about these rather long surnames like Beste-Chetwynde, Digby-Vaine-Trumpington etc. that make it somehow ridiculously English, of course in the German sketch the fun part is also the fact that she cannot really pronounce the names and starts to lisper whenever she tries to say something with a ‘th’ in it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygK3yvUee4), from which he is expelled and then forced to work as a teacher in a public school. He gets engaged to the mother of his disciple Peter, Margot Beste-Chetwynde, who made fortunes with brothels, for which he goes to prison for after taking the responsibility for his fiancées’ business to protect her. She then marries another guy who helps him fake his death to get out of prison. Pretending to be a distant cousin of the original Paul Pennyfeather, he goes back to Scone College where he starts to work as a teacher again. He is back at square one, unlike Faust for example. No happy end despite being quite a humorous little novel. But back to Professor Silenus. He has a thing for machines and hates humans as they are unefficient.

 ‘What an immature, self-destructive, antiquated mischief is man! (…) How loathsome and beyond words boring all the thoughts and self-approval of his biological by-product! This half-formed, ill-conditioned body! This erratic, maladjusted mechanism of his soul: on one side the harmonious instincts and balanced responses of the animal, on the other the inflexible purpose of engine, and between them men, equally alien from the being of Nature and the doing of the machine, the vile becoming!’

I had to think of Le Corbusier and his fascination with machines and couldn’t stop thinking that he is actually Professor Silenus come alive. Silenus was hired by Mrs Beste-Chetwynde to redesign the famous ‘Kings’s Thursday’ manor and had only one guideline to follow: Make it

                                                              ‘clean and square’.

He thinks about the design for three days and then starts the work. In the end he hates his design as he does

‘not think it is possible for domestic architecture to be beautiful’.

 He then moans about needing to design a staircase

'Why can't the creatures stay in one place? Up and down, in and out, round and round! Why can't they sit still and work? Do dynamos require staircases? Do monkeys require houses?’

 The most important and fascinating part of the story however is Silenus’ speech about the ‘wheel of life’. It reflects Paul’s life very well I think. Paul tried to get to the centre of the wheel where one can keep ones balance and therefore have a pleasant live. But most people get thrown off before they reach it, so did Paul, and quite badly too. But that’s what life is all about, isn’t it? Getting thrown off that ever spinning wheel, trying to find you place of comfort in the middle and trying not to be thrown off again. I really enjoyed reading this novel. It was funny and well written and actually gets you thinking about some of the metaphors used in the text.  

On Marshall Berman's 'All that is solid melts into air'

Oh yes, I have been looking forward to this as Goethe’s Faust is one of my favourite classic literature and theatre pieces. In fact it was the first opera and one of my first stage plays I have seen. I really liked it although I must admit despite being a big fan of classic opera I do prefer Faust as a play. Later on my teacher in school somehow managed to make the discussion on Goethe’s Faust so exceptionally boring that at that time I completely lost the interest in it until I watched a production of it on TV which was very well made. But this has been quite a while ago now (god time flies….) and I was looking forward to the Berman text to freshen up my knowledge about this great piece. And I have to say, after reading all the previous text over the past couple of weeks, I did draw some parallels to some of those texts and it changed my understanding of the story of Faust. I never really saw it as a piece of anti-capitalism but havening read these texts really seem to have changed my comprehension of it in a way and I now kind of feel like I got more out of Goethe’s piece than before, going deeper into the story and I really liked that. The story of Faust of course is very well known, especially Goethe’s version which took him nearly all his life to write, which is mentioned in Berman’s text as well. He thinks, and I totally agree with him, the reason why this particular version of Faust is so successful is that its characters

‘experience with great personal intensity, many of the world-historical dramas and traumas that Goethe and his contemporaries went through; the whole movement of the work enacts the larger movement of Western society’.

In fact it does mirror different phases of Goethe’s life during the Industrial Revolution which happened exactly during the time when he was writing Faust. Berman’s quite personal analysis of the text is very close to the original and his interpretation of it with regard to our modern world. He divides his text into three different stages that he calls metamorphosis: The Dreamer, The Lover and The Developer.

Goethe’s Faust can be separated into two tragedies, the first one being the tragedy of a desperate man on a quest for knowledge, the scholar tragedy; the second one, the Gretchen tragedy, is the tragedy of the seduced woman who is driven into despair by conceiving an illegitimate child. Goethe connects these two tragedies. Heinrich Faust desperately searches for knowledge, he wants to know everything and hence is God’s favourite human being. Mephistopheles, a devil, argues with God about whether or not he is able to lure Faust away from the path of knowledge into unrighteous pursuit. God accepts the challenge and here through allows Mephisto to seduce Faust.  This shows that, even though Mephisto is the evil one, he is part of the divine order, one of God’s instruments. To me he plays the most important part of the story. The extraordinary about Goethe’s Mephisto is what he says of himself, his negative but seductive being.

                                               ‘I am the spirit that negates all!’

Berman speaks about this too and about the conflict that Mephisto is at the same time

         ‘part of the power that would / Do nothing but evil, and yet creates good’.

Berman says that it is ironic that

‘just as God’s creative will and action are cosmically destructive, so the demonic lust for destruction turns out to be creative’

and that only if ‘Faust works with and through these destructive powers will he be able to create anything in the world: in fact, it is only by working with the devil, and willing

       "nothing but evil," that he can end up on God's side and "create the good"

love how he then rephrases the aphorism The road to hell is paved with good intentions into the perfectly suitable opposite of

                             ‘The road to heaven is paved with bad intensions’.

Faust wants to experience real, vivid life because so far he has not gained any experience outside of the academic world. He goes on a few trips and meets Margaret, Gretchen, and is instantly attracted by her. Mephisto helps him to seduce her and when Faust finally persuades her to sleep with him, he experienced exactly what he has whished for. But this moment of happiness and satisfaction goes hand in hand with a crime. This shows that there is always a price for happiness.

Now having said that through reading the other texts, my understanding of Faust has changed and I have to admit, I am a little ashamed. I think the links to capitalism are quite obvious and I can only assume that I have not seen them in the past because I have been reading and watching this piece too naively. Berman’s text was very well written and I really liked that, although being a Marxist himself, he didn’t force it down his readers’ throats, unlike Lefebvre for example. Speaking of which: I did have to think back very briefly about the terms ‘micro’ and ‘macro’  and how Lefebvre said a split between them should have let to more diversity but instead did quite the opposite by causing alikeness, now this could be complete bollocks but I felt reminded of that when reading Berman’s text about Faust. Faust in the beginning sort of lives in his own little world, his on ‘microcosm’ if you want and then later goes into the world, meets people, makes love…well and kills his lover’s brother but yeah back to the big world, he goes from ‘micro’ to ‘macro’ in a way, experiencing a variety of things only after bringing the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ together. When he separated himself from the outside world, living only in his academic little world, everything to him was the same and he criticises the vanity of the various subjects of study by saying the very famous Phrase

 

‘I've studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine,-- And even, alas! Theology,-- From end to end, with labor keen; And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before’.

 

 This actually brings me to the second parallel between Goethe’s Faust and one of the previous texts: Alan Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’.  Faust moans about that, even though he is a scholar, he does not get any recognition for it.  

                                                                                                                                                                           ‘Don't imagine your teaching will ever raise
The minds of men or change their ways.
And as for worldly wealth, you have none -
What honour or glory have you won?
A dog could stand this life no more.‘

‘Yes, what men choose to understand!                                                                                                         Who dares to name the child’s real name, though?                                                                                        The few who knew what might be learned                                                                                              Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show,                                                                                        And reveal their feelings to the crowd below,                                                                                              Mankind has always crucified and burned.’

This is exactly what ‘Howl’ is about.

 

‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked (…) who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull’.

 

Wow I just realized that this blog has gotten pretty long but I am kind of hyped about the fact that I have read the story so many times and only now it feels like I have really read it, if you know what I mean. There are so many analogies to other texts popping into my mind right now. So just one last comparison: Terry Eagleton’s After Theory! He talks about how bad it is that subjects in university have become trivial and how the great thinkers are long gone and the

‘generation which followed after these path-breaking figures did what generations which follow after usually do. They developed the original ideas, added to them, criticized them and applied them‘.

This is pretty much the exact same meaning of Faust’s dialogue with Wagner, his attendant, where Faust says:

‘Parchment then, is that your holy well,

From which drink always slakes your thirst?
You’ll never truly be refreshed until
It pours itself from your own soul, first.’

 

Wagner then answers with:

‘Pardon me, but it’s a great delight                                                         

When, moved by the spirit of the ages, we have sight
Of how a wiser man has thought, and how
Widely at last we’ve spread his word about.’

 

Ok, this is it now. I am still baffled as to how many parallels there actually are to the previous texts and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading Berman’s text for this reason!

 

On Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl'

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t get this so-called masterpiece of poetry when I first read it, or trying to read it would probably be a more accurate description. I trudged through the first couple of pages, not sure of what it means (Come on! Seriously, couldn’t he just write it in English?), my dictionary at my side I tried very hard to make sense of it all but it was so tiring that I quit reading it for a couple of days. I thought it might be helpful to do some research on the author and his background before giving it another try. And in fact it proved quite helpful to know Allen Ginsberg’s story and to learn about the ‘Beat Generation’ of the 1950’s. A generation that was influenced by the post-World War II atmosphere in America, trying to escape or more precisely revolt against the rigid system, the received standards, by the means of poetry, music, usage of drugs and alternative lifestyles such as acting out homosexuality. But it wasn’t before I listened to the recording of him reading the poem to an audience in San Francisco in 1955, and watching the short film that was trying to animate the meaning of the poem, that I even began to understand what this guy was talking about. At this point I should probably mention that I am not very good in analysing gibberish, but hey, that’s life isn’t it? Making sense of things you don’t understand.

‘Howl’ is said to be the essential work of poetry of the ‘Beat Generation’, with Jack Kerouacs’ ‘On the Road’ being the literature equivalent to it. The poem is an early confession of Ginsberg about being gay, although he does not literally say it, I think it becomes very obvious in the text that he is actually talking about things he experienced himself. Which brings me to the analysis of the text, well at least I think that’s what it is…that’s of course if I understood him right and was actually able to make sense of it all.

The poem is divided into three parts and is dedicated to Ginsberg’s friend Carl Solomon who he had met during his brief stay in the psychiatric hospital which is called ‘Rockland’ in the poem. The first part is the description of a whole generations’ life situation: Sex, drugs and Jazz portray their inner disunity, ideals and dreams which are nonconformist with the ideals and values of the general American way of living, it is an analysis of the American dream which leads into the

                                                                       ‘Moloch’

of an greedy success orientated society, which destroys natural resources and literally gorges itself on people. The ‘Moloch’ is the main subject in the second part of the poem. This part to me deserves the title ‘Howl’ because it feels like he is screaming and ranting, it is clearly the most negative, angry and grim section of the poem. The third and last part is directly addressed to his friend Carl Solomon and has a completely different feel to it compared to part one and especially the very dark and angry second part. He repeatedly says:

                                                       ‘I am with you in Rockland’

and is talking a lot about the Soul

                    ‘…the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly…’

‘Where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void’.

To me this part has almost a prayer-like, religious atmosphere.

The poem in most parts is autobiographical, which I think is one of the reasons why it is very hard to read and understand as he constantly refers to things or people of his life that one can only (fully) understand when researching about his life, for example: 

"Who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N. C. secret hero of these poems."

 N.C. stands for Neal Cassidy whom he had a sexual relationship with.

                                                                      “Accusing the radio of hypnotism...”

 which is a reference to his mother who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

                                                "Pilgrim's State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls ..."

 these are the names of psychiatric hospitals that his mother stayed in. As mentioned earlier, it was very hard for me to read this poem and quite frankly, I hated it at first. I hate things I don’t understand because they make me feel stupid. But the more I read ‘Howl’, and I did have to read it several times, the more I came to like it. Especially after watching the movie and listening to the recording as the rhythm of it gives it so much life and meaning. I think to really appreciate this work you HAVE TO listen to Ginsberg reading it himself, breathing and pausing at certain points, stressing sentences or words. Having said I came to like the poem, I really don’t get the whole idea about the ‘Beat Generation’. Yes, it might be the case that there was/is a rigid system and yes there are rules everyone has to follow which sometimes suck and yes maybe it is unfair that people who speak their mind weren’t admitted into the university because they didn’t conform with the ideas of the time and the university itself. But I think it is important rules exist and I don’t understand people who are always trying to be against the system (except of course it is a totalitarian system or the like). Sometimes it feels like they are just against something to be against it, if you know what I mean. Advocating your ideals, like treating gays the same or freedom of speech and being able to study no matter what your religious, sexual or political background is, of course is a good thing, but I don’t like the way they tried to accomplish it. It’s over the top; can’t they just make their point without having sex in public, swearing and doing drugs? They just want to provoke at any cost.