>>There is no chance that Ginsberg had even the slightest understanding of the OT. Nor does his work (or his life for that matter)reflect any understanding at all of the OT.
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>>That said I recognize the pole star (the guiding light) in your discussion would naturally come out of most undergraduate literary programs at American universities.
Are you kidding? He’s Jewish! His father was literary as well, which simply makes your argument seem naive. Yeah, he may have been a pot smoking hippie through most of the 60s and a guy that really pissed off Kerouac, but “Howl” is still pretty damn good.
Furthermore, the research and paper I did on him was at a master’s level program at a BAPTIST university.
He’s Jewish! His father was literary as well, which simply makes your argument seem naive.
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yeah I know he’s jewish.
There’s an old lenny bruce joke. (he was a jewish comic from the 1960’s.) anywhere outside of new york in the USA whether you’re christian or jewish—your christian. However, in new york—no matter whether you’re christian or jewish—its just the reverse-— you’re jewish. (lenny died with his head in the toilet and a syringe on his arm)
I lived in Manhattan/morningside heights for almost 20 years. so I know jewish. and yeah ginsberg was ethnically—ie lox and bagel—but probably only bagels— jewish— but that’s really really it..
Since I left Manhattan/morningside heights 20 years ago I’ve spent some time in study of the Old Testament.
Ginsberg’s writing shows that he didn’t get anything more than a superficial understanding of the old testatment from his father. Certainly columbia college didn’t give him anything more than a superficial understanding of the old testatment.
This is the way that DH Lawrence talks of Walt Whitman. I think the same applies to Ginsberg.
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Walt was really too superhuman. The danger of the superman is that he is mechanical.
They talk of his ‘splendid animality’. Well, he’d got it on the brain, if that’s the place for animality.
I am he that aches with amorous love:
Does the earth gravitate, does not all matter, aching, attract all matter ?
So the body of me to all I meet or know.
What can be more mechanical ? The difference between life and matter is that life, living things, living creatures, have the instinct of turning right away from some matter, and of bliss- fully ignoring the bulk of most matter, and of turning towards only some certain bits of specially selected matter. As for living creatures all helplessly hurtling together into one great snowball, why, most very living creatures spend the greater part of their time getting out of the sight, smell or sound of the rest of living creatures. Even bees only cluster on their own queen. And that is sickening enough. Fancy all white humanity clustering on one another like a lump of bees.
No, Walt, you give yourself away. Matter does gravitate helplessly. But men are tricky-tricksy, and they shy all sorts of ways.
Matter gravitates because it is helpless and mechanical.
And if you gravitate the same, if the body of you gravitates to all you meet or know, why, something must have gone . seriously wrong with you. You must have broken your main- spring.
You must have fallen also into mechanization.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lawrence/dhlch12.htm
More DH Lawrence on Whitman—that I think is apropos of Ginsberg
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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/lawrence/dhlch12.htm
You must have fallen also into mechanization.
Your Moby Dick must be really dead. That lonely phallic monster of the individual you. Dead mentalized.
I only know that my body doesn’t by any means gravitate to all I meet or know, I find I can shake hands with a few people. But most I wouldn’t touch with a long prop.
Your mainspring is broken, Walt Whitman. The mainspring of your own individuality. And so you run down with a great whirr, merging with everything.
You have killed your isolate Moby Dick. You have mentalized your deep sensual body, and that’s the death of it.
I am everything and everything is me and so we’re all One in One Identity, like the Mundane Egg, which has been addled quite a while.