The portrait of the generation in A.Ginsberg’s Howl.

“Howl” was written by Ginsberg in 1956. The poem’s subtitle, “For Carl Solomon, ” dedicates the poem to his friend whom Ginsberg met in a mental institution. TGinsberg wanted “Howl” to express the pent up frustration, artistic energy, and self-destruction of his generation, a generation that he felt was being suppressed by a dominant American culture that valued conformity over artistic license and opportunity.

The title also expresses one of the major themes in the poem - that of madness. " Howl" does not keep the traditional meter or rhythm of a poem but is instead meant to be an extended diatribe or association and stream of consciousness writing. One important thing to note about " Howl" is that it is a male-centric poem.

At the beginning Ginsberg shows the drugs have taken on his once creative friends and how they seem to be falling away from the lives they once lived. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,» His once proud, genius friends are losing it. Their minds, souls, everything is falling apart. ” angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz. ”. This reads like a wakeup call. All that they had worked for was falling apart in a drug fueled self-absorbed mess. Losing sight of what they had worked for to begin with and getting lost in a false reality. It sounds so real because it is. Through the despair Ginsberg pulled himself back up and tries to put in words the loss he feels for the “family” he once had.

The Beatniks had turned into junkies and drunks, luckily Ginsberg saw this and put his mind right on paper writing honestly about what he saw going on around him. ”who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, ”. It is said that Ginsberg was under the influence of the Psycodelic drug Peyote when he wrote “Howl” and in this last passage he seems to call out everyone, not just his friends but his peers. Ginsberg was looking at all the people around him and realizing that he was disgusted by the whole thing. Everything was not perfect as it had seemed. His generation was blowing it. No one had nor would fix the everyday growing problems that are our lives.

“Howl” then goes into its second part, there are three altogether. It starts back up where it had left off only calling out normal society even more then he had to begin with. “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! 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! ”. Ginsberg sees the government, industries, the whole lot for what it is. The society is built on the backs of the poor while the rich get richer and everyone stands aside watching as if its normal and fine. America at the time was still segregated and overtly racist. Ginsberg was an open homosexual. To speak out like this definitely brought a lot of negative attention to Ginsberg and he knew it and wasn’t afraid to speak up. It is utterly amazing to think of the amount of courage that it took to simply be who he was as a person.

The end of “Howl ” is quite different. It’s as if Ginsberg is thinking about what the world could and should be. “ I’m with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep I’m with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free I’m with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night”. What could America be? It is an unanswered question.

7. Sometime during eternity

some guys show up

and one of them

who shows up real late

is a kind of carpenter

from some square-type place

like Galilee

and he starts wailing

and claiming he is hip

to who made heaven

and earth

and that the cat

who really laid it on us

is his Dad

And moreover

he adds

It’s all writ down

on some scroll-type parchments

which some henchmen

leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres

a long time ago

and which you won’t even find

for a coupla thousand years or so

or at least for

nineteen hundred and fortyseven

of them

to be exact

and even then

nobody really believes them

or me

for that matter

You’re hot

they tell him

And they cool him

They stretch him on the Tree to cool

And everybody after that

is always making models

of this Tree

with Him hung up

and always crooning His name

and calling Him to come down

and sit in

on their combo

as if he is the king cat

who’s got to blow

or they can’t quite make it

Only he don’t come down

from His Tree

Him just hang there

on His Tree

looking real Petered out

and real cool

and also

according to a roundup

of late world news

from the usual unreliable sources

real dead

8) In " Marriage, " Corso tackles the possibilities of marriage. It was among his " title poems, " with " Power, " " Army, " and others that explore a concept. " Should I get married? " (1), the speaker begins. Could marriage bring about the results that the speaker is looking for? Coming " home to her" (54) and sitting " by the fireplace and she in the kitchen/aproned young and lovely wanting my baby/ and so happy about me she burns the roast beef" (55-57). Idealizing marriage and fatherhood initially, Corso's speaker embraces reality in the second half of the poem admitting, " No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father" (84). Recognizing that the act of marriage is in itself a form of imprisonment, " No, can’t imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream" (103), Corso's speaker acknowledges in the end that the possibility of marriage is not promising for him. Bruce Cook from the book The Beat Generation^[3] illuminates Corso's skill at juxtaposing humor and serious critical commentary, " Yet as funny and entertaining as all this certainly is, it is not merely that, for in its zany way ‘Marriage’ offers serious criticism of what is phony about a sacred American institution."

9) «Черные юмористы» - одна из современных постмодернистских школ, по способу видения и отражения жизни примыкающая к литературе абсурда. Расцвет американского абсурдизма приходится на вторую половину 60-х годов, когда с его европейским вариантом произошло то, что неминуемо случается со всеми модернистскими школами - исчерпав свои небольшие художественные открытия, абсурдизм привел роман и драму к антигуманизму в философии и морали, к распаду человеческого образа и романной формы - в литературе. Первый базовый принцип «черных юмористов» - восприятие мира как хаоса, второй - утверждение абсолютной бесцельности человеческого существования. У них нет поизведений о домохозяйках, которые только и озабочены тем, как выглядит стойка для цветов, которую они приобрели в магазине за углом.

Итак, база абсурдистской литературы идентична теории экзистенциализма - мир абсурден. Однако решение сложившихся противоречий абсурдисты решают иначе - они абсолютно отрицают разумность жизни и пытаются защититься смехом от ее парадоксальных и калечащих человека конфликтов и противоречий. Школа «черного юмора» представляет собой философско-эстетическую общность писателей, для которых ключевым понятием становится ирония, понимаемая как способ существования в мире, как фундаментальный принцип интерпретации всего, что в этом мире происходит. Общность мироощущения у «черных юмористов» порождает использование сходной повествовательной стратегии, для которой характерно:

• пародирование всех мифов и стереотипов;

• сквозной гротеск, смех над страшным и отталкивающим;

• традиция «небылиц», восходящая к американскому фольклору и раннему М. Твену;

• обилие реминисценций и аллюзий;

• фрагментарность алогичного сюжета;

• условные персонажи-марионетки;

• игра как эстетическая и философская категория.

10) Родиной постмодернистской литературы исследователи признают США — именно отсюда постмодернизм распространился по Европе. Теория постмодернизма начинает складываться в США на волне интереса к интеллектуально-философским, постфрейдистским и литературоведческим концепциям французских постструктуралистов. Американская почва оказалась наиболее благоприятной для восприятия новых веяний по ряду причин. Здесь ощущалась потребность в осмыслении тех тенденций в развитии искусства и литературы, которые заявили о себе начиная с середины 50-х гг. (появление поп-арта, сделавшего цитатность ведущим художественным принципом) и все более набирали силу, что привело в середине 70-х к смене культурной парадигмы: модернизм уступил место постмодернизму.

Рассмотрим часть составляющих постмодернистской парадигмы:

• деканонизация всех канонов и всех официальных условностей, ироническая переоценка ценностей;

• размытость жестких бинарных оппозиций; пристрастие к технике бриколлажа, или цитатного совмещения несовместимого;

• отказ от традиционного «я», стирание личности, подчеркивание множественности «я»;

• гибридизация, мутантное изменение жанров, порождающее новые формы;

• карнавализация как признание имманентности смеха, «веселой относительности» предметов, как участие в диком беспорядке жизни;

• метаязыковая игра, игра в текст, игра с текстом, игра с читателем, игра со сверхтекстом, театрализация текста;

• игровое освоение Хаоса;

• интертекстуальность, опора на всю историю человеческой культуры и ее переосмысление;

• плюрализм культурных языков, моделей, стилей, используемых как равноправные;

• выявление плюралистического типа мышления с его раскрепощающим характером, ориентирующего на приятие жизненного богатства и разнообразия;

• дву- или многоуровневая организация текста, рассчитанная на элитарного и массового читателя одновременно, использование жанровых кодов как массовой, так и элитарной литературы, научного исследования и т. п.; сочетание развлекательности и сверхэрудированности;

• ориентация на множественность интерпретаций текста;

• явления авторской маски, «смерти автора»;

• принцип читательского сотворчества, создание нового типа читателя;

• универсализирующий принцип изображения;

• множественность смыслов и точек зрения;

• принципиальная асистематичность, незавершенность, открытость конструкции;