Collected Poems 1947-1997 - Ginsberg Allen - Страница 197
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273 JOHN FOSTER DULLES: (1888–1959) Eisenhower secretary of state (1953–1959), who escalated cold war with China at 1954 Geneva Conference, where, refusing to shake hands or speak with Chinese foreign minister, he walked past icily, thereby initiating the thirty-year U.S.-China “containment policy.” U.S. refused to sign the French-Indo-Chinese Peace Agreement at Geneva for fear “80% of the populace [of united Vietnam] would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader.”
273 FORRESTAL: James V. Forrestal (1892–1949) First U.S. secretary of defense; inaugurated first U.S. peacetime draft 1948, early cold war time (never before in U.S. history!) by illegally spending military-budget money for pro-draft propaganda. Next year, in mental decline, obsessed with Zionists and Communist Russian invasion of America, he threw himself out of Bethesda government mental hospital window, May 22, 1949.
Journal Night Thoughts
275 HARRY SMITH (1923–1991): Celebrated experimental filmmaker, artist, philosopher, hermeticist; editor Ethnic Folkways Records’ The Kiowa Peyote Meeting (FE 4601, 1973) and three-volume, six-disc Anthology of American Folk Music (FA 2951–3, 1952), influential on midcentury world folk-rock renaissance.
275 ATMAN: Notion of individual self, identifiable with permanent self, Brahman.
275 KABBALA: Hebrew Gnostic numerical meditation practice using letters of Pentateuch (Torah). “Natural language letters.”—H. Smith.
277 SPIRO MOUND: Southern Cult (A.D. 1200) Indian mound in Spiro, Oklahoma.
277 PENFIELD’S HOMUNCULUS: Map of brain areas controlling motor and sensory functions. See design p. 70, Fig. III-15, in Wilder Penfield and Jasper Herbert, Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).
277 KALI YUGA: Present era is last aeon in Hindu cycle of four ages, an age of iron during which spiritual awareness is at nadir, and cosmic apocalyptic destruction follows.
Combination sensory and motor homunculus (as they appear from above on Rolandic cortex). Penfield’s Homunculus. (See n.p. 277.)
Television Was a Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber
280 ENKIDU: Friend-servant of Gilgamesh, for whose shade’s sake Gilgamesh visited the dusts of Deathworld.
280 LAFCADIO: L. Orlovsky, brother of poet Peter Orlovsky; see “Lazarus” portrait, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels, Book Two, Part One, section 10.
280 CHANGO: Afro-Cuban Oricha, Lord of Drum, phallic creation divinity, somewhat equivalent to Hindu Shiva among polytheistic systems.
280 BARDO THODOL: Experience of gap between death and rebirth; see The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo, trans. Francesca Fremantle, commentary by Chogyam Trungpa (Boulder: Shambhala, 1975).
281 KULCHUR: Magazine of new writing, 1961, ed. Leroi Jones et al.
281 IRVING ROSE IN THRALL: Irving Rosenthal (with Paul Carroll), editing 1959 Big Table magazine, published first eighty-page chunk of Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, previously censored in Chicago Review.
281 KALPA: Complete Aeonic four-yuga cycle, according to Hindu mythology.
285 CHESSMAN: Caryl Chessman (1921–1960) Executed for murder in California after lengthy court appeals intelligently written by himself, and despite world protest in favor of his life.
285 CHATTERLEY ATTACKED: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield laid copy of D. H. Lawrence’s long-banned masterpiece, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, on President Eisenhower’s desk with certain words underlined as “obscene,” and asked for permission to ban its transport by U.S. mail. “Terrible, we can’t have that,” said Ike in Time magazine (according to author’s memory, 1959).
285 ROCHESTER: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, Milton’s contemporary, whose brilliant gaudy lyrics, published 1950s Paris by Olympia Press, when imported to America were confiscated and burned by Eisenhower U.S. Customs, along with novels by Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, Jean Genet, etc.
296 2,000,000 PIECES MAIL: At beginning of cold war, 1945, U.S. Customs and Post Office departments burned as propaganda all second-class mail (books and printed matter) arriving from China, N. Vietnam, and other Communist lands. Two million items a year were incinerated. The practice was ended by President John Kennedy.
287 FABIAN BLDG.: Downtown Church and Market streets, Paterson, New Jersey, movie theater where author in boyhood saw movie phantoms of Jeanette Mac-Donald, Nelson Eddy, Ronald Reagan.
288 ANGELICA BALABANOFF: (1876–1965) Kiev-born aristocrat, first Secretary of Third Communist International 1919, quit disillusioned 1923 with Lenin’s & Trotsky’s use of “unscrupulous calumny” for centralization of power, went her own way, radical, poet. Earlier as Benito Mussolini’s mistress she sheltered and introduced him to Socialist ideology, co-edited Rome socialist daily Avanti; later broke with him, was betrayed and confined, when he formed Italian Fascist Party. See My Life as a Rebel (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938; reprint Indiana University Press, 1978). Author met her briefly at pacifist gathering, Brooklyn, 1945.
289 SS SANTA MARIA: “Cruise ship Santa Maria, with 600 passengers aboard, seized … by armed band of 69 … leader identified as [Portuguese dictator] Salazar foe, Army ex-Capt Galvao … colonial policy manifesto demands creation of Fed Repub of the US of Portugal including overseas territories … Portuguese exiles in GB open drive against Salazar regime” (New York Times, January 24–27, 1961). See also Time, February 10, 1961.
290 DEVAS: Hindu or Buddhist gods, attendant psychological spirits.
290 RAY BREMSER: American poet (b. 1934) See The New American Poetry, ed. Donald M. Allen (New York: Grove Press, 1960). Much praised by Kerouac and Bob Dylan for his celebrated word-syncopation, as in Blowing Mouth (Cherry Valley Editions, 1978).
Seabattle of Salamis Took Place off Perama
296 PANYOTIS … YORGIS: Greek youths’ common given names.
296 AHARISTI … NA-TI-THE-MA-FEZ: Bouzouki songs, Athens suburb jukebox, 1961.
296 OPEN THE DOOR RICHARD, I’M CASTING A SPELL ON YOU: American jukebox songs, the latter by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, actually titled “I Put a Spell on You.”
Stotras to Kali Destroyer of Illusions
298 YONI: Vagina, counterpart to lingam, in Hindu iconography.
Heat
302 HOOGHLY: River Ganges at Calcutta.
302 BIDI: Tiny cheap Indian cigarette.
Describe: The Rain on Dasaswamedh Ghat
303 KALI MA: Benares beggar lady with a holy name; see her photograph, Indian Journals (NY: Grove Press, 1996).
303 JAI RAM: “Victory to Ram” (aspect of Vishnu the Preserver).
304 JAI SHANKAR: Shankar or Shiva, patron lord of Benares.
304 BAUL: Mystical sect of wandering, patchwork-clothed Vaishnav singers, some devoted to Krishna, in North Bengal. See Obscure Religious Cults, Sashi Bhusan Das Gupta (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Makhopadhyay, 1959). “The elephant is caught in the spider web, and the ant bursts out laughing.” Influenced Tagore songs.
Death News
305 GANGA-MA: Mother Ganges, represented traditionally riding a crocodile.
305 HOLLAND: John P. Holland (1841–1914) Irish born. His invention, the first iron submarine, the Fenian Ram, launched and sank in 1878, was fished up rusty from the Passaic in 1927, and exhibited thereafter in the Paterson Museum. Holland cofounded Electric Boat Co., ancestor General Dynamics Corp.
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