Allen Ginsberg and Howl

Allen Ginsberg and Howl

Howl is a long poem (হাউল এটা দীঘলীয়া কবিতা) split into three parts (তিনিটা খণ্ডত বিভক্ত) and is Ginsberg's most controversial work (আৰু গিন্ছবাৰ্গৰ আটাইতকৈ বিতৰ্কিত লিখনি). This analysis concentrates on part one (এই বিশ্লেষণ প্ৰথম খণ্ড আধাৰিত), dedicated to Carl Solomon (কাৰ্ল চলমনলৈ উত্সৰ্গীত), who Ginsberg met (যাক গিন্ছবাৰ্গে লগ পাইছিল)  and befriended (আৰু বন্ধুত্বস্তাপন কৰিছিল) in a psychiatric institute (এটি মনোৰোগ প্ৰতিষ্ঠানত) in 1949 (১৯৪৯ চনত).

• Howl is full of people and places, food, music, suicides, sex, madness, drugs and unusual language.
• Ginsberg is a keen observer (গিন্ছবাৰ্গ এজন তীক্ষ্ণ পৰ্যবেক্ষক), the first person perspective obvious in the first line (প্ৰথম পংক্তিৰ পৰা সস্ত পৰিপেক্ষা তেওঁৰ নিজা বুলি বুজিব পাৰি) . Autobiographical and biographical episodes (আত্মজীৱনীমূলক আৰু জীৱনীমূলক অধ্যায়বোৰে) play a major role (বিশেষ ভূমিকা পালন কৰিছে) but often they are altered, transformed (প্ৰায়ে সেইবিলাকৰ সাল-সলনিও কৰা হৈছে).
• The syntax is unusual in some lines (কিছুমান শাৰীত পদান্বয় অস্বাভাৱিক), the language paradoxical (ভাষা বিৰোধাভাষমূলক। অৰ্থাত্ প্ৰথম পঢ়োতে অস্বাভািৱক যেন লগা কিন্তু কিবা সত্য অন্তৰ্নিহিত হৈ থকা। উদাহৰণ - The child is father of the man).
• Note the use of the word 'who' which starts many of the lines and gives the poem a repetitive feel, much like an incantation.
• Howl is a social commentary, a rambling, intense narrative featuring characters, scenes, references and real life sequences. Those on the margins of society are prominent - poets, artists, radicals, homosexuals and the mentally ill - and all are swept along on the long lines that Ginsberg employed to convey deep frustration, joy and energy.
• Ginsberg was influenced by Walt Whitman's long rhythmic lines (in poems such as Starting from Paumanok, Salut au Monde and By Blue Ontario's Shore), William Blake's visionary work (Songs of Innocence and Experience) and certain books of the bible.

Today Howl is acknowledged as a literary classic in the sense that it broke through cultural barriers, challenged establishment and encapsulated the anger and frustrations of a generation.

• Love or hate it, Howl is important because it is of urban birth, the language simultaneously surreal and vulgar, jazzy and foul, yet full of real life, sensitivity and hope.

When it was first presented to the public on October 7th, 1955 at the Six Gallery in San Fransisco, the reading caused uproar. Something new and disturbing had been unleashed.

At that gathering were several of the group who would become known as the 'Beats', including Jack Kerouac, who poured the wine that night and screamed encouragement as Ginsberg read.

Howl would go on to influence not only Kerouac (and authors such as William Burroughs) but artists and alternative thinkers and artists to come, including a young songwriter called Bob Dylan.

Some place Howl in the same boat as the Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, The Prelude, Song of Myself and The Waste Land.

• Walt Whitman's pioneering spirit and opening up of taboo subject matter, plus his use of the longer line, certainly inspired Ginsberg. But Howl is seen as a game-changer primarily because it expressed for the first time a modern psychological angst, an urban existence fueled by drugs, jazz, travel and expansion of the mind.

That said, there are critics who dislike the explicit content, the prose-like loose structure and overall subversive message.

• Howl is on the one hand a personal cry for understanding and a condemnation of comfortable, conforming societal values. It is also full of anguish, incoherency and pain juxtaposed with praise, urgency and calls for change.

Published in November 1956 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the City Lights bookshop as Howl and Other Poems, the book came to the notice of the authorities and was seized by customs officials in San Fransisco as it arrived from London, where it had been printed.

At the obscenity trial in California in June 1957 nine literary experts gave evidence in support. Subsequently the judge's verdict concluded that the book was of 'redeeming social importance' and could be freely sold.

Suffice to say that many believed the modern world to have begun that day. Allen Ginsberg's name became synonymous with radicalism, freedom of speech and the right to protest against sexual and political oppression.