Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (6 page)

You shouldn't have been “distressed” by the tone of my last letter. It was only a mood . . . and a not malevolent one either, not at all. It was all done as an older brother. Sometimes you give me such a feeling of superiority, say, moral superiority, that I can't restrain myself . . . Other times, I feel inferior to you—as I doubtlessly do this moment. I'm afraid that you'll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you'll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased . . . The thing that makes me different from all of you is the vast inner life I have, an inner life concerned with, of all things, externals . . . But that would be discussing my art, and so intimate is it become that I don't want to babble about it. You may deplore the fact that I'm “shepherding artistic problems back to the cave,” but it's certain that that's where they indeed belong. The bigger and deeper this inner life grows, the less anyone of you will understand me . . . Putting it that way may sound silly, it may particularly amuse Burroughs, but that's the way it is. Until I find a way to unleash the inner life in an art-method, nothing about me will be clear. And of course, this places me in an enviable position . . . it reminds me of a remark Lucien once made to me: he said: “You never seem to give yourself away completely, but of course dark-haired people are so mysterious.” That's what he said, by God . . . Then you yourself referred to a “strange madness long growing” in me, in a poem written last winter . . . remember? I just thrive in this, by God. From now on, I think I'll begin to deliberately mystify everyone; that will be a novelty.

After all my art is more important to me than anything . . . None of that emotional egocentricity that you all wallow in, with your perpetual analysis of your sex-lives and such. That's a pretty pastime, that is! I've long ago dedicated myself to myself . . . Julian Green, among others has one theme in all his work: the impossibility of dedicating oneself to a fellow being. So Julian practices what he preaches . . . There is just one flaw: one yearns so acutely to dedicate oneself to another, even though it's so hopeless . . . There's no choice in the matter.

I was telling Mimi West last summer how I was searching for a new method in order to release what I had in me, and Lucien said from across the room, “What about the new vision?” The fact was, I had the vision . . . I think everyone has . . . what we lack is the method. All Lucien himself needed was a method.

I understand Trilling's impatience with the High Priest of Art . . . There
is
something phony about that. It's the gesture adopted when the method doesn't prove to be self-sufficient . . . after awhile the gesture, the Priestliness, begins to mean more than the art itself. What could be more absurd?

But let's not let the whole matter deteriorate, as I feel it will in mentalities such as Trilling's—that to adopt art with fervor and single-minded devotion is to make the High Priest gesture. No, there's a distinction to be made, without a doubt.

So goodnight for now . . . About the Admiral [Restaurant], I'd received your card in time and so was forewarned. I'm keeping Trilling's letter for awhile in order to show it to a few people: this must make you realize that the quality of my friendship for you is far purer than yours could ever be for me, you with your clay-pigeon complex. There's nothing that I hate more than the condescension you begin to show whenever I allow my affectionate instincts full play with regard to you; that's why I always react angrily against you. It gives me the feeling that I'm wasting a perfectly good store of friendship on a little self-aggrandizing weasel. I honestly wish that you had more essential character, of the kind I respect. But then, perhaps you have that and are afraid to show it. At least, try to make me feel that my zeal is not being mismanaged . . . as to your zeal, to hell with that . . . you've got more of it to spare than I. And now, if you will excuse me for the outburst, allow me to bid you goodnight.

[ . . . ]

Jean

 

 

Allen Ginsberg [n.p., Sheepshead Bay, New York?] to
Jack Kerouac [n.p., Ozone Park, New York?]

after September 6, 1945

 

Dear Jack:

I got your letter yesterday. I said to Joan [Adams] when I saw her in the W.E. [West End Bar] “Celine [Young] reminds me of Natasha or whatever her name was in the
Magic Mountain
.” Your remark to the same end in your letter—is this telepathy? Thus surprised me Joan didn't agree though. I think she's thinking of the healthy Celine, paramour of the up and coming lawyers (though that somewhat fits in with Mann, even.) As you have been father confessor of late, I have been brother (or sister?) confidante for some years now and I know the feeling; I suspect that there's some transferred libido in the role.

As there is also, I suppose, in my and Bill's sharp curiosity
vis à vis
your various
affaires de folie
. The assumption on my part (now half habitual) of your double nature and the conflicts there from—“the illusion that everyone has that I am torn in two by all this,” was formerly a sort of half prurient wish-fulfillment. You have got me there. Still you can not arrive at a verdict yourself—that in a sense you are being persecuted by an atmosphere—so easily as you do by “as it were” dissolving it in the white ice of action. I am repelled by the atmosphere of Larry's and Main Street, and by [Bill] Gilmore's patterns of innuendo, at the same time I find myself revolving about in that particular universe (to use a phrase of yours). It is much the same with you; after all, the atmosphere is one that you have chosen from other than aesthetic impulses, you are also drawn by a prurient curiosity which you are conscious of I suppose. You could even accept them (these posy people) as Greeks, though you have contempt and some fear for them as they are. And the “remorse” that you feel is avowedly exteriorized, you are afraid of Burroughs's inquisitive sardonicism, of external consciousness of your fatal flaws. Burroughs or Gilmore are perhaps trying to drive you to this level, you on the other hand provoke them by manifestations of fear, by trying to maintain yourself on another level from them and ignoring or rationalizing all evidences to the contrary. You are more Greek than Gilmore, and more American than Greek, and so you need not be so tense about it.

I don't enjoy sitting at your feet being thrown into consternation by fits of divine madness—alternately “frightened, annoyed, disgusted or pleased.” You are not a toy you know, nor am I a well meaning simpleton ineffectually trying to fathom you. At the same time your conservation of speculative energy and growing aloofness in a promiscuous exhibition of your wares hit me as another corridor in the gamut of emotions, on surprisingly Burroughsian and (I bow) mature in the line of development. Your art is as you say more important to you than anything, mine is an emotional egocentricity. I accept this because I would relegate art to a purely expressive and assertive tool—here I am more Rimbaud, I think. And for me its equal purpose is as a tool for discovery. But the assertion—myself—and the discovery—external—are my aims; I am dedicated to myself. It is you who do not recognize the impossibility of dedicating yourself to your fellow-beings, you are dedicated to your art. My art is dedicated to me.

Anyway, if we traced the currents of poetry, I think that in the end the whole art making machine (in yourself as in myself) would be egocentric, whether we wish to deceive ourselves with other ideas. And in the end, and with Julian [Lucien Carr]. He does not wish to dedicate himself to another, except as far as for him it will dedicate another to him. Love is only a recognition of our own guilt and imperfection, and a supplication for forgiveness to the perfect beloved. This is why we love those who are more beautiful than ourselves, why we fear them, and why we must be unhappy lovers. When we make ourselves high priests of art we deceive ourselves again, art is like a genie. It is more powerful than ourselves, but only by virtue of ourselves does it exist and create. Like a genie it has no will of its own, and is, even somewhat stupid; but by our will it moves to build our gleaming palaces and provide a mistress for the palace, which is most important. The high priest is a cultist, who worships the genie that someone else has invoked.

You say you are keeping Trilling's letter, my true friend, and that I shall realize the quality of your friendship by advertising it for me. My self-souled aggrandizing lust seems to have convinced you of the validity of my clay pigeon complex. Well, you
are
the ungrateful one—and I had the temerity to tell Trilling (half year ago) that you were a genius. This is the thanks I get! (Incidentally, I think that half the reason I told him that was to get him to think that my friends were geniuses and by implication, etc. Still, I risked my reputation on you.)

Aside from all of this frivolity I was surprised by your belief that whenever you show your affectionate nature to me I become condescending—I think that it has been oppositely so. Do you really find it like that?

Incidentally—I was ashamed to tell you before Burroughs—I wrote Trilling an 8 page letter explaining (my version) the Rimbaud
Weltschaung
. It was mostly an exegesis of Bill's Spenglerian and anthropological ideas. I feel sort of foolish now—over bumptious.

I think I'll be in N.Y.—at Bill's—Saturday night, maybe Sunday. I expect to have Monday off. I have no money, so I'll have to seek introspective entertainment—C.

Is Gilmore really writing a novel?

Here are two sonnets on the poet which contain half of my versions of art.
¹⁴

Allen

 

P.S. Don't write unless there is something special. I don't want to take your time and I will see you soon enough. Somehow I'd like to save your letters for tragic occasions, long farewells, or for voyages.

 

 

Jack Kerouac [n.p., Ozone Park, New York?] to
Allen Ginsberg [n.p.]

ca
. April 1948

Saturday night

 

Dear Allen

Distractions, excitement, and evil influences prevented me from absorbing what you were saying about Van Doren and the proposed publication of your doldrums.
¹⁵
Thus, sit down and write me a letter about it. I'd go to see you about it only I'm so near to the end of my book that I tremble at the thought of leaving it for one moment. Exaggeration—but I can see you next weekend. Meanwhile I'd like to hear about it, more about it, circles of it briefly.

Meditating on the
yiddishe kopfe
heads I wonder if you were right about my taking
Town and City
to Van Doren instead of a publisher. Tell me what you think about that in your considered well-groomed Hungarian Brierly-in-thebathrobe
¹⁶
opinion. It seems to me perhaps that if I took my novel to publishers they would glance at it with jaundiced eyes knowing that I am unpublished and unknown, while if Van Doren approved of it, everything would be quite different. I imagine that's what you think, too. We creative geniuses must bite fingernails together, or at least, we should, or perhaps, something or other.

Have you heard from Neal [Cassady]? Reason I ask, if I go to Denver on June 1st to work on farms out there I'd like to see him. It's strange that he doesn't right (write)—and as I say, he must be doing ninety days for something, only I hope it's not ninety months, that's what I've been really worrying about.

Hal [Chase] has been reading my novel and he said it was better than he thought it would be, which everybody says. As a matter of fact I don't know much about it myself since I never read it consecutively, if at all. Hal is still amazingly Hal—you know, Hal at his best and most
mysteriously intense
self. What a strange guy. With a million unsuspected naiveté's jumping over the monotone of his profundity. And it is a real profundity.

It's funny that whenever I write to you nothing seems to sound right due to the fact that I keep imagining you saying, “But why? why is he saying
that
? what is the meaning of all this? what is it for?” Do you know, that sounds like Martin Spencer Lyons, big philosopher. Says, “What are you doing?” and you say: “Writing a novel” and [he] says: “WHY?”—with the voice of Gabriel, supposed to lay you flat under the why-and-wherefore of the universe. I tell you, man, a guy like Martin Spencer Lyons has been into the house of doubt-and-why and had to sneak out the
back way
, whereas you take
me
—I've been in that house and I wandered around all the rooms and I came out the way I came in. Ask me about the whys and wherefores of doing anything, or about the insanity of unconsciously contrived action, and I will say to you in my cardiest Mark Twain tone, “Shit, I even know the wall-termites in the house of why-and-wherefore by their first names.” Good, hey? All of which is supposed to mean that one shouldn't ask
why
all the time, and therefore don't ask
why
I'm writing you this letter. Actually it's because I have a sudden urge to talk to you about it and also, subliminally, to complete a little circle we began last Saturday night when I borrowed a buck from you and we both smiled graciously like two old Jews in the garment business who know each other
so
well that they can smile falsely. Also, the buck is not forthcoming perhaps until I might see you this weekend.