Below, Allen Ginsberg addresses his father and stepmother. His sets out ambitious plans for 1958, even after a rather uneventful celebration of the New Year, during which he wrote a catalogue poem about the drain in his hotel sink Absent from the letter: any allusion to the dread he felt upon the imminent departure of his partner, Peter Orlovsky.
9 Rue Git le Coeur
Paris 6, France
January 14, 1958
Dear Louis & Family:
Everything OK here, got your last letter. I’d seen the Reporter in the Ben Franklin American Library here. Also an article last weekend in the London Observer reviewing Evergreen Review & attacking “Howl” by John Wain, a member of British “Angry Young Men” group—said “Howl” was no recognizable form of poetry that he could see. The more the merrier, good or bad, copies sell, & “the vision of justice is the pleasure of God alone,” as Rimbaud says.
Letter from Prof Parkinson in England (a Berkeley prof whom I knew…) inviting me to stay & visit London at his place & also make BBC recording for a series on American poetry he’s giving for them—I may go over there in February if Jack ever sends that money. He mentions it (the money) in every letter & said originally he’d pay it Xmas, then January when he got the royalties, now he says Royalties don’t come till February &’s left me flat broke waiting. I wrote him I needed some of it meanwhile to live on, so I should get it next week, I hope. Meanwhile broke but not desperate. Don’t send money, Burroughs arriving this week.
Orlovsky succeeded in convincing US Consul he was broked & needed at home or he would flip over here, so they’re sending him on the Mauretania in three days—he leaves Friday. I’ll give him some books & papers to bring out to Paterson & deposit in my trunk—mostly literary letters etc. I guess you’ll see him & get a report on Europe when he calls.
Gregory Corso was here the last few months broke & sleeping on our floor, he went off to Frankfurt to try sell encyclopedias & failed at that, but wrote today that he’s contacted a German Literary magazine…
I saw Jack’s agent here & made arrangements with him to get my book offered to foreign publishers & gave him a Moscow address to try. Russia published six times as many books per year as the US—you know that?—& wants US material, pays high prices in dollars on a Swiss bank…
New Year’s I was broke so someone drove me to Montmartre Pig Alley Pigalle & I wandered around all night & walked at midnite thru Paris past all the whore streets & carousing areas of bar & walked back to Left Bank under the noisy stars.
I’ve been reading Shakespeare–Timon, Pericles, Corialanus—trying to finish all the obscure plays I’d neglected; also some Balzac & Dickens and various French modern poets. Also bought French translation of the Russians Yessenin & Mayakovsky—the latter particularly great—a major world poet like Lorca or Eliot—first great voice of the new Oriental Age to come—sort of a Whitman of Russian aspiration which made use of Democracy. It’s a tragedy he isn’t known in America, his scope and power. Here is a case of an aluminum curtain, culturally, much worse than our ignorances of Soviet Sputnik science power. Russia is here to stay, as a great nation, in one form or other, despite changes of leadership or fluctuations in democratization there…
Love,
Allen
From Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son. New York: Bloomsbury (2002).
FURTHER READING
British dissident poets’ group, Angry Young Men.
A note on the Bolshevik poet Mayakovsky.
Ginsberg and Kerouac describe the Beats in a rare recording.
Greenwhich Village, now and then: vestige Ginsberg haunts.