olivia!

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

Who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes

Ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind

Shocks of hospitals and jails and wars

Who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy

Who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling

Who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations 

Who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury

Presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads 

Returning years later truly except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East

Who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse

The madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death

Crazy in Moloch!

Mad generation!

They saw it all! the wild eyes!

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland where you’re madder than I am

I’m with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss

Where you bang on a catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

Where you accuse your doctors of insanity 

Where there are twenty-five-thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

The idea of madness tells a story to sort of give the tumultuous history of the first statement of the poem “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” It takes us through the journey of these great minds and how they were destroyed. They were shunned because of their obscene ideas and when they tried to explain were labeled insane and society tried to change them but it only made it worse. They came back even more disillusioned than before because their environment was the same one that had driven them crazy in the first place. Then Ginsberg ties in the madness as it applied to writers, like himself; maybe the insanity he felt at the time. It is the disillusioned generation of writers and their tragic story. Carl Solomon’s story is the same and Ginsberg is with him in Rockland; in the same generation experiencing the same things.  

The idea of loyalty is definitely a motif often emphasized through out the play and usually by the character of Eddie. The community portrayed in this story is a tightly knit one that centers around the idea of family ties and working to support the family. The small anecdote about Vinny Bolzano at the beginning really emphasizes this. He betrays the loyalty of his family and is forever shunned because of it. The importance of loyalty is tied in with the strong sense of family that is present and the fact that at that time there are many illegal immigrants struggling in that community and the only way to achieve success is to rely on the loyalty and trust in others and their families.

The 1950s saw the dawn of the Cold War and the McCarthy era. This was a time of doubt and fear for most Americans and the only way to have a sense of security was to know that there was loyalty among friends and family. It was something to hold on to and to teach as important; a way to feel safer. Trust was hard to find and earn and if the trust was broken there was no fixing it.

Eddie has a difficult time with the idea of loyalty and how it relates to respect. He insists on getting his respect and will not function until he feels he has received it. He is the one who brings up the idea in  the beginning with the story of Vinny, yet he seems to have distorted the meaning a bit. He knows the importance of loyalty and would be the first to spot disloyalty if it was towards him, which he often does with Rodolpho. However, when he must be loyal he is not selfless as he expects Beatrice and Catherine to be for him. He is immature in a way because he demands loyalty and respect yet does not understand how to fully give it to others. This is the tragic part about the issue of loyalty for Eddie. He does not want to allow Catherine to be loyal to anyone but him and will sacrifice being loyal to Marco and Rodolpho to keep her from doing so.  

What I took from their conversation was that the girl “feels” obligated to go through with the procedure they are discussing but “knows” that she is unsure about it on a personal level. She is trying to make it clear to him that it means more to her than just a feeling and she expresses this when she says, “I just know things.” It could also tie into the fact that in her stage of pregnancy she does not feel anything, yet has the knowledge that it is there. This is something that the man does not understand and even at the end he asks if she feels better. This is obviously not a problem like a sickness that she can just feel better and move on from. She feels fine; they have not addressed the problem and the question still lingers.

What makes these pieces of art modern is the way the artists depict their subjects and what they leave for the audience’s imagination. What makes many of the pieces so intriguing is the subtlety of the scenes and the ambiguity of emotion that pushes the audience to come to their own conclusions about each work. Many of the works focus on familiar subjects yet are depicted in an unfamiliar way.

The sculptures in gallery A express intense emotion in the way the bodies are formed from the marble and even the facial expressions of some are extreme. The vagueness of setting for each sculpture forces the audience to imagine for themselves what evoked such emotion. A good example of this is “Solitude” by George Gray Barnard. The familiar idea of solitude is set aside in this piece because there are two figures portrayed. Instead of depicting solitude as the physical idea of being alone, he represents it through the positions of the bodies. Also “The Wave” by Chester Beach utilizes body language to depict a scene instead of the actual scene. Because of the name and the way the figures are rendered the audience can imagine what the scenery is. The anticipation in the figures implies the wave even though it is not there. A good example of intense facial expression is Andrew Dasberg’s “Lucifer.” By the mere intensity of the expression and the title of the piece, the story behind the name is implied and left for the audience to interpret.

The paintings in gallery C, like in George Bellow’s “Circus”, give an audience view of what the scene would look like if we had experienced it first hand. Others, like those of Maurine Prendergast and E. Ambrose Webster, are not realistically representative of the subjects and have vaugue titles such as “Landscape With Two Figures,” which leaves a lot to the interpretation of the audience.

In Gallery G there is a varied array of styles. Charles Cander’s painting “La Toilette” focuses on two women figures, one nude and one fully clothed but not interacting. This leaves the audience with any number of possibilities. Others like Wassily Kemdinsky’s “Improvisation No. 27 (Garden of Love)” leaves a lot to the imagination. The vibrant colors and unfamiliar shapes could be interpreted in many different ways. Walter Sickert’s “Noctes Ambrosianae” depicts an audience very engaged in what they are watching, which we as an audience cannot see. In dong this, Sickert has us as an audience imagne for ourselves what is going on.

In Gallery R, Paul Gauguin’s paintings show people together yet not interacting. The interesting thing is that the positions of the bodies and in some the expressions of the faces imply that even tough they are not interacting, there is some connection between them that we can only imagine for ourselves. This is especially evident in his painting “Words of the Devil” because the two figures are not facing each other but it is evident that they have some relationship from the expressions on their faces.  

This eerie ending is definitely a physical triumph over her husband and his attempts to keep her always locked up and in bed. Yet she is mentally defeated; she allows herself to just give in to the madness that is forever nagging at her. She even says when her husband observes her physical health that she is not well in the mind. She knows she is ill beyond the observation of eyes and it is maddening to her to always be incorrectly analyzed from a physical stand point. So when her husband faints, he realizes that the truth he had been denying all along about her mental illness is no longer deniable. 

They shut me up in Prose–

It is as if prose were a limitation or a cage where thoughts are restricted

who is they?

It is like life is poetry to her and by being forced into prose she is censured

They shut her up in prose because she cannot express her true unabashed feelings in prose she prefers the subtle metaphorical outlet that poetry provides

The dash at the end serves as a way of visually explaining how she is being cut off and shut up even as she writes

As when a little Girl

She is comparing her mind and whimsical thoughts to a little girl

She learned how and in some sense was forced to be quiet and respectful, as we all did, when she was a little girl

They act as if she was a little girl, the way they try to shut her up

Ironically there is no dash after this one, she is not being cut off, as if the first line kept us hanging and finished the thought with this definite statement

They put me in the Closet–

“the Closet” is capitalized and is preceded be “the” as if this closet is the general closet of confinement, like a state of mind. All the censured people, like the women of that time period, are metaphorically shut up in that closet

In connection with the previous line, the closet is the like the corner little girls are sent to when they’ve ben bad

“They” equals society?

And she is again cut off

Because they like me “still”–

As I imagine women were considered better to look at than to listen to at that time they liked her “still”

And it is in quotations because it has two meanings: they still liked her because she was did go in the closet to please them and they wanted her physically still

And again with the dash she is constantly interrupted; perpetually checked

Still! Could themself have peeped–

The exclamation of “still” is like her saying “so you think I’m still in this closet? As if i would stay!” But they haven’t peeped they just assume she would stay in line

“themself” is odd because it is a singular word but “them” is plural as if she were referring to society as a singular unit

And seen my Brain–go round–

They cannot peep at her brain and see what she is thinking so in some sense she is free of the prying eyes of judgemental society because they cannot shut up her thoughts 

They can shut her up but she still has her “brain” which is her escape from the closet; no closet can prevent imagination

Maybe the dashes indicate her hesitation in admitting that her brain “goes round,” that she is a free thinker in an unwilling society

They might as wise have lodged a Bird

She is comparing herself and her imagination to a bird; always in the clouds- as if her mind were a bird and was at home in the skies, not tied down

“as wise” is almost like a snide comment: she is saying that lodging a bird is such an offense and yet as wise as they are they committed the same offense by caging her

It is as if they are trying to lodge the bird to its nest- lodge her in her house

For Treason–in the Pound–

It is absurd to accuse a bird of treason and then the dash as her next thought comes, if in an angry tone “in the pound.” It becomes even more absurd; the absurdity of society trying to shut her up

Himself has but to will

The bird “himself” or anyone only, and no one else, ” has but the will”

We should have will over our own situations ungoverned by anyone else

And easy as a Star

She ventures even higher past the sky and right on out to the universe as if showing how far her mind is capable of going

Stars have even more room to roam and be free than birds and so “as easy as a star”

Abolish his Captivity–

This statement is almost like a protest, she uses the bird “his” to express her own desire to “abolish captivity”

She is envious of the bird and she uses “himself” and ” his” indicating that men have that freedom over their own actions that women did not

And again as if this statement were going too far she is cut off

And laugh–No more have I–

Laughter is a symbol of freedom and because she is confined to her mind for freedom she does not laugh out loud

And she is cut off even at the last like of the poem

Observations: 

I find this poem very feminist

It is part of the continuing struggle to end censurship

As in many other writing birds and the universe are used to symbolize freedom and imagination

“Abolish Captivity” could be applied to anything; it is a universal protest

Whitman begins his journey an observer and describes everything as if it were very other to him. Yet his mood changes quite abruptly as if he realizes that everyone else is experiencing the same wonderful crossing as he is, and therefore must have some of the same feelings as he. He says “others the same – others who look back at me, because I looked forward to them.” He realizes that he is not so different, that everyone is observing and coming up with their own conclusions. He could look strange to anyone as others sometimes look strange to him. By explaining all of his human and maybe slightly flawed attributes he draws similarities between him and the rest of the people in the past present and future. He realizes the eternity of the river and like the river, people keep flowing through the ages. Like in his poem “Song Of Myslef,” Whitman becomes a part of the scenery around him, the one he had previously just been observing. I think he is trying to say that we should not detach ourselves but become a part of everything and grow with it. 

I really enjoyed seeing what other people’s perspectives were compared to mine. It was fun looking at all the different ideas and how the images related to the poem.

There was nothing really that frustrated me about this project other than it not working with Safari. Other than that it was an all round enjoyable project.

I got a lot out of seeing other’s interpretations of the text. Parts I was not sure I understood were often made clear by the insight of others and it really helped in the overall reading of the poem.

The image I chose is a photograph I took myself on a hike in Italy. The line “I and this mystery here we stand” embodies my experience on that path through the hillsides of the Italian countryside. His feeling of wonder and not understanding but wanting to understand and become part of the fascinating surroundings are very familiar desires. This picture was of what was ahead of me and I had no idea what was waiting but was very anxious to find out and also very content with how beautiful everything was around me. I was standing with the mystery and and loving every moment trying to figure it all out. 

My companion pointed at an ominous female figure with his wicked staff. I was in disbelief when i recognized my very own spiritual advisor of my childhood. I had to express this shock to my dark companion with that wicked staff; I could not be seen here in the dark tormenting woods at this hour. I did not want her to inquire about my companion and our situation. He understood and allowed me to take to the woods while he walked on, staff in hand, leading the way on the dark path.

I watched as he approached her and set his wicked staff on her haggard neck, interrupting her mumbled prayers. The snake staff startled her and she instinctively screamed, “the devil!” And cloyingly he acknowledged that awful name and called her by name while leaning slyly on his wicked stick. They began to speak of witches and broomsticks and names of damned souls and i watched unbelievingly as they discussed all this wickedness I thought to be beyond the pious woman. She was on her way to a meeting of the communion of a young man. A young man? I could not help thinking of myself and was in an anxious and baffled sweat. I watched as my companion offered the woman his wicked serpentine staff and, as if he were bringing it to life, threw it to the ground. I could not watch I was terrified. When I finally peered again to see the outcome, my companion was alone and without his wicked writhing staff as calm as could be. I expressed my concern that the woman taught me catechism and he looked at me with those sly eyes and said “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”