Beat scholarship – Pedro Casusol Tapias‘ “Visiones Divinas (Divine Visions) – Allen Ginsberg’s Peruvian Trip”, an illuminating account of a key episode in Allen’s early (post Howl) biography, his journey to Peru, in the Spring of 1960, may be read here on the European Beat Studies Network (Rebecca L Thompson provides an English translation)- “como la sociedad no puede tocar con sus sucias manis mi alma, no hay peligro de que la aniquile” – “Since society is not able to touch my soul with its dirty hands, there is no danger of its annihilation”.
From the same 1960 interview – Allen: “...No existe poesía política. La poesía surge del alma, y la política nunca alcanza allí. La poesía no puede usarse como propaganda. Aún cuando sale de lo hondo, como en Neruda es siempre una especie de hipocresía, una variedad de egoísmo, que pretende imponer una regla determinada a los demás.
Political poetry does not exist. Poetry comes from the soul, and politics can never reach there. Poetry cannot be used as propaganda. Even when it comes from a profound place, like in (Pablo) Neruda, it is always a sort of hypocrisy, a variety of selfishness that tries to impose a determined rule on others.”
An interesting revelation is the recollections of poet Raquel Jodorowsky (sister of the film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky):
A sus 84 años, Raquel recordaba: “Una vez me pidió que tuviera un hijo con él”. En un principio pensó que le estaba gastando una broma, pero el beatnik se lo volvió a proponer cuando cruzaban la Plaza San Martín. “En serio, quiero tener un hijo contigo”, le insistió mientras la tomaba del brazo.– Me sorprendí tanto que ni contesté –solía contar la anciana poetaEn la oda que le dedicara a Allen Ginsberg, publicada en el volumen Caramelo de sal, Jodorowsky le recrimina: “te metiste en mi vida de días detenidos / removiendo los cerebros de mis gusanos”, para después afirmar que un hijo suyo: “Hubiera nacido con alma”
At eighty four years of age, Jodorowsky recalled, ‘once he asked me to have a child with him.’ At the beginning she thought he was joking with her, but the beatnik proposed the idea again as they crossed through the San Martín Plaza. ‘Seriously, I want to have a child with you,’ he insisted as he took her by the arm. – ‘I was so surprised that I didn’t respond,’ the elderly poet recounted.”In the ode she dedicated to Ginsberg, published in the collection Caramelo de sal Jodorowsky reproaches him, ‘You put yourself in my life for days that stood still / stirring the brains of my worms,’ but later affirms that a son of theirs ‘would have been born with a soul.’
An interesting, well-researched document. Read the whole text here.