Allen Ginsberg’s 1981 Naropa class on Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues continues from here
AG: Now what? 36th Chorus. – “No direction/ No direction to go/ Burroughs says it’s a time-space/ travel ship/ Connected with mystiques/ and mysteries/ Of he claims transcendental/ majesties,/ Pulque green crabapples/ of hypnotic dream/ In hanging Ecuad vine./ Burroughs says, We have destiny,/ Last of the Faustian Men./ No direction in the void/ Is the news from the void/ In touch with the void/ Everywhere void/ No direction to go/ (but)/ (in) ward/ Hm/ (ripping of paper indicates/ helplessness anyway)
He probably ripped out the sheet and said “This ain’t any good,” and ripped it out and then looked at it again. It’s like “(musician stops,/on the bandstand brooding)” from before. “Hm/ (ripping of paper indicates/ helplessness anyway)
In this undirectional poem there are great lines, like “Pulque green crabapples/of hypnotic dream “- that’s like “endless grape dirigible stars” – another little strangely hypnotic phrase – “Pulque green crabapples/of hypnotic dream.”
Student: What’s “pulque”?
AG: Pulque is a milky-white alcoholic drink made from the maguey cactus.
Student: Oh, I see.
AG: Of which Neal Cassady died of ten years later. Mixing pulque and downers. But everybody was drinking pulque. Everybody in Mexico drinks (pulque). It’s a cheap working-class drink. It’s the cheapest drink you can get. It tastes like spit. And it’s really alcoholic.
Student: Spit.
AG: Well, you drink great big glasses of pulque. It’s nourishing somewhat but it gives you a deadly hangover. But it’s the proletarian drink in Mexico. Made out of cactus so it’s got a cactus-like, mucous-like….
Student: Is it a green color?
AG: Yeah. Well, the cactus is green. So it’s the pulque green [Editorial note – he’s just said it’s milky-white! ]
Crabapples, I don’t know what crabapples (refers to), it just sounds right – “crabapples/of hypnotic dream.” Apples. Adamic apples, I suppose. [Editorial note – referring to The Garden of Eden] Crabs might be crabs he had on his body maybe if he had any crabs. Crabapples. But anyway it’s crabapples. I never was able to explain that.
Student: Crabapples are green apples.
AG: Yeah. Undigestible.
Student: Yeah.
AG: Funny sound, though – “crabapples”. “Pulque green crabapples”. Just the green apples -the green cactus you make the (pulque) out of might have reminded him of crabapples- just the green of the crabapples.
“In hanging Ecuad vine.” Well, the vine would go back to liquor. “Ecuad”, I don’t know. Ecuad. A “hanging Ecuad vine”. Ecuad.
“Pulque green crabapples/ of hypnotic dream/ In hanging Ecuad vine..”.
He repeated that (and) he read (those) lines a lot of times because he thought it was one of his best for music, for a kind of strange assonance but stuck in with a lot of funny labial consonants – not “t”‘s and “s”‘s, but crabapples and hypnotic dream, Ecuad divine. Ecuad. Well, echoed. There’s echo in there. But “”Ecuad” – maybe Euclid? Maybe Euclidean reason or something? Or maybe Ecuad is actually a real name from somewhere. But he liked the word “Ecuad” right there because there was some kind of dreamy “ecuad” or dreamy sound to it, I think. Hypnotic. [Editorial note – it’s also, relevant or not, the first five-letters of the Latin-American country, Ecuador]
Then, of course, he’s making fun of Burroughs‘ mysticism, or desire to get out of the body. or he’s making fun of Burroughs transcendental… or “he claims transcendental majesty” -“Burroughs says it’s a time-space/ travel ship/ Connected with mystiques/ and mysteries/ Of he claims transcendental/ majesties..”
And Kerouac’s characterization of this realm of being, or this realm of consciousness is “Pulque green” – like a drunken Eden, really – “”Pulque green crabapples/of hypnotic dream/ In hanging Ecuad vine” – (hanging, or hanging in space, I guess. The dream hanging in space. The universe hanging in space).
“Burroughs says, We have destiny,” – (he’s making fun of Burroughs here) – “Last of the Faustian (Men).” – (Burroughs is the “Last of the Faustian Men.”) And then Kerouac’s view -“No direction in the void/ Is the news from the void/ In touch with the void/ Everywhere void/ No direction to go/ (but)/ (in) ward/ Hm…” – (That’s the first time I think anybody put “Hm” in a poem. Just sort of stopped and thought, “Hm” at the thought, and then wrote down “Hm.” – And then “ripping of paper indicates/helplessness anyway.”
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seven-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately twelve-and-a-half minutes in