Allen Ginsberg on The Marriage of Heaven and Hell continues from here
AG: The one next I really like – “The fox condemns the trap, not himself.” What does that mean? Anybody got any inkling? Yeah?…Well.
Student: He’s blaming himself for the situation he’s in where….
AG: Well, how could you not blame the situation you’ve created?
Student: You blame the situation rather than yourself.
AG: Okay.
Student: Except for….
AG: Yeah. How would you interpret it?
Student: Yeah, it’s all somebody’s else’s fault. It’s always circumstances.
AG: Well….
Student: You look outside rather than inside.
Student (2): Didn’t it have something to do, something more to do with the …
AG: Huh?
Student(2): … the figure of the fox?
AG: Huh?
Student(2): It has something to do with the animal the fox. The cunning of the fox.
AG: Yeah. He’s smart. He didn’t get hung up on subjective abuse, self-abuse. He tries to get out of the trap, maybe.
Peter Orlovsky: He’s paying attention to the particulars, the particulars of the traps that are keeping him trapped.
AG: Yeah.
Student (3): But it’s also like being trapped in a body.
AG: Yes.
Student (3): You don’t get all …
AG: Yeah.
Student(3): … bent out of shape …
AG: That’s very interesting.
Student(3): … about that.
AG: Yeah. Trapped in a body, don’t get all bent out of shape about that, you would say. Bent out of shape about it. Anybody else? Yeah? You had (something to say)?
Student (4): Don’t get bent out of shape by thought.
Student (5): … It’s a matter of seeing what couldn’t be (properly understood)
AG: A matter of seeing what could be a trap.
Student (5): Yeah. And then avoiding it.
AG: Yeah. Then avoiding it.
Student (5) : And thereby condemning the trap because (there’s nothing there)
AG: That’d be funny. Nothing is worse than an empty trap. That’s one that would break your head. Sounds good. Anybody else got something to add to this?
I turned on to (it). I’d seen it and thought of it, but it never applied, but then I began applying it politically, actually, to the ‘Sixties, when I ran through all of the counter-intelligence plots (of the) program COINTELPRO – xeroxes that were being unearthed by the Freedom of Information Act. I realized that a lot of the people of the ”Sixties were condemning themselves for chaos and disruption and disunity and shitting in the streets, but actually a lot of that was created by the FBI and was sort of the FBI activity rather than the Radical Left activity – Or it was activity encouraged by the FBI, provocated. An enormous mass of the shameful chaos of the ‘Sixties, which turned people off and made for the so-called “Me/Silent Generation” (“Silent Majority“) as a reaction, was created by the government, rather than by the Left. But the Left internalized that and said, “Ah, we can’t get our shit together, we might as well go out and get a job with the insurance company.” A lot of people did – or (decided to) work within the system, or (decided) revolution isn’t the solution, or human nature is too evil, just like William Buckley Jr. says, for democracy to work. So here as, contrariously, Blake is saying, “The fox condemns the trap, not himself.” (That’s) something interesting. That’s why I turned on to this particular slogan.
to be continued