Announcing today an important publishing event, Kate Bredeson‘s definitive edition of “The Diaries of Judith Malina
“The Diaries of Judith Malina is a four-volume set that publishes for the first time together the edited diaries of radical theater director, actor, and activist Judith Malina (1936-2015), co-founder, in 1947, with her husband Julian Beck, of the legendary Living Theatre (which remains, to this day, America’s longest-running continuing experimental theatre)
See our previous postings on Judith – here and here – (and also on Julian – here)
For Allen’s life-long appreciation and support for the Living Theatre – see, for example, this letter on their behalf from August 1971
For Judith’s 1993 Oral History Memoir (interviewed by Cindy Rosenthal for the New York Public Library) – see here
This elegant four-volume set features new editions (with new photographs and introductions) of Malina’s previously long out-of-print published diaries alongside two new volumes of hitherto unpublished diaries. These diaries cover from 1947 to 1971, the most influential period of her remarkable and storied career.
Malina made theater as a way to engage in revolutionary action. In these pages, she chronicles not only her own life and that of her theatre, but also presents vivid and literate political analysis and cultural commentary, and sharp observations on the many people with whom she worked, studied, and socialized..
among whom was, of course, Allen.
She was a perceptive and early reader of “Howl”. This from March 25, 1958:
“Read Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. A poem of vast contemporary significance. It is the poem that has been needed. The whole poem is an immense artery, a scream of anguish and also of beatific love. When I found it in a bookstore on Fourth Street, I bought it out of enthusiasm, I read it aloud to Julian as we drove through the spring snow. He did not like it. “I think this all the time. I have known this for years”. I feel differently, I feel that is so much my poem, a little too wild, but so am I underneath the surface.”
and the following year (January 26, 1959), recounting an Allen Ginsberg-Paul Goodman reading at the Living Theatre:
“Allen Ginsberg read in a dramatic monotonous voice, full of feeling but cadenced in a free but particularly rhythm. His poems seem to me not unlike Goodman’s, but younger, unformed, feelingful but not as profound. Though I was struck by his “Lion In My Room” and moved to many tears by his intensely personal “Kaddish for My Mother”, a poem with which I can too easily identify, and which is yet entirely personally Allen’s document. I love the possibility here fulfilled of the very brazenest, daringest stuff, so close to the old fashioned, coming full circle from the Dadaists, the cool abstractionists, the cerebral psychological metaphysicians who mourn but never weep
– back to the old-fashioned tears. And is in fond remembrance of my own mother’s poetry recitals, a flutter of white hankies through the hall, and the slight embarrassment of one’s neighbor’s tears.
Afterwards at the congratulations Allen seeing my telltale mascara asks, grinning, “Did I make you cry? That’s always been my ambition, to make people cry reading my poems.”
A little background on that reading, October 14, 1958:
“We are planning the poetry series and Paul Goodman has asked to read on the same program as Allen. Allen was delighted and”honored”, he said, at Paul’s request. He has avoided reading for money he said. Julian said this wasn’t money but charity. Allen agrees but want no fee for the reading.”
Elsewhere, Judith relates an encounter (a curious dynamic between Goodman and Ginsberg):
“In the lazy, airless, smoke-laden darkness, talk, half imagery, half insult, with a literary tone and a rebellious air. Paul says to Ginsberg, “I like you but it’s better we don’t discuss things”. Allen presses him, Paul admits to an angry envy, he feels misused. “I’ve published thirty books, at least ten of which are really first-rate literature, and I’ve said what you guys are trying to say, but really said it – and I’ve gotten less recognition for my lifetime’s work than you’ve gotten for a few lousy poems”. Allen: “They’re not all lousy”. Paul: “They’re all lousy, but I like you”. Paul insistently insults Allen, but Allen wisely accepts whatever Paul says without anger or argument…”
A brief account of the reading itself (and an indication of Judith’s luminous prose style):
“The Paul Goodman-Allen Ginsberg reading. The theatre filled to overflowing, and people unable to get seats stand around hoping. We finally put benches on the stage and people just crash in and sit on the stage, on the floor, everywhere, even behind the scenery. None of these people are on dates, no rhinestones, no fashionable clothes. These are the Beat, the intense ones, the lonely ones, the impossible people who live burningly in the Contradiction, joyous and proud of their suffering, crazy, heartbroken, utterly incapable, ruined, and the hope of the world…”
“I was glad that there were people seated on the stage, for it decorated Julian’s stark set beautifully. The stage was set for poets by other poets, lying, leaning and sitting all around. A wooden glass-topped table that we had bought at the Salvation Army and then not used..was the podium, a tape-machine was set up underneath it. We sat..in folding chairs set up in front of the first row. Paul began, after an introduction by Julian, while Ginsberg sat behind him on the stage floor sharing a pint of cheap wine with a dark ugly maiden who Julian tells me, when asked her name, said, “What does my name matter.I am America’s greatest woman poet.”
Allen was of course just one of many who Judith’s sympathetic and eagle eye landed and fixed upon. The cast of characters throughout the four volumes reads as a veritable who’s-who of the post-war New York avant-garde
For more details and details on the content of the individual volumes – see here
Cindy Rosenthal writes:
“The long-awaited, fascinating The Diaries of Judith Malina goes far in filling the gap in our understanding of, and appreciation for, the unique voice, experiences, achievements and perspectives of Judith Malina… In Malina’s intimate, sharply etched and riveting chronicles, astutely and sensitively edited by Kate Bredeson, we can “feel alongside her in the moment”, as Bredeson writes in her illuminating, strongly-argued introduction, tracking an extraordinary life of/in the theatre that can teach us volumes about a revolutionary time not so different from our own.”
and Bonnie Marranca makes a similar observation:
“Judith Malina was an extraordinary artist whose copious diaries reveal her struggle between a love of the world and a desire to revolutionize it. At this moment in history, her soulfulness and fierce honesty, joined to radical politics and ideals, appear as a timely gift to a world theatre community searching for inspirational figures. In its use of archival material and reflections on the diary as a literary form, Kate Bredeson opens up new perspectives on this great woman of the American theatre who embraced livingness in all its splendor and turmoil in pursuit of her vision.”
“This thrilling new installment in the publication of Judith Malina’s diaries brings readers into a tumultuous, largely nomadic, highly creative, and often contentious period of The Living Theatre. While the company constantly grapples with cops, creditors, critics, and the conflicts of communal living, this visionary artist also invents new forms, develops theories of political theater, exalts and agonizes over love affairs, and gives birth and tends to a daughter. Her sparkling, pithy descriptions of places.. and people.. bring every encounter to vivid life, and her honest questioning of all assumptions -except her commitment to pacifism, whether audience members lift her up in triumph or spit in her face – never cease to inspire.”
Rachel Schteir enthusiastically reviews the volumes for American Theatre – here