今天上课,大家就 Allen Ginsberg 的这首诗 America 进行了简单的讨论。
(说是简单,因为课上20来人,真正在讨论的人不多。)
这是一篇激进的诗篇。作为一个在1956年,一个以核弹家庭为主要美国梦的时代,可以向公众公布自己的同性恋倾向的人,勇敢的独立的Ginsberg 不加以思索地披露他眼里的疯狂的美国和他疯狂的思想。
(读时,身边的同学都一直在说“听到 F***k 的瞬间整个人都不好了” (hhhh :))
Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.---Allen Ginsberg
自由的表达,和恼怒的言语。Ginsberg在宣泄他对整个社会的不满。
“Dissatisfaction (不满),madness (疯狂),vision of politics (政治观念)..”
“America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel" (美国 我把我的奇怪的(queer 也指同性恋的)肩膀放在车轮上)表达的是什么意思,为什么他会这么说。
同学们说这里是表明作者把自己已承认的疯狂与畸形(在当时看来)的思想放到美国的革命里,让革命进行下去,永不停息。结合他对美国的讽刺 (“America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world") 和他毫无遮掩的对美国的厌恶和质问, 这里有可能是指他的一种嘲讽。
我觉得这种嘲讽是与第一句有关的。"America I've given you all and now I'm nothing" (美国我给了你全部现在我一无所有)。作者认为他给了美国很多(第二行可能暗示他可能在经济方面帮助了,而却是毫无用处;战争,核弹,虚伪的政府,这些都让他更感觉自己付出很多想改变,但是却不仅无用,而且反而觉得自己的行为是恶心的,是与美国同流合污的),而现在他作为美国人("It occurs to me that I am America"), 他认为他所做的牺牲,都只会因为人们/传统观点对他“肮脏”的身份而成为无用的或是被唾弃的付出(“I don't feel good don't bother me" 明显有 “人/思想” 在阻碍他当下的狂躁的思想。然而他的责任和身份却让他不得不把自己的这份“畸形”“带有歧异”的肩膀(瘦弱而疲惫的位置)放在美国前进的车轮上。讽刺来说,他正在等待被碾碎的瞬间。
另外,这篇诗我读的时候,真的觉得很乱,很矛盾。矛盾总是可以孕育疯狂。作者有意识地疯狂了一把。左扯一下,右扯一下。理性的质问和批判,在作者笔下像揉成一团纸,撕碎了再吞下去的感觉。
America
Allen Ginsberg
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about theWobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save theSpanish Loyalists
AmericaSacco & Vanzettimust not die
America I am theScottsboroboys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.