The dramatic imagery of "Howl": the [naked] bodies of madness

Abstract

Unlike Arthur Rimbaud who wrote his “A Season in Hell” (1873) when he was only 19 years old, Allen Ginsberg was 29 when he completed his epic poem “Howl” (1956). Both works encapsulate an intense world created by the imagery of words and have inspired and outraged their readers alike. What makes “Howl” relevant to today, 50 years after its first reading, is its honest and personal perspective on life, and its nearly journalistic, but still poetic, approach to depicting a world of madness, deprivation, insanity and jazz. And in that respect, it would be sensible to point out the similarities of Rimbaud’s concerns with those of Ginsberg’s. They both managed to create art that changed the status quo of their times and confessed their nightmares in a way that inspired future generations. Yet there is a stark contrast here: for Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell” was his swan song; fortunately, in the case of Ginsberg, he continued to write for decades longer, until his demise in 1997