Comments on On An Overgrown Path: An anniverary howl for Allen Ginsberg

Dennis, there is another tenuous but interesting c...

2008-04-05T21:35:00.000+01:00

Dennis, there is another tenuous but interesting connection.

Karajan's second wife, Anna Maria Gütermann, who he married in 1942 was quarter Jewish. They divorced in 1958.

There is, of course, another connection between Gi...

2008-04-05T20:23:00.000+01:00

There is, of course, another connection between Ginsburg and HvK: a somewhat ambiguous relationship and youthful flirtation with totalitarian ideologies.

While Ginsburg was never an actual party member - unlike HvK and the Nazis - he expressed admiration for fundamental Communist tenets and admired people like Trotsky and Lenin. To wit, some lines from his 1956 poem "America": "America, I used to be a Communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry...America, when will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites...?"

I've never understood how a nation is to become "worthy" of Trotskyism, as if Trotskyism were just too good for America. Would one think to ask in 1956 whether a nation could likewise be deemed "worthy" of Nazism? Another manifestation of the "Intellectuals'" double standard viv-a-vis Communism vs. Nazism.

Just to keep the record complete Louis Spohr was b...

2008-04-05T16:34:00.000+01:00

Just to keep the record complete Louis Spohr was born on April 5, 1784 and Alonso Lobo died on April 5, 1617.

Anyone who can find a connection between them and Allen Ginsberg and Herbert von Karajan deserves a prize.