Landscape Writing And Ethical Expression: On Allen Ginsberg’s Poetry

Allen Ginsberg is among the most important poets of the 20 th century and the representative writer of American Beat Generation.In terms of Ginsberg‘s poetry criticism,the academic circle generally forms a form-based research paradigm,while the thematic study through close reading of the poetry is rarely seen.As an American Jewish poet,Ginsberg has a strong sense of moral anxiety about the racism,war,totalitarianism and environmental ethical crisis prevailing in America after the Second World War.In his half-century landscape poetic practice,Ginsberg conveys a wealth of ethical views and the landscapes in his poetry are mainly those scenes or phenomena with rich symbolic meanings in society.This dissertation discusses Ginsberg‘s poetry from the perspectives of the―non-place‖ landscape,war landscape and industrial landscape.It shows that his poetry is essentially an inquiry into the relationship among individuals,countries and between man and nature,and thus becomes an existential experience and life practice infiltrated with cultural,political and environmental ethical expressions.Ginsberg‘s representation of the ―non-place‖ landscape is highly critical of ―the other‖ cultural mechanism of America,and conveys a vision of a new cultural ethical order.Taking the racist greyhound bus as the landscape representation,Ginsberg deconstructs New York‘s urban myth as the Promised Land,and launching an ethical examination into ―affluent society‖ and the capitalist welfare state by presenting the slum landscape of ―the other America‖.Meanwhile,in the confrontation with the city‘s alienation,Ginsberg deems open road journey landscape as a cultural metaphory to unfold his imagination of multicultural identity.In Ginsberg‘s view,racism and class prejudice are internalized in American cultural tradition of ―the other‖,and thus his poetry conveys a cultural ethical view of freedom and equality among races/classes by constructing the Chinese cultural image which empahsizes the equality of everybody.War landscape writing is the important carrier of Ginsberg‘s political ethicalVexpression.By presenting war landscapes such as Vietnam War propaganda black magic language,the consumed ―war heroes‖,the war machine and its ―crazy‖intellectuals,and the confrontation between guns and flowers representing violence and non-violence,Ginsberg exposes the political operating mechanism of America as a war machine resorting to totalitarianism at home and hegemony abroad.As a foreigner surrounded by war machine and totalitarian politics,Ginsberg is aware of the inherent exclusiveness of America‘s national ideology,which refuses outsiders to visit and even excludes their existence,and thus advocates constructing hospitality political ethics that stresses the co-existence and mutual-sharing among countries.Through industrial landscape writing,Ginsberg gives expression to environmental ethics and deploys a critical examination on modern capitalist industrial civilization.Presenting the towering skyscrapers,trans-corporeal toxic landscape and sounds imperialism landscape of mechanical noises,Ginsberg emphasizes that human beings,when using imagination to build urban architectural landscape,should combine imagination with morality to promote the sustainable development of human and nature;calls on modern society to recognize non-human life as ―actors‖ in industrial processes to control the production and circulation of toxic substances;appeals the public to build an auditory space with rhythm from nature to restore their ecological identity consciousness.Ginsberg believes the postmodern urban environmental crisis stems from the dualistic opposition between man and nature,thus advocating rediscovering ―urban nature‖ by the ecological practice of middle landscapes,expressing the environmental ethical view of constructing interactive symbiotic relationship between man and nature.In contrast to poetic artistic style and influence studies flourishing in recent years,the present dissertation makes an exploration to the landscape writing and ethical expression of Ginsberg‘s poetry,intending to step out of the predicament of his ethical thoughts being ignored and to display Ginsberg‘s scrutinization to the mechanism of American modern civilization when the social moral system is in imminent danger of collapse.Moreover,the moral rules,such as equality,mutual sharing and symbiosis,which Ginsberg makes efforts to advocate to maintain the goodness ethical relationship among individuals,countries and between man and nature,have an eternal guidance for shaping the democratic ideal of freedom,equality and the moral ideal of harmonious coexistence of humans,promoting the construction of a Community of Shared Future for Mankind,and solving the global ecological crisis.