On The Apollonian And Dionysian In Howl

The Beat Generation is a unique post-war literary school, a forerunner ofPost-Modernism and the Hippie Movement. It has received more admiration as well as morecondemnation than many other literary schools since it appeared. Allen Ginsberg, son of aJewish family in America, is the greatest poet of the Beat Generation. His Howl is viewed asthe manifesto of the Beat Generation and most influential poem in the last decades by thepublic. The poem, which shares great reputation with T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and JamesJoyce’s Ulysses, has shocked the whole American society not only in fields of literature andpoetics but also social conventions, morality, and even other fields of art, such as painting,film and music. It has also changed the ideology and life-style of Americans and influencedmany people in other countries of the world, along with works of other members of the BeatGeneration. Allen Ginsberg and his Howl, thereby, have become an indispensable part of the20thcentury world literature.Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most influential philosophers in the19thcentury,illuminates theories of the Apollonian and Dionysian in his famous work—The Birth ofTragedy. The two theories have influenced generations of people in the world, and providedus with a brave new perspective to the study and appreciation of art, giving us another chanceto revaluate the world, society and life. Given the succession from Nietzsche to Ginsberg inthe aspects of ideology and insight, it is an available way to comprehend the images,characters and intense feeling in Howl to analyze the poem from some more rudimentaryelements with Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian theories.Allen Ginsberg applies the Apollonian approach of painting to poetry, endowing theworld with fantastic visions, and delineating the picture of American society after World War Ⅱand the psychological state of the Beat Generation in Howl. It is not an incondite copy ofthe world in the sense of naturalism, or super-realism, but a glorification and deification of thechaotic and absurd world in the Apollonian dream where the poet attains courage and reasonof existence and faces up to the crude world. At the same time, Dionysus, as an opponent toApollo, in the poem, has never stopped its howl for shattering those visions created by Apollo,surpassing all those straitlaced poetic rules, widespread standard canons of value and socialmorality. The poet dissolves his own self and all other individuals into the primordial oneness,and rejoices at the original joy in the becoming of the universe in the Dionysian intoxication.For the poet’s special need, the confrontation and cooperation of the two artistic drivesinevitably appear in Howl.This thesis consists of three chapters between Introduction and Conclusion. Chapter Oneexplores the incarnation and effect of Apollo in Howl, through analysis of the application ofmythology and the employment of artistic approaches from plastic arts. Chapter Two dwellson the intoxication of Dionysus, researching “the original contradiction and pain” and “theprimordial joy” in the life of Beats which not only include these writers, poets, and artists ofthe Beat Generation, but all people living in a life-style of unconformity to any conditioning.Chapter Three illuminates the cooperation and confrontation of the Apollonian and Dionysianin Howl, searching the inherent relationship between the two artistic drives.