par Govaerts, Mathieu 
Référence Recherche littéraire / Literary Research: Automne / Fall 2024, 40, page (33-62)
Publication Publié, 2024-10-31
Référence Recherche littéraire / Literary Research: Automne / Fall 2024, 40, page (33-62)
Publication Publié, 2024-10-31
Article révisé par les pairs
| Résumé : | The influence that English Romanticism has had on Allen Ginsberg is more complex and multifaceted than meets the eye. This essay proposes to shed new light on Ginsberg's debt to Romanticism, especially the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, through the scope of Nature Philosophy, a mapping of the world as an organic unicity rooted in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. Thanks to this new tool, this essay confronts Ginsberg's “Siesta in Xbalba" and Shelley's “Mont Blanc" in order to draw the similarities in their conception of the world. In fact, the convergences between the two poems are not simply limited to their foregrounding of a system that presents Nature as an interconnected and organic web, in which the human presence gets more or less challenged. They both attempt to find a balance between mind and matter in their agency or passiveness through a process of becoming deconditioned, achieved thanks to an exploration of a kaleidoscopic landscape. Through these journeys, both poets experience a transition from one consciousness to another, as they learn where the sacred resides. One could even say that, on many different levels, “Siesta in Xbalba" is a modern American version of “Mont Blanc," in which the mountain-scape is transformed into a jungle-scape. In it, the discovery of the landscape corresponds to a discovery of the mindscape, both of which are actually placed in a relationship of constant interchange. After having experienced the marvels of Nature, the readers are invited to re-evaluate Ginsberg's sense of eco-spirituality, which already transpired in his early poetic production. |
