Allen Ginsberg genius or insane?

Question

I really like jack kerouac but for some reason i just find allen ginsberg out of his mind. I mean he was sent to a lunatic asylum part of his life and one night he was found streaking high on LSD.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Lunatic asylum? I don't know about that. Maybe he was depressed and went to a psychiatric hospital?...it happens to many people, and if you leave out all the artists and poets who had mental diseases, you will leave out many. I don't really like his last works, but I think that some of his poems are very good.
Maybe you could try reading Kaddish, if you haven't done so yet, because it is a beautiful tribute to his mother. Read it out loud, because that's the way it should be done, and that's the way he did it:

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm--and your memory in my head three years after--
And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud--wept, realizing
how we suffer--
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of An-
swers--and my own imagination of a withered leaf--at dawn--
Dreaming back thru life, Your time--and mine accelerating toward Apoca-
lypse,
the final moment--the flower burning in the Day--and what comes after,
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed--
like a poem in the dark--escaped back to Oblivion--

Source(s):

Read the rest of part I here:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMI…

Answer 2

I think he was (to a degree), both. His mother suffered from nervous breakdowns and later proved to be mentally unstable. This, coupled with his confusion over his sexuality as a young boy, (and many other experiences) led to the poetic genius and passion that came through in his poetry as a grown man. "Howl", "Kaddish", etc., provide us readers of his poetic works a window into his turbulent, (yet unsurprisingly, placid) mind and soul. Ginsberg believed in liberation of every sense: sexually, intellectually, morally, culturally, etc. So it's really no surprise that while on LSD he decided to strip down and proclaim his "mystical" freedom. As to your reference to the "lunatic asylum", (I believe you meant "psychiatric hospital?"), Ginsberg Wanted to be admitted many months/years before he was actually checked in. The reason for his being sent there was due to his association with a couple of folks who would often break into houses and steal whatever seemed of value in New York. Allen allowed these people (who were in fact friends of his,) to stash their goods in his personal apartment, which he also shared with them. One day, one of these people stole a car. Long story short, the police caught them, and broke into Ginsberg's apartment. While going through everything, they found a stash of Ginsberg's letters and poems, all of which often contained themes of homosexuality (or simply sexuality, for that matter,) drug use, and adventures he had indulged in with Kerouac and Burroughs. The police were so alarmed at these that they recommended Ginsberg be placed in a psychiatric hospital. And there you go. He was a mad genius.

Answer 3

Why can't someone be both a genius and insane?

The use of a psychedelic like LSD doesn't make you insane, or constitute the label of having a mental disorder, though I suppose it's all up to one's perspective of what insanity is. Remember Allen Ginsberg was born in 1926, and lived during a time where the medical system, and culture was wary, even fearful of eccentric people with new and shocking ideas, which Allen Ginsberg certainly had, especially for his time.

I would say Ginsberg had a level of insanity in his persona and perception, with a spark of genius and innovation.

Answer 4

zorztronic said it. Genius and a of flash of insanity often go hand in hand.

" I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn looking for an angry fix;
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night." (Howl)

Genius commenting on madness.

Answer 5

he is a genious ..........duh super flippin rightous dude.. he was in a psyciatric ward not a nut house