226
PARTISAN REVIEW
room. He himself, he said, welcomed the chance to hear these poets
read their works - he never once in his remarks gave them their name
of "beats" nor alluded even to San Francisco - because in all poetry
it was important to study the spoken accent; he himself didn't happen
especially to admire those of their works that he knew; still, he would
draw our attention to their skillful use of a certain kind of American
imagery which, deriving from Whitman, yet passed Whitman's use
it or even Hart Crane's....
It
was Dupee speaking for the Academy,
claiming for it its place in life, and the performers were inevitably
captive to
his
dignity and self-assurance. Rather than Ginsberg and
his
friends, it was a photographer from
Life,
exploding
his
flashbulbs
in everybody's face, mounting a ladder at the back of the stage
the more effectively to shoot his angles, who came to represent vul–
garity and disruption and disrespect; when a student in the audience
disconnected a wire which had something to do with the picture-tak–
ing, one guessed that Ginsberg was none too happy but
it
was the
photographer's face that became ugly, the only real ugliness of the
evening. One could feel nothing but pity for Ginsberg and his
friends that their front of disreputableness and rebellion should be
this transparent, this vulnerable to the seductions of a clever host.
With Dupee's introduction, the whole of their defense had
been
pene–
trated at the very outset.
Pity is not the easiest of our emotions today; now it's under–
standing that is easy, and more and more - or so I find it for my–
self - real pity moves hand-in-hand with real terror; it's an emo–
tion one avoids because it's so hard; one understands the cripple, the
delinquent, the unhappy so as not to have to pity them. But Thurs–
day night was an occasion of pity so direct and inescapable that it
left litde to the understanding that wasn't mere afterthought - and
pity not only for the observed, the performers, but for us who had
come to observe them and reassure ourselves that we were not impli–
cated. One might as readily persuade oneself one was not implicated
in one's children! For this was it: these
were
children, miserable chil–
dren trying desperately to manage, asking desperately to be taken
out of it all; there was nothing one could imagine except to bundle
them home and feed them warm milk, promise them they need no
longer call for mama and papa. I kept asking myself, where had I
had just such an experience before, and later
it
came to me: I had
