NIGHT AT COLUMBIA
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gone to see O'Neill's
Long Day's Journey into Night
and the play
had echoed with just such a child's cry for help; at intermission time
all the mothers in the audience were so tormented and anxious that
they rushed in a body to phone home: was the baby really all right,
was he really well and warm in his bed; one couldn't get near the
telephone booths. A dozen years ago, when Ginsberg had been a
student and I had taxed Lionel with the duty to forbid
him
to mis–
behave, he had answered me that he wasn't the boy's father, and
of course he was right. Neither was Mark Van Doren the boy's father;
a teacher is not a father to his students and he must never try to be.
Besides, Ginsberg had a father of his own who couldn't be replaced
at will: he was
in
the audience the other night. One of the things
Ginsberg read was part of a long poem to his mother who, he told us,
had died three years ago, and as he read it, he choked and cried; but
no one in the audience tittered or showed embarrassment at this pub–
lic display of emotion, and I doubt whether anyone thought, "See,
he has existence: he can cry, he can feel." Nor did anyone seem very
curious when he went on to explain, later in the evening, that the
reason he had cried was because
his
father was in the theater. I have
no way of knowing what Ginsberg'S father felt the other night about
his
son being up there on the stage at Columbia (it rather obsesses
me), but I should guess he was proud; it's what I'd conclude from
his expression at the end of the performance when Ginsberg beat
through the admirers who surrounded
him,
to get to his father as
quickly as he could: surely that's nice for a father. And I should
suppose a father was bound to be pleased that his son was reading
his poems in a university .auditorium: it would mean the boy's success,
and this would be better than a vulgarity, it would necessarily include
the chairman's critical gravity and the fact, however bizarre, that
T. S. Eliot had been the last poet in this place before him. In a sense,
Orlovsky and Corso were more orphans than Ginsberg the other
night, but this was not necessarily because they were without fathers
of their own in the audience; I should think it would go back much
farther than this, to whatever it was that made them look so much
more armored, less openly eager for approval; although they were
essentially as innocent and childlike as Ginsberg, they couldn't begin
to match his appeal; it was on Ginsberg that one's eye rested, it was
to the sweetness in his face and to his sweet smile that one responded;
