When Allen Ginsberg wrote that he saw the greatest minds of his generation destroyed by madness in a poem that itself can only be considered the expression of the most perfected form of madness itself, he managed to pinpoint the ambiguity of the creative force field that is a troubled youth, intentionally or not.
Originating from the myth of Orpheus, whose lyric talent moved mountains, the image of the young tormented poet has become a trope in fiction through the ages, from Shakespeare’s Romeo wondering about love, over Balzac’s suicidal Raphaël, onto any young male character in a novel written by a young male author since the 1990’s.
More often than not we see this image confirmed in reality as well, its most famous example being young Arthur Rimbaud, who at the tender age of 16 wrote his guts out in verses, mesmerising generations after him, and through the now iconised Kurt Cobain.
Whilst this image is often romanticised, it cannot be denied that when the torment that comes with being young meets a creative talent, the madness that ensues, whilst it might destroy the greatest minds, creates the greatest writing.
In youth, ones own finiteness remains inconceivable, not only ones life appears infinite, so does ones energy, ones commitments, ones emotions. The only priority of a young troubled mind is to express the chaos that reigns supreme inside of it, to relentlessly and ruthlessly express the inner anguish, the revolt of being trapped in an existence that doesn’t live up to the seemingly endless ambition of the mind.
The beauty of the youthful torment is that it doesn’t seek anything but to be expressed in the most raw and honest way. It is made of questions it seeks no answer to.
A more seasoned writer is made to understand that his experience, his research is expected to deliver hypotheses to these questions, only for those hypotheses to be absorbed by these young troubled minds to be questioned again.
When two young minds discuss philosophy, they discuss is with their loins, their blood. They spit they arguments, they cry their outrage over disagreement, they claim possession of authors they feel closest to, they absorb the answers to ask more questions.
No mind can feed itself of questions alone forever, quite the opposite, questions starve the mind, and a starved mind is prone to madness. And only a young mind dares to ask the questions that could be its demise.
Ginsberg’s generation of minds was one who sacrificed itself, in the name of expressing the anguish that resonated with generations to come.
Measure, compromise is the language of the mature mind, whereas excess is the language of youth. When Nietzsche defended Dionysus and the celebration of excessive humanity against Apollo’s harmonious censorship of the latter, did he not defend his own right to express his youthful mind, his longing for the excess that is so specific to the mind that has nothing yet to lose and everything yet to perceive? In a more cynical way, is the Übermensch nothing more than a glorified teenager?
Nietzsche himself fell into the pit of madness when he tried to keep the fire of youthful outrage alive in his works. JD Salinger, who through Holden Caulfield managed to put the very rage of youth into words, was reputed to have been mad.
The very madness Ginsberg accuses of having destroyed his generation’s mind, the very madness that manifests in his poem, is it not the condition for the mind to be great? Is the expression of this madness, this frustration that comes with the certainty that the price to pay for the expression of the distress that comes with the incomprehensible reality that is so painfully perceivable to those that have not yet made sanity a priority over truth. In that way, the realisation that this truth will never be the ideal it was meant to be, can only ever manifest in a long agonising Howl.
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