앨런 긴즈버그의 ‘간극’

Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Gap’

Ginsberg sees the function of poetry as a catalyst to mystical states of consciousness, where in an instant one can realize the secret of the universe or nature beyond ordinary perceptions and thoughts as he did in his Blake visions. He finds a critical clue to poetry that reveals nature’s hidden order in Cézanne’s paintings. He tries to incarnate Cézanne’s ‘gap’ in his poetry by means of juxtaposed images, i.e., ellipses that compress different parts or associations in the mind in one instant. Ginsberg also argues that poets are spontaneous because they follow the mind’s naked and free activities: they observe and transcribe the interior flow of the mind, the natural flow of consciousness without self-conscious control. This interior flow shows that his poetics actually deviates from Poundian tradition in spite of their apparent affinity in their methods of juxtaposition. However, Ginsberg’s spontaneous poetry also differs from surrealist automatism in that, by following the natural flow of consciousness, the poems incarnate mystical gaps