Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Kaddish is a poem by Allen Ginsberg published in his poetic collection Kaddish and Other Poems in 1961. The poem's full title is "Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956)" and it is a poem by Ginsberg about his mother Naomi and her death on June 9, 1956. Naomi Ginsberg was a schoolteacher who suffered from psychosis and was later admitted to mental institutions many times. She was treated with medication, insulin shock, and, electro-shocks, but the treatment didn’t help much. She often suffered distress, paranoia, and painful sensitivity to light. She was an ardent Communist and believed that the government was trying to kill her. She also had a bad relationship with her mother-in-law and often feared that she was planning to murder her. Finally, she was treated with a lobotomy. She died on June 6, 1956, when Allen Ginsberg was away in California. He failed to attend her last rights and he learned that the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer for the dead, had not been read because too few men had been present (according to traditional Jewish law, at least ten men, a minyan, must be present for certain services to be performed). This further pained him and he expressed his anguish, guilt, and suffering by writing the poem Kaddish, meant for his mother.
Themes of Kaddish:
The main themes include Ginsberg’s guilt as he wonders whether he treated his mother appropriately in the past or if there could have been better ways. Another theme is remembrance as he remembers his mother and her psychotic episodes and sufferings. Death is also a major theme as the speaker is reckoning with his mother’s death and contemplating his own. In many ways, he sees his mother’s death as a release— "Blessed be Death on us All!” Mental illness and its effects are also an important theme as Ginsberg describes all the suffering his mother and his family went through.
Ginsberg wrote this poem to mourn the death of his mother but the poem also reflects on his inability and sense of loss at his estrangement from Jewish religion and culture in which he took birth. Traditionally, the mourner’s Kaddish is a prayer during funeral services. The mourner’s Kaddish does not mention death but is a prayer that celebrates the holiness of God. However, the Kaddish written by Ginsberg has no mention of God, rather the speaker mourns his mother and contemplates the nature of death.
Structure of Kaddish:
Allen Ginsberg's poem "Kaddish" is a long prose poem with five numbered parts and an ‘Hymn’ between parts 2 and 3. The poem is structured as a series of memories and thoughts about the lives of the speaker and his mother, Naomi Ginsberg. The poem is not linear, and it's told through narration and lament that arises from Ginsberg's memories of his mother's life and their relationship. It is a long poem written in 19 pages. The poem is divided into five parts. Ginsberg used Repetition and Refrain skillfully throughout the poem while adding Anecdotes from the real past of his and his mother.
Summary of Kaddish:
Part 1:
In this part, Ginsberg informs how he got the idea to write a Kaddish in memory of his mother. Naomi Ginsberg died on June 6 1956 when Ginsberg was away in California. He began writing the poem in December 1957 and completed it in 1959.
The poem begins as the speaker (Ginsberg himself) walks through the echoing streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, thinking about the death of his mother, Naomi. He ruminates on the meaning of death as he walks through the neighborhoods where his mother lived when she was a child. He thinks about what her dreams might have been as a child, and whether or not the life she lived, reflected them. The first part is a prelude to the long second section, which tells the whole story in terrible but loving detail. He thinks about all the people who have passed, including Naomi's sister Elanor Frohman who helped take care of Naomi and died as a result of heart problems. Ginsberg wonders what comes after death and realizes that Naomi and Elanor know what is in the next life.
He notes that in her death, he knows that his mother has gone somewhere good, along with her sister Elanor who has also died. In death, she has escaped all the good and bad experiences and relationships she had when alive. He ends the section by thinking about the meaning of death and Naomi’s experience with it.
Part 2
In this section, Ginsberg details Naomi’s life and memories with her. He remembers one afternoon when he stayed home from school to take care of her because she was always nervous and believed that people were trying to kill her. He decided to solve the issue and the two of them traveled all over New York City by bus looking for a rest house for Naomi to stay in. While doing so, Naomi details her dislike of her mother-in-law, Ginsberg’s grandmother, who she believes wishes her harm. Ginsberg later gets a call that Naomi wouldn’t leave from under the bed at the rest home in her paranoia, and she is hospitalized at Greystone once again, for three years.
He mentions the horrors his mother suffered at the Greystone Mental Institute. While the medicines, electric shocks, and insulin therapy didn’t help her, they worsened her health and made her fat. She returned after three years but couldn’t recognize her home, and eventually escaped the home and lived with her sister Elanor in New York City. She and Ginsberg’s father, Louis, separated. Eugene, Ginsberg’s brother, joined the army and then returned to finish law school. He also mentions how once during her psychotic episodes, she acted like a sexual predator and he thought as if she was trying to seduce her.
One night, in the midst of one of her paranoid episodes, Naomi began to attack her sister Elanor, and Ginsberg had to call the police. She was brought to a hospital once again. After two years, Ginsberg went to meet his mother in the hospital but she was unable to recognize him, called him a spy of the government, and declined to recognize him as her son. Later, Ginsberg is in California with his partner Orlovsky and receives word that Naomi has died. Two days after her death, he received a letter from her with the lines: “The key is in the sunlight at the window in the bars the key is in the sunlight.”
There is an ‘Hymn’ between Part 2 and Part 3 in which Ginsberg calls for a blessing on Naomi, her life, her death, and the death of all the people living.
Part 3
Here, Ginsberg describes the various ways that Naomi’s mental illness manifested and affected both his and her life. Repeating the beginning phrase “only to,” he describes the various delusions that his mother experienced. He imagines her writing her last letter to him while looking at the sunlight through the bars of her window, and quotes from a letter Naomi wrote before her death: “The key is in the sunlight at the window in the bars the key is in the sunlight”.
Part 4
In Part IV, the narrator agonizes over aspects of Naomi’s story that have been left out or forgotten. Referring to her as “O mother” repeatedly, the narrator says farewell and then expands upon different moments and relationships in Naomi’s life by initially referring to different parts of her body. After mentioning her chin, fingers, belly, mouth, and more, Ginsberg then repeats multiple lines beginning “with your eyes of…” Each of these lines mentions a relationship, moment, or memory from Naomi. It includes Russia, her country of birth, Aunt Elanor, her sister, and a list of all her medical procedures and complications—pancreas removed, appendix operation, abortion, ovaries removed, shock, lobotomy, stroke. It ends by describing her death as “full of Flowers.” He remembers her weight gain, paranoia, and surgeries as well as the fighting she did for workers' rights.
Part 5
The fifth, final section imagines the grave site, the cawing crows, and the muttered prayers to God. It is the shortest part of the poem. The poem ends with a rumination at the grave of Naomi. “Caw caw caw” is repeated as is “Lord Lord Lord” throughout the section. The narrator stands above Naomi’s Long Island grave as crows circle in the sky. Ginsberg makes reference to “a boundless field in Sheol” which is the state of the dead in the Hebrew Bible. These are the last lines of the poem:
Lord Lord an echo in the sky the wind through ragged leaves the roar of memory
caw caw all years my birth a dream caw caw New York the bus the broken shoe the vast highschool caw caw all Visions of the Lord
Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord Lord Lord caw caw caw Lord
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of American English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards!
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