Further thoughts on Ginsberg and Eliot

A few more thoughts on the post of a few days back on Allen Ginsberg and T.S. Eliot: I noted in that post that these two great 20th-century poets presented us, each in his own manner, a vision of a fallen world: Ginsberg's a world in which the "best minds" of his generation have been "destroyed by madness" - as well as by drugs, alcohol, social and political and sexual ostracism; Eliot's a world in which all values and sense of purpose have been attenuated or obliterated, in particular after the World War. Ginsberg's vision is passionate, hallucinatory, at times comical; Eliot's, quite the opposite - dry, controlled, morbid, serious. Yet I both writers, I believe, are trying to transcend the ruined society that they articulate, which I think is what gives their works of value and scope. Ginsberg sees salvation in faith, his Jewish faith early on (Kaddish, qv) but over time moving more toward Eastern religions, Zen, Buddhism, and Hinduism in particular - and of course increasingly toward a transcendence through hallucinatory or visionary drugs (see Wales Visitation for a key example) as well as through sexual freedom and antiwar activism. Eliot is far from Ginsberg in each of these particulars except for their shared interest in Hinduism, with Eliot actually concluding Waste Land with a Hindi chant for peace - but over time his search for transcendence shifted more toward Christianity and ultimately to Catholicism (he was a late convert), as his later poetry becomes even more strict, controlled, and didactic (4 Quartets) in its delineation of faith. And a final note, which I provided via email to blog-reader ML: Though I read Eliot and Ginsberg in my teenage years, I did not read them "in school." (I probably read them in the school building, but they were not part of any curriculum at West Orange High School.) Actually, my brilliant friend the late R.I. Nagel was so advanced that he led two or three English classes on Eliot (I was not in those classes), but for the most part TSE was probably considered too difficult for h.s. students (and maybe teachers). Ginsberg was of course completely out of the question; led by close friend DC, a few of us found copies of that famous City Lights edition of Howl and read the poems surreptitiously.