Neal Cassady, Ginsberg’s Kaddish and Baelfire

I believe Allan Ginsberg’s poetry is the key to understanding the Neal Cassady character…and I do believe that it all points to Baelfire.

I’m pressed for time so I don’t have time to pull out every line (maybe I can do that later on) but here is a portion of Allan Ginsberg’s Kaddish, his mourner’s poem for his mother. Neal Cassady is not mentioned in this portion…but is referred to later on as N.C. This portion of the poem describes almost perfectly the path that Neal Cassady/Mystery Man walked through New York City, exiting Central Park at 7th Street, ending up on the lower East Side, even looking over his shoulder, the reference to horses from Emily Dickenson’s poem…the horses in the poem drive the carriage that is death…the last lines of Adonis fit Baelfire exactly. I could go on and on but I don’t have time. Kaddish and Howl are Ginsberg’s two most famous poems and they both are based on his early experiences.

The second section of Ginsberg’s Howl could also be speaking of Baelfire/Neal Cassady/Mystery Man. It is entitled Molech. Molech was a stone god whose belly contained fire. Little babies/children were sacrificed to Molech…they were laid in his sloping arms where they rolled into the fire. Rumple sacrificed his son, Baelfire, to save his Magic. It is also very possible that the name Baelfire was chosen with this synmbolism…as Molech and Baal(Bael) both trace back to the same Pagan god. And Bae was allowed to slip into the “fire”.

If these nods turn out to be correct I think the picture we are getting from Ginsberg, who was a beat poet and friend of Neal Cassady, is that Neal/Baelfire was a child sacrificed by his father and that child was thrust into a world where he is totally alone. The world, nothing like what he knew…and unlike August Booth, his father did not lovingly put him in a magic wardrobe and send him away with love….rather his father dug his rumple blade into the dirt to keep himself from following his son…and let go of his hand, sacrificing Bae for his own greed/fear/magic.

This brings me to another thought. Bae’s world is totally lost. There is multiple mentions of people jumping off of fire escapes in Beat Poetry…and Mystery Man/Neal Cassady/Baelfire dropping his communication could have been setting a scene where we are supposed to see the despair of the people that were at that hopeless place. I totally believe he is mourning…but then just like in the story of Noah and the Ark, where Noah’s world is completely lost, everyone gone…a dove flies to the window. And like Noah’s dove who bears an olive leaf…Neal/Baelfire’s dove bears a message of hope. The curse has been broken.

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm–and your memory in my head three years after–
And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas aloud–wept, realizing
how we suffer–
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of An-
swers–and my own imagination of a withered leaf–at dawn–
Dreaming back thru life, Your time–and mine accelerating toward Apoca-
lypse,
the final moment–the flower burning in the Day–and what comes after,
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed–
like a poem in the dark–escaped back to Oblivion-–
No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream,
trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worship-
ping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all–longing or inevitability?–while it
lasts, a Vision–anything more?
It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder,
Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shoul-
dering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant–and
the sky above–an old blue place.
or down the Avenue to the south, to–as I walk toward the Lower East Side
–where you walked 50 years ago, little girl–from Russia, eating the
first poisonous tomatoes of America frightened on the dock
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?–toward
Newark–
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice
cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards–
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school,
and learning to be mad, in a dream–what is this life?
Toward the Key in the window–and the great Key lays its head of light
on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the
sidewalk–in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward
the Yiddish Theater–and the place of poverty
you knew, and I know, but without caring now–Strange to have moved
thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstops doors and dark boys on
the street, fire escapes old as you
–Tho you’re not old now, that’s left here with me–
Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe–and I guess that dies with
us–enough to cancel all that comes–What came is gone forever
every time-–

Here is a link to the entire Kaddish – http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15307

Here is a link to the post I wrote describing the Mystery Man’s path. It was written before the character was revealed as Neal Cassady whom I believe is Baelfire. Most of the items are very understandable now as they reflect the communication arts culture. https://oncepodcast.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=1514&start=110#p21041

Even the color green that Baelfire fell into ties in with the Beat Generation. Robert Stone’s — Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties mentions Neal Cassady.