Notes on Moloch
Moloch is a term for a Canaanite god that demanded child sacrifices. The symbolism of this bargain seems to be what has drawn authors as diverse as Milton and Allen Ginsberg, and then Scott Alexander via Ginsberg.
Moloch shares similarities with, and is perhaps the ancestor of, the Carthaginian god BaĘżal Hammon -- or Ba’al, for short -- which comes from the Hebrew for “lord.” And Ba’al of Carthage demanded child sacrifice.
This lecture series, by the archaeologist and Stanford professor Patrick Hunt, argues that the evidence shows these sacrifices to Ba’al continued into the time Hannibal was alive (a mere 2 centuries before Christ). Hunt paints the picture of Hannibal swearing an oath to always hate Romans surrounded by sacrifices to Ba'al (a point was to make the sacrifice when children were older to make sure they survived infancy). In this context Hannibal could see his life as forfeit to his culture. This type of ceremony was an emotional forging, leading to Hannibal (the “bal” in his name in honor of Ba’al) being reborn in service to his god, his people, and the word of his oath. Such a ceremony really solves the problem of people not taking their faith and their oaths seriously.
This leads "Beelzebub", which is now used as one of the names for the devil (or another demon. . . the usage is very confused). "Beelzebub" comes from the Hebrew “ba'al-z'bub,” which means the lord of the flies (which is why the classic novel is so named).
And why was Beelzebub called the lord of the flies? Because the large scale human sacrifices he demanded tended to bring in the flies. Can you imagine. . . so many dead bodies around an idol that it is just covered in flies?
Beezlebub, Ba’al, Moloch. . . all can refer to anything power enough to make you do this kind of evil. . . and be trapped with no way out.
Notes on Howl.
The first time I looked at Howl was because a student was auditioning it as a piece to a speech contest.
To take a poem this long to contest, you have to cut out parts, which is a good deal of the educational point of the activity. So it was in that context that I first came across the line
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down,
(If you haven’t read the poem before the “who” is still those mentioned in the poem’s famous opening “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. . . ;” this is one of many, many clauses elaborating on them, which makes up the entirety of the poem’s first section). The student who was working on the piece didn’t know what Los Alamos was and referring to and so was thinking of cutting that line out. Instead, I had a talk about how the nuclear bomb and the Cold War lead to a permanent state of fear that would make radical social change impossible, that the line was a great chance to vary the a reading of poem from a mad rush to a moment of clarity turning to despair for that all the outward projects Ginsberg would have hoped for.
The triple shocks of the great depression, World War II left the United States philosophically-spiritually adrift, ready to be rebuilt completely as a society -- or to quote Field of Dreams, of all things, “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again.” It’s a beautiful quote, but I think it was written lacking context for how much of this “army of steamrollers” was a post-World War II phenomenon.
"Field of Dreams" is pretty good at articulating the way change exploded in our country after World War II, how it constructed a mythos of innocence, and then of world-changing compassion, and ultimately left both myths exposed.
In my previous life, as an instructor of “film as literature” class, I would subject students "Field of Dreams", and then talk to them about Baby Boomers -- their moral confusion and how they will bankrupt the nation.
Well, Back to “Howl” . . .
After reading the piece and giving my comments on what to do with the cutting, I was left intrigued by the poem. And so by the coincidences only I had read Howl before seeing it in Meditations on Moloch.
Trying to relocate the Los Alamos bit in order to quote it here, I ended up re-reading the poem -- exactly the kind of distraction I like to allow myself in my time as a man of letters (as opposed to social media feeds, where regret or dread is the usual cost of such distractability). After the famous first clause, section I continues on with the adventures of those in Ginsberg’s circle, making something like a 2,000 word breathless sentence, showing a kind of interesting and dangerous, if not mad, underworld that you would not have thought possible if the television of the time was your only look at the world.
Section I turns on this line:
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task,
This line really captures for me the difficulty in locating an American culture that isn’t some kind of gimmick -- or a hustle, to use Morris Berman’s terminology. (Compare this with another iconoclastic American, Thoreau, and his exhortation, “Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.”) After establishing this "hopeless task," the poem moves quickly to the bit about Los Alamos and then drifts back into the flow of adventures -- redoubling on obscenities, homosexuality, and other things that would offend 1950s sensibilities.
Part II is about Moloch, which is the reason for this appendix, the piece it is the appendix to, and the original piece that inspired it turn.
And part III is more tightly focused on giving Carl Solomon, to whom the poem is dedicated, solidarity, and a hope for the future
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
