Department of British and American Studies at the - Univerzita ...

for I am of Slavic parentage
and a Buddhist Jew
Who worships the Sacred Heart of Christ
the blue body of Krishna
the straight back of Ram
the beads of Chango the Nigerian singing
Shiva Shiva in a manner which
I have invented,
and the King of May is a middle-european
honor, mine in the XX century
despite space ships and the Time Machine,
because I heard the voice of
Blake in a vision and
repeat that voice. (Ginsberg 1997: 148)
During the visit to Prague, and other places in the Soviet bloc, including Moscow
where he met with the poets Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, Ginsberg must have gotten a
taste of both the total lack of freedom and the suppressed but stored-up desire to be free. The
short visit to Czechoslovakia was a memorable event, indeed a powerful political happening.
It was understood as such by everybody involved, from the enthusiastic students to the
irritated regime, and the poet himself. Ginsberg‘s visit and eviction were remembered for
years as a symbolic moment of resistance, especially among young people and above all
among students, despite the fact that hardly anyone knew his poetry, which could only
circulate as samizdat material, if it was at all available or translated. When asked about the
impact of Ginsberg and others in Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel wrote in 1999: ―There has
been a sensitive awareness of the Beat movement in our country since the nineteen fifties. The
general revolt against the official establishment and the literary nonconformism of the Beat
poetry and prose have most likely been perceived in our unfree conditions as even more
rebellious than in the land of their origin‖ (Havel 2001: ix). The fact that Ginsberg was also
remembered as one of the close and familiar figures of world literature from the outside of the
Iron Curtain was confirmed when he was welcomed in Prague after the November revolution
of 1989. Already in May 1990 we had him back, an elderly man but still full of life and
visibly happy that he was able to celebrate with us the return of freedom and democracy. And
so the Czechoslovak episode from 1965 remained a surprisingly strong memory not just for us
here but for the poet himself, as I found out when interviewing him. It took away some of his
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