Illuminations (Picas series)

Schizophrenic disassociation of life and mind make for a double tragedy in this young man's early death. A. Ginsberg longed for that ancient connection with the starry dynamo in the night; Rimbaud's brain shook with its deadly current and it made him feel quite odd among the emissaries of French bushwa normality, wearing buttoned coats, with eyes averted, as they stepped over the alter-ego of the boy, the poet in heat, in the gutter of the whorehose they were leaving. The poems typify European longing for escape from the feudal history of their rigid societies, and make one think of a dog yowling at the moon while teathered to the rock that Sisyphus rolled up the hill.A highly introverted exposay of French longing for the nobel savage, dramatically punctuated with images as consoling as the sun going nova, blazing in the eye of a mad dog.