Kaddish

Published in 1961, 'Kaddish' is a sprawling, deeply emotional elegy written by Allen Ginsberg to mourn the 1956 death of his mother, Naomi Ginsberg. It blends the traditional Jewish mourner's prayer with raw, confessional details of her tragic life, severe mental illness, and ultimate decline.

The traditional Jewish Kaddish requires a quorum of ten adult Jewish men, known as a minyan, to properly recite the prayer. Ginsberg was unable to gather enough Jewish men at the funeral home to form a minyan, leaving him deeply haunted and inspiring him to write this literary adaptation.

Ginsberg uses surreal, haunting imagery—such as paranoid visions induced by his mother's worsening psychosis—to document her tragic struggles with mental institutions and failed lobotomy attempts. These intense, fragmented memories capture the terrifying reality of her clinical schizophrenia.

'Kaddish' is widely considered to be Allen Ginsberg's masterpiece, standing alongside 'Howl' as a foundational text of the Beat Generation. It is universally recognized as one of the most powerful, devastating, and complex elegies in 20th-century American literature.