Allen GINSBERG - Original signed drawing - "Buddha's Footprint" 1967.

Allen GINSBERG (1926.1997)

Original signed drawing – Buddha's Footprint.

One page in-16° (9.50 x 10 cm, at sight) on fine bluish paper.

London. August 16, 1967.

Rare document by the American poet, founding member of the Beat Generation , depicting three single-headed fish, combining, in the center, the all-seeing eye, and considered by Ginsberg as the imprint of Buddha.

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In 1967, in the Catholic Worker , Ginsberg clarified his discovery in 1962, in India: "I saw the three fish, one head, carved on the inner sole of the bare stone of the Buddha's footprint at Bodh-Gaya, under the Bo tree. Stone feet or soles are a traditional form of votive marker. Mythologically, the 32 signs – like the stigmata – of the Buddha include chakras (symbolic magic wheels of energy) on the hands and feet. It is a type of fish chakra. Thus, ancient artists carved large feet as symbols of the enlightened man – before the Greeks introduced the representation of the human face of Buddha. They never had statues of him – umbrellas, Bo trees or feet – before Alexander came to India. »

In 1967, Ginsberg was in London and regularly met Paul McCartney discussing the counterculture and the decriminalization of drugs. Ginsberg took part in the hippie gathering in Hyde Park on July 18 and gave multiple readings of his texts in the British capital.

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The Buddha's Footprint was included, among other things, on the frontispiece of his Indian Journal and on the cover of his work Collected Poems.