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The beat generation

Page history last edited by Ilaria Basso 2 yrs ago

THE BEAT GENERATION

Introduction
History
Principal themes and literary origins
The diffusion of the beat culture
References

Introduction

The beat generation is a literary and cultural movement boomed in the 50s in the U.S.A. and characterized by a clear attitude of protest towards the conformist society of the second post-war period.

It was a movement that included anxious youth who took alcohol and drugs in order to create a parallel world to that in which they felt impotent and hopeless.

History

The origin of the term "Beat" probably derives from a journalist who coined the term "Beatniks" to define some writers that were talked about for their questionable positions.

Afterwards Jack Kerouac, the founder of the group, used the term "Beat" referring to the sad condition of modern man, precisely beaten and defeated by society, false communication, cupidity, violence and hunger for power.

Then, after a brilliant publication by a magazine, people began to talk about this movement, but considering its members just a group of inept ramblers. Thus they were soon identified as young delinquents (some of them had police records) and their attitude and style were not understood.

However, the members of the Beat Generation were first of all a group of great friends, indissolubly joined by the common condition of “beaten” and “beatific” men at the same time. They supported pacifism, civil rights and sexual freedom.

This generation disappeared rapidly and for this reason it has often been compared to the Lost Generation of the first post-war period.

Nevertheless, its members are still remembered for their adventurous insatiability of liberty, their fight against censorship and state regimentation, their ecological consciousness, their opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization, and their respect for land and indigenous peoples.

A "Beat" was a young intellectual who wanted his voice to be heard, an obstinate searcher for truth in marijuana, in mysticism, in oriental philosophies, in sexual activity and in jazz (precisely in be-bop); he was a man anguished by the mystic love for humankind, an unacknowledged poet who perennially lived on the edge of madness and irreversible hallucination; he was a dreamer always unsatisfied who fought to eradicate taboos and class struggles. The main exponents of this group were Jack Kerouak,Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy and William Burroughs.

Principal themes and literary origins

The Beat Generation is an avant-garde cultural movement, and like any other avant-garde it is characterized by the following elements:

1) the temporal dynamism by which the writer deliberately thinks of being a member of a culture perceived as a constant transformation that justifies his/her artistic experimentation;

2) the social antagonism which makes possible the author's separation from the ethic and spiritual values of contemporary critics;

3) the historical potentiality of art by which the avant-gardist contemplates an idealistic future which becomes the aim of his work (that implies an alliance with revolutionary or progressive forces);

4) the aesthetic militancy, which generates new consciousness in life and art.

All these aspects regarded the beat generation, which acrimoniously criticized the conformism

In order to express their proud diversity, they took their cue from authors which in their works manifested a certain rebellion against the normal schemes of world vision.

From W. Blake, visionary prophet, they recovered the image of the bard, the atmosphere of delirium and the anti-intellectualistic emancipation from literary conventions. From A. Rimbaud they recovered the choleric and hallucinated poetry, which opposed tradition, realism, mysticism and simple language; from C. Baudelaire the capacity to investigate the phenomenal profundities.

From W. C. Williams and E. Pound they absorbed the concreteness, the concision and the idea by which poetry is founded on music; from Whitman, the creator of the American dream, the long free irregular verse, the rhythm, the continuous search for one's essence, the mysticism and the vividness of a language full of slangisms and imitative words. From Poe, Faulkner and Hemingway they inherited the cruelty; from D. H. Lawrence the frankness towards sex. Finally, from Aldous Huxley they got the passion for drugs.

And exactly the theme of drug, of the alternative vision of reality, of the ecstatic liberation through the use of narcotics certainly represented a starting and foundamental point for the literature of the Beat Generation.

The diffusion of the beat culture

The Beat Generation movement originated and developed in the United States.

With its infinite space and folks pervaded by the pioneering spirit, the States for sure represent the cradle of the Beat Generation, the indefectible setting for the freedom so desired by "rebel" writers.

If it is true that we can find the Beatniks in Europe as well, it is very difficult to pinpoint the Beats out of an environment so industrialized, McCarthyite, nuclear, imperialistic, open to the religious syncretism as the American one.

If the flower people (i.e. the Hippies), for example, are quite easily assimilable by the establishment and the mass society, on the contrary the Beats have always had their dimension of "free predators" in the consumer society.

Some exponents (Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti) of the above-mentioned movement travelled to Italy on occasion of special festivals (for example Spoleto Festival, 1965) or to find ideas for their works, though their presence does not leave many traces both as regards the Italian translation of their books and the impact on the public imagination.