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[Abstract] It’s a generation hard to summary in a word, they were crazy, undisciplined, desperate and self-indulgent, and however, they were also active, ambitious and sincere.
They certainly did not have the ability to change life which is indeed conservative and old-fashioned. What they could do was to escape from it, they gave up money, status, social responsibility and family obligation, they got pleasure from taking addictive drugs, sexual love and jazz etc. In pursuit of sensational experience, they tried to free themselves from old ideas, and look for a new life style, new faith, new values, and new relations with each other. They weren’t “beat” down, as the term apparently suggested. Their life and art practice both demonstrate their active attitude towards the life. They took risk, brought forth new ideas, and explored true essence of life bravely.
This article tries to probe into the essence of the spirit of the Beat Generation and offers a new point of view to approach this cultural trend.
[Key Words] the Beat Generation；extreme behavior；young face；lost faith
【摘 要】 关于“垮掉的一代”是很难用简单几个字就能形容清楚的，他们疯狂，放纵，堕落，沉沦；同时他们又坦率，真诚，积极，有追求。
他们并没有能力改变生活与其中的那个守旧古板的社会，他们能做到的只是厌倦和逃避，把金钱、地位、社会职责、家庭义务一概抛弃，从吸毒、性爱、爵士乐等感官欲望的满足来把握自我，解放个性，直接获得全新的生命体验。
他们试图通过直接获得生命体验，从而以人最基本的生命存在为基础，探索新的生活方式、新的信仰、新的价值观念、新的人与人之间的关系。他们并没有“被击败”，更没有“垮掉”，他们的生活及艺术实践都显示出他们对人生进攻的姿态，他们追求冒险与创新，勇敢地探索人生真谛。
本文试着探究“垮掉”精神的本质，重新看待“垮掉”意义。
【关键词】 “垮掉的一代”；极端行为；年轻面孔；信仰缺失
1. Introduction
Like the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s, the American "Beat Generation" of the 1950s names both a literary current and a broader cultural phenomenon or mood. Rejecting the conformism and stress on "normality" of the Truman and Eisenhower years, the Beats emphasized an openness to varieties of experience beyond the limits of middle-class society; they explored the cultural "underground" of bebop jazz, drug use, "polymorphous perverse" sexuality, and non-Western religions.
The term” Beat” was reportedly coined by Jack Kerouac (1922-1969, American) in the late 1940’s. As he said “Ah, this is nothing but a beat generation” from a specific conversation between Holmes (1926-1988, American) and him, this great movement in American history came into being. Then Holmes’s celebrated article in late 1952 in the New York Times Magazine carried the headline title “This is the Beat Generation”, that caught the public eye. But it became more common at about the time that writers like Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997, American) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919, American) were beginning to get noticed. It was quickly becoming a slang term in America after World War 11, meaning “exhausted” or “beat down” and provided this generation with a definitive label for their personal and social positions and perspectives.
The origins of the word 'beat' are obscure, but the meaning is only too clear to most Americans. More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. Kerouac, who coined the expression, Beat, insisted that it meant not simply "beat down" or exhausted, but also "beatific." in his The Source of Beat Generation, he explained, the primary meaning of beat was poor, frustrated, penniless, beating down, roaming and sleeping in the subway, but at last it became the revolutionary slogan and label of American society behavior. [1] Holmes said: the so-called” Beat Generation” meant not only tired out., exhausted, upset, but also being ordered, used up, utilized, and the naked intuition and sincerity from deep heart. [2] Ginsberg calls this Beat Generation "Legacy and Celebration, conference an ‘intergenerational symposium’… learned from William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Steir. The ideals transmitted ‘involve candor, spontaneity, suspicion of hierarchical authority, a multicultural sophistication, a world revolution’.
2. “The Beats” beating the society
2.1, the living social environment of “The Beats” at that time
It’s a postwar generation, after World War II, life in America was dull and static. Dad went off to work, mom minded the house and it seemed like everyone would have a job, security and happiness. Visionaries at the time, however, saw that this idyllic prosperity was artificial and temporary; they wanted life now, not at age 65. They went on the road, hung out in jazz bars, drank and read poetry and howled at the moon. They created an antithesis called the Beat Generation. Th[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] 下一页
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