American Romantics & The Beat Generation
Works from writers and artists of the American Romantic time period and the Beat Generation may seem completely different while judged solely on subject matter, but are surprisingly similar as the themes, motifs, and times are thoroughly uncovered.
The American Romantics lived in an unstable, warring, turmoil filled America. Almost a whole generation removed from the American Revolution and on the verge of, involved in, or in the wake of the American Civil War; American Romanticists brought a sort of bohemian literary and artistic revolution to America. Through creating works of strong emotion and imagination the American Romanticists broke away from the conventions of a predominately Classicist society to bring emphasis away from classical models and onto “the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendent.”(1) These emphases form a clear connection to the Beat Generation of mid-twentieth century America.
The Beat Generation, as the American Romantics, lived in a time of war. For most of them, their entire lives were played out in a time of continuous war ranging from World War II to the Cold War to the Vietnam War. This life in wartime instilled a pathos of apocalypse into the Beat Generation, giving them the feeling that the world could end at any given moment and that they had to live in the now, experience the experiences of life. This sentiment created a renewed bohemian culture in America similar to the American Romantic movement. The Beat Generation sought out to convey their internal intense feelings in contrast with conformist American culture. On The Road, by Jack Kerouac (who coined the term “beat”), can be seen as a novel that defined the Beat Generation.
On The Road brings the reader on an adventure full of visions, experiences, dangers, and unexpected occurrences through the words of Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac; prominent Beat Generation novelist) and the command of Dean Moriarity (Neal Cassady; friend of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, among other famous beatniks). Kerouac’s writing style brings an unprecedented stream-of-consciousness prose (similar to Be-Bop Jazz era improvisation) to American literature that is metaphorically symbolic for the journey contained within the text of On The Road. As the journey from the “East of their youth” to the “West of their future”(2) progresses they experience a life of transcendence that was unknown to the common American. This life filled to the brim with mystery, eccentricity, and wild debauchery brings an exotic feel to the work that was made popular by American Romantic novelists such as Herman Melville.
In Melville’s debut novel, entitled Typee, he gives the bourgeois American a vicarious life to experience by describing “the exotic, the remote, the mysterious, the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased, and even the satanic”(3) in the vivid, boundless detail that characterized the American Romantics. His tale brings the reader from life aboard The Dolly to life with the cannibalistic Typee tribe on the foreign South Seas island of Nukuheva. Similar to On The Road, Typee presents the American public with a way of living that is outside the norm, a set of documented experiences (in full or partial truth) that contradict the manifesto of American daily life. Melville’s account of Tommo’s (the protagonist) sojourn with the Typee tribe ends with Tommo coming to the realization that although Europeans had praised themselves as the civilized people of the world, they were actually the corruptors. This type of extreme contradiction to public opinion strongly relates to the Earthworks art movement during the mid-twentieth century, at the forefront of which was sculptor Robert Smithson.
During the time that the Earthworks movement began there was a communal feeling between participants to escape “the gallery,” the conventional center of exhibition for any work of art. They sought out to create natural pieces of immense size and meaning that could not possibly be put into museums. This type of rebellious inspiration conjured up in order to create works of art parallels the train of thought of the literary movement going on at the time, the Beat Generation. Robert Smithson can be seen as the Jack Kerouac of the Earthworks movement, the leader and figurehead.
Smithson’s most famous work, the Spiral Jetty, through its many interpreted meanings, epitomizes the thoughts and ideas of Beat Generation authors and Earthworks movement artists. The Spiral Jetty juts 1500 feet into the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and was constructed solely of materials found on and around the site: mud, volcanic rocks, water, algae, and salt. Since it is out in the open and not enclosed within a museum it can take on many forms depending on the conditions. At some times it is completely engulfed in the Great Salt Lake, while other times it is solid white, covered in salt. When I visited the Spiral Jetty it was in a state of exposure, completely free from the grip of the Great Salt Lake. As I descended the rocks down towards the Jetty I felt the already searing temperature around me increase to an almost unbearable inferno. As I advanced on the Jetty I noticed an ever-changing landscape around me, despite the fact that I was traveling in a continuous loop to one destination. When I reached the terminus I felt the overwhelming feeling of desolation, combined with the heat, creating what very well could be Hell on Earth. This must have been analogous to the Beat Generation’s outlook upon the society that they were living in, giving them only one choice, to go back; back to a state of being before society had taken its toll. And this is just what I did; I turned around, walked the Spiral, and drove away.
This type of inspired soul-searching is beautifully displayed in a poem written by Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg entitled “Sunflower Sutra”. He explores the deterioration of American society and the human consciousness as he relates with the skeleton of an old locomotive during a golden riverbank sunset. “Poor dead flower? when did you forget that you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide that you were an impotent old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?”(4), he says. As he interrogates the locomotive he indirectly brings question upon himself, upon America, and what America has done to him. Suggesting that he has been gutted and left to die by a system that feels no remorse. He wants to know when the change in society came that left him that way, proposing the idea that there was a time, a former life, that he longs to continue. This longing for an unattainable, yet vivid, past corresponds to themes that are present within a large amount of American Romanticist poetry.
In “The Solitary Reaper”, by William Wordsworth, the narrator dramatically recounts his observation of a “Highland Lass” reaping and singing alone in a field. He sets a tone of nostalgia, similar to Ginsberg’s desire for his uncorrupted life, by so vividly describing the maiden’s song that he mentally brings himself back to her even though he knows that he will never be able to truly experience her song again. This reoccurring motif of longing for the unobtainable, the yearning for lost history, resurfaces numerous times throughout American Romantic and Beat Generation literature alike.
Although American Romantic and Beat Generation works are not directly related in subject it is truly the “golden sunflower inside”(5) that counts. American Romantic literature often involves tales of the exotic, far off, mystery worlds that the common Americans aspired to experience, but could not because of the confining circumstances of society. Beat Generation literature, instead of giving the public an escape from the conformist American society, gave them insight into an alternative to it, a path heading away from conventionality and towards bohemianism. Within the written texts (spoken ideas, and presented art works) of these periods in American literary history the underlying layers presented the most radical, philosophical similarities. Predominately taking the emphasis away from orthodox America and projecting it onto the unconventional American and their experiences in a world of contrast.
Sources
Melville, Herman. Typee: A Peep At Polynesian Life. NY: Penguin Books, 1846.
Kerouac, Jack. On The Road. NY: Penguin Books, 1957.
William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper”, Macmillan & Co.,
London, 1888.
Allen Ginsberg, “Sunflower Sutra”, City Lights Books, San Francisco,
1955.
Spiral Jetty. http://www.robertsmithson.com/earthworks/spiral_jetty.htm.
Romanticism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism. 2004.
Beat Generation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_generation. 2004.
Footnotes
from Source 6.
paraphrased from Source 2, page 15.
from Source 6.
from Source 4, lines 69-74.
from Source 4, line 85.
