Beat Generation

The 1950s were years of calm worldwide. The world had come out of a great war and everywhere there was an effort to heal the wounds of the great destruction. All of Europe, America and Japan, starting with Germany, had turned inward and were in the process of gathering themselves socially, economically and psychologically. Therefore, there was no possibility of a new war, nor were the relations between the countries of the world in a position to cause a new unfortunate process. Calm and silence prevailed everywhere. My American teacher Marvin Jones also said that the 1950s were the best years of his life. As a person who fought in World War II.

In this quiet and calm atmosphere of the 1950s, Life magazine referred to a group of poets as “the only revolutionary movement around.” These poets lived in and around San Francisco. The movement they represented was called the Beat Generation . Jack Kerouac, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Michael Mcclure, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, etc. were the leading Beat representatives. The San Francisco Renaissance, which formed the basis of the movement, was first announced in a literary magazine called Evergreen Review.

Source: https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/sixties/walkthrough/beatsnewyork1

Beat poets have an extremely bohemian lifestyle and a considerable majority of them have trouble with drugs. They are ideologically communist and are a community that mainly believes in Buddhism. Their beliefs are shaped around holding on to life and establishing an inseparable bond with life. They perceive poetry as confronting oneself in the sense of writing and confronting the world in the sense of reading. They think that the way to survive in life is to express oneself by sending more difficult confrontations (a kind of rebellion, non-acceptance) to life. They were particularly influenced by Collingwood's essays on the philosophy of art. They know no bounds in thinking and expressing themselves in every way and method.

Alan Ginsberg slams America with his poem "Howl" and gets into legal trouble when this poem is banned. Michael McClure publishes erotic poems with his book Dark Brown. Beat poets refuse to make peace and compromise with themselves first and foremost so that they can challenge the world. For this reason, they have an anarchist attitude. They are interested in theorists of anarchism such as Kropotkin and Enrico Malatesta and are very close to a quarterly anarchist magazine called Retort and the ideas it represents. Keneth Rexroth, one of the Beat members, states that San Francisco has almost reached the level of the Paris Commune.

Some of the ideological and literary characteristics of the Beat members listed above are reflected in their comments on the world order of the 1950s and 1960s, and especially Lawrence Ferlinghetti's comments on the world order of those years are extremely interesting when evaluated considering the world conditions of the 2010s.

Beat members say that the ecological balance of the world will rapidly deteriorate within the capitalist order of the 1960s and that it is impossible for the ecological balance to withstand these economic conditions. They argue that in a world where an unplanned economic order, the philosophy of “let them pass, let them do” and a system based on constantly producing and consuming more are encouraged, natural resources and the atmosphere will rapidly become polluted and are already being polluted. They say that the capitalist order has literally thrown its filth into the resources of nature and that it is becoming impossible to reverse this situation. They draw attention to the importance of preventing population growth and the vital importance of establishing an apolitical central planning institution above countries. It is also claimed that the Beat Generation is the first environmentalist literary movement with all these ideas.

The Beat poets' observations and solution proposals for the world order of the 1950s and 60s are in the nature of an artist's response. At the core of their ideas is human nature. They form their political ideas with the idea that man is inherently destructive. Their political views come to the fore in their philosophy of poetry. They think that knowledge formed in a correct order produces doctrine, and doctrine formed in a correct order produces reason.

More than half a century has passed since the years when Beat representatives intensively introduced their ideas to the world. We also know that humanity was well aware of global warming at that time, that environmental disasters were the result of an unregulated capitalism, and that all of this was known by the leading capitalist representatives of the time. We later learned that this information was deliberately suppressed. Beat representatives boldly voiced all of this in those years.

I often thought about these issues while reading books I bought at the Steps of Rome café in San Francisco, at the City Lights bookstore, and at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's. The cultural and ideological atmosphere of San Francisco and Berkeley was largely shaped by Beat ideas. In Berkeley, I had heard many Americans say that the US presidency was bought and sold every four years for money. Such ideas could have come out of the "Peoples' Republic of Berkeley," as the local metaphor goes.

Source: https://citylights.com/our-story/a-short-history-of-city-lights/

I think the most successful book that describes the daily life and lifestyle of the Beat members is Jack Keouac's Dharma Bums. The real names of the Beat members were changed to fictitious names and adapted for this novel. The novel is based on true stories. It is definitely a book to be recommended for those interested in the events between the Beat and the Beat representatives of that period. I also have a special interest in the Beat Generation due to my own ideological affinities.