The Crazy Dumbsaint of the Mind or Poet-Prophets of the Beat and Beatific: William Blake's Resurrection in the American Beat Generation
Abstract
On August 6, 1945, "Little Boy" was lost, along with approximately 200,000 lives and 4 square miles of earth, as the radioactive vapors of this "Little Boy," the world's first operational nuclear weapon, flew through the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Out of the fallout fell out a group of writers who responded to this newest apocalypse, to the madness of a world bent on annihilating itself, with a madness all their own. The poetry and prose of this small group of avant-garde writers, self-proclaimed as the Beat Generation, continues a tradition of prophecy and visionary poetry from Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau and Milton, all the way back to Ezekiel and Isaiah. The most influential of these visionaries on the Beats was William Blake, the prophet of the same force that drove the Beats, the God of imagination. William Blake's literary visions and primordial experiences made him as much prophet as poet. Blake claimed to have held visionary conversations with the poets of the past. While Blake repeatedly re-invoked, re-imagined, and rewrote the prophecies of Ezekiel, Isaiah, St. John, Dante, and Milton in his poetry, the most central theme in his work is his rejection of the systems, religions, traditions, and laws created around the visions of other poet-prophets. This resulted in Blake's creation of a mystifyingly complex mythology and poetic vision he claims was inspired more by the visions behind other prophetic poetry than the poetry itself. By placing the Beat Generation within the context of its spiritual and prophetic lineage, the author intends to defend the often-criticized madness of the Beat generation. This is not to trivialize the Beat Generation as purely derivative of Blake's mysticism, but rather as an extension of it into a post world war America in which Blake's Romantic depictions of the French and American Revolutions are replaced with a much more ominous political moment defined by the threat of nuclear Armageddon.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 20, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA427720
Entities
People
- Gregory M. Dandeles
Organizations
- University of Illinois at Chicago