The disengagement of the creator, who, as creator, is necessarily judge, is one thing, but the utter nihilism of the emptied-out hipster is another. What is going to come of an attitude like this? It is impossible to go on indefinitely saying: “I am proud to be a delinquent,” without destroying all civilized values. Between such persons no true enduring interpersonal relationships can be built, and of course, nothing resembling a true “culture” — an at-homeness of men with each other, their work, their loves, their environment. The end result must be the desperation of shipwreck — the despair, the orgies, ultimately the cannibalism of a lost lifeboat. I believe that most of an entire generation will go to ruin — the ruin of Céline, Artaud, Rimbaud, voluntarily, even enthusiastically. What will happen afterwards I don’t know, but for the next couple of decades we are going to have to cope with the youth that we, my generation, put through the atom smasher. Social disengagement, artistic integrity, voluntary poverty — these are powerful virtues and may pull them through, but they are not the virtues we tried to inculcate — rather they are the exact opposite.
– Disengagement: The Art of the Beat Generation// Kenneth Rexroth, 1957
(Source: bopsecrets.org)
The disengagement of the creator, who, as creator, is necessarily judge, is one thing, but the utter nihilism of the emptied-out hipster is another. What is going to come of an attitude like this? It is impossible to go on indefinitely saying: “I am proud to be a delinquent,” without destroying all civilized values. Between such persons no true enduring interpersonal relationships can be built, and of course, nothing resembling a true “culture” — an at-homeness of men with each other, their work, their loves, their environment. The end result must be the desperation of shipwreck — the despair, the orgies, ultimately the cannibalism of a lost lifeboat. I believe that most of an entire generation will go to ruin — the ruin of Céline, Artaud, Rimbaud, voluntarily, even enthusiastically. What will happen afterwards I don’t know, but for the next couple of decades we are going to have to cope with the youth that we, my generation, put through the atom smasher. Social disengagement, artistic integrity, voluntary poverty — these are powerful virtues and may pull them through, but they are not the virtues we tried to inculcate — rather they are the exact opposite.
– Disengagement: The Art of the Beat Generation// Kenneth Rexroth, 1957
(Source: bopsecrets.org)
Posted 7 months ago & Filed under kenneth rexroth,
