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Whitman’s voice electrifies evenmodern readers with his proclamationof the unity and vital force ofall creation. He was enormouslyinnovative. From him spring thepoem as autobiography, theAmerican Everyman as bard, thereader as creator, and the still-contemporarydiscovery of “experimental,”or organic, form.THE BRAHMIN POETSIn their time, the BostonBrahmins (as the patrician,Harvard-educated class cameto be called) supplied the mostrespected and genuinely cultivatedliterary arbiters of the UnitedStates. Their lives fitted a pleasantpattern of wealth and leisuredirected by the strong NewEngland work ethic and respect forlearning.In an earlier Puritan age, theBoston Brahmins would have beenministers; in the 19th century, theybecame professors, often at Harvard.Late in life they sometimesbecame ambassadors or receivedhonorary degrees from Europeaninstitutions. Most of them travelledor were educated in Europe: Theywere familiar with the ideas andbooks of Britain, Germany, andFrance, and often Italy and Spain.Upper class in background butdemocratic in sympathy, theBrahmin poets carried their genteel,European-oriented views toevery section of the United States,through public lectures at the 3,000lyceums (centers for public lectures)and in the pages of twoinfluential Boston magazines, theHENRY WADSWORTHLONGFELLOWPhoto courtesy Brown BrothersNorth American Review and theAtlantic Monthly.The writings of the Brahmin poetsfused American and European traditionsand sought to create a continuityof shared Atlantic experience.These scholar-poets attemptedto educate and elevate the generalpopulace by introducing aEuropean dimension to Americanliterature. Ironically, their overalleffect was conservative. By insistingon European things and forms, theyretarded the growth of a distinctiveAmerican consciousness. Wellmeaningmen, their conservativebackgrounds blinded them to thedaring innovativeness of Thoreau,Whitman (whom they refused tomeet socially), and Edgar Allan Poe(whom even Emerson regarded asthe “jingle man”). They were pillarsof what was called the “genteel tradition”that three generations ofAmerican realists had to battle.Partly because of their benign butbland influence, it was almost 100years before the distinctive Americangenius of Whitman, Melville,Thoreau, and Poe was generally recognizedin the United States.Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807-1882)The most important BostonBrahmin poets were HenryWadsworth Longfellow, Oliver WendellHolmes, and James RussellLowell. Longfellow, professor ofmodern languages at Harvard, wasthe best-known American poet ofhis day. He was responsible for themisty, ahistorical, legendary sense32