It is a word of useful
characterization. Only American books, and not books written in
English in America, can adequately represent our national
contribution to the world's thinking and feeling. So argued
Emerson and Whitman, long ago. But the younger of these two poets
came to realize in his old age that the New World and the Old
World are fundamentally one. The literature of the New World will
inevitably have an accent of its own, but it must speak the
mother-language of civilization, share in its culture, accept its
discipline.
It has been said disparagingly of Longfellow and his friends:
"The houses of the Brahmins had only eastern windows. The souls
of the whole school lived in the old lands of culture, and they
visited these lands as often as they could, and, returning,
brought back whole libraries of books which they eagerly
translated." But even if Longfellow and his friends had been
nothing more than translators and diffusers of European culture,
their task would have been justified. They kept the ideals of
civilization from perishing in this new soil.
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