Boston Brahmins

Brahma, in Hinduism, is the Supreme Entity of all Matter and Spirit alike. Traditional Hinduism contains five distinct castes or classes of people. A Brahman is a member of the highest, priestly caste. The other castes are, in decreasing status: Kshatriya (rulers/warriors), Vaishya (merchants), Shudra (artisans/servants), and Harijan (outside caste). People are born, married, and die in these castes. Mr. Holmes might have picked Kshatriya or Vaishya as the name for his New England Caste, if only for legacy reasons--some men in these families became eventually known as Merchant Princes in history.

The term "Boston Brahmin" has often been used to describe a group of very wealthy nineteenth century Beacon Hill families. Oliver Wendell Holmes coined the original phrase in 1860. Holmes wrote a series of articles in the Atlantic Monthly called The Professor's Story. In Volume 5, Issue 27, Chapter 1, The Brahmin Caste of New England, he wrote: "There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call it so, which has a greater character of permanence. It has grown to be a caste--not in any odious sense, but, by the repetition of the same influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct organization and physiognomy...." This series of articles collectively became the novel Elsie Venner, published in 1861.

The object of Elsie Venner was, "an attempt to illustrate the doctrine of inherited moral responsibility for other people's misbehavior." In broad terms, this was an intentional contradiction of certain theological (Calvinist) beliefs such as pre-destination. An unintended consequence of describing a New England Caste of strict progeny, educational, religious, and business practices, was to later make the Brahmin families appear quite elitist.

Many of the Brahmin families had descended from the original Puritan settlers of Massachusetts. Holmes was a descendent of Thomas Dudley, Governor of Massachusetts in 1634, 1640, 1645, and 1650. The most well known wealthy families of nineteenth century Boston include the Appletons, Bacons, Cabots, Codmans, Coolidges, Forbes, Hunnewells, Lodges, Parkmans, Perkins, Russells, and Shaws. Old guide books exist that trace the ancient lineage of these families, and some even trace the lineage of their Beacon Hill addresses.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (a Brahmin Poet, 1807-1882)

Longfellow was born in Portland. He went to Bowdoin College, where, in the later years of his course, a few poems testify to his love of nature and of legend. He was a classmate of Nathaniel Hawthorne, George B. Cheever, and J. S. C. Abbott. Like most of the literary men of his time, he intended to be a lawyer; but the offer of the professorship of modern languages in his college, determined him to go abroad and fit himself for the work. His stay covered two years.

The Voices of the Night, published in 1839, contains some of the very best of his work — poems whose simple truth and natural expression. render them popular — The Reaper and the Flowers, Woods in Winter, and The Psalm of Life. The small volume of Ballads, and other Poems, appeared in 1841. The poet's return from Europe, in 1842, was marked by the Poems on Slavery, dedicated to Channing. About this time Longfellow gave a series of lectures on Dante, illustrating them by translations from the work of the great Italian poet.

By the end of the year 1846, he had published the Spanish Student, a collection of translations called The Poets of Europe, and The Belfry of Bruges. The next year is marked by the appearance of Evangeline, the poet's favorite of all his works. Kavanagh, a novel of little power, and a volume of poems called The Seaside and the Fireside, were published in 1849; The Golden Legend, a drama, in 1851. The Song of Hiawatha (1855) raised a storm of enthusiasm and literary controversy as to the cause of its success and its probable permanence. Longfellow called the poem 'An Indian Edda;' the scene was among the Ojibways, near Lake Superior; the meter is rhymeless trochaic tetrameter. The Courtship of Miles Standish was another successful essay in hexameter, followed by The Tales of a Wayside Inn a collection of poems on various subjects; The New England Tragedies, The Divine Tragedy, and The Hanging the Crane (1874).

The closing years of Longfellow's life were rich in friendship and success, but there is an increasing seriousness in all his work. The poem, Morituri Salutamus, which he read. at the fiftieth anniversary of his graduation at Bowdoin, is weighty with feeling. In 1880 came Ultima Thule; in 1881 a sonnet on the death of President Garfield. Hermes Trismegistus was his last poem. He died in 1882, and was buried near the 'three friends'—Charles Sumner, Louis Agassiz, and Cornelius Felton—whom he had loved so dearly and mourned so sincerely. England has honored his genius by giving his bust a place in Westminster Abbey."

Lecture 4

LITERATURE OF THE CRITICAL REALISM (2^nd half of the 19^th century)

Questions:

Дата добавления: 2014-01-06