In 1920, Van Wyck Brooks wrote that Whitman was the “focal center” of American creative experience and literary expression. The poet combined within him elements of native realism and of New England philosophy which made him a truly national spiritual synthesis. But modern criticism does not view Whitman as the quintessential American poet, or the national norm; other writers, such as Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne may be equally regarded as national norms. Whitman, no doubt, embodied many qualities of the American character—for example, its variousness, diversity, adventurousness, and pioneering spirit—yet he was not the only national norm. To us today, submerged as we are in specialization, Whitman has a particular appeal because he symbolizes variety, largeness, and the tendency toward innovation.
