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· " > •• :',> >:;., . .' . ~':·::r·.··.··· ED FOLSOM & GAY WILSON ALLEN Introduction: "Salut au Monde!" If it hadn't been for Emerson's electrifying letter greeting Whitman at "the beginning ofa great career," the first edition of Leaves ofGrass, published in 1855, would have been a total failure; few copies were sold, and Emerson and Whitman seemed about the only people who recognized much promise in it. Undaunted, Whitman published an expanded second edition in 1856, in which he included a visionary poem (then called "Poem of Salutation," later to become "Salut au Monde!") containing this prophetic exclamation: My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth, I have look'd for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. (LG, 148) He boasted that this new edition would sell several thousand copies, but it turned out to be an even greater failure than the first. What we now see as prophecy appeared in 1856 as nothing more than boastful fantasy, for it would be many years before Whitman would become known in other lands. Throughout his life, though, he would maintain this international dream; in 1881, while expressing hope that a projected Russian translation of Leaves would soon become a reality, he noted: As my dearest dream is for an internationality ofpoems and poets, binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties and diplomacy- As the purpose beneath the rest in my book is such hearty comradeship, for individuals to begin with, and for all the nations ofthe earth as a result - how happy I should be to get the hearing and emotional contact ofthe great Russian peoples.l Eventually Whitman would find "equals and lovers" quite literally around the world, a true "internationality" of "hearty comradeship." Today, complete translations of Leaves of Grass have been published in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, and China, and selections ofWhitman's poetry have appeared in every major language except Arabic. Scores ofbiographical and critical books on Whitman have been published on every continent. This book sets out to trace some of the ways Whitman has been absorbed into cultures from around the world for more than a century. From nation to nation, Whitman's poetry and prose have generated a wide variety of aesthetic, political, and religious responses. Since no American writer has been more influential in more nations than Whitman, the materials in this book demonstrate some important ways that American culture, as articulated in Whitman's work, has helped redefine older and more established national traditions and how it has helped emerging nations define themselves. These materials also show how various national cultures have reconstructed Whitman in order to make him fit their native patterns. This book presents and examines, then, some radically realigned versions ofWhitman, as his writing-translated into other languages and absorbed into other traditions - undertakes a different kind of cultural work than it performs in the United States. To accomplish this overview ofresponses, we organized an international group of writers and scholars, each with expertise in both Whitman and the culture about which they write. This group of distinguished scholars corresponded with each other and eventually met in Iowa City in 1992 to discuss the project in detail; their collaboration has resulted in one ofthe first sustained explorations of a major American writer's influence on world literature. Our goal has been to bring together the most illuminating responses to Whitman from every culture in which we could identify significant work on Whitman. The book is organized in sections , each one offering a careful analysis of the ways that Whitman has been absorbed into a particular culture and then offering selections from writings about Whitman by poets and critics from that culture. The size and detail of each section of this book reflect the range and depth of the particular national response to Whitman. For cultures that have long and manifold responses to Leaves ofGrass, like Great Britain, we have chosen to present brief excerpts from a large number of respondents, indicating the wealth of materials available. Where particular essays have had a dramatic impact on Whitman's reputation in a given culture, as Jose Marti's did in Spanish-speaking countries or as Ferdinand Freiligrath's and Johannes Schlaf's did in Germany, we have devoted more space to those individual responses. In countries where the re- [ 2 ] Introduction [3.14.246.254] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 03:08...

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