As unusual notes from an uncommon singer, we will offer in the body of our work the re-creation in Portuguese of the following books/poems from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “INSCRIPTIONS”; “Starting from Paumanok”; “Salut au Monde!”; “Song of the Open Road”; “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”; “Song of the Answerer”; “Our Old Feuillage”; “A Song of Joys”; “Song of the Broad-Axe”; “Song of the Exposition”; “Song of the Redwood-Tree”; “A Song for Occupations”; “A Song of the Rolling Earth”; “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night”; “BIRDS OF PASSAGE”; “SEA-DRIFT”; “MEMORIES OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN”; “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”; “Proud Music of the Storm”; “Passage to India”; “Prayer of Columbus”; “The Sleepers”.
Considering that the Leaves was published in England and translated into German (1870) and French still in the nineteenth century, and translated into Italian (Foglie di Erba, by Luigi Gamberale) in 1900 (and a reprint in 1907), and into Spanish in 1912[1], and into many other languages today, receiving acclaim and admiration from authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pessoa and Lorca, who are akin to Brazilian writers, it is a mystery why it has not received appropriate attention from Brazilian editors up to now. A few incomplete editions and a popular one are not enough. Moreover, if we take into account that Leaves of Grass was only properly published in the U.S. in 1881, we are doing to Whitman today in Brazil what his countrymen did to him in the past, that is, denying him his rightful place among us, especially for what Freyre has said about his being a personality akin to Hispanics and also to Brazilians. This is another reason to make us understand that he is needed in our land: real democracy is lacking in this tropical Republic, which was saluted by Walt Whitman in 1889 at its birth, just after he had received news of a new republic in the Americas (Brazil adopted the republican system on the 15th of November, 1889), with a poem called “A Christmas Greeting” (From a Northern Star-Group to a Southern, in “Good-Bye My Fancy”.), translated by us and inserted in our previous work[2]:
WELCOME, Brazilian brother–thy ample place is ready;
A loving hand–a smile from the North–a sunny instant hail!
(Let the future care for itself, where it reveals its troubles, impedimentas,
Ours, ours the present throe, the democratic aim, the acceptance and the faith;)
To thee to-day our reaching arm, our turning neck–to thee from us the expectant eye,
Thou cluster free! thou brilliant lustrous one! thou, learning well
The true lesson of a nation’s light in the sky,
(More shining than the Cross, more than the Crown,)
The height to be superb humanity.
The verses in parenthesis point to a biblical source, not because of the “Cross” in particular, but because the words are an echo of Matthew, 6:34: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Like the prophet, the poet focus and calls attention to the present moment, to the “evils” of today, for now is the right time for action. A change of attitude like the one that took place in Brazil and was hailed by him with joy is what the nation needs. We must not lose memory of our past, to learn the lessons history teaches us; however, every action must be carried out at the present time, otherwise, we will only repeat mechanically the same old mistakes.
As for the part of the “superb humanity” living in Brazil, we must retribute the American bard for his prompt acknowledgment of our new reality, and our work here is our gift of gratitude to him. To show that he deserves more than what he has received up to the present time, we will take a brief look at the publications already produced in Portuguese. The oldest edition is the famous Folhas das Folhas de Relva (something like Leaves from Leaves of Grass), a collection of poems and fragments translated by Geir Campos, published by Brasiliense in 1983 (9th reprint in 2002; actually, the original edition was published by Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1964). As Geir declares in the afterword (2002, p.140), he did not do a common translation. What he undertook to do was an “over-interpretation of the poems and fragments.” The aim of both “the editor and the translator” was to take Whitman’s poetry to the “unscholarly Brazilian reader”, which led to another “aspect” of this translation: the re-distribution of the whitmanian verses into shorter segments or parts (p.141). Finally, the translator leaves an unanswered question to the reader: whether Whitman’s poetry was intimately linked to the form of his verses. According to what we have presented before, the form of the poems was definitely linked to its content, because that was one of Whitman’s point about creating a new form for the new poetry portraying a new world. A quick example of his work can be seen in the following passage from section 1 of “Salut au Monde”, which will be compared to ours just by placing them one after the other for a visual analysis (the alliterations of “gliDing wonDers” and “SightS and SoundS” are the key elements in this part of the poem, re-created by us as “Prodígios Planantes” and “CenárioS e SonS” – the C sounds like S when it is followed by E and I in Portuguese , and all the words have the same meaning as the original -, which are neglected by Campos; in fact, the word “gliding” disappears from his translation, which breaks the whole phono-semantic sequence: the adjective is replaced by a noun: “desfile”, a word that means “parade”):
O take my hand, Walt Whitman!
Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds!
Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next!
Each answering all, each sharing the earth with all.
GEIR CAMPOS:
Segure minha mão, Walt Whitman!
Esse desfile de maravilhas!
Essas vistas e sons!
Esses elos unidos infinitos
cada qual enganchado no seguinte,
cada qual respondendo aos outros todos,
cada terra com todos partilhando a terra.
OUR RE-CREATION:
Oh segura minha mão Walt Whitman!
Que prodígios planantes! que cenários e sons!
Que infindos elos unidos, cada um ligado ao seguinte,
Cada um bastando a todos, cada um partilhando a terra com todos.
After that, there is another edition by Imago Editora (2000), a literal translation of “Song of Myself” done by André Cardoso. It is a bilingual edition, with a very careful translation, an honest work, without any pretentiousness, yet, a very useful one to attentive (or inattentive) readers, for its fidelity of meaning. Then, there is a bilingual publication by Plano Editora, another selection of poems translated by Ramsés Ramos (2001). It is a literal translation, or almost that. There are changes that make us think it is not so literal. For example, let us compare the last poem from “Children of Adam”, “As Adam Early in the Morning”, which shows that the translator inserted a word not present in the original, “veredas”, which means “paths / ways”, or a green forest in a desert-like region, when the original only means a leafy recess, a cottage, or a retreat; also, there is a change in the third line, which begins in Portuguese with the word “quando” (when), which does not exist in English, and by doing so the translator eliminated the imperative tone of the passage, followed by the inclusion of the expression “por favor” (please). Adam in the poem is self-reliant, he is not begging, he is commanding, because he knows he is the father of humanity, the first man made in the image of God, which is kept in our own re-creation of this piece:
As Adam early in the morning,
Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep,
Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass;
Be not afraid of my body.
RAMOS:
Feito Adão de manhãzinha
Abrindo veredas refrescado pelo sono,
Quando eu passar, por favor, ouça, venha,
Toque-me, pouse a palma da mão em meu corpo
- não tenha medo do meu corpo (2001, p.89)
OUR RE-CREATION:
Feito Adão de manhã cedo,
Saindo do abrigo refeito com o sono,
Vê-me onde passo, ouve minha voz, aproxima,
Toca-me, toca a palma de tua mão em meu corpo quando passo,
Não tenhas medo de meu corpo. (SARAIVA, p.76)
Apart from these, there is another bilingual edition, this time a translation of the 1855 Leaves of Grass published by Iluminuras (2005), whose translator is Rodrigo Garcia Lopes, who is also a poet, journalist, and composer. This edition contains everything from the original edition: the preface, the twelve poems accompanied by notes to the poems, a postface, and bibliography. In the postface, the translator gives detailed historical, economic, social and literary information on the United States of the nineteenth century, and discusses Whitman’s “basic procedures” of writing, such as borrowing words from other languages, parallelism, free verse, catalogues. In short, it is a good homage to Whitman. We shall also quote a passage to compare to our own work, from what is now section 5:
Loafe with me on the grass … . loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want …. not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.
LOPES:
Vadie na relva comigo …. Solte o nó da garganta,
Nada de palavras música rima alguma …. nem bons-costumes ou sermões, nem mesmo os melhores,
Só quero sua calma, o zunzum de sua voz valvulada. (p.49)
OUR RE-CREATION:
Vagueia comigo na relva …. solta a trava da garganta,
Nem palavras, nem música ou rima quero …. nem hábito ou palestra, nem mesmo os melhores,
Somente o sossego me agrada, o rumor de tua voz valvulada.
(SARAIVA, p.12)
In this passage, the first and third verses are, poetically speaking, the most beautiful, because they are based on rhythm and repetition of sounds that make them penetrate our ears smoothly. The relation between “Loafe” and “grass” is re-enacted, in our re-creation, with the combination of the V and G sounds in “Vagueia comigo na relva”, although in our vernacular we lose the F (unvoiced sound), we gain the V (voiced version of the same sound). If the verse is whispered, the V’s become F’s. Then, there is the L from “relva”, to compensate for the lack of it in “Vagueia”. In the second hemistich of the line (as speakers of Portuguese, we can not escape our natural ear, which apprehends this line as two verses of six metrical syllables each), the link is between “loose”, “stop” and “throat”, re-designed in “solta a trava da garganta”. The “sol-” from “solta” re-constitutes “loose” anagrammatically. “Trava”, which is the stopping element in the throat, carries the T, a stop sound (compare the sounds of “lot of” and “both of”; the TH is a continuant sound, because the sound continues, while T really stops). This T sound appears only at the end of “garganta”, fading away, as it does in “throat”. We can see that Lopes’s translation is not concerned about these aspects of poetry. He inverts the position of the persons in “Vadie na relva comigo” (which should read like “[you, my soul] loafe with me on the grass”, that is, we two together on the grass, with nothing between us; on the contrary, the grass will be the third element in this triad, receiving us two on her leafy lap), placing visually the grass between the poet and his soul. In the second part, “solte o nó da garganta” sounds like the opposite of what it means, with a falling note on “nó”, and not the ripping out of a stop that is blocking the poet’s soul from expressing itself through him. Besides, “solta” is the imperative form of the verb, whereas “solte” is the subjunctive form.
The third verse, again an alexandrine (a verse of twelve syllables), divided into two hemistiches, has wonderful alliterations: the L sounds in “Only the lull I like,” and the combination of H and V sounds in “the hum of your valvèd voice”. In Lopes’s version, almost all of this is lost. He manages to repeat the sounds S and Q/C in “só quero sua calma”. “Hum” indicates a low natural sound as from a bee or of singing without opening the lips, although it might indicate busy activity as well. In Portuguese “zunzum” is an onomatopoeic word that means “buzzing” and “rumor” (gossip). The rest is very similar in Portuguese: “voz valvulada”. In our work, we re-constructed the chain of L sounds through the use of S sounds: “Somente o sossego me agrada”, and the K from like is re-issued in the G sounds (K is voiceless and G is voiced, which is the only difference between them). For the second part, we chose the word “rumor”, which means the noise made by things moving but also voices murmuring, which is why we have chosen this one. We preferred “rumor” because it is the sound of voices murmuring and the R sounds like the H in English, keeping the same sequence of sounds of the original: “o rumor de tua voz valvulada”.
Finally, there is a popular edition by Martin Claret publishing house of the complete text of the Leaves (Folhas de Relva, 2005), with an introduction by Luciano Alves Meira, the translator. Meira comments briefly on Whitman and the book, but nothing is said of the operation of bringing the whole Leaves of Grass into Portuguese, which must have been a tremendous and long work. Nevertheless, in order to have an idea of what was done, we shall again compare his work to ours. Placing the texts side by side might enable us to figure out its workings. We will analyze the first part of section 22 of “Song of Myself”:
You sea! I resign myself to you also—I guess what you mean;
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me,
We must have a turn together—I undress—hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet—I can repay you.
MEIRA:
Tu, ó mar! Eu também me entrego a ti – adivinho o que queres dizer,
Vejo da praia teus dedos deformados que me convidam,
Creio que recusas retornar sem antes me sentir,
Precisamos juntos dar uma volta, eu me dispo, me apresso para fora da vista da terra,
Amortece-me suavemente, embala-me em encapelado adormecimento,
Espirra-me tua umidade amorosa, eu posso te recompensar. (p.69)
OUR RE-CREATION:
Tu mar! Me entrego a ti também – entendo teu sentido,
Contemplo da praia teus curvos dedos convidativos,
Creio que te recusas a recuar sem me sentir,
Devíamos sair juntos, dispo-me, corro pra longe dos olhos da terra,
Me acolhe suave, me embala em ondulante modorra,
Borrifa-me com amorosa umidade, posso te recompensar.
(SARAIVA, p.26)
The most striking difference between the two texts in Portuguese is that Meira’s has more words than ours. Sometimes too many words (“que me convidam” for “inviting”) or too long words (“encapelado adormecimento” has more syllables than our “ondulante modorra”). As Whitman’s verses are direct and precise in depicting the poet talking to the sea, both in meaning and in grammar, the idea is to be as precise as possible in our language, considering that the words in our vernacular have more syllables than in English. This should be a reason to make us look for the shortest words always. Our choice of words shows that even in such situations, there is something we can do to make the poem as efficient as it is in the original. In this sense we can say that this passage is simple, given the choice of words and the sentence structures presented. On the other hand, the content is intense and sensual, it is a romantic scene: an offering and surrender. In verses like these, which are difficult to re-create because of their intense emotional discharge, we must try to do what the author did: describe everything as accurately as possible. Like Whitman, who worked and re-worked his verses to find the form he wanted them to have[3], we have to re-work the lines time and again, so that we may achieve the best poetic product. We believe that segments like “entendo teu sentido”, “Contemplo da praia”, “recusas a recuar”, “me embala em ondulante modorra” and “Borrifa-me com amorosa umidade” are good solutions to the challenges faced by us here.
[1] In the first section of the “Introduction to Walt Whitman, Poemas, by Álvaro Armando Vasseur”, by Matt Cohen and Rachel Price, in which the authors discuss the presence of Whitman in Latin America and Spain, they state that “Only with Vasseur’s […] 1912 translation did Whitman become available and important to generations of Latin American poets, from the residual modernistas to the region’s major twentieth-century figures, including Peruvian vanguardist César Vallejo, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and the Argentine Jorge Luís Borges.” As mentioned before, the text of the Spanish edition is available at <http://www.whitmanarchive.org/index.html>. Accessed on May 22, 2007.
[2] “Uma Saudação de Natal”
De um Grupo-Estelar do Norte a um do Sul. 1889-90.
BEM-VINDO, irmão brasileiro-teu amplo posto está pronto;
Esta mão carinhosa–um sorriso do Norte–uma instantânea saudação solar!
(Deixa o futuro cuidar de si mesmo, onde ele revela seus obstáculos, barreiras,
Os nossos, os nossos a pontada atual, a meta democrática, a aprovação e a fé;)
A ti hoje nosso braço estendido, nosso pescoço volvente–a ti nosso olho expectante,
Tu livre de grupo! tu brilhante lustroso! tu aprendendo bem,
A verdadeira lição da luz de uma nação no céu,
(Mais luzente do que a Cruz, mais do que a Coroa,)
A altura para ser a humanidade soberba. (SARAIVA, 1995, p.5)
(The Library of Congress records this historical fact, which is available at: <http://international.loc.gov/intldl/brhtml/br-1/br-1-6-2.html#track2>; accessed on May 22, 2007.)
[3] In their introduction to Leaves of Grass and other writings (WHITMAN, 2002, p. xliii), Bradley and Blodgett assert, about Whitman’s uncollected poems included in this edition, that the poet “[…] wrote with such abundance that he knew selection to be an unceasing problem, as it is indeed that of any artist, but with him a particularly pressing one, for he had a gradually developing schema within which to direct his essential purpose—to celebrate the individual (himself as symbol), the nation, and his intuition of final things. To conform to this purpose, he had worked out through the years, as we have seen, a structure that was essentially complete by 1881. To this he adhered faithfully, but he had much left over […]. It is a great mistake to think of Whitman as un uncritical genius whose prodigality led him into wastefulness.” A few pages later (p. xlvi), they politely refer to the American poet William Carlos William (1883-1963) as having been “affected by inadequate knowledge” when the latter said that Whitman only knew how to give birth to poems and send them to the world, thus having no capacity to work on their form.
