All about Walt Whitman

5 CONCLUSION

We must begin this chapter by remembering what we stated in section 3.2, where we declared that our purpose is to re-create some books and poems from Leaves of Grass into Portuguese according to our theory and practice of creative translation, which was exposed in that part of our research. After establishing our methodological approach to the texts, we defined the corpus that would be subject of it, as it can be seen below, a passage from section 2.3 (and repeated in section 3.7):

We have chosen the following books and poems to work on this time: “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”; “SEA-DRIFT” (“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”); and “Passage to India”. We intend to include more  poems in our project, such as: “A Song for Occupations”; “A Song of the Rolling Earth”; “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night”; “Birds of Passage”; “Memories of President Lincoln”; “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”; “Proud Music of the Storm”; “Prayer of Columbus” and “The Sleepers”.

Now we shall explain what happened to our proposition in the course of our studies, whether they have been realized and whether there were changes, and finally whether our dream has come true, that is, if we have been able to bring into our language a considerable amount of Whitman’s poetry in a reasonable poetic re-creation. First of all, by comparing the list above to the list of poems at the Table of Contents we can see that there have been changes. The first one is the order in which the poems appear at the Table of Contents, which is the order they appear in Leaves of Grass; naturally, we refer to the 1891-92 edition, also known as the “deathbed” edition. Thus, after “Song of the Redwood-Tree”, the correct order is: “A Song for Occupations,” “A Song of the Rolling Earth,” “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” “Birds of Passage,” “A Broadway Pageant,” “Sea-Drift,” “Memories of President Lincoln,” “Passage to India,” and “The Sleepers.” The second change is in the choice of poems. We have decided to include the complete “Sea-Drift” cluster, since it is a very important book in the poet’s life, where he confesses his desperation and faith in recovery (see section 2.5.2 for more information on these poems). Another reason for this is Bloom’s indication of Whitman’s six elegies mentioned in section 2.4, which include “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life.” For the same reason we have included “The Sleepers,” so that we pay homage to Bloom and provide the reader the opportunity to read all six elegies in Portuguese (“Song of Myself” was re-created for our Master’s thesis). In the same line of reasoning, as we have decided to re-create “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” we have chosen to translate the complete “Memories of President Lincoln,” so that we could all enjoy “Oh Captain, My Captain” and the other poems of this group as well.  As our work has increased a lot with these additions, we have decided to exclude for the present research these three poems: “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” “Proud Music of the Storm,” and “Prayer of Columbus.” Not other criterion was used for this exclusion except for availability of time, under the circumstances mentioned above.

However, there is still another fact to explain. Actually, we are very proud to say that we have translated complete sections of Leaves of Grass, especially because we have rendered into Portuguese the books and poems from “Inscriptions”, the first book of Leaves, up to “Sea-Drift,” which is why we have translated “A Broadway Pageant,” so that we could have all these poems fully in our language. After “Sea-Drift,” we have chosen to re-create “Memories of President Lincoln” and “The Sleepers” as a deed of gratitude to Bloom’s insights, and “Passage to India,” which we had already re-created before we had taken these decisions. As a matter of fact, we began  translating “Passage to India” soon after we had been awarded our Master’s degree, and it served as a bridge to our doctorate, as well as “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” whose revision served us as an incentive to continue this work. This is why both are part of this research.

From now on we will see in practice whether our method has worked: we will quote passages from the re-created texts in order to verify whether we have been able to re-construct the “original codification” of the poems into our vernacular, as we have stated in section 3.2.  We will take a sample from each book, cluster or poem re-created, so that we can have a general view of the work. Nevertheless, we advise our reader to pay attention to the following poems, as they are an exception in Whitman’s poetic production: “Eidólons,” from “Inscriptions;” “Pioneers! O Pioneers”, from “Birds of Passage;” “To the Man-of-War-Bird,” from “Sea-Drift,” and “O Captain! My Captain!,” from “Memories of President Lincoln.” These four poems are written in traditional meter and some lines are rhymed, furthermore, they show Whitman’s departing point, traditional versification, which he developed to arrive at his free verse. However, even in these poems Whitman does not follow totally exact patterns of verse, and the verses within the stanzas are varied in meter.

As we have showed in the last sections of chapter 3, we have also followed a similar development in our course of poetic study. We first learned and practiced traditional versification, and then moved on to free verse. Therefore, our poetic ability in translation is a development over past rhythms and meter, which is a kind of learning that is similar to Whitman’s own way of writing his poetry. To use Whitman’s expression on music, we saturated ourselves with all kinds of poetry in Portuguese, English and Spanish, as well as in translations from other languages, before attempting to free our ear from them and be free to create new combinations of verse. Thus, it is natural to find traces of regular verses mingled with free verse. Nonetheless, our main goal is always to find the best combination possible of sound and rhythm for each line or poetic unit, that is, a part of a line, according, of course, to the “original codification.” In this manner, we have followed Whitman’s particular diction or prosody, which, as we have pointed out in chapter 3, section 3.4, is varied and new, adjusted to what he wanted to convey. This resulted in a broader concept of rhythm, which points to the flow of verses in the poem as a whole, as they unfold, one after the other or even one out of the other, budding like flowers, and not only the specific combinations within each unit or group of words. Regarding this, many poems or parts of poems are better enjoyed as a complete composition and not as individual verses. Then, sometimes, it is not useful to analyze a poem bit by bit; it is better just to place them next to their original and compare one to the other as an entire picture. We will indicate in each case what the best course of action is. We will do this especially not to tire the reader, since there are three sections in chapter 3 dedicated to this kind of presentation and comparison.

Apart from these comments, we must add some grammatical ones: in English, when things, thoughts or feelings are described or expressed in a series and the last item is introduced with the use of “and,” it is separated from the others by a comma, which does not happen in Portuguese, in which the use of “and” is enough. So we have taken care to follow the patterns of grammar of our own language. In the case of coordinate clauses and phrases, particularly in clauses with a different subject, we use a comma after the coordinate conjunction “and” in Portuguese as well. Of course, when punctuation in the original text is used for purposes other than purely grammatical convention, or in a strange way, we have kept it the way it was printed: then it is not a mistake to find words beginning with capital letters in the middle of sentences, or a new phrase that starts with lower-case letters after an exclamation point. We have left these graphic arrangements the way they are. Of special notice is our choice of pronouns. We have decided to use the second person singular and plural (tu, vós) to translate you. This is the best way to avoid all misunderstandings with personal references caused by você, vocês in Portuguese, whose verbs follow the patterns of third person pronouns (ele, ela; eles, elas), especially because in our language there is an even worse problem: people use tu and você with verbs following the second and third persons interchangeably. This is colloquial usage, but it has become so common that its use has contaminated all means of spoken and written expression. Another point that must be made is about the use of subject pronouns. As the verbs in Portuguese already indicate the person who is speaking, it is in general a linguistic redundancy to use pronouns, especially in catalogues when the same pronoun is repeated throughout long stanzas. Even when the pronoun is “I”, we have avoided the repetition. However, we do not lose this cataloguing effect by excluding the pronouns, since there is the repetition of the verbs. On the other hand, we have kept the pronouns in the passages in which we have considered them necessary according to the context to emphasize the subject who is performing the action.

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