1. Introduction
1 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of our work is to render a considerable part of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in Portuguese, so that the Brazilian reader can have an idea of who the great American poet was and what his poems convey. It is also intended to provide some information on his influence on the following generation of writers. In order to do this, we have divided the central part of our research in three chapters: chapter 2, Criticism and Context, contains a short account of the publishing history of the Leaves in the United States and its Brazilian editions. It also presents a critical review of the authors who have helped us to better understand Whitman and the Leaves, as well as a critical analysis of one major symbol in the Leaves, the calamus, or sweet-flag. In chapter 3, Re-creating Leaves of Grass Into Portuguese; we describe our method of creative translation, which can also be referred to as re-creation, or poetic re-recreation, which is different from literal translation. This chapter also presents our mentors in this type of translation, a discussion on the poetic aspects of Whitman’s verse, some authors who are literarily connected to Whitman and some examples of poetic re-creation. Chapter 4 contains the poems and books which we have been re-creating since 2006. In chapter 5, the conclusion, we shall analyze the result of our work and assess if it has been fruitful. We will give now more details of this research, of Whitman, of Leaves of Grass and creative translation.
