All about Walt Whitman

Dear readers,

my resumé page shows that I have been doing a

doctorate in poetic translation since 2005.

The good news is that I have finished it,

and got my Ph.D.

I have got an A with honors!

If you want to know what my research was about,

read a section (below) from my presentation to

the panel of examiners.

Kind regards,

Gentil

—

The focus of my work is on the re-creation of Walt Whitman‘s poetry into Portuguese in a creative way. Basically, it means that literal translation, or the transposition of a text, word for word, from one language into another, is definitely out of question. It might only happen by chance, when a verse naturally may find its way into our language without much re-working. The idea is to convey the meaning based on the re-creation of the poetic structure, the poetic-linguistic means that supports and transmits the affective-intellectual content of the poetry of the American bard. In other words, to combine in a single aesthetic act the conveyance of the semantic element, or the content, harmonized with its formal elements, which in poetry are meter, rhythm, rhyme, assonance and alliteration, in their endless manifestations, as well as the atmosphere, tone or diction of each passage. This term that I use to refer to this process, re-creation, which indicates a type of translation that goes beyond literal translation, was borrowed from my masters in this type of translation, the Brazilian Concretist poets: Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari. In English, I use this word with hyphen, “re-creation” (and its derivatives), due to the fact that “recreation” indicates only diversion, an activity that is performed for relaxation and pleasure, and not “creating again”.

Thus the specific aim of my research was to translate a considerable part of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass into Portuguese, so that the Brazilian reader can have an idea of who the great American poet was and what his poems conveyed. It is also intended to provide some information on his influence on the next generation of writers. In order to do this, I have divided the central part of my research into three chapters (chapter 1 is the introduction): 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 me to understand Whitman and the Leaves better, 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”, I describe my 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 my masters in this type of translation, a discussion on the poetic aspects of Whitman’s verse, some authors who are related to Whitman and some examples of poetic re-creation. Chapter 4 contains the poems and books which I have been re-creating since 2006. In chapter 5, the conclusion, I analyze the result of my work and assess if it has been fruitful. I will give now some more details of this research, of Whitman, of Leaves of Grass and creative translation.

As it can be seen in chapter 2, which I believe will help the reader to understand the whole matter, Leaves of Grass comprises the complete poetic works of Walt Whitman. The first edition was published by the poet in 1855, with only the title and a picture of Whitman on its cover. The 1855 edition contained the famous Preface plus twelve poems, which carried no titles either. Whitman’s name appeared only in the middle of the poem that is known today as “Song of Myself,” in the passage that later became section 24 (there were no subdivisions either in the first edition), in a verse that read: “Walt Whitman, one of the roughs, a kosmos,” as we can see in a Brazilian edition of the 1855 edition by Iluminuras publishing house. After a few changes over the years, Whitman finally arrived at the current and more poetic version of this line in 1881: “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son.” In subsequent editions, the poet gave titles to all the poems, and inscribed his name on the cover. The fact is that every new book or cluster of poems that he wrote, he added them to the already published book, keeping the same general title. Whitman did that from the 1856 second edition until the 1891-2 last or final edition, which became known as the “authorized” or “deathbed” edition, and which is the one that is used as the source of my creative translations.

Except for the absence of the poet’s name on the cover and of poem titles, the most striking literary fact after the release of the first edition was that, among many people whom Whitman sent copies of his book, the writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was the only person who personally answered him in writing, that is, by sending the poet the most famous letter in American literature, in which the poet-philosopher acknowledged Whitman’s poetic genius (Whitman answered Emerson’s letter in 1856, calling Emerson “Friend and Master”; WHITMAN, 1996, p.1350). Emerson, who was a great influence on Whitman, and would remain a friend for life, gave Whitman this “safe-conduct” into the literary world. In section 2.5.6 I provide more information on the connection between these two poets and how some Emersonian ideas on poetry and poets are assimilated into Leaves of Grass, especially Emerson’s concept of “Language as fossil poetry” and the poet as “namer”, which is linked to Whitman’s role as American Adam in his book “Children of Adam”. In the same section there is a discussion on how Whitman’s poetry is connected to William Blake’s at the spiritual level, and what there is of vision and prophecy in their writings. In section 3.4, where there is a discussion about catalogues, I also refer to religiousness, since the Bible is one of the sources of this type of writing.

Also included in chapter 2 is a review of the criticism that has been so important to me in researching Leaves and the poet. Authors such as Ezra Pound, Harold Bloom, Gay Wilson Allen, Henry S. Canby, Ed Folsom, D. H. Lawrence and Fernando Alegría have been tremendously helpful in broadening my view of Whitman. These and many others are featured in section 2.4, with emphasis on their specific contribution to my research. Then there is section 2.5, which examines the meaning and possible mythical origin of the use of calamus, reed or sweet-flag as a major symbol of manly attachment in Leaves, particularly in the “Calamus” cluster, in which it acquires a political meaning, representing comradeship, union (Calamus was a Greek mythological figure), and even nationality, which is an aspect that Whitman shares with the Romantics. By the way, whenever appropriate, I will point out what Whitman has in common with the Romantics and what aspects of Romanticism he rejected or surpassed. As a result of this approach to this literary movement, there will not be a specific section to discuss Romanticism in my dissertation. Moreover, I will examine other meanings and uses of the calamus or reed, such as musical instrument, pen, pipe and even as spice.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to the translatorial method, a study of poetic elements, such as rhythm and meter, and an examination of Whitman’s verse. My method of creative translation is defined at the beginning, in section 3.2, where I summarize the set of ideas that has guided me in my task. In short, I could describe my method as the reconstruction or re-configuring of the original text in the target language in a way that both the meaning and its poetic elements and linguistic properties are maintained, as well as its atmosphere and diction. Naturally, my presentation in chapter 3 is more extensive and detailed, and it shows how I have put this concept of translation together. There I also mention and quote my mentors in this field of activity, what I have learned from them and how I use this knowledge in my work. As I can not cite all the translators whose works have helped me in some way, I have decided to include in my research only the most immediately representative, to me, of what might be called today a Brazilian translation school. Although critics might complain that I have neglected many important scholars in this area, such as Paulo Rónai or Lawrence Flores Pereira, I have decided to narrow a little my focus for theoretical reasons. It does not mean that I am not aware of their work, especially Professor Pereira’s, whose translations of T. S. Eliot’s poems, Antigone (2006) and Hamlet (2007) are outstanding and have been a model to me. However, my choice of authors forces me to keep my attention on the ones I have chosen.

Thus, the poet translators whose concepts I have followed most closely in my research are Haroldo and Augusto de Campos  plus Décio Pignatari, who, together with the Campos brothers, started the Concrete Poetry movement in the 1950′s and renewed our poetry from then to the present. Ezra Pound, as their chief influence, is definitely part of the history of literary translation, or more specifically poetic translation, in the Western world and must be on any one’s curriculum (his books ABC of Reading and How to Read are real manuals for translators and poets). I also mention Odorico Mendes, who was revived by the Concrete poets, who were following Pound’s path of searching for the living parts of the culture in order to integrate it into the current literary movement. Actually, there are other translators who appear in my work, in sections 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9, in which I compare my re-creation of passages from Leaves of Grass and the works of other poets to their translations. In this case, I do not discuss their theoretical view of translation, only their practical results. In this sense, it is not appropriate to relate them to the Concrete poet-translators’ concepts and activities, particularly for the reason that the Concrete poets depart from a different idea of translation. As suggested by Pound, I have just compared results to verify what works best.

As for the poetic elements and Whitman’s verse, I refer in section 3.3 to what I have learned from Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Pound, especially about directness in language and poetic and linguistic correlations that exist between words in a text. When dealing specifically with verse, and in particular with Whitman’s verse, I study parallelism, enumeration, catalogues and meter, and the differences between their expression in English and Portuguese, due to the intrinsic linguistic properties of each language (section 3.4).  In section 3.5, I compare Whitman’s career and production as a man of letters to Oswald de Andrade’s, one of our most combative writers, including in this term its political sense. This is due to my view of Whitman as an author whose attitude and writings are closer to the kind of attitude towards nature, society and industrialization presented by Modernist poets than to most American and Brazilian poets of the nineteenth century. For this reason, I have included in this part of my research the contribution of Fernando Pessoa, speaking as his heteronym Álvaro de Campos, to the spread of Whitman’s reputation as a poet who has inspired many other poets and writers in many different countries. Still in section 3.5, I bring the word of Gilberto Freyre and Aléxis de Tocqueville to help furnish a portrait of the social and political situation in the United States during the years around the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, mainly from 1849 until the end of the American Civil War. This situation was important because it prompted a major shift in Whitman’s life and career, since he resigned politics in 1849, after many years of involvement in party politics, to dedicate his efforts to creating his poetic works.

After that, in section 3.6, I discuss Longfellow’s poetry, which is placed here as a counterpoint to Whitman’s, that is, as a voice that occurs simultaneously, but is independent in form and rhythm. Specifically, Longfellow represents traditional poetry, writing in poetic forms that have been used for centuries, while Whitman is the poet of current times, creating a type of poetry that mirrors the modern time in which he lives (Whitman wrote an article called “Old Poets” (1996, p.1276), in which he gives his view on American poetry of his time, and indicates the main poets: Longfellow, of course, Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, and Emerson). Longfellow was also the most popular poet of that time, he was respected by Whitman and even visited the poet in Camden in 1879, a fact that was remembered with pride by Whitman, who is known for his cultivation of many devoted friends (American and British, who helped him in his last years, when he was physically incapacitated, due to the illnesses caught during the War of Secession).

I have been reading, studying and translating Leaves of Grass for around twenty years now. During this time, I have been not only studying and translating poetry, but also developing this system of translation as well. My translatorial method, which I describe in chapter 3, has been applied to various poetic works. Thus, I have improved my translating skills and have practiced them on texts which can be defined as difficult, that is, attractive to a translator, as is stated in section 3.2. So, before tackling Whitman’s songs, I spent some time learning how to re-create poetry. Samples of this work are shown in sections 3.7, in which there are examples of re-creations from Leaves of Grass, which are compared to other translations published in Brazil. In section 3.8, I offer the reader instances of creative translations of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Whitman loved the Rubaiyat too), James Joyce’s and Emily Dickinson’s poetry, and in 3.9 there are more passages from Leaves of Grass. All these renderings are followed by comments or explanations on technical details or choice of words performed by me.

In chapter 4, the result of my efforts can be appreciated: the poems, re-created in Portuguese according to my idea of re-construction of content and form, of re-building the poetic elements that are the structure that carry the meanings. After I  accomplished the re-creation of three books that are part of the Leaves, “Song of Myself”, “Children of Adam” and “Calamus”, in my Master’s thesis, a task that was completed in 1995 and which is available at the UFRGS library, I resumed my work of bringing Whitman’s poetry into our language. I 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”; “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.”

Finally, in chapter 5, I analyze critically the re-created poems in our language, quoting passages, in order to verify whether I have achieved the desired results. I have also included comments on each book or poem, in order to contextualize them and help the readers a little. Apart from these five chapters, there is a reference section, with all the publications and authors that have contributed to my research and an annex with the text of “Origins of Attempted Secession”, since this document clarifies Whitman’s political view on the United States of his time and is mentioned in section 3.5.

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