5 CONCLUSION (Part 20)

From “Passage to India,” published in 1871, we bring two excerpts to illustrate what the true son of God, the poet, is singing: God’s purpose. This means that in this poem he is not singing the materials of his America or the earth, he is going beyond geography and culture since he has seen that the earth is to be all linked together, towards what is universal and eternal: the soul, and its divinity and connection with the Creator. He includes the great achievements of his time; however, he is sailing much farther than that, he is asking his soul to sail “the seas of God.”  As we have stated at the comment on “Salut au Monde!,” we have the feeling that this poem is a continuation of that one, but at another degree of awareness, passing from material, from what is seen and physical, to the immaterial, to the unseen and spiritual. I would not dare to say metaphysical because the poet himself wrote in a note that there is nothing philosophical about “Passage to India,” because it is focused on “evolution” (WHITMAN, 2002, p.345).

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WHITMAN:

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5 CONCLUSION (Part 19)

“Memories of President Lincoln” was composed in the weeks after Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, and was published together with Drum-Taps that same year. Everything that Whitman presents in the poem “When Lilacs…” actually took place: the “great star”, Venus, excessively low in the sky, the lilacs blooming at every dooryard, the bird singing, the processions throughout the United States, the coffin being taken to many cities, the cloud over the President after his second inauguration, as he appeared on the Capitol portico (seen or heard and recorded by Whitman), the atmosphere of fear. Everything was uncommonly strange during that month. In The Solitary Singer (1955, chapter VIII), Allen portrays this period in the life of Washington, Whitman and the Nation in great detail as well as Whitman does in the poem. As for our work in this section, we do not intend to present any passages from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d;” we only want to stress the extreme difficulty to re-create its title, which in Portuguese became too long: “Da Última Vez Que Lilases Floriram no Pátio.” However, it is one that mirrors the original, which is also made up of two sound/sense units. In English they are divided or separated by “in,” and in Portuguese by “Que,” which also begins the second part. We tried many variables, but it was very hard to find one that carried all the meaning and at the same time sounded well. As it is a sad and sweet elegy, it must be read in a smooth and calm tone. In this way, we may feel the sounds echoing in each other through the line. In this way, the title can sound very well in Portuguese, because it carries in itself the tearing apart, the grieving and the tiredness of the nation portrayed in the poem. On the other hand, we shall present two stanzas from “Oh Captain! My Captain!,” which is a very rare piece in Whitman’s poetry, mostly written in iambs (verses with short/unstressed syllables followed by long/stressed syllables), and dedicated to the same person addressed in “When Lilacs…” Naturally, we did the best to maintain the beating pulse and rhymes of the original, and, in comparison to it, we may say that the result is fairly good:

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WHITMAN:

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5 CONCLUSION (Part 15)

The next poem, “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night,” must be quoted in full, since it has only four lines. This short poem is what was left of the poem “Great Are the Myths” from the 1855 edition, which was excluded from Leaves of Grass in 1881. Though short, it is a beautiful poem that sounds very well in Portuguese with its graceful and peaceful acceptance of old age.

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WHITMAN:

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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!

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A Note On Poetic Translation

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INSCRIPTIONS, EPIGRAPHY, EIDOLON, CATALOGUES

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REVISIONS, PERCEPTION, MOVEMENT, CHANGE

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There has been much controversy (see Roy Harvey Pearce, “Whitman Justified: The Poet in 1860″, in Modern Critical Views, 1985) about the changes made by Whitman in Leaves of Grass during his life. His revisions, which are similar to the method of recomposition in performance by Greek bards, as noted by Nagy in his Pindar’s Homer, could be seen as a new edition of a book in modern times (what is done on paper today represents a new performance for a bard in ancient times). The revisions then can be taken into account for just what they are, attempts to find a better way to convey a message. This is a common practice for any writer. Every time we re-read what we write, we tend to seek a better word, better sound, better rhythm, the same way a translator does, always trying to reach perfection of expression. In the case of Whitman, we must have in mind that he never yielded to his critics, and never changed anything due to public opinion or just to have his book published. It took decades until a publishing house took over his works to make an official edition.

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SEARCHING FOR WHOLENESS, OR DIVINITY

The passage “Do I contradict myself? / Very well, then, I contradict myself. / I am large, I contain multitudes.”, from section 51 of “Song of Myself”, is a true picture of Whitman and the Leaves. For the author as well as the book contain multitudes. “Multitudes” means a great number of things or people, the masses, the populace, hosts, legions, armies, or even multiple points of view, as in the expression “a multitude of reasons”. A reader may be even puzzled by the Leaves for many years, feeling confused by not comprehending its messages, and considering himself unintelligent for not being able to capture the totality of the work or to grasp its open or hidden meanings.

However, when this reader finds words like: “Except for Dickinson (the only American poet comparable to him in magnitude), there is no other nineteenth-century poet as difficult and hermetic as Whitman [...]“, and “Only an elite can read Whitman, despite the poet’s insistence that he wrote for the people [...]“, written by Bloom (1985, p.3), he understands that he needs more than a superficial comprehension of the book to really walk down these leafy roads.

The poet was not easy to be understood; although he was acquainted with people of all ranks, he preferred to be with the common men, as he called himself “one of the roughs”(BLOOM, 1985, p.2), someone who enjoyed being with the common people on ferries and buses, as he truly confesses in this poem, “To the Prevailing Bards”, from “Uncollected Poems”:

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