6 REFERENCES
REFERENCES
ALI, Manuel Said. Versificação Portuguesa. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2006.
ALLEN, Gay W. The Solitary Singer: a critical biography of Walt Whitman. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955.
5 CONCLUSION (Part 21)
5 CONCLUSION (Part 21)
From “The Sleepers” we bring the passage that is mentioned in section 2.5.2, which depicts a swimmer’s death by sea water. As we have explained in that section, Whitman was a swimmer himself, and this scene portrays the death of a swimmer that is similar to the death of Carpus in the myth when competing with his friend Calamus, who died shortly after this event (2.5.1). As Whitman saw himself in everyone, it could be argued that the swimmer described in the scene is also a manifestation or projection of his own self, since the swimmer in the passage below is big, like him, and middle-aged. Although Whitman was thirty-seven years old at that time (“The Sleepers” was part of the 1855 edition, in which the poet sings in part 1 of “Song of Myself”: “I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin”), he was prematurely aged enough to look forty-five. As for the poem, it describes Whitman’s vision in his dream, in which he can see the dreams of the other dreamers. However, he also wanders during the day in the light. He is conscious of light and dark, life and death, and is content with both. He always accepts everything and everybody and excludes nothing.
3.7 Leaves of Grass in Brazil
3.7 Leaves of Grass in Brazil
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”.
2.2 Brazilian editions of Leaves of Grass
2.2 Brazilian editions of Leaves of Grass
Compared to what happened in other nations, the Leaves has a short and small history in Brazil. The oldest edition is the famous Folhas das Folhas de Relva (Leaves from Leaves of Grass), a collection of poems and fragments translated by Geir Campos, published by Editora Brasiliense in 1983 (9th reprint in 2002; actually, the original edition was published by Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1964). After that, there is another edition by Imago Editora (2000), a literal translation of “Song of Myself” performed by André Cardoso. It is a bilingual edition, with a very careful translation, an honest work, without any pretentiousness. It is a very useful one to attentive (or inattentive) readers, for its fidelity to 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. 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 and the twelve poems, which are 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, and catalogues. In short, it is a good homage to Whitman. 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 effort.
