All About Walt Whitman: Poetic Seeds In The Kosmos
I have created this page to share my thoughts and writings on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I have been studying and translating Whitman’s works into Portuguese for more than 20 years now. So, everything I have written about the American bard is on the web (check my Ph.D. dissertation in the categories for my translation theory and practice; and read the translated poems in Portuguese at Poesia de Whitman.
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 18)
5 CONCLUSION (Part 18)
Although the “Sea-Drift” cluster comprises wonderful poems, such as “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life,” as well as other beautiful poems, we have chosen one short poem and a stanza from another to include in this discussion. It does not mean that these poems are better than the others, but because they are great expressions of the poet in a very dense way, which is not typical of Whitman, who usually prefers longer and freer lines. The first, “Tears”, echoes the poet’s anxiety and loneliness at night. It is similar in tone and rhythm to another poem, “Trickle Drops”, from “Calamus,” included in section 3.5. Two Brazilian poets have inspired us in the re-creation of these poems: (João da) Cruz e Souza (1861-1898) and Augusto (de Carvalho Rodrigues) dos Anjos (1884-1914). The inspiration came from their well marked rhythm that has lingered in our memory, as well as their capacity for interweaving sounds in their poetry. The re-creation of the other poem quoted further on, “To the Man-of-War-Bird,” imposed itself by its strong and marked rhythm, a mix of decasyllables and alexandrines. The passage selected below has been translated in alexandrines, even the last line, which is a combination of a short verse of four syllables plus an alexandrine.
5 CONCLUSION (Part 17)
5 CONCLUSION (Part 17)
Now we give a quotation from part 1 of “A Broadway Pageant,” which is a poem to celebrate the parade down Broadway of the Japanese embassy in 1860, and to sing freedom and democracy in America. We have chosen this passage to show the beauty of these long lines (from part 1) that beat like a long and free percussion of the drums in a parade, and its mixing with the beating of the feet on the street and the voices from the crowds:
5 CONCLUSION (Part 2)
5 CONCLUSION (Part 2)
We shall now provide examples of poetic re-creations from Leaves of Grass so that the reader might judge our work for themselves. We will also add some comments on each poem, in order to situate the reader. For that purpose, we will also provide the original text, and when available, another translation of the same passage for comparison. We begin by quoting stanzas from the poem “Eidólons,” from “Inscriptions.” This is an example of poems in which Whitman uses regular meter. “Eidólons” is an image, a phantom, an appearance, to indicate that above or behind it the real being exists, the soul, our eternal reality. This first stanza below is made up of the following combination: a line of six syllables, then one of five plus one of six again, with a pause between them, then one of eight syllables with one of ten between parenthesis, and ending with one of four. The other verses naturally fell within the natural rhythms of our language, especially verses of six and ten syllables:
