Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday,... Leaves of Grass

The British Library

The British Library

11分鐘 · 

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Only 795 copies of the first edition were printed, of which it is estimated around 200 survive. This edition includes an earlier version of what is perhaps its most famous poem, ‘I Sing the Body Electric’. The poem was initially untitled and its opening line wasn’t added until 1867.
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Which is your favourite Whitman poem? #Whitman200

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Only 795 copies of the first edition were printed, of which it is estimated around 200 survive. This edition includes an earlier version of what is perhaps its most famous poem, ‘I Sing the Body Electric’. The poem was initially untitled and its opening line wasn’t added until 1867.
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Which is your favourite Whitman poem? #Whitman200

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. Wikipedia

Born: May 31, 1819, West Hills, New York, United States

Died: March 26, 1892, Camden, New Jersey, United States

Poems: Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself, O Captain! My Captain!, MORE

Awards: Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Illustration

Quotes

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

WHYY.ORG

For Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday, Philadelphia will ‘contain multitudes’

 Walt Whitman 全集，早已有中文本。長詩《草葉集》Leaves of Grass，也有幾個中文譯本。


“Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul…”
--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass preface (1855)




"I see great things in baseball. It's our game — the American game." 

題詞是惠特曼："Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, 

                             When I give I give myself." - Walt Whitman

1992年的美國總統選舉日，我與阿擘回他的母校加州大學UC Davis ，住在附近的民宿。由於是假日，靜得"不可思議"，天地悠悠，我在附近的草地走走.....

當年我在杜邦公司"服務"，當時已知公司要將我們整個事業部門"賣出" (也許4億美元)，有點傷心：因為我將台灣的工廠和市場單位"轉型"，不過，那只是戰爭中的一場地方戰役......所以決定休年假。.....

The United States presidential election of 1992 was the 52nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1992. There were three major candidates: Incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush; Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot.

A reminder: Walt Whitman really, really liked Election Day. Nothing could quicken the man’s pulse like a good showing at the polls.

一併請教您老人家，我今日讀 Whitman 的O Capaitain! My Captain! ，首段提到大船入港，用一句 the vessel "grim and daring" 。一般翻譯是威嚴勇敢，可是我查字典，grim 是 without hope 或unpleasant ， daring 是正確的。不高興或沒希望，形容這艘船似乎不是很搭，其他翻譯也差不多如此。不知何謂？

布   "

"O Captain! My Captain!"
by: Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

---

Walt Whitman 


"Two Rivulets" by Walt Whitman


Two Rivulets side by side,

Two blended, parallel, strolling tides,

Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey.


For the Eternal Ocean bound,

These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life,

Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by,

The Real and Ideal,


Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights,

(Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, Past.)


In You, whoe'er you are, my book perusing, 10

In I myself--in all the World--these ripples flow,

All, all, toward the mystic Ocean tending.


(O yearnful waves! the kisses of your lips!

Your breast so broad, with open arms, O firm, expanded shore!)

Poet Walt Whitman was born 199 years ago in West Hills, New York #OTD in 1819.

Vintage Books & Anchor Books

Poet Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, New York on this day in 1819.

“Exclusive emphasis on either the physical or the spiritual Whitman misses his determined intermingling of the two realms. His earliest notebook poem contained the lines, “I am the poet of the body / And I am the poet of the soul,” establishing at once the interpenetration and cross-fertilization between matter and spirit that is felt in virtually all his major poems. The earthly and the divine, the sensuous and the mystical, are never far from each other in his verse. His images flow rapidly from the minutiae of plant or animal life through parts of the human body to sweeping vistas of different times and places,”
―from WALT WHITMAN'S AMERICA: A Cultural Biography (1995) by David S. Reynolds, Winner of the Bancroft Prize and the Ambassador Book Award

In his poetry Walt Whitman set out to encompass all of America and in so doing heal its deepening divisions. This magisterial biography demonstrates the epic scale of his achievement, as well as the dreams and anxieties that impelled it, for it places the poet securely within the political and cultural context of his age. Combing through the full range of Whitman’s writing, David Reynolds shows how Whitman gathered inspiration from every stratum of nineteenth-century American life: the convulsions of slavery and depression; the raffish dandyism of the Bowery “b’hoys”; the exuberant rhetoric of actors, orators, and divines. We see how Whitman reconciled his own sexuality with contemporary social mores and how his energetic courtship of the public presaged the vogues of advertising and celebrity. Brilliantly researched, captivatingly told, Walt Whitman’s America is a triumphant work of scholarship that breathes new life into the biographical genre. READ more here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/walt-whitmans-america…/

Happy birthday Walt Whitman! Born today in New York in 1819. Here's D. Graham Burnett on the curious power of Whitman’s posthumous eyelids: https://buff.ly/2J4LlmM

Walt Whitman

Tomorrow we celebrate the 200th birthday of the American literary giant who sought to bring his rhythmic prose-poetry to the masses.

But before he was known as the “good gray poet,” Walt Whitman cut his teeth as an apprentice at a weekly newspaper, The Long Island Patriot, and he continued to work as a journalist for years after publishing the first edition of “Leaves of Grass.”

A portrait of Walt Whitman in 1870.  Library of Congress

As editor of The Brooklyn Daily Times in 1857, Whitman reported on the citywide gang war between the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys, and in editorials he was a sharp critic of Mayor Fernando Wood.

When he lived in Washington during the Civil War, he wrote of the wounded in military hospitals for several New York papers, including The Times.

As his success grew, Whitman’s bylines turned into headlines. And in the months leading up to his death, his health was front-page news.

Yale Alumni Magazine

Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman’s birth. The Beinecke Library is marking the occasion with a pop-up exhibit of letters, manuscripts, and artifacts from its Whitman collection, including the author’s last pair of eyeglasses.

惠特曼的詩

新亞出版社 1972