Leaves of Grass (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: Walt Whitman, Chu Tunan, Li Yangguang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1987-02-01
Features: Since the first edition of Leaves of Grass was published, it has been 137 years, and the author Walt Whitman has passed away exactly 100 years ago. In no other example in the history of world literature can a work and its author be so closely intertwined, breathing together and bound by life and death. As Whitman greeted us in "Farewell!" at the end of the collection (Main Sequence): "Comrade, this is not a book, / Whoever touches it touches a person." This person is the poet himself. Whitman lived about half a century after the independence of the United States, an era when the bourgeois republic was flourishing in the New World. He was born into a family of farmers and craftsmen in West, Huntington, Long Island, and left school at the age of 11 to earn a living independently. He first worked as a janitor in a law office and a doctor's clinic, then became an apprentice and compositor in a printing factory, and later taught in rural schools, edited newspapers, and wrote for local party newspapers. During his youth, he embraced democratic ideals and became a radical Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democrat, while also beginning to write, producing sentimental essays, novels, and poems. However, just as he was frequently exploited and suppressed in politics and within the local Democratic Party struggles, his literary creation remained stagnant in imitation for a long time, yielding little achievement. It was not until he was 30 in 1849 that he decisively changed course, withdrawing from political activities and determined to strive in the literary field. After years of silent exploration, he published Leaves of Grass in 1855. In "A Backward Glance Over Three Decades," Whitman discussed the background, motivation, and themes of writing Leaves of Grass: "I had not won the recognition of my time, so I turned to my beloved dreams of the future. This was to strive to express and present my physical, emotional, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic personality firmly and clearly in the form of literature or poetry." He also said, "When my career and exploration were actively taking shape, (how could I best express my special time and environment, America, democracy?) I saw that the mainstay and center providing the answer must be an individuality—this individuality, after much consideration and reflection, I cautiously concluded should be myself—I could not have been any other." To write about myself, to express my "special time and environment, America, democracy"—this is the theme of Leaves of Grass, and it was Whitman's original "dream." Through his relentless efforts over 37 years, it has been largely realized.