" Leaves of Grass

Author: Walt Whitman, Chu Tunan, Li Yiguang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1987-02-01
Features: Since the first publication of Leaves of Grass, it has been 137 years. The author Walt Whitman has also 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 connected by life and death. As Whitman greets us in "Farewell!" at the end of the collection (Main Body): "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 eleven to support himself independently. He worked as a janitor in a law office and a doctor's clinic, later becoming an apprentice and compositor in a printing factory, a rural school teacher, a newspaper editor, and a contributor to 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, short stories, and poems. However, just as he was frequently manipulated 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 thirty in 1849 that he decisively abandoned political activities and resolved to dedicate himself to the literary cause. After several years of silent exploration, he published Leaves of Grass in 1855. In "A Backward Glance at My Own Road," Whitman discussed the background, motivation, and themes of writing Leaves of Grass when he said: "I have not won the recognition of my own time, so I turned to my beloved dreams for the future. This is to strive, in the form of literature or poetry, to firmly and clearly express and embody my physical, emotional, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic personality." He also said: "When my career and exploration were actively forming, (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 assure you, no 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." After thirty-seven years of relentless effort, it has been largely realized.