Early Russian Interest in Walt Whitman’s Works

By Bogdan Horbal, Curator, Slavic and East European Collections
May 24, 2019
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Portrait of Walt Whitman

Portrait of Walt Whitman. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 437788

Two hundred years after Walt Whitman's birth, a new exhibition at the New York Public Library examines many of the individuals, beliefs, and experiences that shaped Whitman’s work while commenting on his literary legacy and continuing cultural impact. Walt Whitman: America's Poet also highlights Whitman's impact on foreign writers and literatures, including Russian authors.

Walt Whitman’s influence in 20th century Russia was huge. His Leaves of Grass was a constant bestseller while his other works had a major influence on many Russian poets. Initial interest in Whitman’s work developed slowly, in parallel with his rise in popularity in the United States. Leaves of Grass was noted in Russia only after its third edition was published in 1860. The prolific Russian novelist and short story writer Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) attempted a translation of Whitman’s poem "Beat! Beat! Drums!". Just like later translators of Whitman’s work, Turgenev showed admiration for the United States, a country he saw as a "fertile prairie… on whose horizon there burns dazzling dawn." The author put a good amount of effort into the translation but never finished it.

Photo of Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1158500

The year Turgenev died, coincidentally, a new review of Leaves of Grass appeared in Russia, penned by N. (P?) Popov, and printed in a monthly Zagranichnyi viestnik (March 1883). The identity of the reviewer is not clear, although he was described as a doctor. What is known is that this man was arrested for writing the review and the issue containing the review was the last edition of Zagranichnyi viestnik ever published; it was suspended by the authorities and never revived.

Perhaps this turn of events attracted attention abroad; the review was soon partially translated into English and published in The Critic (June 16, 1883). After praising the United States which "owe their prosperity not to some military genius, not to some statesman, not to any particular class, but to the free labor of free citizens at large," Popov turned his attention to Whitman, whom he regarded as "the only original and purely American poet and a patriot in the best sense of the word."

Popov specifically emphasized Whitman’s approach to man: "Everything in man is beautiful for Whitman: his intellect and his physique; his ideals, passions, and needs; his brain and his muscles; the soaring of his mind, the agitation of his heart, the movement of his body. His poems are a worship of man." Popov went on to describe several of Whitman’s poems and translated some of them.

Although the news of Whitman’s death in 1892 hit the pages of many Russian newspapers, it was still risky to translate his work. Russian symbolist poet and translator Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal’mont (1867-1942) started translating Whitman in 1903, with very poetic translations that strayed stylistically from the original. Bal’mont published some of Whitman’s poems during the revolution of 1905 but his work was confiscated and most copies were destroyed.

Also in 1905, Russian poet, writer, and literary critic Kornei Chukovskii (1882-1969) was taken to court for translating Whitman. Clearly not disturbed by this, a year later Chukovskii was at it again, writing and publishing an article "Russkaia Whitmaniana" which he opened with this paragraph:

"It's time for Whitman to become a Russian poet. Aren’t [Maurice] Maeterlinck, [Henrik] Ibsen, and [Émile] Verhaeren Russian? He is on his way to us - to our guestrooms, lecture halls, to our books. In our souls, he has been present firmly for a long time but in the books still only for a minute. It is necessary to prepare for him and first of all to clarify how he had made his way up to his Russian glory."

Chukovskii devoted his article to reviewing a few previous Russian pieces on Whitman. He focused on pointing out various factual mistakes in works by Russian publicist and belletrist Isaak Vladimirovich (Vul’fovich) Shklovskii (1864-1935), who published under the pseudonym Dioneo, and by writer, translator, and literary critic Zinaida Afanas’evna Vengerova (1867-1940).

Photo of Vladimir Mayakovskii

Vladimir Mayakovskii. NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1565330

In 1907, utilizing free verse, Chukovskii published Poet anarkhist-Uolt Uitman [Poet-Anarchist: Walt Whitman] which included his translations and biographical information. Through his works during the first decade of the 20th century, Chukovskii established Whitman at his high reputation in the Russian literary world. He also described the American poet’s influence on Russian poets, most notably futurists Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922) and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930). Although none of the Russian writers knew much English, Chukovskii claimed that Khlebnikov liked listening to Whitman’s poems declaimed in English. Khlebnikov's famous zoo poem, "O Garden of Animals!" (1910), is considered a homage to Whitman.

According to Chukovskii, Mayakovsky had an instinctive feel for Whitman’s rugged diction. Chukovskii’s opinion on how Whitman impacted Mayakovsky’s poetry was widely spread in both Western and Soviet scholarship. It was only in 1969 that Dale E. Peterson argued that "as for the 'Whitmanesque' in Mayakovsky, it does not go very deep. It is, indeed, little more than a false scent that has waylaid too many fine critics for too long."

Still, it is a fact that Chukovskii read his own translations of Whitman to Mayakovsky. Elena Evich has recently pointed out that "Mayakovsky at the beginning of his literary work creatively absorbed and reworked the poetry of Leaves of Grass. He was mainly interested in the role of Whitman as a destroyer of literary traditions and a creator of his own original principles of poetry." She also underlined that "we cannot speak of direct borrowings from and stylistic influences of Whitman's poetry."

In 1911, the same year Bal’mont published a translation of Leaves of Grass as Pobiegi travy, Chukovsky’s book of translations from Whitman was destroyed by court order. In many instances, what was forbidden before the revolution became the order of the day after the Communists took over Russia. M. Wynn Thomas, professor at the University of Wales at Swansea, noted that Whitman was admired by the Communists "as a heroic poet of true Soviet communism."

That tone was already set in 1919 when Chukovskii released Uot Uitmen: Poeziia gradushchei demokratii [Walt Whitman: The Poetry of the Forthcoming Democracy], published by the Petrograd’s Soviet of Workers and Red Deputies. Three years later, Bal’mont followed in Chukovsky’s steps publishing Revoliutsionnaia poeziia Evropy i Ameriki: Uitman [Revolutionary Poetry of Europe and America: Whitman].

Chukovsky’s translation of Leaves of Grass appeared in many (improved) editions in the Soviet Union (1922, 1923, 1931, 1935, 1955, 1966, 1969, and 1982), establishing Chukovskii as the leading Whitman scholar in the Soviet Union. The 1922 edition, published in 4,000 copies, already included a substantial essay "Whitman in Russian Literature", and Chukovskii's 1966 work was called Moi Uitmen:  ocherki o zhizni i tvorchestve [My Whitman: Essays on Life and Work]. Bal’mont is also considered a fine Russian essayist on Whitman and his insights largely complemented those of Chukovskii.

When M. Wynn Thomas was in Russia in the early 1990s he found it difficult to talk about Whitman because, in some respects, he was "compromised by the way in which the Communists had appropriated him." Still, in 2014, a bilingual edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in Russia.
 

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