"My Whitman" by Korney Chukovsky, summary

Korney Chukovsky’s book "My Whitman," published in 1966, is the culmination of more than half a century of translation and reflection on the legacy of the founder of modern American poetry. Chukovsky explores Walt Whitman through the lens of his seminal collection, "Leaves of Grass," combining a biographical essay, an analysis of his poetics, and the history of the poet’s reception in Russian culture. The book draws on the researcher’s personal reading experience, having purchased the first edition of his poems in 1901 at the port of Odessa, as well as an extensive collection of historical documents, letters, and contemporary testimonies.

Cosmic feeling and the laws of the universe

Chukovsky begins his study with an analysis of Whitman’s worldview, which was founded on the experience of the infinity of space and time. The poet saw every person and the smallest object against the backdrop of billions of years and the astronomical scale of the universe. This perception was shaped by the direct influence of the explosive growth of the natural sciences in the mid-19th century: celestial mechanics, geology, paleontology, and biochemistry.

In the poem "This Humus," the chemical cycle of matter in nature is reimagined as the triumph of life’s eternal renewal, where the earth transforms decay into new greenery. Whitman’s worldview blended materialist theories with the German philosophical idealism of Kant, Hegel, and Schelling, as well as the mystical teachings of ancient India.

The poet was convinced that every thing in the universe possesses an immortal soul. This led him to create a system of universal equality: a blade of grass was declared as beautiful as the course of the heavenly bodies, and the body was endowed with the same sanctity as the spirit.

Democracy, equality and the problem of personality

In Whitman’s poetry, democracy takes on a planetary scope and is presented as a continuous movement of successive generations of workers. The poet preached international brotherhood, arguing that selfless comradely friendship can unite nations more firmly than any diplomatic agreement. He sought to establish spiritual contact with all the inhabitants of the Earth, addressing his lines to future generations.

The principle of universal identity defined the composition of the poems, in which the author continually transformed himself into the people around him: a runaway slave overtaken by pursuit, a wounded firefighter, a grieving widow, or a street beggar. Chukovsky points to a paradox: seeing humanity as a gigantic ocean of identical drops, the poet proved incapable of depicting the unique individuality of each individual.

Even in his poem on Abraham Lincoln’s death, "When the Lilacs Bloomed in the Front Yard That Spring," the president’s image is devoid of specific portrait features, becoming a generalized requiem. To resolve this contradiction, Whitman advanced the principle of "personalism" and, in "Song of Myself," exalted his own persona as the collective image of a free man of the democratic era.

Urban Environment, Rebellion, and Poetic Innovation

The 1850s saw the rapid development of American industry and the emergence of a working class. Whitman was the first to introduce technical vocabulary into poetry, extolling machine tools, steam locomotives, telegraph cables, canals, and bridges. Along with the French poet Maxime Du Camp, he laid the foundations for urban poetry, celebrating the rhythm of the crowded streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The poems reflected the tense atmosphere on the eve of the American Civil War, echoing John Brown’s rebellion and Henry Thoreau’s treatise on civil disobedience. Yet, in practice, the poet himself remained a proponent of moderate reforms.

The new content required a break with old literary canons. The poet discarded traditional metrics, rhymes, and salon prettiness, making the verse muscular, rough, and close to colloquial speech. He boldly introduced physiological details, celebrating the health of the flesh in defiance of Puritan prohibitions.

Chukovsky disproves the myth of the poet’s spontaneous creativity by demonstrating the meticulous finishing of his texts through manuscripts. Whitman’s verse relied on biblical recitative, synonymous and antithetical parallelism, and lists of laconic everyday vignettes.

The poet’s life and the birth of a book

Walter Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in the village of West Hills on Long Island, to a poor carpenter’s family. From the age of eleven, he worked as a lawyer’s errand boy, then as an apprentice typesetter in a printing house, a teacher in rural schools, and an editor of local newspapers. Until the age of thirty-five, he led a carefree life, wandering the ocean coast, visiting New York opera houses, consorting with omnibus drivers, and writing imitative essays, poetry, and a commissioned anti-drinking novel, "Franklin Evans."

An internal revolution occurred in the mid-1850s, when, after traveling over 4,000 miles across the country, Whitman decided to create a national American epic. In July 1855, he personally typeset and published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in an edition of 800 copies, changing his name to the colloquial "Walt."

The book was met with harsh criticism in the press, with critic Rufus Griswold calling it filthy, and poet John Whittier burning the copy he’d received. The only major thinker to immediately recognize the book’s scope was Ralph Emerson, who sent the poet an enthusiastic letter. Later, widespread acclaim came from England, with Algernon Swinburne, William Rossetti, John Symonds, Edward Carpenter, and the writer Anne Gilchrist.

During the Civil War, Whitman went to the front to search for his wounded brother George and remained in Washington. For three years, he volunteered to care for wounded soldiers in military hospitals. Hard work and infections undermined his health. After the war, Secretary of the Interior James Harlan dismissed the poet from the department for an "obscene" book, sparking a wave of outrage and the publication of William O’Connor’s pamphlet "The Good Gray Poet."

In 1873, after suffering a stroke, Whitman settled in Camden, New Jersey. Despite his paralysis, he remained cheerful, giving lectures on Lincoln and receiving visitors, including Horace Traubel, who recorded his many conversations with the poet over the years. The poet died on March 26, 1892.

Journalistic legacy and controversy

Chukovsky examines Whitman’s relationship with the Transcendentalists in detail. Emerson and Thoreau highly valued his connection with nature, but Emerson spent two hours during a personal meeting in Boston, unsuccessfully persuading the author to exclude explicit poems from his "Children of Adam" cycle. Unlike the suburban thinkers, Whitman drew inspiration from the urban crowd and industrial development.

In his essay "Democratic Vistas" (1871), the poet documented the moral crisis of American society during the era of wealth: corruption, the cynicism of businessmen, and the decline of faith. He saw the salvation of democracy in the creation of a distinctive national literature capable of uniting the states and cultivating noble characters in workers and mothers.

In "Letter on Russia" (1881), intended for a failed Russian translation, Whitman pointed out the profound similarities between Russia and the United States. He highlighted the vastness of their territories, the diversity of their peoples, the yearning for heroic friendship, and the historical mission of both countries.

The Perception of Whitman in Russian Literature

The first review of the poet’s work in Russia appeared in 1861 in the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, where the collection of poems was mistaken for a novel. In 1872, Ivan Turgenev translated the poem "Beat, Beat, Drums!", a draft of which was discovered in a Paris archive only in 1966. Leo Tolstoy read the London edition of his poems in 1889, highlighting the works about universal love, the transience of fame, and independence of spirit, and recommended them for publication by Posrednik Publishing House.

Whitman’s poetry had a significant influence on the Russian Futurists. Velimir Khlebnikov wrote his poem "The Menagerie" under the direct influence of fragments of "Song of Myself." The young Vladimir Mayakovsky embraced Whitman’s pathos of destroying outdated literary canons, hyperbolic imagery, and the theme of poetic self-affirmation, which was reflected in his poems "A Cloud in Trousers" and "Man."

Soviet critics Anatoly Lunacharsky and Dmitry Mirsky noted Whitman’s poetry’s resonance with ideas of collectivism and brotherhood, as well as the realistic power of his artistic generalization. Maurice Mendelsohn’s 1966 study emphasized the folkloric origins and revolutionary democratic character of the American author’s poetry.

Results of scientific research

In his review of foreign literature, Chukovsky distinguishes between early myth-making biographers (Richard Beck, John Borrows, Henry Binns), who idealized the poet, and representatives of the mid-20th-century critical school. Scholars Roger Asselino, Gay Wilson Allen, Newton Arvin, and Hugh Fawcett have conducted scholarly research into the manuscripts, archives, and correspondence.

Research has shown that prior to the publication of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, Whitman’s literary endeavors were entirely mediocre and imitative. The poet himself constructed his own image as a sage of the people, aligning his life and appearance with his poetic manifesto. Over the course of ten editions during his lifetime, his verse evolved from a spontaneous flow to greater rhythmic order and harmony.