R. Brisbane to Walt Whitman, 1 February 1887
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BRISBANE, R
see notes March 3d 1889
83 Bould St Michel
Paris
Feb 1st 1887
Dear Walt Whitman.
Your two postals came duly to hand—the last on the 2d of last month—but the letter there in announced has not come. It is now too late I presume to expect it:
I will say for Mr 
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Laforgue1 that he is glad of your permission to translate "Leaves of Grass" & that he expects to make of
it an interesting Volume2
We want to publish it with a preface in the shape of a biographical sketch. It would
be pleasant to have 
syr_kc.00003_large.jpg facts in your life not yet published: your youth, how you gave yourself on the
battlefield during the war, etc. Would you have the strength & the inclination
to furnish us such?
I am sorry to learn thro' the papers that you are permanently disabled physically. I
trust that the appearance of your poems 
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happy pecuniary result. In any event you have too many friends on both sides the
ocean ever to be forgotten.
As the interpreter of the little group here I am the bearer of many good words
Ever yours sincerely R. BrisbaneCorrespondent:
R. Brisbane was a French admirer of
Whitman and apparently a collaborator on a planned translation of Leaves of Grass into French.
Notes
- 1. Jules Laforgue (1860–1887) was a French free-verse poet born in Uruguay. Laforgue, whose work mixed symbolism with impressionism, became one of Whitman's most important supporters in France, and he translated thirty-four of Whitman's poems, published in La Vogue in 1886. Shortly after receiving Whitman's permission to translate Leaves of Grass as a whole in 1887, he died of tuberculosis. [back]
- 2. Horace Traubel asked Whitman about this project a few years later: "Did this scheme ever come to anything?" [Whitman] shook his head: "No: to nothing." Then he quietly chuckled: "But that's not surprising, not exceptional: my schemes never came to anything." "Then there were none of the pecuniary results Brisbane speaks of?" "Least of all, pecuniary results: does anything I do ever have pecuniary results? When I think of all the schemes—some of them mine, some of them from others—designed to establish for Leaves of Grass some plausible wordly estate, I am struck with amazement—almost consternation. George once said to me: 'Walt, hasn't the world made it plain to you that it'd rather not have your book?" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, March 3, 1889). [back]