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Paris,
10, Rue Croyon
6 Janvier 18891
Dear Mr. Whitman,
I send you
the estimate of you I
had room to publish
last year in one of
our most important Reviews,
La Nouvelle Revue.2 Unfortunately
the essay is not complete;
I was obliged to shorten
it, as it is often the
case, when one writes
for periodicals, and I would
not myself encroach on
the space devoted to the loc.03737.002_large.jpg
work of other contributors;
but my second series
of English and American
poets will soon appear
in book form, and there
will I print all I
wrote first about you, to
the full extent.
Did you
hear a lady friend of
mine, Madame Blanc-Bentzon3
reviewed "Leaves of Grass"
in the Revue des Deux-Mondes4?
She did it ten or fifteen
years ago, I don't remember
exactly the date, and the
same book was also reviewed
four years ago by Madame
Léo Quesnel,5 in the Revue
Politique et Litteraire.6 Lately, a loc.03737.003_large.jpg
young writer, M. Francis Vielé–Griffin7 translated
Faces in a less known
periodical, La Revue indépendante;8
and I have been told
another young poet, who
died five years ago, M.
Jules Laforgue,9 translated,
I know not where, A Woman
Waits for me. I cannot
procure easily the essays
or translations; but for
that, I should have
forwarded them to you.
Believe me, Dear Mr. Whitman, your admirer
Gabriel Sarrazin
Paris,
10, Rue Croyon
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Correspondent:
Gabriel Sarrazin (1853–1935)
was a translator and poet from France who commented positively not only on
Whitman's work but also on Poe's. Whitman later corresponded with Sarrazin and
apparently liked the critic's work on Leaves of
Grass—Whitman even had Sarrazin's chapter on his book translated
twice. For more on Sarrazin, see Carmine Sarracino, "Sarrazin, Gabriel (1853–1935)," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. This letter is addressed:
Etats Unis d'Amerique | Walt Whitman, | Middle Street, | Camden, | New Jersey | U.S.A. It is postmarked: Paris 42
|[illegible] 7 | JANV | 89 | AV.
FRIEDLAND; New York | Jan 20 | 89 | Paid | H | All; Camden N. J. | Jan 21 | 6 AM
| 89 | Rec'd. [back]
- 2. Sarrazin is referring to his
essay "Poétes modernes de l'Amérique: Whitman," which was published in
La Nouvelle Revue 52 (May 1888), 164–84. Here,
Sarrazin explains to Whitman that while the essay had been abridged in the
journal, the excised portions would be restored when printed in La renaissance de la poésie anglaise. See Roger
Asselineau's article in Walt Whitman Review 5 (1959),
8–11. After receiving Sarrazin's letter, Whitman then asked William Sloane
Kennedy and Richard Maurice Bucke to make an abstract in English of Sarrazin's
essay (see Whitman's letter to Kennedy of January 22,
1889, and to Bucke of January 27, 1889).
Sarrazin's piece is reprinted in an English translation by Harrison S. Morris in
In Re Walt Whitman (1893, pp. 159–194). [back]
- 3. Thérèse Blanc
(1840–1907), under her psuedonym Thérèse Bentzon, was an author,
translator, and literary critic who is specifically noted for her expertise on
American literary works and her subsequent writings for the Revue de Deux Mondes (Karen Offen, Debating the
Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920 [Cambridge
University Press, 2018], 189–190). [back]
- 4. This article was published
in the June 1, 1872 issue, of the publication. [back]
- 5. As yet we have no information about
this person. [back]
- 6. In February of 1884, Quesnel
declared that the Leaves are untranslatable and that
Whitman was not enough of an artist to appeal to Quesnel's countrymen (P.
Mansell Jones, The Background of Modern French Poetry
[Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1951], 71). [back]
- 7. Francis Vielé
(1864–1937) was born in America and moved to Paris with his mother when
his parents divorced in 1870. He was a French symbolist poet and literary critic
known for creating controversy; for example, a slighting remark he made about
Catulle Mendès led to him being wounded in a duel in 1891 (Reinhard
Clifford Kuhn, The Return to Reality a Study of Francis
Vielé-Griffin [Geneva, Switzerland and Paris, France: Librairie E.
Droz and Librairie Minard, 1962]). [back]
- 8. This translation can be
found on pages 271–286 of Volume 9 of La Revue
indépendante de littérature et d'art published in October of
1888. [back]
- 9. 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]