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Säfsjö
8th July 1889.1
Dear old W.
Your postal card was already forwarded to me here in this little Swedish city the
4th and to day I received the great parcel with your
complete works. I thank you for your love and kindness. Mr. Traubel2 has read my letter to you, I presume. My essay on you and my
translation of "D. V."3 most surely have not run out in the
Sand! Fare ye well, dear old Walt. If we never saw each other in "the land of
living we shall see each other in the "land of ghosts!"
Truly yours
Rudolf Schmidt
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Correspondent:
The Danish writer Peter Carl
Rudolf Schmidt (1836–1899) was the editor of the idealist journal For Idé og Virkelighed ("For Idea and Reality") and
had translated Whitman's Democratic Vistas into Danish in
1874.
Notes
- 1. This postal card is
addressed: Walt Whitman, poet | Camden | New Jersey | United States of America.
It is postmarked: Camden, NJ | Jul | 20 | 6AM | 1889 Rec'd. There are two
additional postmarks from Safsjö, but neither are legible. [back]
- 2. Horace L. Traubel (1858–1919)
was an American essayist, poet, and magazine publisher. He is best remembered as
the literary executor, biographer, and self-fashioned "spirit child" of Walt
Whitman. During the late 1880s and until Whitman's death in 1892, Traubel visited
the poet virtually every day and took thorough notes of their conversations,
which he later transcribed and published in three large volumes entitled With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906, 1908, & 1914).
After his death, Traubel left behind enough manuscripts for six more volumes of
the series, the final two of which were published in 1996. For more on Traubel,
see Ed Folsom, "Traubel, Horace L. [1858–1919]," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]
- 3. Whitman's Democratic Vistas was first published in 1871 in New York by J.S. Redfield.
The volume was an eighty-four-page pamphlet based on three essays, "Democracy," "Personalism," and "Orbic Literature," all of which
Whitman intended to publish in the Galaxy magazine. Only "Democracy" and "Personalism" appeared in the magazine. For
more information on Democratic Vistas, see Arthur Wrobel, "Democratic Vistas [1871]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and
Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]