Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Letters
  3. Correspondence
  4. rlc.00016

Walt Whitman to Rudolf Schmidt, 13 October 1882

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to Rudolf Schmidt, 13 October 1882
  • Date: October 13, 1882
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: rlc.00016
  • Source: The Royal Library of Copenhagen. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

    Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson Nima Najafi Kianfar Stefan Schöberlein Nicole Gray
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to Rudolf Schmidt, 13 October 1882." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 24 April 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: rlc.00016.xml (TEI)
 rlc.00016.001.jpg Camden New Jersey U S America Oct:​ 13 '82​ Evn'g​

I send you by same mail with this my new prose vol: "Specimen Days"1—I wrote you some days since that I had rec'd​ your elegant little volume—Dr Bucke has also rec'd​ his2—I am well as usual—

Walt Whitman

do I address my letters right?

 rlc.00016.002.jpg

Notes

  • 1. Schmidt noted receipt of the book on November 3 and his desire to translate "The Death of Abraham Lincoln." [back]
  • 2. Richard Maurice Bucke mentioned receiving Schmidt's book in a letter to Whitman on October 11. In this letter he summed up his reactions to Specimen Days in a passage which Whitman marked with red ink: "As to S. D. it is a suitable finish up to your work, it is what we (those who know something of you) have been wanting for a long time and what the future will want still more and will prize far more even than we can prize it now—it is all on a low key (as it ought to be) no fine writing but plain prose giving the [illegible] just the insight that we wanted into your common every day life, and your ordinary every day manner of looking at things—I think you may now say that your work is done, I do not see any more for you to do at all events though perhaps you will see something, when you have had time to look about again a bit." [back]
Back to top