Ivo Andrić’s Response to Walt Whitman

Abstract

AS WE APPROACH the 2019 bicentennial of Walt Whitman's birth, it is fitting to recall what Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric (1892-1975), the 1961 Nobel laureate in literature, wrote about Whitman almost century ago, in 1919.1 He was at the time one of four editors of the literary magazine Literary South [Knjizevnijug], which was published twice month in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia).2 The magazine ran for two years and featured texts in both Latin and Cyrillic script. In the very first issue (January 1, 1918), Andric published his translations of three of Whitman's poems (To The States, When I Peruse the Conquer'd Fame, and Chanting the Square Deific).3 Then, in the November 1918 issue, his translation of On the Beach at Night appeared. His interest in the American poet did not cease there, and the 27-year-old Andric published subsequent article commemorating the centenary of the poet's birth in the August 1919 issue of the magazine.4In this brief, seven-page essay, Andric provides not only then-mandatory biographical sketch of the poet but also weaves in astute literary criticism.5 Andric narrates the story of Whitman's life as if it were piece of art, connecting events in the poet's life to his work, making them inseparable. The fluency and ease of Andric's lines allow readers to absorb Whitman and his philosophy, and didactic voice pervades the text. This is why publishers of numerous editions of Leaves of Grass in Serbian have used Andric's article as preface.6Andric asserts this close connection between the poet's person and his words at the very beginning of the text: It is not the kind of poetry from which single word or line could be extracted, dissected, nor measured; it is work of lifetime and an expression of personality; what is important is the entirety. Andric goes on to compare Whitman's work to strong drink, thus establishing connection not only to Baudelaire, but to Nietzschean Cult of Dionysus as well.7Near the end of the article, Andric stresses the idea that Whitman is beyond all definitions, that he contains multitudes, and that he is a poet of the body and of the soul, poet of freedom, joy, struggle, energy, virgin land, and of hale, good, daring people, poet of democracy, love, and religion, poet of comradeship and of sacrifice, but also poet of vice and misfortune which he duly recognized. Andric argues that Whitman eludes aesthetic molds and goes far beyond such contemporaries as Emerson and Tennyson.Andric leaves the reader with the vision of Whitman as a rare, perfect, clairvoyant man, who left his followers words that would lead to the simple yet all-encompassing love that he had harbored in himself all his life. Throughout the text, the author lauds Whitman's poetry, arguing that its lines encompass greater cultural milieu, than simply that of the U.S. in the second half of the nineteenth century. As Andric wraps up the poet's biography, one particular sentence connects Whitman's lines to the hoped-for rejuvenation of Slavic nations: medicine and joy for us is this poetry, much like miraculous Japanese spring, it wishes to restore to humanity the delight of youth, and it is the refreshing scent of foreignness; there we rest long way from our somber Slavic sorrow.Whitman's words indeed have the power to cross national and linguistic borders, as Andric rightfully observes some three decades after the poet's death. While Andric stopped writing about and translating Whitman after his piece was published, the poet clearly had profound effect on his development into one of the most prominent Yugoslav literary figures of the twentieth century.What follows is my translation of Andric's 1919 essay, the first translation from the original Serbo-Croatian into English. I have kept Andric's casual shifting of verb tenses, his free-flowing syntax, and his occasional obfuscations.WaltWhitman (1819-1919): A Brief Recollection in Honor of the CentennialSo as to provide an image of Whitman's character and his poetry and to get sense of its value and significance, it is neither enough to apply common place literary standards nor to apply European aesthetic molds. …