“Leaves of Grass” de Walt Whitman

A Clear Midnight

THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,           

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,     

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.        

Night, sleep, and the stars.

(in Leaves of Grass de Walt Whitman)

Ao folhear o último catálogo da Bauman Rare Books – 85 Great Books | January 2014

85 Great Books | January 2014

encontrei um exemplar da rara primeira edição de Leaves of Grass de Walt Whitman.

WHITMAN, Walt – Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, New York, 1855. Quarto, original dark green cloth gilt, gilt-lettered title, blindstamped  leaf-and-vine designs, gilt-lettered spine, yellow endpapers. Housed in custom chemise and slipcase. A touch of foxing to portrait, far less than usual; slightest edge-wear to original cloth. Only 795 copies of this first edition were printed; this notoriously fragile book is exceedingly rare in the original cloth. This copy is one of the 262 copies in the rare state B binding, with gilt-lettered title and blindstamped triple-ruled borders, spine titled in gilt. A beautiful copy.

Em 1855, Walt Whitman publicou a expensas próprias um volume de 12 poemas, Leaves of Grass, em que ele começara a trabalhar muito provavelmente em 1847. Em 15 de Maio de 1855, Whitman registou o título Leaves of Grass no United States District Court, Southern District of New Jersey onde recebeu o seu copyright.

Whitman financiou, supervisionou e, mesmo em algumas partes, seleccionou pessoalmente os tipos para a composição desta escassa primeira edição de apenas 795 exemplares.

 

WHITMAN, Walt – Leaves of Grass

(Title page)

Foi criticado por causa da exaltação do corpo e amor sexual e também por causa da sua inovação na forma de versos — ou seja, no uso do verso livre em linhas de tempo rítmicos, com uma estrutura natural, "orgânica".

Com efeito, os poemas de Leaves of Grass não têm uma interligação ou sequência directa e cada um deles representa a celebração que Whitman faz da sua filosofia de vida e da humanidade.

Com uma excepção, os poemas não rimam nem seguem as regras padrão para a métrica ou tamanho de linha.

Entre os poemas da colectânea estão: "Song of Myself", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking". Edições posteriores incluem a elegia de Whitman ao presidente assassinado Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd".

Trata-se de um belo exemplar desta importante e extremamente escassa primeira edição, na sua encadernação original em pano, de um dos mais importantes volumes de poesia americana.

Walt Whitman, age 37, frontispiece of the 1855 edition Leaves of Grass.

Steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison.

“In Whitman we have a democrat who set out to imagine the life of the average man in average circumstances changed into something grand and heroic… There has never been a more remarkable poem” (Callow).

“No one knows for certain how Whitman raised the money to pay for the first Leaves of Grass… Whitman had taken his manuscript to a couple of friends, the brothers James and Thomas Rome, who had a printing shop at the corner of Fulton and Cranberry Streets. Possibly the author had tried a commercial publisher first and had the book rejected. If so, he kept quiet about it. The Romes did print a few books but specialized in the printing of legal documents. Whitman, a proud and skilled printer, moved in on them to oversee the production of Leaves. They allowed him to set type himself whenever he felt like it. Ten pages or so were his own work. He had a routine and a special chair over in the corner… The inking was spotty and must have given Whitman some qualms, but he had no money to spare for anything better… The centerpiece of his strange book, in the ‘rough and ragged thicket of its pages,’ was a sustained poem of fifty-two sections called ‘Song of Myself… If Emerson is, in John Dewey’s words, the philosopher of democracy, then Whitman is indisputably its poet” (Callow, From Noon to Starry Night).

Frontispiece of the 1883 edition of Leaves of Grass.

Engraving, with facsimile signature and four line quote from ''Leaves of grass''

Espero com este apontamento vos ter conseguido atrair a atenção para a leitura deste belo livro de poemas.

Saudações bibliófilas.

Nota:

Leia-se a propósito das actividades editoriais de Walt Whitman: Whitman Making Books/BooksMaking Whitman: A Catalog and Commentary – Ed Folsom.