_Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A., Dec. 20, '81._ DEAR SIR:--Your letter
asking definite endorsement to your translation of my "Leaves of Grass"
into Russian is just received, and I hasten to answer it. Most warmly
and willingly I consent to the translation, and waft a prayerful God
speed to the enterprise.
You Russians and we Americans! Our countries so distant, so unlike at
first glance--such a difference in social and political conditions,
and our respective methods of moral and practical development the
last hundred years;--and yet in certain features, and vastest ones, so
resembling each other. The variety of stock-elements and tongues, to
be resolutely fused in a common identity and union at all hazards--the
idea, perennial through the ages, that they both have their historic and
divine mission--the fervent element of manly friendship throughout
the whole people, surpass'd by no other races--the grand expanse of
territorial limits and boundaries--the unform'd and nebulous state of
many things, not yet permanently settled, but agreed on all hands to
be the preparations of an infinitely greater future--the fact that both
Peoples have their independent and leading positions to hold, keep, and
if necessary, fight for, against the rest of the world--the deathless
aspirations at the inmost centre of each great community, so vehement,
so mysterious, so abysmic--are certainly features you Russians and
we Americans possess in common. As my dearest dream is for an
internationality of poems and poets binding the lands of the earth
closer than all treaties and diplomacy--as the purpose beneath the rest
in my book is such hearty comradeship, for individuals to begin with,
and for all the nations of the earth as a result--how happy I should be
to get the hearing and emotional contact of the great Russian peoples.
To whom, now and here, (addressing you for Russia and Russians and
empowering you, should you see fit, to print the present letter, in your
book, as a preface,) I waft affectionate salutation from these shores,
in America's name.