Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

Martin, Robert K

Groff, David and Richard Berman, eds., Whitman's Men: Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers; Duane Michals, Salute, Walt Whitman [review]

Describes an 1887 etching by Charles Mielatz that inspired Whitman's "The Dismantled Ship.

Harned Jr., Mrs. Herbert S

ON THE BACK COVER: 
THE ORIGIN OF "THE DISMANTLED SHIP" 
The etching of a sailing vessel in dry dock that is reproduced on the back 
cover of this issue once hung in the dining room of Thomas Biggs Harned, 
one of Whitman's three literary executors. According to Harned family sto-
ries, when at dinner at the Harneds' home on one occasion, Whitman ad-
mired the etching, and afterwards he was inspired to write "The Dismantled 
Ship," first published in the New York Herald on February 23, 1888, and later 
added to his "Sands at Seventy" collection in November Boughs (1888) and to 
the Sands at Seventy "annex" in the 1891-92 printing of Leaves of Grass: 
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, 
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore, 
An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done, 
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and hawser'd tight, 
Lies rusting, mouldering. 
Whitman recalled the etching and commented on its significance while talking 
with another of his literary executors, Horace Traubel, on June 27, 1888. 
Discussing "the origin of the poem The Dismantled Ship," Whitman says, 
"Yes, it was suggested by the picture in Harned's parlor: that's me-that's my 
old hulk-laid up at last: no good any more-no good ... a fellow might get 
melancholy seeing himself in such a mirror-but I guess we can see through as 
well as in the mirrors when the test comes" (With Walt Whitman in Camden, 
1:390). 
The 13" x 21" etching is signed in pencil in the lower right-hand corner of 
the original mat, "Chas. W. Mielatz." Also, on the original mat-outside the 
etching itself-in the lower left-hand corner is a line drawing of a canoe/row-
boat, and centered just under the etching is neatly handwritten, "Copyright 
1887 by C. F. W. Mielatz." 
The etching is still hanging in the front hall of Dr. and Mrs. Herbert S. 
Harned, Jr., in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but ownership now has passed to 
their son-Thomas's great-grandson-Douglas Alan Harned of Cary, North 
Carolina. 
MRS. HERBERT S. HARNED, JR. 
37 


English

The Origin of "The Dismantled Ship"

Demonstrates the importance of an early page of Whitman's handwritten notes (currently in the University of Texas Humanities Research Center collection) by showing how it sheds light on a number of mysteries concerning Whitman's intentions for the 1855 edition of Leaves

Folsom, Ed

Walt Whitman's Working Notes for the First Edition of Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Summer 1998

Shusen, Liu

Thomas, M. Wynn

Ceniza, Sherry. Walt Whitman and Nineteenth-Century Women Reformers [review]

Introduces and provides a transcription of Whitman's previously unpublished "Glendale Notebook" and argues that its "absence from the Collected Writings calls into question the handling of the Feinberg-Whitman Collection" by earlier editors

Green, Charles B

"Missing Me One Place Search Another": Three Previously Unpublished Walt Whitman Notebooks

Walt Whitman: A Current Bibliography, Fall 1998

IN MEMORIAM: MILTON HINDUS 
Milton Hindus, whose essays appeared in the W&lt Whitman Review and W&lt 
Whitman Quarterly Review from the 1960s through the 1980s, died on May 
28, 1998. He was 81. The Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities Emeri-
tus at Brandeis University, Hindus was one of the thirteen original faculty 
members at Brandeis. He was a wide-ranging scholar whose critical, biographi-
cal, and textual works covered writers as diverse as Marcel Proust and F. Scott 
Fitzgerald, Louis-Ferdinand' CeIine and Charles Reznikoff. His book of po-
ems, A Broken Music Box, appeared in 1980, and his Essays Personal and Imper-
sonal appeared in 1988. A champion of Jewish writers, he published The Old 
East Side, an anthology of New York Jewish writing, in 1969. An active scholar 
to the end of his life-he died just after leaving the Goldfarb Library on 
Brandeis's campus in Waltham, Massachusetts-he published an edition of 
Reznikoff's selected letters just last year and was finishing work on the com-
plete letters. 
Milton Hindus's most important contributions to Whitman scholarship were 
two books he edited. The first, Leaves of Grass One Hundred ~ars After (Stanford 
University Press, 1955), brought together responses to and analyses ofWhitman 
by an impressive group of writers including William Carlos Williams and Ken-
neth Burke. The second book, W&ltWhitman:The Critical Heritage (Barnes and 
Noble, 1971), gathered for the first time many of the early reviews ofWhitman's 
work and documented his complex reception from the appearance of Leaves of 
Grass in 1855 on through the first two decades following the poet's death. 
Hindus was always fascinated by the evolving response of readers and writers 
to Whitman's work. As he wrote in the introduction to Leaves of Grass One 
Hundred ~ars After: "Whitman is nothing if not the precursor of things to 
come .... When the true · classic comes to justify him, it may be possible for 
some critic of the future to say ofWhitman what Quintilian once said ofEnnius: 
'Let us revere him as we revere the sacred groves, hallowed by antiquity, whose 
massive and venerable oak trees are not so remarkable for beauty as for the 
religious awe which they inspire.'" 
53 


In Memoriam: Milton Hindus

Liu Shusen,

ANNOUNCEMENTS 
IN MEMORIAM: ZHAO LUORI, 1912-1998 
Zhao Luori (Lucy Chen)-professor of English at Peking University, poet, 
and literary translator, whose rendition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass remains 
the only complete Chinese version done by a single translator-died on Janu-
ary 1, 1998, in Beijing, People's Republic of China. For the Whitman scholarly 
community in China and around the world, her death is an irreparable loss. 
Zhao Luori's prolific work as a translator over a sixty-year-long career in-
cluded Chinese versions of representative works ofT. S. Eliot, Ignazio Silone, 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, William Faukner, and Henry 
James. In 1937, when studying for her M.A. in English literature at Qsinghua 
University, Professor Zhao became famous overnight when her Chinese trans-
lation ofT. S. Eliot's The waste Land appeared. It was her first translation, and 
it introduced Eliot's literary work into a Chinese context. Nine years later, 
when the grateful Nobel Prize-winning poet met Professor Zhao and her hus-
band Professor Chen Mengjia at Harvard University, he presented her with 
inscribed copies of his Poems> 1909-1935 and The Four Quartets. At this meet-
ing, Eliot read parts of The Four Quartets and expressed his hope that Zhao 
would translate them into Chinese, and also that his Chinese translator would 
put her own Chinese poems into English, since he was interested in reading 
them and getting them published in Britain. Unfortunately, these dreams failed 
to materialize because of the situation Zhao Luori faced when she returned 
home in 1948. 
From 1944 to 1948, Zhao had studied at University of Chicago under R. S. 
Crane and other well-known scholars. When she received her Ph.D in 1948, 
Zhao returned to China, as her husband and father wished, and began her 
lifelong career as professor of English and American literature at Yenching 
University and Peking University. The influence of the Cold War as well as 
China's continuing political movements over the next few decades curbed the 
academic freedom and creativity of Chinese intellectuals and led to their per-
secution. Zhao Luori and her family were no exception. 
In 1955 the Chinese government organized a commission of scholars and 
officials into a cultural administration, which was in charge of selecting for-
eign literary authors and their works that were deemed worthy of translation 
into Chinese and of determining Chinese translators who were considered 
trustworthy to render specific works. When the commission decided in 1962 
that there should be a complete Chinese version of Leaves of Grass, Professor 
Zhao became the appointed translator. It took her three years to read all of 
Whitman's works and the voluminous criticism that could be found in librar-
ies in Beijing. But no sooner had she begun her translation than the Great 
Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) broke out. The anti-cultural, political tur-
moil brought the whole country into chaos. In 1966 Zhao's husband, a well-
51 
known archeologist and poet, could no longer stand the tortures to his body 
and soul, and he committed suicide. During those suffocating years, Zhao 
Luori suffered spiritually and physically but strove to endure like the "noise-
less patient spider" in Whitman's poem. It was impossible, however, for her to 
continue work on her Whitman translation. 
When the Great Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, the commission sug-
gested that Professor Zhao resume her translation, which she did in 1978. She 
was then sixty-six years old, weak in body but indomitable in spirit. In order to 
fulfill the assigned work she twice visited the United States in quest of neces-
sary materials and assistance from Whitman scholars, especially Gay Wilson 
Allen and James E. Miller, Jr. Twelve years of reading, translating, and revising 
finally made it possible for her complete Chinese version of Leaves of Grass to 
appear in 1991-without a doubt her crowning achievement in the field of 
literary translation. Her research-based translation ofWhitman's poems is char-
acterized by what she used to call "a style of literal translation"-that is, a 
comprehensive effort to make the Chinese version faithful to the original En-
glish text with regard to verbal meaning, connotation, rhythm, style, and even 
typographic form. Seven years after its appearance, her translation has won 
widespread praise for its faithfulness. Her achievements as a translator brought 
her numerous awards and prizes, including the "Professional Achievement 
Citation" at the centennial of the University of Chicago (1991), the "Award 
for Sino-American Cultural Exchange" (1994), and the "Rainbow Translation 
Prize" (1994). ' 
In the 1990s Zhao Luori decided it was important to take Whitman studies 
in China to an even higher level. In addition to publishing her own transla-
tions and articles on Whitman, she encouraged young people to study the 
American poet. Thanks to her help, a number of distinguished Whitman scholars 
such as David Kuebrich, Kenneth M. Price, James E . Miller, Jr., and Ed Folsom 
taught or lectured at Peking University, bringing new perspectives and infor-
mation. When Ed Folsom was invited to visit Peking University and two other 
universities in Beijing in October, 1997, Zhao Luori was in the hospital and 
unable to attend his lectures. Folsom visited her in the hospital, but she regret-
ted missing the lectures and, in her final days, was already beginning to plan 
for the next Whitman expert to be invited to China. The Whitman scholarly 
community, and the growing Chinese audience for the American poet, are 
lucky to have been served so well by this Chinese poet-professor, who, even at 
the age of eighty-five, continued to contribute energetically to the dissemina-
tion of Whitman's work. 
52 
-Liu Shusen 
Department of English, Peking University 
June 16, 1998 


In Memoriam: Zhao Luori, 1912-1998

A translation into English of Jorge Luis Borges' sonnet portraying Whitman on his deathbed

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