These are words from a letter of the great American poet Walt Whitman, written in 1881 in response to a request from a publisher in St Petersburg to consent to the publication of a Russian translation of the poetry collection Leaves of Grass.
Here is an extract from Whitman’s reply, which he titled, A Letter to a Russian: «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, surpassed by no other races – the grand expanse of territorial limits and boundaries – the unformed 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. <…> And as my dearest dream is for an internationality of poems and poets binding the lands of the earth closer than all treaties or diplomacy…»
It is difficult to add anything to these lines, written by a classic of American literature almost a century and a half ago. Nevertheless, in order to prolong the responsible tone that Whitman once set, we have decided to dedicate a special issue of the Russian Mind magazine to Russia and the USA.
By Kirill Privalov
