惠特曼(1819～1892年)
Whitman, Walt(er)
美国诗人、新闻工作者和随笔作家，生於长岛一木匠家庭。只受过五年初级教育，担任过许多工作，其中包括了撰写和编辑刊物。其诗集《草叶集》是美国文学史上的里程碑，第一版发表於1855年，虽然赞誉者不多，但深得爱默生赞扬。惠特曼通过诗歌敦促美国公民要心胸开阔，争取成为政治上自由解放，身心同时发达的新民族。《草叶集》後来又陆续出版修订本，并收录其新的诗文。惠特曼宣扬肉体与性爱的美妙，声称他的诗歌风格新颖，充满活力，是一代诗人的先驱。1861年南北战争爆发後，曾去前线找他负伤的弟弟。後来在华盛顿供职，利用业余时间访问伤病员。1865年先後发表《桴鼓集》（Drum Taps）及其续集。他不再像内战开始时那样满腔热情、慷慨激昂地歌颂年轻人参军入伍，而是写他认识战争真实情况後的困扰不安。《桴鼓集续集》中收有哀悼林肯的出色挽歌〈最近紫丁香在庭院里开放的时候〉。1871年出版的杂文集《民主的远景》表明南北战争对惠特曼的世界观有很大影响。他对20世纪的影响从诗人聂鲁达、佩索阿和金斯堡各种不同的诗作中可看出。
English version：
1819～1892年
Whitman, Walt(er)
U.S. poet, journalist, and essayist. Born in West Hills, Long Island, N.Y., Whitman lived in Brooklyn as a boy and left school at 12. He went on to hold a great variety of jobs, including writing and editing for periodicals. His revolutionary poetry dealt with extremely private experiences (including sexuality) while celebrating the collective experience of an idealized democratic American life. His Leaves of Grass (first ed., 1855), revised and much expanded in successive editions that incorporated his subsequent poetry, was too frank and unconventional to win wide acceptance in its day, but was hailed by such figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson and exerted a strong influence on American and foreign literature. Written without rhyme or traditional meter, such poems as “I Sing the Body Electric” and “Song of Myself” assert the beauty of the human body, physical health, and sexuality; later editions included “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” and the elegies on Abraham Lincoln “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.” Whitman served as a volunteer in Washington hospitals during the Civil War. The prose Democratic Vistas (1871) and Specimen Days & Collect (1882-83) drew on his wartime experiences and subsequent reflections. His powerful influence in the 20th century can be seen in poets as diverse as Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa, and Allen Ginsberg.