The Body Poetic: Laforgue's Translations of Whitman. (2nd January 2016) - Bootle, Samuel Douglas
Abstract : This article explores Jules Laforgue's 1886 translations of a selection of poems from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and their connections with his broader oeuvre through a thematic lens — that of corporeality. Both poets give a prominent role to embodiment, but there are significant disparities between their representations of bodily experience. Whitman's treatment of sexuality is forthright, betraying the influence of contemporary scientific discourse, while Laforgue uses jocular periphrasis; Whitman tends to portray vigorously healthy bodies, while Laforgue's poetry is riddled with illness and weakness. These differences are tied to their disparate conceptions of their roles as poets. Whitman sees his creative project as inherently political, his aesthetics being founded on the metaphorical equivalence between body, text, and nation; Laforgue, on the other hand, rejects this political role, focusing his attention on the suffering of the individual body. In contrast to Whitman's expansiveness, then, Laforgue's poetic self remains essentially bounded.