The reception of Walt Whitman has been a global phenomenon. This book focuses on the Russian and Soviet uses of the poet and shows their central role in the construction of a revolutionary and internationalist icon. 

List of illustrationsPermissionsNote on transliteration, names and translationsAcknowledgementsForewordIntroductionChapter 1. Whitman as a primitive (1880s–1910s)1. A neo-wanderer2. “Striking up for a New World”The Adamic WhitmanThe Greek Whitman3. The barbarian The Germanic WhitmanAgainst “Latin” sclerosis4. Westward: another direction for the quest of the primitive in Russia5. Appropriation and separationTransatlantic barbarians: Whitman and VerhaerenVolte-facesChapter 2. The Futurist poet (1910s–1920s)1. The poetry of modern chaosPoet of the metropolisA rebel against hierarchy2. A precursor of Futurism A “propeller” of Western avant-gardesKorney Chukovsky’s “first real Futurist”3. Whitman and (post-) Russian Futurist poetry Velimir Khlebnikov: from circumspection to kinshipVladimir Mayakovsky: from anxiety of influence to anxiety of impotencePost-imperial Whitman (the Baltic states and Ukraine)Chapter 3. Whitman the prophet (1880s–1930s)1. The prophet of the body“I believe in the flesh and the appetites”: the anti-Victorian WhitmanThe passion of the body (Konstantin Balmont)Yiddish poets and the female body2. The poet as “kosmos”The prophet’s heart as a cosmos (Morris Rosenfeld)Cosmic consciousness (Richard Maurice Bucke)A “chronic mystical perception” (William James)From the Milky Way to Russian iconostasis (Balmont and Grigoriev)3. The seer and the guideNew American and British churchesThe Russian prorokThe prophet of the Promised LandChapter 4. From democrat to socialist (1880s–1919)Foreword: the impact of the British editions1. “The institution of the dear love of comrades”Whitman and British ethical socialismThe transatlantic socialist fellowshipContinental European Whitmanites2. The Russian democratSelected poems, from Whitman and not from WhitmanThe poetry of “struggle” versus the poetry of “future democracy”3. War and peace“An example of war poetry”Whitman the wound-dresserLove and reconciliationChapter 5. The extraordinary adventures of Walt Whitman in the land of the Bolsheviks (1918–1936)1. A wide circulation The 1920s: (re)-translating, (re)-publishing Whitman in RussianThe anthology of the revolution: highly selected poemsKorenizing WhitmanThe 1930s: becoming a classic 2. Whitmanian agitpropCelebrating the revolution with Whitman in 1918The Proletkult shows: “the first experiments of poetic theatre”The Whitman club: “to kiss, to work and to die Whitman’s way”Whitman and Soviet film: from kino-eye to montageChapter 6. Between the wars: a transatlantic fellow traveler (1919–1938)1. In Europe: the relative decline of the socialist WhitmanThe 1919 celebrationsFoiled European revolutions In the press: the Comintern of translatorsTurning “Salut au Monde!” into a parody2. In the US: Proletarian WhitmanTurning more partisanWhitman for the workers“Towards Proletarian Art”: Whitman among leftist intellectualsIn Yiddish: “Salut au Monde!” as a marching hymnWhitman and the Great Depression3. Supplementing Whitman’s America“The other America”Black Whitman, Red WhitmanCoda: Three American intermedial “Salut au Monde!”Chapter 7. Pioneers and Pionery: political transfers (1886–1944)1. Preamble: the British marches of the “Pioneers”2. Russian and Soviet PioneryFake PioneersAvant-garde PioneryFrom “frontline fighters” to pionery3. In the US: “O New Pioneers”Pionern: a velt fun marsh un arbetThe pioneers during the Great DepressionChapter 8. Anti-fascist Whitman (1936–1945)1. “Against war and fascism”“Spain 1873–1874,” Spain 1936–1939León Felipe: from “Song of Myself” to “Salut au Monde!”2. World War II: The Whitman pactA “wartime Whitman” in the USLooking for Whitman on the White SeaThe honor of poets (the French Resistance)1945: Singing the springChapter 9. “Salut au Monde!” across the Iron Curtain (1946–1956)1. “Salut au Monde!” a French comeback2. Saludo al mundo: from Neruda to MirPablo Neruda’s Let the Rail Splitter Awake Rendering unto Whitman what belongs to WhitmanPedro Mir’s Countersong to Walt Whitman3. The centennial of Leaves of Grass in 1955 New Soviet translations, critics and responsesThe World Peace Council and the 1955 celebrationsYevtushenko and Neruda: watermelons and strawberriesChapter 10. Back from the USSR (1955–1980s)1. A Soviet classic2. Pablo Neruda as Whitmanian go-between Nerudean repercussionsA final companion3. Whitman and the countercultureWalter Lowenfels: American and Soviet dialogsLawrence Ferlinghetti: Goodbye, comrade?Allen Ginsberg: Hello again, camerado!4. From transatlantic to transmediterranean: new pathsCodaAppendixBibliographyIndex of Walt Whitman's Poems and WorksIndex of Names

“Delphine Rumeau’s Comrade Whitman is a powerful contribution to global literary studies. Her detailed, incisive account of Whitman’s Russian and Soviet reception not only transforms our knowledge of Whitman and his legacy, but it also gives a new account of literary internationalism itself.”— Rebecca Beasley, University of Oxford"Although the innovative focus on Whitman in Russia and the Soviet Union may suggest otherwise, this is the first study that establishes Whitman as a truly global poet. A  landmark in Whitman research proving that some poetry can break all bounds."— Walter Grünzweig, TU Dortmund University and Andrássy Universität Budapest; author of Constructing The German Walt Whitman“Just as Walt Whitman’s poetry collection Leaves of Grass became a paradigmatic work of world literature, so, too, Delphine Rumeau’s study of its reception in Russia and among the international left over the century between the 1880s and the 1980s embodies the very best of contemporary world literature studies. Erudite and multilingual, profoundly historic and featuring excellent close readings, Comrade Whitman is a pleasure to read.”— Rossen Djagalov, New York University; author of From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third World (2020)“Whitman was a communist internationalist avant la lettre. His verse took the socialist world by storm at a time when the nascent Soviet Union was at the center of an internationalist utopian drive. In this superb book about translation, form, and the politics of the transnational left, Delphine Rumeau shows how the author of Leaves of Grass transforms the way that writers around the world, from Moscow to Madrid, thought about poetry.” — Amelia Glaser, University of California San Diego