W. W.
I am prohibited from writing too much, and I must make this candid
statement of the situation serve for all my dear friends over there.
II
TO -- -- -- DRESDEN, SAXONY
_Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A., Dec. 20, '81._ DEAR SIR:--Your letter
asking definite endorsement to your translation of my "Leaves of
Grass" into Russian is just received, and I hasten to answer it.
Most warmly and willingly I consent to the translation, and waft a
prayerful God speed to the enterprise.
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, surpass'd by no other races--the grand expanse of
territorial limits and boundaries--the unform'd 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--the
deathless aspirations at the inmost centre of each great community,
so vehement, so mysterious, so abysmic--are certainly features you
Russians and we Americans possess in common.
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