[ I celebrate myself, and sing myself ]

1. [ I celebrate myself, and sing myself ] Walt Whitman 英一乙 高佳琪 65號

2. 關於作者 Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, Huntington on Long Island in New York, second of nine children born to Walter Whitman and Louisa (Van Velsor) Whitman. One of his siblings, born prior to him, did not make it past infancy. His most famous work is Leaves of Grass, which he continued to edit and revise until his death. A group of Civil War poems, included within Leaves of Grass, is often published as an independent collection under the name of Drum-Taps.

3. The first versions of "The Leaves of Grass" were self-published and poorly received. Several poems featured graphic depictions of the human body, enumerated in Whitman's innovative "cataloging" style, which contrasted with the reserved Puritan ethic of the period. Despite its revolutionary content and structure, subsequent editions of the book evoked critical indifference in the US literary establishment. Outside the US, the book was a world-wide sensation, especially in France, where Whitman's intense humanism influenced the naturalist revolution in French letters.

4. By 1865 Walt Whitman was world-famous, and Leaves of Grass had been accepted by a publishing house in the US. Though still considered an iconoclast and a literary outsider, the poet's status began to grow at home. During his final years, Whitman became a respected literary vanguard visited by young artists. Several photographs and paintings of Whitman with a large beard cultivated a "Christ-figure" mystique. Whitman did not invent American transcendentalism, but he had become its most famous exponent and was also associated with American mysticism. In the 20th century, young writers such as Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac rediscovered Whitman and reinterpreted his literary festo for younger audiences.

8. I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 我讚揚自我，歌唱自我， And what I assume you shall assume, 我所採納的，你也得採納， For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 因為屬於我的每個原子，一樣的屬於你。

9. I loafe and invite my soul, 我遊蕩著，並邀請我的靈魂， I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. 我自在地斜倚、遊蕩，觀察一葉夏草。 My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, 我的舌頭，我血液中的每個原子，是此間的泥土和空氣所形成，

10. Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, 我生於此間，生我的父母一樣是生於此間的父母所生，他們的父母也一樣。 I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, 我，今年三十七歲，健康沒問題，從此開始， Hoping to cease not till death. 直到死亡死時永不歇止。

11. Creeds and schools in abeyance, 信條和學校暫時擱在一邊， Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, 退後一步，滿足於現在他們已給我的一切，但總不能把他們全遺忘 I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, 我心懷善惡，我不計後果，

12. Nature without check with original energy. 一任自然宣洩其原始的活力。

13. "Song of Myself" is a poem by Walt Whitman that was included in his book of poems Leaves of Grass. The poem appeared as the first of twelve untitled poems in the 1855 edition, and it is one of the best-known poems in the book. In the edition of 1856, Whitman titled it "Poem of Walt Whitman, an American." It was called "Song of Myself" in the 1881-82 edition.

14. The poem was divided into fifty-two numbered sections in the 1867 edition.There seems to a strong Transcendentalist influence on the poem, a theory somewhat validated by Ralph Waldo Emerson's enthusiastic letter praising the first edition of Leaves of Grass. And yet, in addition to this romanticism, the poem seems to anticipate a kind of realism that would only come to the forefront of United States literature after the American Civil War.

15. In this poem Whitman seems to put himself in the center, but the "self" of the poem's speaker - the "I" of the poem - should not be limited to or confused with the person of the historical Walt Whitman. This is an expansive persona, one that has exploded the conventional boundaries of the self.