A vegetação como metáfora em três poemas de “Calamus”, de Walt Whitman

Abstract

The present study conducts an analysis of three poems from Walt Whitman’s poem collection “Calamus”, focusing on the American poet’s use of vegetation-related expressions as metaphorical devices. In this sense, the poems “Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone”, “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” and “Here the Frailest Leaves of Me” will be analyzed with the aim of demonstrating Whitman’s use of botanical elements to allude to both homoerotic desire and the poetic process. Thus, this article aims to highlight the multitude of possible readings that the poems invite, given they defy a single, unique interpretation. The theoretical framework of this study consists of works from the fields of literary theory, philosophy and linguistics. In this context, critical contributions from James Miller (1957), Max Black (1962; 1993), Russel A. Hunt (1975), Joseph Cady (1978), Paul Ricoeur (1987), Octavio Paz (1996), Conrad M. Sienkiewicz (1998), Luiz Antônio Marcuschi (2000), João de Mancelos (2009) and Betsy Erkkila (2011) will be approached. The poems will be analyzed in their original English versions, given that, as Marcuschi (2000) points out, literary translation often entails an act of interpretation.