However in Persian, you naturally place a much greater emphasis, if not all of it, on the word “myself”.

In English it is natural to put the emphasis on “celebrate”. For example, even the phrase “I celebrate myself” feels different in Persian than it does in English. Also, the message itself changes when you present it to a different culture, because each culture has different points of reference, histories and identities. You can swear in Persian and still give it the rhythm and beauty of a song or poem. Every language has its own music and Persian is far more musical than English. S holeh Wolpé : As we were translating Song of Myself, or rather recreating it in Persian, I realized that my favorite Whitman poems in Persian were different from the ones I had originally favored in English. Wh a t is your favorite section of the poem and why? We are also considering a couple of Persian publishers in Europe so that it can be made available to Persian speakers outside of Iran. Hopefully it will be available by the end of the year. My co-translator, Mohsen Emadi, has found a great publisher for our translation of Song of Myself (complete with Ed Folsom and Chris Merrill’s notes for each section) in Iran. Those who are familiar with his poetry have read him in English. How (well) is Whitman known in your country/language?

Sholeh Wolpé, working with co-translator Mohsen Emadi, spent nearly a year producing the first complete translation of Son g of Myself into Persian as part of the online multimedia gallery project WhitmanWeb.

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