This commendable book is a well-informed cultural history of Walt Whitman reception in many countries. The “Whitman socialist and internationalist vade mecum” offered in the book’s appendix will show what poems elicited the fullest responses in various literary culture worlds during the century 1880–1980: “For You O Democracy,” “Salut au Monde,” “Europe, the 72d and 73d Years of These States,” “To a Foiled European Revolution[n]aire,” “Years of the Modern.” The most socio-politically ambitious poems by Whitman have not garnered the attention among American readers that the more metaphysical-religious, ontological, or mystical pieces have attained. But these globally expansive outreaches have stimulated such an impressive number of poets, translators, and emulators worldwide that we miss a major phenomenon of literary and social history if we neglect or slight them. Delphine Rumeau and her assisting multilingual, informed researchers have done us all a great service.

“Whitman as a primitive (1880s–1910)” shows the “Adamic Whitman” stimulating the thought of Miguel de Unamuno in Spain, while the “Greek Whitman,” author of the homoerotic “Calamus” folio, is applauded in Britain by Edward Carpenter, John Addington Symonds, Oscar Wilde, and D. H. Lawrence. In Germany, Whitman attracted the veneration of Stefan Zweig; in Portugal, Fernando Pessoa was “one of Whitman’s most acute readers” (37). Giosuè Carducci’s Whitmanism together with his discovery of Friedrich Nietzsche were energizers of the prolific Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio. According to Kornei Chukovskii, Nietzsche never really found his way to Dionysus but Whitman certainly did.

One of the things I found fascinating about Rumeau’s book is her psychologically astute analysis of Chukovskii’s ideological changes throughout several decades, each alteration influenced by current trends and manifested in some original poems falsely attributed to Whitman, with continually new Chukovskian translations accompanied by emphatic deprecations of rivals. When researching Balmont’s imaginative vision and translations of Whitman, I was astonished by the brusque Chukovskian dismissals of this valuable achievement: Rumeau has clarified the context. Initial acceptance followed by later rejection of Whitman may be seen in Algernon Swinburne and Valéry Larbaud (and later in Velimir Khlebnikov).

“The Futurist Poet (1910s–1920s)” shows Chukovskii presenting Whitman as the “first real futurist.” Vladimir Maiakovskii’s Whitmanism, a complex and highly fruitful topic, is splendidly treated by Rumeau, and she also pioneers the analysis of Ukrainian futurist Whitmanian appropriation.

In “Whitman the prophet (1880s–1930s),” Konstantin Balmont is shown as a discerning appreciator of Whitman’s homoerotic vision, Boris Grigoriev as painter-portraitist of Whitman. A renaissance of Yiddish poetry was inspired by the American bard (Abraham Walkowitz, Morris Rosenfeld). Philosophers R. M. Bucke and William James value his “cosmic consciousness.” G. K. Chesterton is a Whitman enthusiast, and in Russia the American poet is often likened to Lev Tolstoi as a seer of the “open road.” Outstanding Yiddish and Hebrew emulators of Whitman in Israel and America are copiously quoted.

In “From Democrat to Socialist (1880s–1919),” J. W. Wallace and Edward Carpenter use Whitman to champion “ethical socialism.” Léon Bazalgette and Hermann Bahr write extensively about the Whitmanian thought-world. “The extraordinary adventures of Walt Whitman in the land of the Bolsheviks (1918–1936)” shows the poet being translated into indigenous languages of the former Russian empire to gather support for the revolution. This led in the 1920s to a Ukrainian rendering of Leaves of Grass by Jewish-Ukrainian poet Ivan Kolyk, who was executed in 1937. D. S. Mirsky, historian of Russian literature, wrote insightfully about Whitman before the critic’s death in a gulag. There were Proletkult theater performances, a Whitman Club, and from filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein an essay on Whitman equally embodying “ecstasy” and “pathos.”

From “Between the Wars: A Transatlantic Fellow Traveler (1919–1928),” I gladly learned this: “An example of the impact of Whitman’s centennial in Germany is Paul Hindemith’s claim ‘to have taught himself English by reading Leaves of Grass as the celebrations of the Weimar Republic coincided with those for the centenary’” (172). Emma Goldmann cites Whitman disciple Horace Traubel on the universality of the revered bard, who transcended mere nationalism. From Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg to John Reed, Whitman moves on. One of the richest discussions in “Salut au Monde!” across the Iron Curtain (1946–1956)” is that of Pablo Neruda’s incorporation of Whitman’s legacy into his own hugely influential verse. In “Back from the USSR (1955–1980s),” we hear from Laurence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Federico García Lorca. Rumeau wrote a book of vast import; it contains multitudes.