ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the contours of the unlikely attachment between translation and the American vernacular to explain how Walt Whitman negotiated his desire to be nationally unique yet globally representative. It shows how Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days invoke and reconfigure the discourse of a specific kind of literary anthology, the specimen collection. Anthologies select only the best literature, but Robert Southey also includes less qualitatively distinguished literary productions in his holistic attempt to create a literary environment. He wishes to include "every writer" who was sufficiently prolific, so as to give a comprehensive overview of the range of literary productions and to recreate a literary environment in its entirety. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ferdinand Freiligrath worked out a theory of the vernacular through their collaborative practices of translation. Longfellow's comment anticipates Whitman's claim in Specimen Days that translations are improvements of the vernacular.
