The Earliest English Translations of Bürger's Lenore: a Study in English and German Romanticism/Chapter 1
THE EARLIEST ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF
BURGER'S LENORE.
I. Introductory
The earliest English translations of Bürger's Lenore will always interest a student of the English poetic revival at the end of the eighteenth century. They represent almost the first real touch of the German romantic movement on England. It is true that certain German poems had appeared in English dress before this time. Yet these had but slight relation to the new romantic movement. This applies to Gessner's Idylls and Death of Abel, both of which had been translated into English in 1762. It was equally true of Goethe's Iphigenia and Wieland's Dialogues of the Gods, which were made accessible to Englishmen by William Taylor of Norwich in 1793 and 1795. In Edinburgh, according to Scott's Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, Henry Mackenzie had lectured on German literature as early as 1788, but even this had produced little immediate effect.
This late influence of Germany on English literature of the eighteenth century is also the more remarkable, because the Germans had long recognized the inspiration of English masters. Shakespeare and Milton for the older periods had already been studied and imitated in Germany, as well as numerous writers of the eighteenth century, notably Thomson, Richardson and Goldsmith. Indeed, the translators of Bürger's most famous poem were merely returning to its native land an originally English ballad, which had inspired the most successful of the German ballad imitators.
Yet the slight acquaintance of Englishmen with Germany fully explains the lack of literary influence from that source. Throughout the eighteenth century the literary relations of England and the personal relations of Englishmen had been with France and Italy. In the early part of the century an Englishman would have been about as likely to visit Russia in travel, as any part of Germany. Even when Englishmen took to themselves the Hanoverian royal house, they still had as little interest in the Hanoverian principality as the first two Georges had in their English possessions. Later, when England gave her support to the great Frederick of Prussia, it was with pecuniary aid merely, unaccompanied in the case of most of the people with any but the barest knowledge of his kingdom, or of the learning and literature of his countrymen.
Take, for example, some significant instances of ignorance about things German on the part of literary Englishmen. In his essay On the Present State of Polite Learning (1759), Goldsmith says that the Germans had, indeed, a "passion for polite learning," that is literature, but "instead of studying the German tongue they continue to write in Latin." Nor does he mention a single German work of which he had any knowledge. A little later when the young Gibbon was meditating an historical subject for his pen, he preferred "one to all others, the history of the liberty of the Swiss." From this, however, he was debarred, as he thought absolutely, by his ignorance of "an old barbarous German dialect," and his unwillingness to learn it even for so important a purpose. Although Gray was one of the first to study Icelandic literature, he knew nothing of German, or of the beginnings there of a romantic movement which would have delighted him. Horace Walpole lived until 1797, but there is no mention of a German work or of German literature in his voluminous correspondence. When Mackenzie, the author of the Man of Feeling, lectured in Edinburgh on the German Theatre, and as Scott tells us first interested his countrymen in German literature, he knew no German himself, and had obtained his whole knowledge of German plays from French translations.
Under these conditions the appearance of Bürger's Lenore in the England of 1796 is quite extraordinary. Especially is this so when we remember that not one version only, but seven renderings by five different translators were published in that single year. Such an unusual circumstance naturally calls for some special explanation. Unfortunately, hitherto some of the important relations of the several versions appearing within a twelve-month have been missed by those who have dealt with the subject. It is possible, therefore, to shed some light upon the individual Bürger translations, and especially to give a connected history of this remarkable year in the literary influence of eighteenth century Germany upon England. Incidentally, too, it is a question whether the immediate influence of these translations upon English literature has been fully appreciated.[1]
- ↑ Special treatment of the subject by Brandl in Erik Schmidt's Characteristiken I, 244 (1886); H. A. Beers, English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, chap, xi (1899); W. W. Greg, Modern Quarterly of Language and Literature II, 13 (1899); W. A. Colwell, Modern Language Notes XXIV, 254 (1909), who adds a correction or two to Greg's article, as the latter had corrected Brandl in some particulars.
Incidental treatment of the subject occurs in Theador Süpfle, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur in England im letsten Drittel des 18 Jahrhundert, Ztschr. f. vgl. Litgsch. VI, 305; Weddigen, Die Vermittler des deutschen Geistes in England und Nordamerika, Archiv f. d. Studien der neueren Sprache LIX, 129; Georg Herzfeld, William Taylor von Norwich, Halle, 1897; Ernst Margraf, Der Einfluss der deutschen Litteratur auf die englische am Ende des achtzehnten und im ersten Drittel des neunsehnten Jahrhunderts, Leipsic, 1901.