Coleridge in the Pleasure Dome of Hebrew

ABSTRACT

Samuel Taylor Coleridge maintained a deep relationship with Hebrew. In this article, I examine the Hebrew infrastructure of his poem “Kubla Khan” (1816) and the translations of this poem into Hebrew in light of Coleridge’s translations from Hebrew. These will serve as keys for a threefold argument. My first goal is to obtain new insights into Coleridge’s poetry and thought through the prisms of Hebrew and translation, especially through the intersection of Kubla’s “pleasure-dome” with the biblical “House of the Forest of Lebanon” and Coleridge’s Hebrew-English mini-lexicon. The second goal is to map the mutual shaping power of English Romanticism and Hebrew Enlightenment through the possibility that Coleridge was influenced by the European Hebrew scholar-poet Solomon Löwisohn (1780–1821). The third goal is to investigate the translations of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” into Hebrew in view of his choices in translating from Hebrew, his insights on Biblical poetry and the Hebrew language. These three threads, linking the study of language, poetry, translation, and history, open new paths to understanding Coleridge’s work, offer a complex perspective on the relations between European Romanticism and Hebrew Enlightenment, and hint at new possibilities for the prismatic translation of Coleridge’s poetry into Hebrew.

Acknowledgments

I wrote the main part of this article during my stay as a visiting scholar at the Comparative Literature Department of Harvard University. I had the privilege of auditing a seminar on Comparative Romanticism under Professor James Engell’s facilitation. I am deeply grateful to Professor Engell for his invaluable advice, and to Adam Walker for the insights he shared with me. I thank Adriana X. Jacobs, Lily Kahn, Michal Ben-Horin, and Keren Mock for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article, as well as the anonymous readers of European Romantic Review for their generous advice.

Notes

1 Coleridge’s unique translation strategies are a topic to be developed in a separate article. For discussion of his choices in translating Kinat Yeshurun (1817) from the Hebrew, see Naishtat-Bornstein, “‘Mourn, Israel.’”

2 See Shaffer; Heilbrun, “Jewish Influences”; Fulford, “Coleridge, Kabbalah” and “Coleridge and the Wisdom Tradition”; Lipkowitz; Spector, British Romanticism, Jews, and Romanticism/Judaica; Rubinstein, “Coda” and “Coleridge and Jews”; Davies; Barbeau; Jones, “Tautological Imperative”; and Dyck.

3 An epitomic example of these is his “translations form English to English” (as Coleridge defined them) of works by his fellow poets Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and William Bowles, and of the eighteenth-century poet Mark Akenside. See Mays, Coleridge’s Experimental Poetics 164.

4 Coleridge translated the Song of Deborah in 1798 (Poetical Works [2001] 613–14); Psalm 46 and Isaiah 1.6–26 in 1799 or 1802 (600–01, 615–17); Job 28.1–3 and 20–28 in 1815 (924–26); several verses from Psalms in 1822 (Confessions 355–58); Isaiah 2.7 and a Micah 5.1–6 in 1833 (Poetical Works [2001] 1147; Marginalia 442–44).

5 For discussion of his choices in translating the Song of Deborah from the Hebrew, see Naishtat-Bornstein, “Coleridge’s Translation.”

6 Princess Charlotte of Wales died on 6 November 1817. Kinat Yeshurun was published in a bilingual edition thirteen days later, on 19 November, the day of the princess’s funeral. King George III died on 29 January 1820 and was buried on February 16. Kol Nehi was performed in the Central Synagogue in London on the day of the funeral.

7 In the book he published that year, Vindiciae Hebraicae (1820), Hurwitz discusses the Hebrew word ‘afar (dust) as it occur in the Creation story (“And the LORD God formed man of the dust [‘afar] of the ground”—Gen. 2.7) and in Abraham’s negotiations with God over the fate of Sodom (“I am but dust [‘afar] and ashes [efer]”—Gen. 18.27 [Hurwitz, Vindiciae Hebraicae 39]). In the mini-lexicon in Coleridge’s notebook he is evidently referring to the above discussion by Hurwitz, as he focuses on the words ‘afar, efer, and avaq.

8 This matter still needs some clarification. On the list, the Hebrew word dam (blood) is written in pencil over the word written in ink, perhaps indicating an attempt by Coleridge to practice writing in Hebrew.

9 I thank Odile Harter, research librarian at Harvard College Library; Graham Davidson, editor of the journal, Coleridge Bulletin; and Emma Davidson of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, for their assistance in tracking down the original document.

10 See Notebooks 4: 190, 1097; Letters 4: 1094, 1095, 1097; and Marginalia 2: 505. Coleridge planned “a series of Odes and Meditations” based on a Hebrew meter (Letters 4: 972 [2 Aug. 1815]) and a double translation—literal and metrical—of “all the Odes and fragments of Odes” in 1818 (4: 1094 [8 Jan.]). His plan was to produce this translation in pre-seventeenth-century Saxonian English (Prickett 45).

11 See also in Burwick, “Coleridge as Translator”; Burwick, “Coleridge’s Art”; Knox 249–28; among others.

12 Coleridge invoked the idea of “untranslatableness” in chapter 22 of the Biographia Literaria to describe the virtue of Wordsworth’s poetry. It was not the first time he expressed this idea. In the very first pages of the Biographia, he argued: “Whatever lines can be translated into other words of the same language, without diminution of their significance, either in sense or association, or in any worthy feeling, are so far vicious in their diction” (1: 23).

13 Coleridge used this expression to describe the intercultural and intergenerational nexus of English, German, and French literature.

14 This weighty matter deserves separate study. Coleridge subjected even Hurwitz, whom he strongly liked and appreciated, to indirect and direct invective in view of Hurwitz’s Jewish identity. For example, he deems him “a learned Jew—an animal of rare occurrence, I admit” (Marginalia 3: 42); confesses that he wishes to return Hurwitz to the bossom of Christianity (Notebooks 5: 5706 [27 Dec. 1827]); describes Jews stereotypically: “I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I have never borrowed any money from them”; and describes an unpleasant portrait of a Jewish man, to whom he said: “Son of Abraham! thou smellest; Son of Isaac! Thou art offensive; Son of Jacob! Thou stinkest foully” (Table Talk 2: 114 [8 July 1830]).

15 In his Melitsat Yeshurun Löwisohn cited segments of Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews almost word by word. For example, compare T. Cohen 239 and Lowth 141–42. His reliance on Lowth is so intensive that it has been argued that his book should be perceived as a cultural translation of Lowth’s book (T. Cohen 32). There are several similarities in Lowth’s and Löwisohn’s biographies: both were schooled in Catholic institutions and fluent in diverse languages. Comparison of Löwisohn’s text with Lowth’s shows that Löwisohn often expands on Lowth’s arguments. For example, compare Lowth 68 with T. Cohen 186–87. See also in T. Cohen 44–55, 87–92; Lachover; Shapira; Shaanan; Zinberg, Fichman; Levinsohn 28n1; Klausner, “Solomon” 272–74n1; Graetz 327; and Horn 135–42.

16 As in the clusters of words ‘ol-‘olel-na’al-man’ul-me’il and levana-livne-lebona-levanon-helbena (Hurwitz, Etymology 7).

17 As in, for example, the pairs hivuy-hava, dam-adam, qoder-qedar, hara-har, berekh-berakhot, ma’avaq-avaq, ganav-kanaf, and others (T. Cohen 180–181, 4–133).

18 Hurwitz’s syllabus as a professor in UCL included “modern Hebrew poems,” for example, those of Luzzatto, Franco Mendes, and Hartog Wessely (Stein 18, 21).

19 Bikurei Toʿelet was an 1820 “continuation of sorts of Hameasef, which closed down in Germany, and foreshadowed Bikurei HaʿItim in Vienna” (Toury 327). After the “New Hameasef” was decommissioned in 1811, several initiatives to reestablish it were made: in 1818, a selection from Hameasef was planned, in 1815 a “Toʿelet society” was established in Amsterdam, and in 1820 an edition of Bikurei Toʿelet appeared under the editorship of Shmuel Mulder (Pelli, Bikurei 119–27).

20 For a detailed discussion of the dirge and its translation, see Naishtat-Bornstein, “Mourn, Israel.”

21 For example, “Va-yishman Yeshurun va-yiv’at” (Deut. 32.15), “Yeshurun rokhev shamayim” (Deut. 33.2), and “Yeshurun baharti bo” (Isa. 44.2).

22 A similar gender inversion is found in the Book of Lamentations, where Yehuda is given feminine grammatical gender: “Galta Yehuda me-‘oni u-me-rov ‘avoda hi yashva ba-goyim ve-lo matse’a manoa’h” (Lam. 1.6) and in Shlomo Mandelkern’s translation of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies (1815), which he renders “shiri Yeshurun” (Sing, Jeshurun).

23 The famous Tsiyyons, among which is Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s Tsiyyon ha-lo tishali. See Rosenfeld xxiii.

24 For example, the German Maskil David Ottensoser (1784–1858) in his introduction to the Book of Isaiah, Mesila le-gei hazon. See also T. Cohen 45–46.

25 As early as 1815, Löwisohn wrote as much in the introduction to his book Mekhkere Arets (1819): “When I come forth to speak about lands of antiquity … and about the province of the inheritance of Israel and Judah, my heart storms inside me and my mind throbs like the pounding of seas … . For when I ply the land of Yeshurun, I remember its offspring who remain in the lands of the world in their thousands and tens of thousands, keeping the torches of their inheritance ablaze in [their] human hearts” (4).

26 Steinhardt quotes Marko Polo’s description:

In the middle place the park thus surrounded with a wall, where there is a most beautiful grove, the great Kaan has made for his dwelling a great palace or loggia which is all of canes, upon beautiful pillars gilded and varnished, and on top of each pillar is a great dragon all gilded which winds the tail round the pillar and holds up the ceiling with the head, and stretches out the arms, that is one to the right hand for the support of the ceiling and the other in the same way to the left … The roof of this palace is also all of canes gilded and varnished so well and so thickly that no water can hurt it. … Moreover, the great Kaan had made it so arranged that he might have it easily taken away and easily set up, … for when it is raised and put together more than two hundred ropes of silk held it up in the manner of tents all round about. (“Plan” 154)

I thank Prof. Michal Biran for her generous help.

27 The names went through several variations in translation, such as “Ciandu,” “Cyandu,” “Xandu,” “Xamdu,” “Xaindu,” “Qubilai,” “Cublay,” “Cublim,” “Choblay,” “Coblay,” “Chan,” “Khan,” “Kaan,” and “Cane” (Hersnat 292–95).

28 Edward Said further claimed that the four kings who ruled Creation before Adam were called “suleimans” after Solomon, who is considered the ideal monarch (63).

29 See Guillaume and Hellander 15–29; Eshel 31–33; Hareuveni 42–45; Mazar 2: 80–82; Ussishkin 174–86; and Benzinger 38.

30 The original Shakespeare text is: “Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, / Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee / And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, / Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, / Under the canopies of costly state, / And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?” (2 Henry IV 3.1.9–14); and in Löwisohn’s translation: “Why should [slumber] take flight amid the buzzing of night-flies to those prostrate in the forest, and the songbird, the organ, and despise songbird, organ, and harp when they summon you with the loveliness of their voice to the palaces of pleasure?” (T. Cohen 247–48).

31 “Alph” in Arabic is the number 1000. Thousand and One Nights occupies a special position in Coleridge’s personal mythology. As a boy, he found the work so enchanting that it turned him into a dreamer, prompting his father to burn it. Indeed, James Mays proposes the Thousand and One Nights stories as an interpretive key to “Kubla Khan.” See Mays, Coleridge’s Experimental Poetics and Coleridge’s Father 14.

32 Moshe Dor published the poem Back to Xanadu in 1962. Dor (1932–2016), a poet, translator, journalist, and diplomat, was born in Tel Aviv and belonged to the Likrat literary circle that revolutionized Hebrew poetry in the 1950s. His poem was strongly inspired by Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” and its opening line serves as Dor’s poem’s motto.

33 The translators Ronen Sonis and Ishay Rosenbaum, interviewed by my students in April 2021, affirmed that they had first encountered “Kubla Khan” via the Hebrew translation of Adams’s book.

34 Quoted on Eli Eshed’s site, Yakum Tarbut. The date of its provenance is unknown; the translator himself, when I interviewed him, was unable to specify it.

35 For discussion of the importance of the preface as part of the poem, see Naishtat-Bornstein, Who’s Afraid 20–34, 78.

36 Fleishman alone gives an abridged version of the poem’s preface (39).

37 Fleishman transcripted the consonants without vowel diacriticals (“ksnda”); Sternberg and Stav attached the last vowel (“ksanadu”); Grossman, Rosenbaum, Mann, and Sonis elected to use “plene” orthography, inserting two alefs and a final yod to substantiate the three syllables; Inbari, Wangrob, Shaked, and Peretz favored a “defective” spelling with vowel diacriticals. The most extreme variant was that of Tsur, who tried to reconcile the written and the pronounced forms and converted the letter X into the voiced consonant gimmel (gzanadu).

38 Cf. “She plucks its fruits in Paradise” (“Israel’s Lament”), “And drunk the milk of Paradise” (“Kubla Khan”).

39 Cf. ‘Ali ‘alata aher ‘ata, pne tevel veyoshveha, bemot Princess Charlotte, beterem mele’at yameha: Mourn for the universal Woe, with solemn dirge and fault’ring tongue: For England’s Lady is laid low, So dear, so lovely, and so young! (“Israel’s Lament”).

40 Cf. ‘Ali hashod asher shided, pe’er Leopold adoneh! Asher bemar nafsho yimaen letnahem ‘aleha. “Mourn for the widow'd Lord in chiefs, who wails and will not solaced be, Mourn for the childless Father's grief, The wedded Lover's Agony” (“Israel’s Lament”).

41 Such solutions were offered by Hebrew translators to Hebrew words embedded in German poems by Heinrich Heine, Paul Celan, and Dan Pagis. See Celan 103; Rokem, Prosaic Conditions; Barouch; DeKoven Ezrahi 56–57; Ben-Horin.

42 Examples include “Much on my early youth I love to dwell, ere yet I bade that guardian dome farewell” (Letters 1: 78), and “Dome-shaped Mountain” (Letters 2: 21).

43 Fleishman translated the phrase “still and awful red” as “um’qom parsa sefina tsila dom, sham ka’esh ayom ve-adom”; “slimy things did crawl with legs” as “yetsure domen zahla dom” (11, 19).

44 “And he shone bright, and on the right” ‘veyef berom, veyemin dom’; “We listened and looked sideways up!” ‘Hiqshavnu dom, hebatnu rom!’; “This seraph-band, each waved his hand” ‘Qehal-serafim dom yad nasu rom’; “I closed my lids, and kept them close, / Till the balls like pulses beat” ‘Atsamti ‘einai, behalom, bebohen retet kedefaqim dom, ki rom vayam, yam varom’ (Coleridge, Poetical Works [2001]; Ginsberg [1931] 319–49). Ginsburg’s translation was first published in Ha-Tekufah (1924).

45 “She blushed with love, and virgin-shame; And like the murmur of a dream, I heard her breathe my name” ‘Be’ahava uv-voshet-tom, samqa, ukh’lahash bahalim, et shemi shma’ti dom’ (299).