Natural effusions: Mrs J. Howorth's English translation of Albrecht von Haller's Die Alpen

Abstract

Albrecht von Haller's Die Alpen [The Alps] was an immensely popular piece of early eighteenth-century poetry, yet it took more than half a century to be translated into English. In this article I examine Mrs J. Howorth's prose rendering of it in her translated collection The Poems of Baron Haller (1794) and analyse how the translation itself reflects late-eighteenth-century scientific, political and aesthetic concerns, notably through the influence of Linnaeus and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Secondly, I explore how Howorth constructed a public image of herself as a female consumer and producer of botanical literature, and argue that her translation constitutes an early example of British women's increasing engagement in science through the activity of translation.

Keywords:

• Albrecht von Haller
• Die Alpen
• female translators
• scientific translation
• eighteenth-century science
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Heike Heklau at the Botanical Garden in Halle for answering my botanical queries, and Caroline Schaumann, Jo Whaley and Anthony Ozturk for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

1. Henry Barrett's 1796 translation, The Alps, a Moral and Descriptive Poem of the Great Haller. Translated from the German, was published in London by Parsons. I have been unable to locate a copy of this work in any library. Both The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature 18 (1796), 467, and The Monthly Review XXI (1796), 350–51, mention this work, the latter considering it inferior to Howorth's translation, the former describing it as a pleasant read and quoting Barrett's English rendering of stanzas six to eight.

2. See Linnean Society manuscripts, James Edward Smith: Correspondence vol. 19 (family and private correspondence). I quote from the manuscript of the letter itself rather than the version printed in the correspondence edited by Smith's wife Pleasance. Her 1832 Memoir and Correspondence of the Late Sir James Edward Smith, which was published with Longmans in London, was an abridged (and bowdlerized) version of Smith's letters, in which she also altered punctuation and some turns of phrase. My thanks to Ben Sherwood at the Linnean Society for facilitating access to these letters in manuscript form.

3. All subsequent quotations refer to this edition. Mason's more recent translation has: “A yellow gentian there raises its noble head / Above the common choir of pastures and of moors; / A flower populace is by its banner led, / And its blue brothers too bow down as servitors.” (Haller 1987, 69).

4. “Its blooms of shining gold, in ray-like clusters seen, / Climb up the stalk and crown its garb of greyish hue; / The smooth white of the leaves, with stripes of deeper green, / Bears sparkling diamonds left by the morning dew.” (Haller 1987, 69).

5. See Shteir, “Haller's Botany” (1976–77, 177), for more on this distinction and the generally symbolic use of plant personification in the eighteenth century.

6. “Here Reason rules supreme, with Nature as its guide” (Haller 1987, 45).

7. “What does a prince possess that shepherds cannot have?” (Haller 1987, 41).

8. “There some wild reckless prince plays with his servant's lives, / Or burghers’ blood must flow to suit his savage moods;” (Haller 1987, 75).

9. “No difference of class here turns achievement sour / By marking virtue slave to some unworthy might; / No idle boredom can prolong the dragging hour, / Since work fills out the day, and rest commands the night; / No gifted mind falls foul of blind ambition's snare, / No future fears conspire today's delights to spoil;” (Haller 1987, 45).

10. “Nature supplies your needs with goods that are to hand, / False lures you do not know, of joys you have your share. / […] O happy you who here, with steers of your own rearing, / Plough your ancestral fields and tend paternal leas, / […] Who could not seek to change, who live the life you love! / Lo, Fortune has no gifts that could your state improve.” (Haller 1987, 77).