Patrick M. Erben. A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. xvi + 335 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8078-3557-9.
Reviewed by Denise D. Kettering Lane (Bethany Theological Seminary)
Published on H-Pietism (October, 2014)
Commissioned by Jared S. Burkholder (Grace College)
Speaking a Shared Language in Different Tongues
Colonists arriving in Pennsylvania spoke different languages, came from different social backgrounds, and had varying levels of education. In A Harmony of the Spirits, Patrick M. Erben demonstrates how a shared spiritual language helped to bridge these linguistic and sociological differences. In particular, Erben considers how translation drew on shared religious and utopian ideas, particularly mitigating the differences between English Quakers and German Pietists. Contrary to the common narrative that linguistic diversity challenged the stability of community life, Erben’s analysis shows that translation itself strengthened a sense of community among people from widely different backgrounds.
A Harmony of the Spirits raises questions about the interrelationship between early modern linguistics and a shared theology and spirituality. While Erben’s work focuses on colonial Pennsylvania, it accounts for continental, English, and transatlantic conversations regarding translation and spirituality. Erben highlights the belief in a relationship between spirituality and language in ways that could bring groups together through translation. Central to these beliefs was the sense that translation could reduce the effects of Babel and promote a shared spirituality between British, European, and Native American persons. This book draws on both literary and historical methodologies in order to interpret the writings of key writers in colonial Pennsylvania.
The book opens with a treatment of seventeenth-century ideas regarding linguistic reform throughout Europe. This discussion became particularly pronounced in the theological world, where concentrated interest emerged in the intersection of spirituality and communication. According to Erben, several important theologians reflected on how the dispersion of languages portrayed in the Tower of Babel narrative continued to influence the way people communicated. Erben provides a helpful summary of various pertinent views of language, particularly from Neoplatonist thought, which carried important implications in seventeenth-century religious thought among radical Protestants. He also highlights the surge of interest in the writings of Jakob Boehme, Jan Amos Comenius, and Rosicrucian thinkers. Both German mystics and English Quakers drew on these authors as they considered the linguistic possibilities of translation and the rediscovery of the original language. Erben’s research shows how the Philadelphians helped to bridge the gap between the Quakers and Pietists because of their significant communication with and influence on both groups. In fact, translation was central to the dissemination of Philadelphian ideals. Erben argues that this spiritual background gave radical Protestants a shared goal of obtaining a common spiritual language once they found themselves living in proximity in Pennsylvania.
Erben next demonstrates how William Penn and others espoused a vision of a shared spiritual community during the process of recruiting persons to come to Pennsylvania. A thorough examination of promotional materials aimed at Germans, particularly Pietists, demonstrates the continued attempt to translate a shared Philadelphian notion of community. The resulting journal entries and correspondence from Penn’s visit to Germany reveal his attempt to sell a notion of shared spiritual community to Radical Pietists. Promotional materials stressed the ideas of toleration and harmony as features of the new colony, ideas that became even more prevalent in translations than they were in Penn’s own writings.
A key figure in Erben’s study is the Lutheran Pietist Francis Daniel Pastorious who attempted to bridge the linguistic divide in Pennsylvania. He was an initial contact person with Penn and recorded his own decision to form a spiritual community in Pennsylvania. Erben mines Pastorious’s writings for areas of confluence between English and German, but also examines how the new settler viewed indigenous language and its role in this shared spiritual language. Pastorious attempted to show throughout his writing that linguistic confusion was an enemy of community and frequently used his writing as a way to mediate between German and English immigrants. Repeatedly, Erben turns to Pastorious’s writings to show how he applied concepts of friendship, shared experience, and common spirituality to draw persons together, even when they did not have a shared language.
Erben, however, not only shows places where there was an attempt to share language and create harmony but also considers areas of difference that led to division and conflict. He explains the fear among some people that the Pennsylvania experiment might lead to the Babylon of the New Testament book of Revelation. Emphasis here is on the Keithian controversy at the close of the seventeenth century. Erben notes that much of the controversy was carried out through a pamphlet war, emphasizing the linguistic nature of the debate. The conflict between the Keithians and more conventional Quakers showed a breakdown in communication as well as different understandings of language. Erben uses this controversy to demonstrate the difficulty of moving from a theoretical position that valued shared spiritual language to the actual challenges of translation.
Chapter 5 considers several German Radical Pietists, who approached the challenges of translation differently than Pastorious, including Johannes Kelpius, Peter Miller, and Conrad Beissel. Erben’s consideration of mystical writings and music demonstrates how these types of writings created issues when it came to translation, as the translator had to try to communicate abstract language or language written in verse and rhyme that was not easily translatable. For example, in Kelpius’s community, a manuscript hymnal contained songs printed side by side in German and English, an attempt to attain a common spiritual language in worship. Ephrata, Beissel’s semi-monastic community along the Cocalico Creek, used a different tactic in that hymns were not translated because additional translation would have distracted from the “translation” already occurring as human voices assumed a spiritual voice in the act of singing. Erben highlights that the Moravians took a third approach by stressing that their spirituality would allow them to move beyond linguistic differences. In the meantime, they provided opportunities for worshippers to sing the same song in several different languages.
Erben next examines the impact of war on the relationship between these many groups and their attempt to achieve a harmonious spiritual language. He particularly notes the influence of Christoph Sauer’s emphasis on shared spirituality among Pennsylvanians in contrast to Benjamin Franklin’s more militant writings. Sauer’s publications drew together German immigrants and Quakers by emphasizing liberty of conscience as a shared value. Erben also notes that the publication of The Martyrs’ Mirror in 1749 at Ephrata, a translation of the original Dutch (published in 1660) into German, strengthened the resolve of German sectarians who potentially faced persecution for their beliefs. The peace positions of many German sectarians coincided with that of the Quakers, leading to cooperation when it came to the Revolutionary War. These groups worked actively to retain their nonresistant position. Perhaps this was the shared and translated spiritual language between Quakers and German sectarians.
In the final section, Erben considers the ways that Moravian missionaries, in particular, used translation in their efforts to convert Native Americans. The key figure here is David Zeisberger, who attempted to convey Moravian spiritual language in Delaware and other Indian languages. Zeisberger even produced a quadrilingual dictionary that paralleled words in English, German, Onondaga, and Delaware.
This book draws on a vast array of German and English print and archival sources, and readers will find that the footnotes contain a rich array of secondary sources. What is more, the volume invites further investigation of the transatlantic linguistic and theological networks that contributed to concerns about spiritual language in Pennsylvania. Amid calls for more analysis of transatlantic Pietism, Erben’s book documents one aspect of an ongoing conversation in a compelling and persuasive manner. At times, the German sectarians become somewhat too separated from the Quaker milieu around them, particularly in chapter 5, where there could have been more engagement with how the larger Quaker society or those outside those communities understood their activities, such as their musical practices.
In sum, scholars interested in transatlantic conversations and in particular Pietist and Quaker studies will find this well-researched and well-written book a welcome volume. Erben’s method of providing translation and quotations invites a continued conversation among those who have a shared interest in the spiritual, social, and even political life of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Pennsylvania.
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Citation:
Denise D. Kettering Lane. Review of Erben, Patrick M., A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania.
H-Pietism, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2014.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=39852
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