Dietrich H. Fischer: Wordsworth in Cotta’s Literary Journal Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslands, 1836 – 1840 Dietrich H. Fischer 31 January 2015 Wordsworth in Cotta’s Literary Journal Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslands, 1836 – 1840 1. Introduction This enquiry was motivated by an entry in Henry Crabb Robinson’s (HCR) diary, as ex- cerpted by Edith J. Morley. In July 1837, on their way back from Italy HCR and William Wordsworth stayed for some days at Munich, where HCR visited the office of the pub- lisher Cotta. HCR writes: ‘I looked over the translations from Wordsworth in the Ausland by Freiligrath. They seem in general done with feeling and talent. By the bye, Freiligrath has translated The Ancient Mariner. Wordsworth’s translations are anonymous. .’ (HCR/Morley, 531, mark of ellipsis by Morley). The short title Ausland is homonymous even in the context of Cotta’s business. In the year 1828 Cotta founded the journal Das Ausland. Ein Tag(e)blatt für Kunde des geis- tigen und sittlichen Lebens der Völker. Let us call it for now the General Ausland. In 1836 Cotta added to his portfolio a further journal dedicated to literature, which for the sub- scribers of the General Ausland in the first half of 1836 was a free supplement to it. Its title was Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslands. Let us call it for now the Literary Ausland. We may assume that HCR refers to the Literary Ausland, and this may be sup- ported by the fact that the translation of the ‘Ancient Mariner’, signed by Freiligrath, can be found in the first year’s volume of it, 1836. In the following, as HCR did, by Ausland we refer to the Literary Ausland, or shortly Ausland. My first simple question was: Which translations from Wordsworth did Henry Crab Robinson see in the journals accessible to him in the publisher Cotta’s office on 17 July 1837? My next questions are derived as well from this diary entry, because one may see an ambiguity in it or even a contradiction: On the one hand, HCR says that he looked over translations in the Ausland from Wordsworth by Freiligrath, on the other hand, HCR says that the translations from Wordsworth are anonymous. Can we now identify the author or authors of the translations, which HCR could have perused? Could there be among them translations from Wordsworth by Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810-1876), the poet, translator and prominent German Forty-Eighter? Especially in order to answer the first question it seems to be sufficient to exploit the journals of the year 1836 and 1837. However, we extend our search on all existing journals of the Ausland, which are available in digitalized form as Google Books on the Web in five yearly volumes from 1836 until 1840, the year, when the publication was stopped. In addition we present biographical notes on each identifiable author of the translations from Wordsworth. Finally we acquaint the reader with those Wordsworth- related articles in the journal, which are translated excerptions from English journals. We identify the exact source as well give information on their authors. Thus, confining to one journal, the Literary Ausland, we contribute to close a gap in the description of the reception of Wordsworth by German literary journals, which flourished in the first half of the 19th century1. 1 Sibylle Obenaus’ collection of 39 journals in Literarische und politische Zeitschriften 1830-1848 does not even mention the two journals of Cotta, referred to above. 1 © Dietrich Fischer 2015, last update 11.10.2015, www.william-wordsworth.de Dietrich H. Fischer: Wordsworth in Cotta’s Literary Journal Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslands, 1836 – 1840 Technical notes: The perusal of the yearly volumes of the Ausland seems to be a trivial task, how- ever, it requires some diligence for the following reasons: • On the Web the texts are searchable by a Google function, but the searches are not reliable with respect to completeness (recall). • When the book is downloaded as pdf, then the text is not automatically searchable at all as nor- mally by a search in pdf texts. • The yearly volumes themselves mostly have a yearly index, which was compiled by the original publisher; however, this is not reliable with respect to completeness (recall). • Neither the editor of the Ausland nor its authors cite the original English title of the poems and the source, from which the poems are taken. In case of translated articles only the name of the journal is given. Therefore identifying the sources sometimes requires some search. In addition we note that the volume 1839 on the Web had been a real fragment due to fundamental fail- ings of the Google copyist. The Bavarian State Library also had offered that faulty copy for online reading; therefore I asked them to re-digitalize this volume. This was meritoriously realized in October 2014. Af- terwards also the Google file on the Web was replaced. 2. Translations from Wordsworth in the Ausland 1836 and 1837 About the two travellers, William Wordsworth and Henry Crabb Robinson (HCR) and their days at Munich 17- 21 July 1837 on their way home from Italy, we are informed by HCR’s diary, accessible to us by Sadler’s and Morley’s different excerpts. They met the celebrities Clemens Brentano, Wilhelm von Kaulbach and Peter von Cornelius, the last two being painters. The brothers Brentano, Clemens and Christian, were friends of HCR since his first years in Germany, i.e. since 1802. With Christian Brentano he walked e.g. from Frankfurt/Main to Grimma in Saxony. Now Clemens Brentano gave HCR ‘a note to the ‘conductor’ of the publisher’s Cotta ‘business’ at Munich, that the conductor might show to HCR some German translations from Wordsworth. Unexpectedly, this conductor was ‘an old acquaintance’, Mr Oldenburg. Without getting further information by Morley or HCR on Mr Oldenburg, HCR says, ‘He speaks English, is very desirous to serve, and will be of great use to Wordsworth. .’ (HCR/Morley, 531, mark of ellipsis by Morley). Then the words already cited above follow. Now let us list the German translations from Wordsworth HCR could have seen, when he visited Cotta’s office 17 July 1837. 24 February 1836 (No. 5, 17-18): An anonymous article with the German title ‘James Hogg, der Ettrick-Schäfer’ in memory of James Hogg, who died 21 November 1835. The article ends with an untitled transla- tion of Wordsworth’s poem ‘Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg’. The rhyme scheme abcb and more or less the iambic tetrameter are preserved, but the tenth 2 © Dietrich Fischer 2015, last update 11.10.2015, www.william-wordsworth.de Dietrich H. Fischer: Wordsworth in Cotta’s Literary Journal Blätter zur Kunde der Literatur des Auslands, 1836 – 1840 stanza, dedicated implicitly to Felicia Hemans, is omitted. Wordsworth’s poem had been published 12 December 1835 in the Athenaeum. In the same volume of the Ausland (dat- ed 17 and 19 November 1836) another anonymous article is dedicated to James Hogg. 20 July 1836 (No. 45, 117): A translation of the poem ‘To the Cuckoo’, Ger- man title ‘An den Kukuk’, subheading: ‘Nach Words- worth’ (after W.), same meter and rhyme scheme as original, yet omitting the second stanza without notice. Immediately following and concluding this issue of the journal are three other translations from English poems (by Burns, Shelley and E. L. Bulwer). Below the last and at the end of all these four consecutive translations, not separated by any demarcation lines, we find the name ‘Fr. Notter’, which stands for Friedrich Notter. So we may conclude that Notter is the author of all four translations. 2 6 August 1836 (No. 50, 197): German title ‘An ein Kind am Abend des längsten Tags’, a transla- tion of the poem ‘Addressed to -------, ON THE LONGEST DAY’, published by Wordsworth 1820, which with a few changes became in 1850 ‘The Longest Day – Addressed to my Daughter, Dora’; the translation is written in the same trochaic tetrameters and rhyme scheme abab, but omitting without notice four stanzas of the total nineteen. The poem is not signed, but on the next page (without a demarking line between the poems) follows another translation, this one is signed ‘Fr. Notter’, with title ‘Das erste Lied’, subheading – ‘Nach Burns’ in the same vain as it is said ‘Nach Wordsworth’ for the ‘Addressed to…’. So again we can attribute the author Notter to both these consecutive translations. 10 September 1836 (No. 60-62, 10–17 September): In three sequences an article ‘Die (englischen) Dichter unserer Zeit nach ihren philoso- phischen Richtungen betrachtet’. No introduction, as if being an original contribution, but at its end in No. 62 a simple name in parenthesis: ‘London and Westminster Re- view’. The exact origin is: ‘ART III. -The Poets of Our Age, Considered as to Their Philosophic Tendencies’ in the London and Westminster Review, April 1836 (33-39), also anonymous, but signed ‘D.’. The German version is nearly unabridged. The Wellesley Index to Victori- an Periodicals 1824-1900 (III (1979), 586-87) lifts for us the secret of the acronym ‘D.’: It was used at least two times by William Henry Smith (1808-1872), ‘philosopher, poet and miscellaneous writer’, especially known as author of Thorndale, or the Conflict of 2 In the anthology Blumen aus der Fremde (1862) we can find a slightly improved version of this transla- tion (now with title “An den Kukkuk”), but clearly appointed to Friedrich Notter, thus confirming the above inference. 3 © Dietrich Fischer 2015, last update 11.10.2015, www.william-wordsworth.de Dietrich H.