Those Who Hoped

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between the proliferation of artificial languages and literary cosmopolitanism at the turn of the century: both strove to promote ideas of world citizenship, universal communication, and peaceful international relations. The two most successful artificial languages of this period, Volapük and Esperanto, employed literature, literary translation, and the periodical medium to create a new type of cosmopolitan literacy intended to quench divisive nationalisms and to challenge Herder’s theories on the link between national language and individual identity. Starting with Henry James’s lampooning of Volapük in his short story ‘The Pupil’ (1891), the chapter charts the uneasy relationship between literature and artificial language movements. Ludwik L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, stressed the importance of literary translation for his utopian ideal and used original literature to explore the complex affect of his cosmopolitan identity. The chapter closes with an analysis of the growth of the Esperanto movement in turn-of-the-century Britain, focusing on its overlap with literary, artistic, and radical circles, on contributions by Max Müller, W. T. Stead, and Felix Moscheles, and on the 1907 Cambridge Esperanto World Congress.