Coleridge’s Translation of the Song of Deborah

Abstract: Coleridge wrote a translation of the first ten verses of the Song of Deborah in September 1798, while on a boat overseas on the way to Germany, in what was his first-ever voyage outside of England. This article offers a close reading of this manuscript, which has not yet been examined thoroughly by scholars, and suggests what lay behind Coleridge’s choice to translate it at this specific moment in his life and career. The Song of Deborah in fact continued to fascinate the poet throughout his life, especially in relation to the innovative Romantic poetics he developed together with William Wordsworth. Translating the Song of Deborah was Coleridge’s first experience with translating Hebrew. As such, it provides early evidence of his grasp of Hebrew, as well as his understanding of the act of translating, both of which he was to develop further later in life. The text in question thus constituted an experimental exercise for Coleridge during a transitional period in his career, in which it is clear that he was playing with the tonal qualities of the Hebrew words and their multiplicity of meanings, including intra- and interlinguistic ones, as well as aspects of the language’s polyphony and its use of tautological repetition.