Abstract
Hessell intervenes in critical debates about Felicia Hemans’s poetry in a global context by considering the impact of indigenous print culture and translation on her colonial reception. The chapter analyses three Māori translations of Hemans’s poem “The Hour of Prayer” as part of a wider discussion of prayer, Christianity, and conversion efforts in nineteenth-century Aotearoa New Zealand. Hessell’s reading resituates “The Hour of Prayer” in its original publication context to show how it partakes in Hemans’s wider and more overt discussions of faith and the colonised world.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See also Mulholland 2013, 83–92.
- 3.
Fulford’s detailed discussion of Hemans’s Native American poetry is on pp. 196–204.
- 4.
David Simpson makes some interesting points about the role of Hemans’s poetry in “imperial pedagogy,” suggesting that her verses helped to promote a “global poetic English” while still containing much challenging content (2013, 175–77).
- 5.
- 6.
The most detailed discussion of this second phase can be found in Paterson 2006.
- 7.
Under a slightly different title, The Forest Sanctuary: and Other Poems was first published in 1825 by John Murray . The 1829 second edition, published by Blackwood in Edinburgh and Cadell in London, was marketed as containing “additions”: twenty-nine new poems were added to the end of the “Miscellaneous Pieces” section, one of which was “The Hour of Prayer.” Kelly notes that Hemans’s short poems were common choices for children’s reciters throughout the nineteenth century and twentieth centuries (2002, 77).
- 8.
The role of the missionaries in the translation and promotion of Māori-language religious texts is discussed in Elsmore 1989, 23–29. For a very sophisticated discussion of the importance of print in both the dissemination of Christianity in New Zealand and the active collection of Māori spiritual traditions, see Ballantyne 2002, 83–168.
- 9.
For bibliographic information, see Parkinson and Griffith 2004, 209.
- 10.
Parkinson and Griffith (2004, 209), following Herbert W. Williams (1924, 51), propose that T. H. Smith is also the translator of this version, but it is unclear why he would have made two different translations of the poem, especially if the translations were undertaken at around the same time, as Parkinson and Griffith believe.
- 11.
Te Korimako was founded by the American temperance activist W. P. Snow and published and edited by Davis from 1882 to 1887. Davis had the linguistic ability to translate the poem but was blind and nearing death at the time it was published. More detail about Davis as a translator can be found in Petrie 2002, and Paterson 2006, 23–26.
- 12.
Nineteenth-century Māori newspapers are now the subject of considerable scholarly interest, following the release of Niupepa: Māori Newspapers, a major digital project hosted by the New Zealand Digital Library <http://www.nzdl.org/cgi-bin/library.cgi>. For English readers, a very useful introduction to the content of the newspapers can be found in Curnow et al. 2006. For information about the process of producing the digital repository, see Keegan et al. 1999.
- 13.
In fact, some debatable choices of vocabulary were introduced in order to preserve the poetic characteristics of the original verses. The first word of these versions is an example of this slightly skewed translation. As I mentioned in my introduction, “pōtiki,” the word for the youngest child in a family, is chosen for this translation in preference to “tama” or “tamaiti,” the generic word for “child.” This decision seems to have been made simply to assist the rhythm.
- 14.
McRae makes the point that “the ease with which Maori amalgamated the oral and the written, and with which Pakeha employed Maori erudition and figures of speech, attests to the regard for each other’s discourse. No doubt at times that borrowing was tactical or contrived. The papers were after all highly engaged political and writers opinionated. But on occasions when Maori and Pakeha use each other’s poetry and thinking, we read something courteous, appreciative of difference, suggestive of a possible rapport” (2002, 43–44). Paterson also expands on this point (2006, 51–72).
- 15.
See Davis 1876, 12–15 and 129–38.
- 16.
References to “The Hour of Prayer” are to the text in The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans (1890). This text differs slightly from that in the 1829 volume The Forest Sanctuary, and Other Poems . The Māori texts contain some variants that are included in the later version, making it clear that this is the text from which the translators worked.
- 17.
See also Pere 2006, 143–57, 155.
- 18.
See for example the use of “rehurehu” to refer to “bedimmed eyes” in line 5 of “An Action Song” in Ngata 1959, 3: 43.
- 19.
The Māori dictionary Wakareo contains a range of definitions of “hinapouri” that span from “very dark” to “tragic” and “remorseful.”
- 20.
Metge has highlighted the complexities of the phrase, describing the term Te Ao Mārama as “particularly difficult to grasp … It has been suggested to me by an elder that Te Ao-Marama is a completely abstract concept, applicable to any situation where knowledge, enlightenment and understanding are the ruling principles” (1976, 57).
- 21.
For a definition of mana and its application in different contexts, see Barlow 1991, 61–62.
- 22.
See Marsden 2003, 151.
- 23.
For an overview of the characteristics and significance of Māori oral literature, see Dewes 1977, 46–63.
- 24.
See also Mitcalfe 1974, 1–12.
- 25.
See Petrie 2002, 181.
- 26.
It seems unlikely that there was a specific tune associated with “The Hour of Prayer.” Te Korimako routinely printed poems with the names of recommended and familiar English airs attached; this was not the case for “Te Haora Inoi,” however.
- 27.
See for example Lootens 1994.
- 28.
See Orbell and McLean 2002, 124.
- 29.
- 30.
- 31.
- 32.
Herbert W. Williams (1985) includes a note in the entry on “inoi” in his dictionary: “The use of inoi applied to religious exercises is entirely modern”.
- 33.
Irwin divides karakia into five types: those that were placatory, invocatory, and those that were concerned with intercession, incantation, and exorcism.
- 34.
- 35.
See also Sweet 1994, 182–83.
- 36.
References to the poems in this volume are to the text in The Forest Sanctuary: With Other Poems, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1829).
- 37.
For more detail on Hemans’s use of the natural American landscape of this poem, in an argument which questions the specificity of that detail, see Sussman 2011.
- 38.
For examples of her use of customs from throughout the colonial world, see “The Bird’s Release,” based on Malabar customs, or “The Isle of Founts: An Indian Traditio n,” the latter being the poem which draws on Bartram’s account cited above. For more detail on Hemans’s interest in global folk literature, see Kelly 2002, 32–33, and Lootens 1994.
- 39.
A similar interest in the nature of indigenous belief systems can be seen in Hemans’s note to “The Isle of Founts ”; see Hemans 1829, 142–43.
- 40.
For a subtle discussion of the range of Hemans’s portrayals of Native American spirituality in contact with Christianity, see Goslee 1996.
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Hessell, N. (2018). Praying: Felicia Hemans at Third Sight. In: Romantic Literature and the Colonised World. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70933-8_2
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