PATRICK M. ERBEN. A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania.

Abstract

The historiography on early Pennsylvania is polarized in an interesting way. On the one hand, explains Patrick M. Erben, “the utopianism of Pennsylvania's founding has become such a cliché that its explanatory power has waned” (p. 46). On the other hand, historians seeking to challenge the seemingly mythical depiction of peace and harmony in the colony have often focused on the conflict and acrimony in Quaker politics or other ways the “holy experiment” allegedly failed. Without denying the challenges early inhabitants of Pennsylvania faced, Erben's work uses previously unexploited sources to give a fresh perspective on the founding and early history of Pennsylvania. Erben explains Pennsylvania's origins as a holy linguistic experiment conducted by several groups—English Quakers, radical German Pietists, Dutch and German Anabaptists—to counteract the legacy of Babel. Bringing with them a background in Neoplatonist and pansophist thought, their aim was not to abolish multilingualism but rather to embrace it as a way to discover a higher, spiritual language that united all people, including Native Americans. This book has the rare quality of being at once revelatory about the past and having an easily identifiable lesson for our times. As Erben explains, his argument “interferes with the cultural and political myth that language diversity poses a fundamental threat to communal coherence—both in colonial America and today” (p. 14). Moreover, he reveals German Pietists to have been not simply followers of Quakers to the new world but very much partners in the founding of Pennsylvania, in some ways even taking the lead in trying to create the utopia that William Penn envisioned.