The Work of the American Esperanto Association

Ni laboras por vi.

Sometimes when I’m reading old articles about Esperanto I realize that I’m missing something. The New-York Tribune printed a letter in their April 19, 1908 edition which referred to their “recent article about Esperanto.” The letter was dated April 7, 1908, so they clearly had hung on to it for a while, but even increasing my search to February 1, 1908 shows nothing to which John Fogg Twombly could have been responding. On March 2, they had written an article about Moresnet, the proposed Esperanto state (noting that the country would be tax-free for its residents as “the expenses of the state are to be borne by the subscriptions of Esperantists all the world over,” which would seem to be an inducement not to learn Esperanto, and so no wonder that the Esperanto movement rejected the idea) and on March 3 that Edmond Privat had visited the White House. There was also a children’s puzzle in which “Esperanto” was an answer. (During that same period, there are six citations of Esperanto in the New York Sun.)

With the “recent article” left a mystery, all we have left is Twombly’s letter. The letter itself is signed “A.E.A.,” but that’s the American Esperanto Association, of which Twombly was the secretary, though, unbeknownst to him, his time at that position was coming to a close. The AEA had sown the seeds of its own destruction by helping to organize the 1908 conference at Chautauqua, New York. Given that the creation of the new organization doesn’t seem to have bettered the fortunes of Esperanto in the United States, the expression “don’t switch horses in mid-stream” comes to mind. Obviously, we’ll never how how things would have played out had the American Esperanto Association continued.

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Homer in the Original Esperanto

Ĉu esti aŭ ne esti?

There was a joke made in the movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country that Shakespeare was best “in the original Klingon,” which was probably playing off of the claims made by German scholars that Shakespeare was better in German translation than it was in the original English, with the further claim that Shakespeare had a “German spirit.” I bring this up only because in a letter to the Sun on April 8, 1906, John Fogg Twombly, the secretary of the American Esperanto Association made the claim that the Iliad was better in Esperanto than it was in English.

After some hunting, I managed to find both the Esperanto translation of the Iliad and the Esperanto translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, which was also cited by Twombly. Twombly is bringing up great works of literature translated into Esperanto in response to a editorial which appear in the Sun on April 4, 1906. There, the future of Esperanto was described in terms of sophomores turning out translations of the poems of Tennyson and Browning.

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You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

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This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!