Therese Albertine Luise von Jakob (Halle 1797 – Hamburg 1870), best known for her translations under the pseudonym Talvj, exemplifies the importance of cultural mediators in Romantic Nationalism.
Growing up in Kharkov, where her father taught philosophy, and St Petersburg, Talvj, without receiving a formal education, acquired a near-native fluency in Russian and developed an interest in the Slavic languages. During the early years of her adult life, she wrote poetry and short stories which remained mostly unpublished. In 1822 she published some literary criticism under the pseudonym “ein Frauenzimmer” (“a female”). Her first translations, of Walter Scott’s Old Mortality and The black dwarf, were published in 1822 under the pseudonym “Ernst Berthold”. Her most celebrated translations were the Volkslieder der Serben (1826). Talvj’s interest had been fuelled by Karadžić’s edition of Serbian folk songs as reviewed by Jacob Grimm, and Goethe commended her poetical German version (as opposed to Grimm’s literal paraphrases). It formed, in turn, the basis of Elise Voïart’s French version.
In 1828 Talvj married the American theologian Edward Robinson. Between 1830 and 1837 she resided in Andover and Boston, then, after a three-year interval back in Germany (where in 1840 her Die Unächtheit der Lieder Ossian’s und des Macphersonschen Ossian’s insbesondere appeared), in New York. Between 1840 and 1863, her New York home became a meeting place for prominent Americans (like Washington Irving) and visiting European intellectuals (like Friedrich von Raumer). In America, Talvj herself took an interest in Native American languages, and translated John Pickering’s Indian Languages of North America into German (1834). Other German-American publications followed: Aus der Geschichte der ersten Ansiedelungen in den Vereinigten Staaten (1845) and Die Colonisation von Neu England (1847).
Conversely, Talvj presented her European interests to an English-speaking audience. Her Historical view of the Slavic languages appeared in 1834, and again, revised as Historical view of the languages and literature of the Slavic nations, with a sketch of their popular poetry, in 1850. “Popular poetry of the Teutonic nations” was published anonymously in the North American Review in 1836; it included translated poems from Scandinavian languages which were later included in Longfellow’s anthology The poets and poetry of Europe (1847).
Versuch einer geschichtlichen Charakteristik der Volkslieder germanischer Nationen (1840; a reworking of her 1836 article, but also covering aspects of the Lieder aussereuropäischer Völkerschaften) and a historical novel Marie Barcoczy (1852) were aimed at German readers. Talvj returned to Germany after the death of her husband in 1863, living in Hamburg until her death in 1870.
