cahn | Frederick the Great discussion post 9

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...I leave you guys alone for one weekend and it's time for a new Fritz post, lol!

I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)

Frederick the Great links

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From:

cahn

In his pride on this influence, he dropped the remark "le roi m'a dit" ("the king told me") so often that he was finally called at the court only "l'abbé le roi m'a dit".

Heeee!

Voltaire concluded a reflection on the case in a letter to Frederick II with the words "Oh, best of all possible worlds, where are you!"

(German wiki, you should know that if Voltaire uses this particular quote, he's being sarcastic, not dismayed, but apparantly you don't.)

Wait, do we have this letter from Trier? If so, what's the context of the reflection?

From:

selenak

Found it! I'm so proud. It is, indeed, in Trier.

Fritz had written, in May: "You wanted to know to know the adventures of the Abbbé de Prades; these would make a big volume. To satisfy your curiosity, it will suffice to know that the Abbé let himself be seduced, during my stay in Dresden, by a secretary whom Brühl had left there when he departed. (...) He played this beautiful trick on me at the same time I had secured him a big profit in the Cathedral of Breslau."

Voltaire replies in June 1759. The remark in context. Good old Voltaire starts out his letter with poetry:

"I know you, you seem difficult,
But you like a bit of impurity,
When you add the purity of style,
for Maupertuis, coated pitch-resin.(...)
Ah! It was he who deprived me of the day,
Since it was he who took your sight away from me.

That is all I can answer, me slender and decked out in a sweating to the eyes, to the cleverest of kings, and to the loveliest of men, who constantly scares me, and who cries that he is scratched. Slash MM Daun - the Austrian Field Marshal - and Fermor, but spare your old, skinny victim. (...)
You are a legislator, a warrior, a historian, a poet; but you are also a philosopher. After having dabbled all your life in heroism and in the arts, what do you take to the tomb? An empty name that no longer belongs to us. Everything is vanity, as the other Solomon said, the one not from the North. To Sans-Souci, to Sans-Souci, as soon as you can.

So De Prades is a dog, an Achitophel? What? He betrayed you, when you overwhelmed him with goods. Oh best of all possible worlds, where are you? I am a Manichaean like Martin.
Your Majesty reproaches me with his very pretty lines for sometimes caressing the infamous. Eh! My God, no; I only work to root infamy out, and I succeed a lot among honest people. I will have the honor of sending you, shortly, a little piece that won't leave you indifferent.
Ah! Believe me, Sire, I was all made for you; I am ashamed to be happier than you, for I live with philosophers, and you are only surrounding yourself with murderers in shortened clothing. To Sans-Souci, Sire, to Sans-Souci! But what will your devil of an imagination do with it? Can it live with retirement? Yes, you are made for everything."

(That is the end of the letter as given in Trier.

Achitophel: Ahitophel or Ahithophel was a counselor of King David and a man greatly renowned for his sagacity. During Absalom's revolt he deserted David (Psalm 41:9; 55:12–14) and supported Absalom.

Manichaean: I'm assuming he's refering to Manichaeism, but the context here beats me. No idea who Martin is supposed to be. St Martin the former Roman soldier who parted his cloak to help a beggar? That makes no sense.

Edited Date: 2020-01-22 06:58 pm (UTC)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Quick note before I go back to wrangling the OCRed Heinrich political correspondence: Martin the Manichaean is a Candide reference.

Found it! I'm so proud.

Well done! We too are proud of you. :D

From:

cahn

Heh, I didn't know Martin was from Candide (I've never read it all the way through, which I know I need to do, I'll do it by this year's Yuletide, lol), thank you

mildred_of_midgard! but I can tell you about the Manichaeism context!

"Best of all possible worlds," as I'm sure you know, refers to the question of "how can bad things happen if God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent?" and ends with the answer "well, this must be the best of all possible worlds!" But of course you could instead postulate that Good and Evil are dualistic and so therefore the answer to the question in this case would be, "well, Evil exists and does Evil Things, and Good is no more powerful than Evil, so that's why bad things happen."

(My very vague understanding/partial reading of Candide leads me to believe that this is also the context in which Martin appears.)

So Voltaire is saying here that omg, De Prades has betraaaaaayed Fritz, how could this possibly be the best of all possible worlds?? No, it can't be; Voltaire must therefore be a Manichaean and believe that evil is indeed a power in the world, that such things could happen.

I mean, it's all very tongue-in-cheek and rather mocking of Fritz for being upset about it (for two people who reacted to things pretty much the same way, they sure do both make fun of each other a lot for their reactions, geez), but I suppose you could stretch and say "dismayed" if you had to; I do think there is a kernel of dismay in there :)

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(for two people who reacted to things pretty much the same way, they sure do both make fun of each other a lot for their reactions

Part of reacting to things pretty much the same way is reacting to the way other people react to things. ;)

I.e. they both had some emotional stunting going on. Thanks, Dad(s)!

What little I know of Manichaeism comes from two sources: my very casual interest in the development of early Christianity (St. Augustine as one of the more famous Manichaeans, before his conversion, for example), and, of all places, Tolkien scholarship, in which I have a much less casual interest (it's one of the few things I come close to being a specialist in). The whole problem of good and evil comes up a *lot* in work on Tolkien, as you can imagine.

But Candide I haven't read and can't promise to read by Yuletide, so good thing you've got that down! (How do you feel about Peter Keith, btw? I have a whole plot that just needs converting into scenes, which I hear is the easy part! ;) We can even work Lehndorff in!)