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 :)

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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!)