cahn | Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

I've just hit the halfway point on my Catt proofreading/reading, and I had to share some fun findings.

Remember in another comment I mentioned Catt's sudden code-switching?

Partway through, he decides he's going to start switching between French and Latin in the same sentence.

It gets even wilder. He quotes Fritz uttering a sentence that goes, word by word, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, French, French, Latin, and then in the very next sentence, which is Catt's, Catt decides to one-up Fritz and go French, French, French, Latin, Latin, Greek, with the last in the Greek alphabet, no less (p. 374).

Look:

»Mais possum finire tragoediam quand je volam.« Je le vis in parvula δόξᾳ.

"But I can end the tragedy when I want." I saw it in a small [...]

I assume this is Fritz showing Catt the little box of opium. Is this like sensitive information that we have to put in code? In case some French speaker happens to come along and not be able to figure out Latin? But just in case they can figure out Latin based on their French, let's make absolutely sure they don't know where the opium is kept?

The problem with this: δόξᾳ doesn't mean box. In all the dictionaries I've checked, I've not been able to find any definitions other than the ones I was familiar with: judgment, opinion, vision, glory. How on earth does that make sense in context? It should mean box or other type of container. Another layer of code here?

Help?

Anyway, now Catt's just decided that...what's the French + Latin equivalent of Franglais?...is the way to go. Look: "Vidi regem. Mihi dit quod multum pro Keith, et sa résolution etc." Latin, Latin, Latin, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, proper name, French (probably), French, French (p. 375).

Oh, wow, the Émilie gossip entry is amazing and ridiculous. It's November 2, 1758. Fritz is "très fatiguée" and they gossip instead of talking about important things. Good distraction, I guess?

She wanted to do an experiment on fire, burned a whole forest, told her husband it was a demonstration in his honor (like fireworks, I guess), so he had a good view. Uh uh. Took a hot bath to see at what point she couldn't tolerate the heat any more. Okay, maybe. Was waiting on Voltaire to come back from Prussia, he was late because he had a scheme to make money (sounds plausible so far), went to Brussels to meet him, didn't see him, assumed he was unfaithful, took opium. She was stopped? "On l'arrêta." Entry ends there.

WTF.

Now it's November 8 and things have just gotten interesting again. I wish I were more confident in my French. I can tell what's being said but not who's saying it. *Fritz* (???) just said laws were unfair to women, that men get to force women to put up with stuff they won't put up with themselves, and that if a man is unfaithful, that exempts a woman from being faithful? Catt disagrees? This would all make sense, especially given Fritz's attitude toward nephew FW's wife, except for the part where he prefaces it with, "I know I will never make laws, but." What do you mean, you'll never make laws? You mean you'll never make *this* the law, that women can be unfaithful if their husbands are? (But not vice versa, which is still a double standard.) If not for that line, I'd be sure it's Fritz taking the side of women and Catt disagreeing, but what is Fritz doing saying he'll never make laws?

Anyway, now we follow the proto-feminism up with a comment from our Fritz on how this one woman is really hideous. End of entry.

Gold star, you tried?

Anyway, tiny possibility that when Fritz, before he got married, said "she can do what she wants and I'll do what I want," he actually meant he would have let her produce an heir with some discreet Prussian noble from an appropriately old family (Katte cousin? :P), and it was EC who noped right out of that?

Honestly, as long as it was Fritz's idea, I think he'd be fine with it. It's EC doing it of her own accord that he'd flip out about, especially if he could argue that he was being faithful in the sense of not having mistresses. (Remember, we had this convo about the MT marriage.)

Also, worth mentioning that Catt feels the need to comment on the pretty girls in practically every village he stays at.

Okay, more cleanup tomorrow! Soon I'll have the translation up so you can see all for yourselves. (For now, you can check the French, I mean French-Latin-Greek, if you want.)

That is all *wild.*

Was waiting on Voltaire to come back from Prussia, he was late because he had a scheme to make money (sounds plausible so far), went to Brussels to meet him, didn't see him, assumed he was unfaithful, took opium. She was stopped? "On l'arrêta."

OK, so, this sounds like a mashup of stories to me -- Zinsser talks about the story that I alluded to in my writeup, where she had a fling (~1728) with this older military guy the Comte de Goesbriand (this was before Voltaire), he broke up with her (possibly for another girl), she said she wanted to die, and Goesbriand told a story of how she had taken opium but he saved her. Zinsser is very skeptical of whether that last part actually happened (as opposed to Goesbriand making it up), but she says that the story was retold as late as 1748. Anyway, I would not be at all surprised if Fritz had heard that story and was recounting it to Catt, and that it got garbled at some point in transmission, though whether at the point of Fritz or at Catt I couldn't say.

Ahhh, thank you! Also, look at you being the one to provide additional context and clarification. :DDDD

Had to stop proofreading to report this.

Now Catt's decided to throw English into the mix! French, Latin, Latin, English, French, French, French, Latin, Latin, Latin, Latin.

j'étais factus pro you, mais sum honteux quod sim felicior Te

Even wilder, he's quoting Voltaire's "best of all possible worlds" letter. At some length. In a mishmash of languages. OMGWTFBBQ.

›Vous êtes le plus malin des rois; vous me déchirez et vous vous plaignez que je vous égratigne. Vous êtes roi, vous êtes poète, musicien; mais vous êtes philosophe. Comment pouvez-vous vous plaire au carnage! Allons à Sans-Souci, à Sans-Souci! L'Abbé était donc un Doëg, un Achitophel que Votre Majesté comblait de bien? Oh, voilà le meilleur des mondes possibles ! Croyez-moi, Sire, j'étais factus pro you, mais sum honteux quod sim felicior Te. Quel plaisir pouvez-vous goûter, entouré toujours de nobles meurtriers en habit écourté? A Sans-Souci, à Sans(-Souci)! Mais que fera là votre diablesse d'imagination? Vous êtes philosophe.‹ Signé:
›Votre grammairien de Potsdam.‹

I mean, when I was in sixth grade, I used to render individual words in the middle of a sentence in my diary into dwarvish runes in case my sisters decided to go through my diary. But this is special.

Also, this is interesting: both Catt and (I checked) the letter in the Fritzian library have "Doëg", whom Wikipedia tells me is an Old Testament figure who informed on David to Saul. Ah, Trier footnotes Doëg as a reference to 1 Samuel 22. And Achitophel to 2 Samuel 15. So I think a small correction needs to be made to

selenak's original translation of this letter, which had "dog" rather than "Doëg".

I feel like we can more or less keep up with these people in the Classics, but we need far more French literature and Biblical acumen than I for one have. Thank goodness for Google and Wikipedia.

So noted, makes sense that both are biblical allusions. (From Voltaire the student of a Jesuit run school to Fritz the son of Calvinist FW.) I see both comparisons cast Fritz as David, one as young and one as old David.

Liveblogging Henri de Catt's diary! MAN I wish my French were better, I'm sure I'm missing a lot of good stuff. But this little gem jumped out at me.

You know Fritz had a totally paternal love for Fredersdorf, three years his elder? He's now being paternal toward Voltaire, seventeen years his elder!

Voltaire: *writes whiny letter about how Fritz doesn't love him*
Fritz: *responds like a tender father who wants to lead his son back onto the right path*

That's Fritz for you, always the tender father and chill older brother.

Voltaire: *writes whiny letter about how Fritz doesn't love him*
Fritz: *responds like a tender father who wants to lead his son back onto the right path*

Could this possibly be a summary of my favourite Voltaire/Fritz Exchange from the Seven Years War, as quoted here, to wit:

Voltaire (in May 1759):
I admit to be very rich, very independent and very happy; but you are the one thing I am missing in my happiness, and soon I will die without having seen you again; you hardly care, and I try to work on not caring, either. I love your verses, your prose, your ésprit, your bold and firm mind. I couldn't live without you, nor with you. I do not speak to the King right now, to the hero, that is the business of monarchs. I speak to the one who has bewitched me, whom I have loved and who never ceases to infuriate me.

To which Fritz replies in July 1759 (war time mail being slow): You are indeed a unique creature; whenever I want to be angry with you, you speak two words to me, and my accusations die in the tip of my pen. (...) I know very well I have adored you for as long as I didn't regard you as a pest and a villain; but you have played so many dirty tricks on me - but let's no longer talk about this; I have forgiven you everything in my Christian heart. All in all, you've provided me with more joy than grief. I take more enjoyment in your works and only feel a little of the scratches. If you didn't have any flaws, you could make the human species look far too inferior, and the universe would have good cause to be envious of your qualities. As it is, one can say: Voltaire is the most beautiful genius of all centuries, but I am at least more calm, more agreeable and more soft hearted than he is. And this comforts a common man over the fact of your existence.

Edited 2020-02-03 08:44 (UTC)

No, alas, this is a *different* whiny letter about how Fritz doesn't love him. There are so many, you know. :P

He showed me a letter from Voltaire which begins:

Caesar appeals to Caesar, Solomon to Solomon. He had refuted the bishop who had attacked the King on a point in his history, on the edict of Nantes. This was of little interest to the King. He complained about the way tractabatur ab ipso [he was treated by him]; complained about this old ambassador, pleaded the cause of his poor unhappy niece who had been frightened to see this letter, quam ipse solus scribere poterat [which only he could have written]: »I am on the lands of France; I would have been lost if this letter had been seen at my house. So treat me with mercy and not strictly. One more word, he said, for whom should we be most interested, who should we love most: a wise king, philosophical, tolerant, generous, or a tyrant who persecutes a bishop? My health is so weak, my eyes are so bad that I am no longer sensitive to anything, not even your heart. Basically you are only a hero for all soup/pottage (?), a genius assassin who has never liked the fool Voltaire. They call me, he said, in Gallia Borussius [Prussian]. I pride myself on this title.

The King replied as a tender father who wants to bring his son back to the right path.

If you have a better translation of this letter, I'm stuck on a couple points. I tried googling "héros pour tout potage" and only got this letter.

Huh. Now my Pleschinski Edition is back in the library, but upon discovering Catt's entry on Fritz showing him this letter comes shortly after Catt's entry quoting Voltaire's "best of all Worlds" letter, which I knew to be from mid 1759, I went and checked the Trier Version you've given us for autumn of 1759 letter, and until 1760, no such letter. Then I thought, maybe with the uncertainty of the mail, and Fritz keeping all of Voltaire's letters, this was in fact an earlier letter, despite him showing it to Catt later, and checked the first half of 1759 at Trier, but nope, if it exists, they don't have it uploaded. Also it's really easy to get distracted, because Voltaire and Fritz at this point in their relationship are really damn enjoyable to read, what with the needling and complimenting in perfect balance. Also, the stakes! Voltaire does still want peace and keeps trying some backstreet diplomacy even after Wilhelmine is gone.

Tonchin: Calvinist Swiss doctor, testifies Ferdinand is really really sick, will after Voltaire's death also testify Voltaire died in blood, shit and vomit and declaring himself to be in hell, which goes against everyone's else's descriptions. Oh, and for "Mastiff", read: Maupertuis. No, Voltaire still hasn't let that go. Also, that little animal parable at the end as a summing up of the Fritz/Voltaire relationship is so very Voltairian. Behold:

In whatever state you are, it is very sure that you are a great man. It is not to annoy your majesty that I write to him, it is to confess me, on condition that he will give me absolution. I betrayed you; here is the fact. You wrote me a letter half like Marcus Aurelius, your boss, half like Martial and Juvénal, your other boss. I first showed it to a little French minaudiere from the court of France, who came, like the others, to Geneva, to the temple of Aesculapius, to be cured by the great Tronchin, very great indeed, because he is six feet tall, beautiful and well made; and if Monsignor Prince Ferdinand, your brother, was a woman, he would come to be healed like the others. This minaudière is, as I think I said to M., the good friend of a certain duke, of a certain minister; she is very witty, and so is her friend. She was delighted, she kissed your letter, which would have made you worse, if you had been there. Send it immediately to my friend, she said; he loves you from his childhood, he admires the King of Prussia, he thinks nothing like the others, he sees clearly, he is real chivalry which unites spirit and arms. The lady says so much, that I copied your letter, cutting very honestly all the Martial and all the Juvenal, and faithfully leaving all the Marcus Aurelius, that is to say all your prose, in which however your Marcus Aurelius kicks us hard, and claims that we are ambitious. Alas! Sire, we are pleasant people for having ambition. Finally I cannot help but send you the answer that was given to me. I can betray a duke and peer, having betrayed a king; but, I implore you, do not pretend. Try, Sire, to decipher the writing. One can have a lot of spirit and very good feelings, and write like a cat.
Sire, there used to be a lion and a rat; the rat was in love with the lion, and went to pay him court. The lion gave him a little kick. The rat went into the mousetrap, but he still loved the lion; and one day seeing a net that was being stretched out to catch and kill the lion, he gnawed at a mesh. Sire, the rat humbly kisses your beautiful claws in all humility; he will never die between two Capuchins as did a mastiff of Saint-Malo in Basel; he would have liked to die near his lion. Believe that the rat was more attached than the mastiff.

See, that's whyh he was Wihelmine's fave among her brother's boyfriends. Fritz, of course, spots the contradiction between Voltaire rooting for French/Prussian peace and still having it in for Maupertuis. Maybe that's what de Catt qualifies as "paternal"?:

Think that kings, after having fought for a long time, finally make peace; will you ever be able to do it? I believe that you, like Orpheus, would be able to descend to hell, not to weaken Pluto, not to bring back the beautiful Émilie, but to pursue in this den of pain an enemy whom your resentment has only too much persecuted in this world. Sacrifice your vengeance, or rather sacrifice it to your own reputation; may the greatest genius of France also be the most generous man of his nation. Virtue, your duty, speak to you through my mouth; do not be insensitive to it, and do an action worthy of the beautiful maxims that you deliver with so much elegance and strength in your works.

Edited 2020-02-04 09:30 (UTC)

if it exists, they don't have it uploaded.

Yeah, I had gone looking for the letter in Trier and not found it. However, I found the whole thing just now! It's a letter that was previously unpublished, but the original letter turned up in Voltaire's hand, and was published, with commentary, in a journal article in 1928. I've uploaded the pdf into the library, in the "Une lettre inédite de Voltaire à Frédéric II.pdf" file.

Futhermore, French wiktionary turned up "pour tout potage," which is evidently an idiom meaning "only", "without anything else." Also, Voltaire's original phrasing was "un grand homme pour tout potage," not Catt's "un héros pour tout potage." The word "héros" does turn up later in the sentence, which makes sense if Catt is reproducing this from memory.

Furthermore, Catt's "un assassin de génie" is Voltaire's "génie universel," which is a little bit different!

The 1928 article tells me that Fritz's reply had already been published, and I've tracked it down to this one.

Detective work complete: Voltaire's letter, Fritz's reply, French idiom. :D

Also it's really easy to get distracted, because Voltaire and Fritz at this point in their relationship are really damn enjoyable to read, what with the needling and complimenting in perfect balance.

I bet!

Edited 2020-02-05 07:11 (UTC)

Just hit the Küstrin episode (where the kids are lined up by Mom and beaten by Dad). In the immediately preceding paragraphs, Catt is listening to stories around camp. This general says this, that baron says that. Fritz left yesterday, when Heinrich arrived, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeeeeaaaahhh, I'm gonna go with Fritz never talked about Katte to Catt or Voltaire. And now I'm really leaning toward Catt reading Voltaire's memoirs (he must have! regardless of whether he borrowed from them), and expanding and correcting the Katte passage a little, and putting it in Fritz's mouth. Since we now know, thanks to our wonderful reader's summary of the Catt preface, that Catt pulled from multiple sources and had no shame about putting things in Fritz's mouth.

Which means now we're down to one 1737 letter, where Fritz has complaints about Katte, as his sole communication that we've turned up so far.

40 more pages of Catt to go, plus some passages from the first 60 that I didn't really read, but I'm not expecting any surprise Katte confidences at this point.

What a downer.

Ooh, wait, what's this? It's just after the defeat at Maxen, Fritz is depressed, he's telling Catt in direct discourse about being locked up alone by his father in a room for three months, his food passed through a small window, getting his shirt the same way, being miserable, never being happy except at Rheinsberg.

It's not Katte, but it's close! I'm stiiiill skeptical about the Katte passage not being lifted from Voltaire (he definitely fudged the date, because Maxen is late 1759, not early 1758), but we'll see how the last 25 pages go.

Do tell! These pre Katte's death imprisonment conditions, btw, are all mentioned by Seckendorff in his dispatches to Vienna.

Neat! We even have the letters where FW gave very detailed instructions on Fritz's imprisonment. Check out YouthDocuments, pages 44 ff. for the instructions on getting him to Küstrin without being captured, the terms of imprisonment, then the interrogation protocol, then another letter on not letting him escape from Küstrin. There's also one letter in there to Wilhelmine during the Küstrin period, which I don't think is in Trier.

Nothing in the last 25 pages of Catt that I could see that convinces me Fritz talked about Katte, but the diary's up, so now you can check yourself. I only read parts of the French and skimmed quite a bit, and I haven't had time to read through the entire translation, so I'm sure there are at least some goodies I'm missing, even if not Katte ones. (I didn't see "If they had raised me instead of humiliating me" or "I have to be won over with praise," both of which could be Fritz talking or Catt putting his opinions in Fritz's mouth. Agree with you that the impersonal sounds more like Fritz, though.)

Oh, btw, speaking of Fritz's imprisonment conditions, I was starting to think I had hallucinated (or read in fanfic) the line where Fritz said he preferred starving at Küstrin to starving at Wusterhausen (which is corroboration of Wilhelmine's accounts of going hungry), but Lavisse had it: Fritz to Grumbkow, as reported by Sauveterre, French ambassador to Prussia (French Rottenburg's replacement, I think).

More evidence, if that's reliable (and god knows it sounds like him), that Fritz was taunting his captors because he didn't think anything worse than imprisonment was in the cards.

So I still think offering his life for Katte's in August was less of a literal offer than a bargaining ploy. "You'll have to kill me, and I don't think you're going to kill me, so you'll give me what I want if I just don't back down, right? I'm really good at not backing down." Only when he gets the news about Katte's imminent execution does he seem to panic and realize he's in over his head. And then he starts offering his life, his rights to the succession, whatever it takes.

</3

Edited 2020-02-04 04:54 (UTC)

Just hit the Küstrin episode (where the kids are lined up by Mom and beaten by Dad). In the immediately preceding paragraphs, Catt is listening to stories around camp. This general says this, that baron says that. Fritz left yesterday, when Heinrich arrived, if I'm not mistaken.

So is this pre Kunersdorf, since the German preface writer said Fritz left De Catt there with Heinrich's army and that's where some of the key stories come from?

Pity the preface writer also says De Catt and Heinrich didn't get along, otherwise I'd have wondered whether he tried pumping him for stories, too. But no love lost there, ergo no likelihood of Heinrich telling him the gory tale of Dad's return home.

So is this pre Kunersdorf, since the German preface writer said Fritz left De Catt there with Heinrich's army and that's where some of the key stories come from?

Yes, indeed. The entry in question is July 29, 1759, and Kunersdorf is August 12.

Pity the preface writer also says De Catt and Heinrich didn't get along, otherwise I'd have wondered whether he tried pumping him for stories, too. But no love lost there, ergo no likelihood of Heinrich telling him the gory tale of Dad's return home.

Interesting! I only recall positive things from the memoirs about Heinrich, both from Catt and from the words that Catt puts in Fritz's mouth. Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe we have another source on them not getting along. Does the preface writer name one?

The memoirs are indeed positive about Heinrich, though there's a slight bit of shade in the way Catt manages his introduction. He has Fritz give a very positive description of his brother, and then says something to the effect "Prince Heinrich arrived x days later; as to his character, I leave the judgment to his brother".

(BTW, courtesy of your algorithms, I can see the diary does include a Shorter version of Fritz being complimentary about Heinrich before he arrives. This is in September, i.e. post Heinrich's visit to Wilhelmine, pre her death, the "day" Fritz will later thank Heinrich in writing for. Writes diariest Catt:

17. Yesterday Prince Henry came to the King. I was introduced to him by General Lentulus. "Have you seen my brother," said the King to me; "He is a kind (aimable) man. I tell you without prevention. We don't see a war like this. It is true that, since the battle of Hochstädt, there have not been any more bloody than those I have given. It is true that the Turks are making movements. It will be a battle for me, if they really work."

I wouldn't translate "aimable" with "kind" - it's "liebenswürdig" in German, but "lovable" in English is not the same thing. "Charming" is better, imo. (Lehndorff calls Heinrich "liebenswürdig" a couple of times in his diaries and I always concluded the original word must have been "aimable".)

Anyway, the Catt Diary preface writer from 1884 cites Thiébault as the source for Heinrich and Catt not getting along, with "volume I, page 209"as reference in his footnote, but I just checked both the original French and the German edition at the Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, and can't find a remark to that effect. I also had entered "Catt" into the search machine and didn't come up with something in case it wasn't in the Heinrich chapter of Thiebault's memoirs, but no luck. Maybe I'm missing something, or there's a glitch. However, I see that the writer of the Seydlitz and Zieten fanfiction also has Heinrich frowning at Catt, so Maybe she has found something?

At a guess, it probably was at heart a case of The Anti versus The Devoted Fan (which Catt pre breakup certainly was).

See my comment below on Thiébault!

The problem with this: δόξᾳ doesn't mean box. In all the dictionaries I've checked, I've not been able to find any definitions other than the ones I was familiar with: judgment, opinion, vision, glory. How on earth does that make sense in context? It should mean box or other type of container. Another layer of code here?

You know, it did occur to me that it's suspiciously like the English word "box", especially if you flip the delta around. But I immediately decided that was me being Anglocentric, why on earth would Henri de Catt use English-Greek code, etc.

But now that I know he has no problem throwing random English words into his diary, that's totally what I think it is! And I do think it's code, because he doesn't want everyone knowing where Fritz keeps his suicide device.

And it occurs to me that one thing I used to do in my own very secret diary was throw *random* words into dwarven runes, just so potential snoops wouldn't home in on the secret words and only the secret words.

And this *is* the first time he starts code-switching. I now think maybe he's covering his tracks with random languages, so his diary doesn't have exactly one sentence in other languages in the midst of all-French diary. Because the very next entry is one sentence of code-switching.

Against this idea is that it then takes him another month or so to start code-switching again, at least from my skimming. But then he starts doing it regularly.

So I wonder if it just gave him the idea, or if he was covering his tracks by trying to sprinkle other languages through a mostly all-French diary?

The further you get into the diary, though, the wilder he gets, I can tell you that. Whatever else was going on, I think he started having fun.

ETA: No, I'm wrong. Just three days later, he's code-switching again. Yeah, he might be covering his tracks.

Edited 2020-02-08 05:42 (UTC)

Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

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Re: Henri de Catt - or rather, Voltaire

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