Announcing Rheinsberg: Frederick the Great discussion post 10

[cahn]

So for anyone who is reading this and would like to learn more about Frederick the Great and his contemporaries, but who doesn't want to wade through 500k (600k?) words worth of comments and an increasingly sprawling comment section:

We now have a community, rheinsberg, that has quite a lot of the interesting historical content (and more coming regularly), organized nicely with lots of lovely tags so if there's any subject you are interested in it is easy to find :D

Comments

Re: Henri de Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.

Re: Henri de Catt

[selenak]

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.

Re: Henri de Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

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.

Re: Henri de Catt - or rather, Voltaire

[selenak]

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.

Re: Henri de Catt - or rather, Voltaire

[mildred_of_midgard]

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!