I'm glad you did, but wow, what is with these letdown stories? How do you make Fritz/Voltaire/Émilie triangle bland where there's canonical fireworks going off every other week? Come on, authors!
I know, I know. So much potential, so much waste! Sire, ich eile (Quote from a Voltaire letter about finally coming to Prussia), the Fritz/Voltaire/Emilie novella by Hans Joachim Schädlich manages to sound like Voltaire at his most self pitying without any of Voltaire‘s wit. It has the David Bodanis characterisation of Fritz, which tells you all you need to know. Maupertuis is a villain who goes after König just because he can and Voltaire protects König, that‘s his whole reason for that part of the disaster. This novella’s Voltaire is basically Zimmermann’s Fritz. (Minus the unfortunate operation.) Also, the novella can‘t decide whether it wants to be fiction or non fiction, so much of it is just a summary of what happens (with extreme Voltaire bias and zero Voltaire wit, as mentioned), and very occasionally, there‘s a fictional dialogue. This includes the aftermath of Émilie‘s death, in which Voltaire yells at Lambert „You murdered her!“. Émilie is Voltaire‘s manic pixie dreamgirl without being manic, because remember, bland. (No mention whatsover of her backstory with Maupertuis, btw.) It‘s just one long exercise of frustration.
Sie machte Frieden (title is from Matthias Claudius poem about MT after her death, which I have already quoted to you many a post ago) is a short story with a good premise (ghost of MT and ghost of Fritz meet at Sanssouci when his body gets finally buried there because reconciling with her is his unfinished business and he‘s hers) which it utterly wastes. The ghost of Henri de Catt is also around; this is Catt as Bambi, which back then wasn‘t a problem for me because this was before I read anything of his. What is a problem, however, is that any version of MT, ghostly or not, who says „call me du and Resi“ to Henri de Catt is not one I can accept. Also, the premise is wasted by the two not talking to each other because the author totally chickened out of imagining what they might say to each other; instead, they both talk to de Catt in mostly quotes from Catt‘s memoirs (Fritz), MT‘s letters, and made up dialogue of the „Call me Resi“ type. Ugh.
Fritz/Voltaire as peace time: um, cold war? Cuba crisis? Also, my next crack fic should be the very secret diary of the Marquis de Valory, having to deal with Voltaire, Fritz, and the Palladion. And Voltaire‘s niece. (Also a French citizen illegally arrested and imprisoned in Frankfurt.) That man must have had nerves of steel. Though not endlessly so. Mitchell didn‘t get to meet him, since Valory‘s successor, the same guy who accused Fredersdorf of taking money from foreigners, had replaced Valory as envoy by April 1756.
You know which writer should have a go at Fritz/Voltaire/Émilie? Christopher Hampton, whose dramatisation of „Les Liasons Dangereuses“ proves he can do the period really well, and whose play „Tales from Hollywood“ about some of our exiled literati during WWII (Ödön von Horvath, Brecht, the Brothers Mann) proves he can do Germans without going into clichés.
Re: Fritz: The French Envoy's Take
I know, I know. So much potential, so much waste! Sire, ich eile (Quote from a Voltaire letter about finally coming to Prussia), the Fritz/Voltaire/Emilie novella by Hans Joachim Schädlich manages to sound like Voltaire at his most self pitying without any of Voltaire‘s wit. It has the David Bodanis characterisation of Fritz, which tells you all you need to know. Maupertuis is a villain who goes after König just because he can and Voltaire protects König, that‘s his whole reason for that part of the disaster. This novella’s Voltaire is basically Zimmermann’s Fritz. (Minus the unfortunate operation.) Also, the novella can‘t decide whether it wants to be fiction or non fiction, so much of it is just a summary of what happens (with extreme Voltaire bias and zero Voltaire wit, as mentioned), and very occasionally, there‘s a fictional dialogue. This includes the aftermath of Émilie‘s death, in which Voltaire yells at Lambert „You murdered her!“. Émilie is Voltaire‘s manic pixie dreamgirl without being manic, because remember, bland. (No mention whatsover of her backstory with Maupertuis, btw.) It‘s just one long exercise of frustration.
Sie machte Frieden (title is from Matthias Claudius poem about MT after her death, which I have already quoted to you many a post ago) is a short story with a good premise (ghost of MT and ghost of Fritz meet at Sanssouci when his body gets finally buried there because reconciling with her is his unfinished business and he‘s hers) which it utterly wastes. The ghost of Henri de Catt is also around; this is Catt as Bambi, which back then wasn‘t a problem for me because this was before I read anything of his. What is a problem, however, is that any version of MT, ghostly or not, who says „call me du and Resi“ to Henri de Catt is not one I can accept. Also, the premise is wasted by the two not talking to each other because the author totally chickened out of imagining what they might say to each other; instead, they both talk to de Catt in mostly quotes from Catt‘s memoirs (Fritz), MT‘s letters, and made up dialogue of the „Call me Resi“ type. Ugh.
Fritz/Voltaire as peace time: um, cold war? Cuba crisis? Also, my next crack fic should be the very secret diary of the Marquis de Valory, having to deal with Voltaire, Fritz, and the Palladion. And Voltaire‘s niece. (Also a French citizen illegally arrested and imprisoned in Frankfurt.) That man must have had nerves of steel. Though not endlessly so. Mitchell didn‘t get to meet him, since Valory‘s successor, the same guy who accused Fredersdorf of taking money from foreigners, had replaced Valory as envoy by April 1756.
You know which writer should have a go at Fritz/Voltaire/Émilie? Christopher Hampton, whose dramatisation of „Les Liasons Dangereuses“ proves he can do the period really well, and whose play „Tales from Hollywood“ about some of our exiled literati during WWII (Ödön von Horvath, Brecht, the Brothers Mann) proves he can do Germans without going into clichés.