This biography was reccommended to me by shezan after she commented on my Voltaire tale, as "opinionated but never bettered" as far as French Voltaire biographies go. It has nearly a thousand pages, and does qualify as a magnum opus. It's stylish by itself; Jean Orieux can tell a tale. It's also visibly a product of its time; Jean Orieux was born in 1907, lived through two world wars, and while providing narrative room for the women in this tale hardly qualifies as a feminist. (For example, he adores Émilie, and defends her against various often quoted malicious gossip - including one description of her which I had indeed encountered in the "Day to Day in the life of Fritz" book Mildred recently added to the library which basically goes "thin, little green eyes, bad legs, way too many beauty spots and jewelry, bad hairstyle, and that was the woman Voltaire kept raving about!" and the accusation that Maupertuis and König wrote her articles and books for her. (Orieux: Émiliie was worth ten of these small-minded gossip mongers!) But it doesn't occur to him to do a bit more research to find out what was so particular about her take on Newton and on Leipzig, or why it was sensational that she could unite the two, so he describes her as a really smart amateur rather than a scientist. Granted, this is a Voltaire biography, not a "Voltaire and Émilie biography", but I do think a more current biographer would take the trouble to find out more about what a two decades life partner of their subject was working so hard on.
A similar thing is noticable with Fritz. When I after finishing the book had a look at the - gigantic - biblography - I wasn't surprised that a) it' s all in French (including Boswell's diaries - Orieux does quote the hilarious Voltaire-Boswell - "he's a wise man" encounter, and thus I learned André Maurois has done a French translation of Boswell's diaries, go Maurois!), and b) the letters aside, the Fritzian titles are all "...and Fritz", i.e. "Voltaire and Fritz", or "Louis XV: political relationshiips with Fritz" and so forth. No individual biography. Which means you get glitches like "Marie Christine" instead of "Elisabeth Christine" (and yes, Voltaire did meet her, but he didn't see her often, unsurprisingly; basically, he was curious enough to ask to be presented, but that was that, one or two more occasions aside). Or, when quoting from a Fritz to Wilhelmine letter written early after Voltaire's arrival about Voltaire being brilliant and "my brothers doing histrionics/histrionisizing" (meaning the court performance of "La Rome Sauvée" where Heinrich played Catiline and Ferdinand the imaginary naiv young male ingenue to Amalie's young female ingenue), Orieux adds "as long as they were acting, at least they couldn't scheme". (Without making clear whether he thinks that's what Fritz thought or whether that's what he assumes; either way, I suspect it's most likely that Orieux, well familiar with French history where most of the royal brothers of the various Louises did indeed scheme day in and day out, made an automatic conclusion without bothering to look up what Fritz' brothers were doing in 1750. (Without looking it up and based on memory: AW, who didn't take part in the Voltairian play-acting, was busy trying to talk Ulrike out of organizing a coup d' etat, Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by a 50 tweets thread publishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars, and Ferdinand did his drilling service and otherwise partied with Lehndorff. Heinrich's pamphlets aside, for which playing Catiline on stage left him ample time, there's not a single anti Fritz action detectable.
Similarly, when we get to Frankfurt, Orieux writes "Fredersdorf, the King's secretary, who hated Voltaire" sent word to Freytag the Prussian Resident in Frankfurt etc. At which point of course yours truly rolls her eyes, because not only is the job description wrong (and while the English word "secretary" can be used for "minister", the German word "Sekretär" can not, and I was reading a German translation of a French book, so I doubt the mistake was in the translation) but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it, because people charmed by Voltaire usually needed to talk to him first. But since no personal letter of Fredersdorf's mentioning his feelings re: Voltaire exists, this is guess work, and in a non-fiction work I want my speculation indicated as such.
Then again, Orieux writes an old school biographee romancée, which reminds me of Stefan Zweig's masterpieces of the type fron the 1920s and 1930s, when Orieux was young,, i.e. biographies unabashedly using novelistic language "her beautiful eyes shed tender tears" etc. He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing. His take on Voltaire includes all the pettiness and shadiness and vengefulness and vanity and histrionics - good lord, all the histrionics. (By which I don't mean the occasional acting in private performances. Btw, Cahn: Émilie could and did indeed sing very well, including in operas privately performed, whereas Voltaire only acted in speaking roles on such occasions, so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.) It also provides the heroics and kindnesses and amazingly modern cosmopolitism (indeed Orieux more than once feels a bit uneasy about that, though he's also admiring, but let's just say he is stretching things a bit when speculating that Voltaire's thing for Germans might be connected in a German grandmaman he never met, and keeps reassuring his French readers that Voltaire being impressed by French defeats such as Roßbach instead of being crushed in patriotic gloom is not comparable to 20th century type of situations). No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death. The only useful things these plays did, for Orieux, was making Voltaire famous, because no one would have read his essays, pamphlets, letters and of course Candide later if he hadn't already become famous via the plays. (Orieux is a big fan of Voltaire's prose, though. Candide being his favourite, but he also adores the letters and tremendously enjoyed the trashy tell all about Fritz.) He's equally opionated on the literary works of other writers. Saint-Lambert's poems, for example, are also deemed both drippy and boring (and the one reason Saint-Lambert made it into literary history, twice, is a) his affair with Émilie and b) his later relationship with the woman Rousseau was after, leaving Orieux to conclude that well, if you can't score via your literary talents...), Fritz' Maupertuis-defending, Voltaire-attacking pamphlets are mediocre. And Orieux is opinionated about characters - Madame Denis is a stupid, greedy cow (German translation uses "eine dumme Pute", but English doesn't go for the fowl to convey the same idea, I don't think - "a goose" is even affectionate and doesn't contain the contempt of the German phrase), Monsieur Arouet didn't deserve his son's hostility, he was doing his best with the enfant terrible he was given under the circumstances, Voltaire's older brother Armand otoh was nuts and a self flaggelating pious fanatic thoroughly deserving of being disliked and ignored by younger brother, etc.
And Fritz? As opposed to Bodanis, he doesn't present this as Machiavellian Fritz luring poor naive idealistic Voltaire to him and says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other (Voltaire's repeated spy offers, Fritz not only writing that supposedly Voltairian poem but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia - he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever. All that getting Voltaire into trouble could have resulted not with Voltaire in Prussia but with Voltaire in prison (again), or worse. (The laws in France being terrible, of which this book has a lot of demonstrations, not least because of Voltaire's big justice for other people campaigns in his later life.) And of course Frankfurt demonstrated what Fritz could do even outside his own kingdom, if he wanted to. Overall, Orieux' take on Fritz is "cruel, brilliant and unique among the kings of his century" (der Einzige strikes again!), and indeed far too similar to Voltaire for them to ever be at peace with another.
New-to-me stuff:
Voltaire and Richelieu - (grandnephew of the Cardinal, temporary lover of Émilie, life long friend of them both, provider of opium in Voltaire's last painful week of life) - actually were at school together, both a Louis-le-Grand, the famous Jesuit school. Orieux, when describing Voltaire returning from his three years in Prussia where most of France actually was still sulking that he'd left in the first place, says Richelieu was an exception: "Voltaire, like Punch in the puppet show, showed up and cried "here I am again, who still loves me?" and Richelieu replied "I love you as ever".
Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive"; this at the same time as writing other letters raving about Voltaire havingt the eloquence of Cicero, the sweetness of Pliny (when he means Ovid) etc." (See, this kind of son-of-FW thing is why I had Voltaire being determined he wouldn't end up as the French Gundling.) Conversely, Orieux also notes that as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)
Orieux about Voltaire and Fritz taking leave of each other after their 1740 encounter: "They were cooing like pigeons. We will later see that they had beaks like eagles."
Jealous Fritz, still writing to Jordan in 1740: "The poet's mind is as smooth as the style of his works, and I flatter myself that Berlin seduces him enough to bring him back soon, especially since the Marquise's purse isn't as well equipped as mine."
(As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.)
Jealous Émilie, writing to D'Argental, also in 1740, re: Fritz: "I think he's indignant about me, but he should only try whether he can hate me more than I have hated him these last two months. You will admit this is a pretty rivalry we have."
(In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz. They're both still there, or were as of the writing of that biography, in the Voltaire museum there.) (No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)
Orieux regrets that Émilie didn't come with Voltaire in 1743. True, Fritz still hadn't invited her, but Voltaire was visiting Bayreuth as well, and Orieux thinks Wilhelmine would have been glad to host Émilie as well. Re: Voltaire finding German aristos nicer than French ones at this point:
He found in these exquisit courts a charm he didn't know from France; they loved him there more. The aristocracy was less stiff, less intellectual than ours, but more sensitive and simpler, despite being just as well educated and hospitable. Voltaire had loved England, but he'd been bored there. He was never bored in Germany. This, Émilie knew and was afraid of. She was jealous of Friedrich, of Ulrike and the Margravine, and of all of Germany. Why didn't she come with her poet? She would have certainly been received. Her scientific studies would not have been ridiculed, au contraire; she would have been spared the Parisian mockery and the poisonous darts of du Deffand. (Madame du Deffand was the one who ridiculed Émilie's looks and claimed Maupertuis and König had written her scientitic writings.) But alas! Germany loved Voltaire too much for Émilie to love Germany - jealousy is relentless. Which is a pity, for Germany would have loved them both.
Sidenote by me: Germany might have, Orieux, but Fritz surely would not, and he really did not want to have her there. Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.
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Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-04 06:44 pm (UTC)A similar thing is noticable with Fritz. When I after finishing the book had a look at the - gigantic - biblography - I wasn't surprised that a) it' s all in French (including Boswell's diaries - Orieux does quote the hilarious Voltaire-Boswell - "he's a wise man" encounter, and thus I learned André Maurois has done a French translation of Boswell's diaries, go Maurois!), and b) the letters aside, the Fritzian titles are all "...and Fritz", i.e. "Voltaire and Fritz", or "Louis XV: political relationshiips with Fritz" and so forth. No individual biography. Which means you get glitches like "Marie Christine" instead of "Elisabeth Christine" (and yes, Voltaire did meet her, but he didn't see her often, unsurprisingly; basically, he was curious enough to ask to be presented, but that was that, one or two more occasions aside). Or, when quoting from a Fritz to Wilhelmine letter written early after Voltaire's arrival about Voltaire being brilliant and "my brothers doing histrionics/histrionisizing" (meaning the court performance of "La Rome Sauvée" where Heinrich played Catiline and Ferdinand the imaginary naiv young male ingenue to Amalie's young female ingenue), Orieux adds "as long as they were acting, at least they couldn't scheme". (Without making clear whether he thinks that's what Fritz thought or whether that's what he assumes; either way, I suspect it's most likely that Orieux, well familiar with French history where most of the royal brothers of the various Louises did indeed scheme day in and day out, made an automatic conclusion without bothering to look up what Fritz' brothers were doing in 1750. (Without looking it up and based on memory: AW, who didn't take part in the Voltairian play-acting, was busy trying to talk Ulrike out of organizing a coup d' etat, Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by
a 50 tweets threadpublishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars, and Ferdinand did his drilling service and otherwise partied with Lehndorff. Heinrich's pamphlets aside, for which playing Catiline on stage left him ample time, there's not a single anti Fritz action detectable.Similarly, when we get to Frankfurt, Orieux writes "Fredersdorf, the King's secretary, who hated Voltaire" sent word to Freytag the Prussian Resident in Frankfurt etc. At which point of course yours truly rolls her eyes, because not only is the job description wrong (and while the English word "secretary" can be used for "minister", the German word "Sekretär" can not, and I was reading a German translation of a French book, so I doubt the mistake was in the translation) but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it, because people charmed by Voltaire usually needed to talk to him first. But since no personal letter of Fredersdorf's mentioning his feelings re: Voltaire exists, this is guess work, and in a non-fiction work I want my speculation indicated as such.
Then again, Orieux writes an old school biographee romancée, which reminds me of Stefan Zweig's masterpieces of the type fron the 1920s and 1930s, when Orieux was young,, i.e. biographies unabashedly using novelistic language "her beautiful eyes shed tender tears" etc. He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing. His take on Voltaire includes all the pettiness and shadiness and vengefulness and vanity and histrionics - good lord, all the histrionics. (By which I don't mean the occasional acting in private performances. Btw, Cahn: Émilie could and did indeed sing very well, including in operas privately performed, whereas Voltaire only acted in speaking roles on such occasions, so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.) It also provides the heroics and kindnesses and amazingly modern cosmopolitism (indeed Orieux more than once feels a bit uneasy about that, though he's also admiring, but let's just say he is stretching things a bit when speculating that Voltaire's thing for Germans might be connected in a German grandmaman he never met, and keeps reassuring his French readers that Voltaire being impressed by French defeats such as Roßbach instead of being crushed in patriotic gloom is not comparable to 20th century type of situations). No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death. The only useful things these plays did, for Orieux, was making Voltaire famous, because no one would have read his essays, pamphlets, letters and of course Candide later if he hadn't already become famous via the plays. (Orieux is a big fan of Voltaire's prose, though. Candide being his favourite, but he also adores the letters and tremendously enjoyed the trashy tell all about Fritz.) He's equally opionated on the literary works of other writers. Saint-Lambert's poems, for example, are also deemed both drippy and boring (and the one reason Saint-Lambert made it into literary history, twice, is a) his affair with Émilie and b) his later relationship with the woman Rousseau was after, leaving Orieux to conclude that well, if you can't score via your literary talents...), Fritz' Maupertuis-defending, Voltaire-attacking pamphlets are mediocre. And Orieux is opinionated about characters - Madame Denis is a stupid, greedy cow (German translation uses "eine dumme Pute", but English doesn't go for the fowl to convey the same idea, I don't think - "a goose" is even affectionate and doesn't contain the contempt of the German phrase), Monsieur Arouet didn't deserve his son's hostility, he was doing his best with the enfant terrible he was given under the circumstances, Voltaire's older brother Armand otoh was nuts and a self flaggelating pious fanatic thoroughly deserving of being disliked and ignored by younger brother, etc.
And Fritz? As opposed to Bodanis, he doesn't present this as Machiavellian Fritz luring poor naive idealistic Voltaire to him and says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other (Voltaire's repeated spy offers, Fritz not only writing that supposedly Voltairian poem but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia - he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever. All that getting Voltaire into trouble could have resulted not with Voltaire in Prussia but with Voltaire in prison (again), or worse. (The laws in France being terrible, of which this book has a lot of demonstrations, not least because of Voltaire's big justice for other people campaigns in his later life.) And of course Frankfurt demonstrated what Fritz could do even outside his own kingdom, if he wanted to. Overall, Orieux' take on Fritz is "cruel, brilliant and unique among the kings of his century" (der Einzige strikes again!), and indeed far too similar to Voltaire for them to ever be at peace with another.
New-to-me stuff:
Voltaire and Richelieu - (grandnephew of the Cardinal, temporary lover of Émilie, life long friend of them both, provider of opium in Voltaire's last painful week of life) - actually were at school together, both a Louis-le-Grand, the famous Jesuit school. Orieux, when describing Voltaire returning from his three years in Prussia where most of France actually was still sulking that he'd left in the first place, says Richelieu was an exception: "Voltaire, like Punch in the puppet show, showed up and cried "here I am again, who still loves me?" and Richelieu replied "I love you as ever".
Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive"; this at the same time as writing other letters raving about Voltaire havingt the eloquence of Cicero, the sweetness of Pliny (when he means Ovid) etc." (See, this kind of son-of-FW thing is why I had Voltaire being determined he wouldn't end up as the French Gundling.) Conversely, Orieux also notes that as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)
Orieux about Voltaire and Fritz taking leave of each other after their 1740 encounter: "They were cooing like pigeons. We will later see that they had beaks like eagles."
Jealous Fritz, still writing to Jordan in 1740: "The poet's mind is as smooth as the style of his works, and I flatter myself that Berlin seduces him enough to bring him back soon, especially since the Marquise's purse isn't as well equipped as mine."
(As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.)
Jealous Émilie, writing to D'Argental, also in 1740, re: Fritz: "I think he's indignant about me, but he should only try whether he can hate me more than I have hated him these last two months. You will admit this is a pretty rivalry we have."
(In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz. They're both still there, or were as of the writing of that biography, in the Voltaire museum there.) (No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)
Orieux regrets that Émilie didn't come with Voltaire in 1743. True, Fritz still hadn't invited her, but Voltaire was visiting Bayreuth as well, and Orieux thinks Wilhelmine would have been glad to host Émilie as well. Re: Voltaire finding German aristos nicer than French ones at this point:
He found in these exquisit courts a charm he didn't know from France; they loved him there more. The aristocracy was less stiff, less intellectual than ours, but more sensitive and simpler, despite being just as well educated and hospitable. Voltaire had loved England, but he'd been bored there. He was never bored in Germany. This, Émilie knew and was afraid of. She was jealous of Friedrich, of Ulrike and the Margravine, and of all of Germany. Why didn't she come with her poet? She would have certainly been received. Her scientific studies would not have been ridiculed, au contraire; she would have been spared the Parisian mockery and the poisonous darts of du Deffand. (Madame du Deffand was the one who ridiculed Émilie's looks and claimed Maupertuis and König had written her scientitic writings.) But alas! Germany loved Voltaire too much for Émilie to love Germany - jealousy is relentless. Which is a pity, for Germany would have loved them both.
Sidenote by me: Germany might have, Orieux, but Fritz surely would not, and he really did not want to have her there. Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.