cahn | Frederick the Great, discussion post 14

cahn

Check out the opera clips at Rheinsberg!

(both the real-life place, which

selenak found out hosts a festival for young opera singers! and the community

rheinsberg)

Also! our fandom has been producing lovely fic at a rapid clip (okay, well,

selenak has):

Sibling dysfunction: Promises to Keep and My Brother Narcissus

Sibling dysfunction PLUS sibling M/M love triangle: The moon flies face to face with me

VOLTAIRE! Between the hour and the age

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

selenak

I have little idea about economic history, so I wouldn't know, alas. Incidentally, the other French writer of the era who also was a successful businessman was Beaumarchais (like Voltaire born a non-noble, like Voltaire ditching the birth name - Caron - in favour of the nome de plume), unlike Voltaire managing nobility by buying a (very expensive) office which meant automatic elevation to the nobility. (Whereas Voltaire just called himself "de Voltaire", which was one of the things Rohan, the one who had his servants beat young Voltaire up, attacked him for.) Mind you, Beaumarchais' most famous deal was one for which only his heirs got the money for, and only partially: supplying the American rebels with boots, clothing, munition and arms. (He also was along with Franklin the single person most responsible for talking Louis XVI into supporting them.) Apparantly the young US republic didn't believe into paying French playwrights?

Beaumarchais in general like Voltaire was a mixture of shady and idealistic in his dealings, involved in a couple of law suits, and the occasional secret agent stint. The most ridiculous of which was this one:

Beaumarchais: *Most likely pens an anonymous pamphlet about how the new young King Louis and Marie Antoinette not producing any kids is problematic*

Beaumarchais: *Travels to Austria* MT, you should totally hire me as your secret agent in France to find out who the bastard writing that pamphlet was! Don't you want to protect your daughter and your alliance? I have already had a duel with this guy while he was masked and in disguise, see my wounds! He escaped, though.

Kaunitz: Your majesty, there's this shady French character, who just faked some injuries, but don't worry, we've just locked him up.

Beaumarchais: I'm oppressed! Is this the gratitude I get? Also, friends at court, pray point out to the queen I've got a hot new play about a barber in Seville in the making in which she could play the heroine at a court peformance. She's bored, right?

Marie Antoinette: Mom, please release Beaumarchais. He means well. And I want to star in his hot new play at a court performance.

MT: I have a bad feeling about this. But fine.

From:

mildred_of_midgard

(He also was along with Franklin the single person most responsible for talking Louis XVI into supporting them.)

Some extremely trivial trivia that I have not had the opportunity to share before this:

The first ambassador from France to the newly recognized United States was Conrad-Alexandre Gérard. He was born at Masevaux, where his father was secretary to French envoy Comte Conrad-Alexandre de Rottembourg, of whom we've heard a thing or two, and managed his estates. Gérard the son was named after Rottembourg, and his decision to pursue a diplomatic career was thus along the lines of going into the family business, even if he and Rottembourg weren't directly related. (Though I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Rottembourg was his godfather.)

This is why, if you go to Masevaux today (or you spend a lot of time exploring it on Google maps *cough*), you will see a school named Collège Conrad Alexandre Gérard, and if you go to Philadelphia, you can see a portrait of the man.

This post brought to you by: the best way to acquire extremely specific historical information is to write fanfic!

From:

selenak

True, that, and this is a nifty detail! I see your Gerards and raise you one Lessing, i.e. a minor detail I came across in the Voltaire biography.

To recapitulate: Lessinng: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, major figure of the German enlightenment, this guy. Came up twice, briefly, in our discussoins, once via his play Minna von Barnhelm, set shortly after the 7 Years War and doing just what Molière did in his day, i.e. attack present day problems via satiric comedy, which is why, as more than one German Fritz biographer said, one can be sure Fritz, who enjoyed Molière, would not have liked it even if he'd been able to get over himself and read/watch it. The other time Lessing came up was when I mentioned Charlotte gave him a job as librarian in Braunschweig, thus proving she may have been a lousy mother in the family tradition but really did have independence of mind instead of just taking Big Bro's cultural dictation.

Well, this same Lessing, as a young man, crossed paths with Voltaire in the most face-palming way.

Voltaire: *has an impending trial in his law suit against the banker Hirschel*

Voltaire: *at least pretends not to speak a word of German*

Voltaire: *therefore needs a German translator*

Lessing: *is a young guy of 20 bedazzled by the thought of being of service to the most famous writer of Europe*

Lessing: *translates for Voltaire*

Lessing: Okay, this Voltaire/Hirschel thing is less than edifying, I, the future author of Nathan the Wise and future best buddy of Moses Mendelssohn, expected more from Voltaire than shady dealings and antisemitism. Hey, Voltaire's secretary, is it true he has a new history in the works? I'm reminding you I'm doing this translation thing for free.

Voltaire's secretary: Sure, kid. Have a look at Le siècle de Louis XIV.

Lessing: Awesome! Now I know again why I wanted to work for this guy.

Lessing: *may be the future primary figure of the German Enlightnment, but right now is a young man on a reading high, therefore*

Lessing: FRIENDS! I have the new Voltaire in my hands! It's awesome! Here are some copies for you!

Voltaire: Excuse you. Did you just illegaly distribute my work which isn't even finished? What in this trial made you think I wouldn't come down like a hawk on you for this? THIEF!

Lessing: *is stuck with the "the one who stole Voltaire's manuscripts' reputation for the next few years*

Lessing: The moral lesson I learned from this is that feuding is the way to go in the literary scene. Hey, Gottsched! I agree with you that German literature needs to be a thing, but I think you're dead wrong about us following the French model of drama. Shakespeare is the way to go!

Lessing: *has started the first big feud of the German enlightenment*

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Lol wow. Everyone is so mature!

Lessing: The moral lesson I learned from this is that feuding is the way to go in the literary scene.

That's...one takeaway.

But go Lessing for anti-anti-Semitism!

From:

cahn

HAHAHAHA well I repeat what I said above about playwrights being ~dramatic~. I guess at least these weren't secret agent hijinks? :)

From:

cahn

Hee! I am basically in this fandom for random trivia, so keep it coming :P

From:

cahn

Wow. I guess I should expect nothing less from the author of Figaro, but still this is kind of awesomely WTF :)

I have already had a duel with this guy while he was masked and in disguise, see my wounds! He escaped, though.

Kaunitz: Your majesty, there's this shady French character, who just faked some injuries, but don't worry, we've just locked him up.

LOLOLOLOL omg Beaumarchais!

I feel like playwrights these days don't get up to ridiculous secret agent hijinks, why not?? :)

From:

selenak

Well, playwrights might not, but writers still do, or rather, did within living memory.

Known to have been secret were the following novelists:
During the war: Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John Le Carré
For a good while after the war: John Le Carré

And Le Carré is still alive.

Also, one of the two headwriters of the tv series The Americans actually was a CIA agent, so if we're counting scriptwriters, this is still a thing.

Back to Beaumarchais: he had a pretty adventuruous life. This was the century for adventurers, full stop. Come the Revolution, he was all for it at first and was a member of the National Assembly, but then the same thing happened to him which did to many a revolution-minded fellow when the Terreur came - Beaumarchais and his family had to get the hell out of France before he himself could get beheaded. He lived long enough to return in safety, and die after a good dinner with family and friends, so - happy ending of sorts? After life full of spectacular ups and downs.

From:

cahn

Oh, cool! I did know that about Fleming (but forgot), though not about the others. :D

...I did not know that about Beaumarchais, possibly because when I learned about the Terreur in high school I didn't know who Beaumarchais was :P (I came across Figaro for the first time in college, and didn't get really interested in it until years after that.)

From:

selenak

Graham Greene: famously was buddies with Kim Philby (one of the Cambridge Five) and often wondered what he would have done had he known re:Philby, hence being one of the people who get attributed the quote: “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” (It shows up in E.M. Forster's writing first, though.)

John Le Carré, I have a soft spot for. Not in the sense of liking every single book, of course, and the tropes he came up with that remade the spy genre have by now long become standards or even clichés (still effective ones, tough), but: he has never stopped being engaged with the world around him. He pointed out third world exploitation and the pharmaceutical industry in the early 90s already. And he's seen, to his horror, the rise of nationalism in England. Now, in in the novel a young Le Carré revolutionized the genre with in the 1950s, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, he advanced the cause of shadiness in the spy genre, but it for all its moral ambiguity, it did so with the underlying assumption that acting thus was still justified by the need to not let the Soviet Union win the Cold War. A Legacy of Spies, written by a much older John Le Carré who is thoroughly disgusted by current day politics, has its narrator wonder increasingly what any of it was for. And then Le Carrès most famous character, George Smiley, in his Old Luke Skywalker cameo answers that question with a passionate declaration that's very obviously also an authorial fourth wall breaking, of a writer in the age of Brexit and Trump. Smiley, on why he did the things he did:

"For world peace, whatever that is? Yes, yes, of course. There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace no stone will be left standing, as our Russian friends used to say. (...) Or was it all in the great name of capitalism? God forbid. Christendom? God forbid again. (...) So was it all for England, then?" he resumed. "There was a time, of course there was. But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European, Peter. If I had a mission - if I ever was aware of one beyond our business with the enemy, it was to Europe. If I was heartless, I was heartless for Europe. If I had an unattainable ideal, it was to lead Europe out of her darkness towards a new age of reason. I have it still.