![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahncahn - Re: The STD threadcahn - Re: The STD threadcahn - Re: Voltaire and Émiliecahn - Re: Not his type?cahn - Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlottecahn - Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlottecahn - Re: Fritz: The Disney version.cahn - Re: Voltaire and Émiliecahn - Re: Voltaire and Madame Denismildred_of_midgard - Re: The STD threadmildred_of_midgard - Re: Voltaire and Émilieselenak - Re: Not his type?selenak - (no subject)selenak - Re: Voltaire and Fritzselenak - Re: Voltaire and Madame Denisselenak - Re: Voltaire and Fritzselenak - Re: The STD threadmildred_of_midgard - (no subject)mildred_of_midgard - Re: Fritz: The Disney version.mildred_of_midgard - Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexualitymildred_of_midgard - Re: Voltaire and Madame Denismildred_of_midgard - Re: Voltaire and Fritzselenak - Re: Voltaire and Fritzselenak - (no subject)gambitten - Voltaire's Fabricated Letterstimeasmymeasure
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-24 05:02 am (UTC)...so I know having an affair with your niece isn't exactly incest by 21st-century standards, but I feel like it's close enough that possibly older!Voltaire should feel a little ashamed of himself :P
(son of Liselotte and her very gay husband of the same name)
OK I'm glad you cleared that up because when I first saw the name I was like "no WAY did Totally Gay Philippe D'Orleans have sex with his daughter, she was a woman!"
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-24 05:06 am (UTC)Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-24 05:10 am (UTC)Is it possible that even though "la femme" is singular that it refers to women in general (so that "women" would actually be a better English translation)? I feel like French does this sometimes, although my French isn't good enough to be able to tell reliably when it does and when it actually means the literal English translation.
Re: Not his type?
Date: 2020-07-24 05:20 am (UTC)You know how carefully I sought your friendship; that I spared neither caresses, nor what can be called advances, to win your heart
Oh Fritz. I know, you're just soooooo nice to Heinrich, why is it that Heinrich never realizes how awesome you are to him??
Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte
Date: 2020-07-24 05:21 am (UTC)Re: All About Grandma: Barbara Beuys: Sophie Charlotte
Date: 2020-07-24 05:24 am (UTC)Re: Fritz: The Disney version.
Date: 2020-07-24 05:35 am (UTC)I am dying at Grumbkow and Seckendorf becoming the bad guys, because OF COURSE. And Emperor Charles as the supervillain is perfect!
MT: This is calumny!
Charles: Actually I think it's kinda cool. I really think I should get my own song though.
Villain death by falling from somewhere high: Grumbkow and Seckendorf, in a duel with Fritz and Katte in the grand action finale on the walls of Küstrin
LOLOLOLOLOL this is AWESOME
Big Villain song: G-S-Emperor trio "No power but mine/That boy must die!"
So I read this as "Gilbert and Sullivan" the first time and was envisioning something like the "I am so proud" trio in the Mikado, hahahaha! (That wouldn't of course quite fit with Disney -- I know exactly the kind of crashy Big Villain song you're talking about :D )
Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-24 05:51 am (UTC)HAHAHAHAHA!
Re: Voltaire and Madame Denis
Date: 2020-07-24 05:53 am (UTC)Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-24 06:32 am (UTC)Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-24 06:35 am (UTC)Re: Not his type?
Date: 2020-07-24 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-24 01:36 pm (UTC)Yes indeed, and presumably if he didn't like Reisewitz at school, he didn't keep in contact and lost sight of him until they both ended up in Heinrich's circle.
Especially since, didn't Ziebura say Heinrich flattered Fritz in an entirely uncharacteristic way to get Kalckreuth a promotion during the Seven Years' War?
So she did, and he did. Leaving aside Fritz having a praise kink in general, I assume that since Heinrich usually didn't feed it, stuff like this was doubly effective.
re: Marwitz - his age (as documented by the Obelisk) was one big reason why we thought Obelisk Quartermaster Marwitz and Page Marwitz could not be identical, until Henckel delivered the identification in his journal. (Especially since due to Fritz' dated letters we do know when exactly the big climax happened.) Now, I see German wiki refers to Marwitz as a "Kammerjunker", not a page, and this would solve the age problem. For Lehndorf, who didn't witness the events of early 1746 himself but only learned about them later, and writers a diary entry in early 1757 for his own benefit and no other reader, it probably wasn't that important which rank Marwitz held during the Carnival of 1746; he knew Marwitz had started out as a page to Fritz, and so assumed this would have been it.
The only fly in this otherwise perfect ointment is that the same wiki entry says Marwitz was Heinrich's Kammerjunker, and he wasn't. (That he worked for Fritz is part of the point, wiki!) The citation wiki gives for this is Ziebura's Heinrich biography, but I don't think Ziebura gives Marwitz another rank than page during the relevant time span, either. Or maybe she does in later editions? Remember, I have read the first edition which is the one the Stabi has, and it does have at least the mistake about who the "empress" Wilhelmine meets is.
Re: Voltaire and Fritz
Date: 2020-07-24 02:02 pm (UTC)I suppose? Because I can't recall another violence threat.
Berlin is the first time Voltaire realizes the French Enlightenment is happening and that he's part of it. Until then, he was just an isolated figure doing his own thing and ignoring his contemporaries.
? He was literary feuding with half of them, which I wouldn't call "ignoring". And he did have pals, both French and international, hence all those visitors in Cirey (hello Algarotti).
Unanimous vote: now this sounds plausible to me.
Doctored letters: Pleschinski's translation is strictly Voltaire/Fritz, not any of the Madame Denis letters. Also he originally published it in 1991, I think. Of course there's editing text covering who is who and what went on between letters, but I don't recall him mentioning anything of the sort. And Orieux, of course, published his biography in the 1960s, so there is no research beyond that point, either.
Mind you, it would be entirely ic for these two (remember the part where Fritz had a Voltaire poem forged to get him into (more) trouble?), but otoh, what I consider even more likely is that Voltaire, if he doctored, made himself look better/smarter by inserting sentences showing he was aware Fritz was being despotic, and that he wasn't planning on staying after the first year anyway.
Re: Voltaire and Madame Denis
Date: 2020-07-24 02:16 pm (UTC)Or if he was Protestant and the King's brother, says Ferdinand. Anyway, what Cahn said. V.v.. Voltaire to check out the expenses and precedents here. Mind you, I can think of another reason why he might have at least considered making it official and marrying Madame Denis: in theory, either or both of them could have ended up in prison because it was illegal. Voltaire wasn't just the son of a notary but also in his later life the attacker of various legal injustices, so he was quite aware of how easily the law could destroy you even if you hadn't committed any offense. The good city councillors of Geneva, for example, might have been willing to put up with his non-religiosity, but uncle/niece incest could have been one thing too many?
Conversely, and also possible: he might have been afraid Madame Denis would remarry and leave him, otherwise, at least early on.
Re: Voltaire and Fritz
Date: 2020-07-24 02:29 pm (UTC)I remember it well, and it's still milder than what Pangels said, which is that Voltaire's entire slander against Fritz (since according to no one other than Voltaire EVER accused Fritz of being gay) is due to getting his heart broken, since he really truly loved Ulrike.
Given that Davidson reports Voltaire desperately trying to get Bentinck as a mistress during the Potsdam years, I wonder if Fritz, if he did express annoyance at Bentinck (we still lack a source on this), actually meant, "Why does Voltaire keep chasing women when he could have meeeee???
Sounds likely to me. Btw, since Voltaire wrote to people other than Madame Denis - including old friend D'Argental, and his other niece (whom Orieux much prefers, sighing that if it had to be a niece, why not this one?) - and one common threat is that he misses women when at Sanssouci (one reason why he also has rented a flat in Berlin is so he can get out of the all-male atmosphere there once in a while), his continuing penchant for female company definitely must have been noticable.
Of course, with our luck we'll discover six weeks later there is indeed a Fritz letter in which he complains about Bentinck/Heinrich. But until I see it, I'm going with Bentinck/Voltaire as the far more likely cause of his irration.
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-24 02:53 pm (UTC)And yes, his son being his namesake (and inheritor of the duchy of Orleans) is why historians usually call Philippe the first by his (and every King's oldest brother) title of "Monsieur", and Philippe the second gets referred to as "the Regent". He shows up a lot in the early part of Horowitz book, btw. (He was regent during the childhood and youth of Louis XV., which was, of course, also Voltaire's youth.) While according to Orieux and wiki he did not have sex with his daughter, he did have sex with a great many other people in a great many ways (though as opposed to Dad, he didn't have male favourites); in general, he's described as smart, liberal for a Bourbon, artistically gifted (he composed operas, painted and acted in plays by Moliere and Racine), and a great reader. (His personal library forms the basis for the National Library of France (much as Jefferson's library became the basis for the library of Congress), which he founded and opened to the public (i.e. not just to students and scholars - this was the first truly public library). Unfortunately, he was also an iccorrigble spendthrift, and so contributed his share to moving France long towards the French Revolution.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 05:43 pm (UTC)Not necessarily a fly. While it would, of course, be nice to have actual evidence of a different rank, an explanation for it (Lehndorff writing 10+ years after the fact about events he wasn't present for concerning someone he's not close to) suffices.
Or maybe she does in later editions?
I just checked the updated edition (which is in our very secret library if you ever want to access it), and I'm not seeing either a different rank than page or the word Kammerjunker anywhere in the volume (per search function).
I think our ointment is acceptable, pending further evidence.
Looking back through Ziebura, I am reminded that she says that Heinrich accused Marwitz of intriguing against Ferdinand and broke up with him. Do we know what her source for that is? Is it in Henckel?
Re: Fritz: The Disney version.
Date: 2020-07-25 05:49 pm (UTC)Haha. You can probably tell from my prompt Lion King rewrite that I feel exactly the opposite way. Obviously I wish FW had acknowledged his wrongdoing in real life and saved Katte and been nicer to Fritz! But since he didn't, the only thing that feels cathartic to me is hating on FW. :P It's not rational! But when I first read the original write-up, I found myself thinking, "Would I rather have a story where Katte lives but the narration expects me to reconcile with FW, or one where Katte dies but I'm free to keep hating FW?" Really! :D
Re: Algarotti's STD and Fritz's sexuality
Date: 2020-07-25 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: Voltaire and Madame Denis
Date: 2020-07-25 05:51 pm (UTC)Davidson quotes numerous letters early on where she keeps talking about getting married to someone else, and Voltaire keeps freaking out, so yes, there is that.
Re: Voltaire and Fritz
Date: 2020-07-25 05:59 pm (UTC)Oh, sheesh. "No one other than Voltaire EVER accused Fritz of being gay" is in MacDonogh, but I don't remember him saying anything about it being related to his true love for Ulrike. *facepalm*
Davidson at least says sth to the effect of, "People have claimed his supposed homosexuality was just a canard put out by Voltaire, but...regardless of his sexuality, he was clearly gay in some sense and obviously in a way that colored his feelings for Voltaire." Which I agree with: even if Fritz had a low sex drive, which I'm undecided about, he was obviously homoromantic and sexually *attracted* to men. You can be attracted to someone without "I want to drop what I'm doing and get down and dirty with them right now" immediately following. And so I will defend Fritz as gay regardless of intensity of sex drive.
Of course, with our luck we'll discover six weeks later there is indeed a Fritz letter in which he complains about Bentinck/Heinrich.
Indeed! "Citation needed...citation found!" is the story of our fandom. I remember "There stands one who will avenge me" as a stellar example.
But until I see it, I'm going with Bentinck/Voltaire as the far more likely cause of his irration.
I did at least proceed to find the quote where Fritz was annoyed at Voltaire's political interference in that situation. So it could be. Fritz could also have been annoyed if he felt Heinrich was siding with her politically (whether or not he was--this is "watch out for intriguing princes of the blood!" political testament time from Fritz).
Re: Voltaire and Fritz
Date: 2020-07-26 04:41 am (UTC)BTW, it just occurs to me that if Heinrich hadn't been married by that point already, then Bentinck could have tried not to not just seduce but to marry him because then Prussia would have been obliged to push her claims against her ex husband for her territory. But since he was married, and couldn't divorce Mina without getting Fritz' permission first, which AW just had failed at getting re: Sophie von Pannewitz/Voss, there was no chance of that.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 04:51 am (UTC)However, Ziebura mentions in her book what a treasure trove for Heinrich's life his letters to Ferdinand were, which Ferdinand all preserved, and which because they were seen as private, not political, previous biographers tended to ignore. It might be that she has it directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak ,i.e. maybe Ferdinand or Heinrich mention it at the time? But if so, she hasn't given us the quote.
Voltaire's Fabricated Letters
Date: 2020-07-31 08:26 pm (UTC)Is this true? Does Pleschinski say this at all?
Voltaire went back and fabricated his entire Prussian-resident-era correspondence with Madame Denis in the vengeance-filled winter of 1753 to 1754, and arranged for these fake letters to be released to the public by Denis after his death. Voltairean scholars thought these letters were legitimate for a VERY long time. Like, for almost 200 years.
To give you some context about when these letters were discovered to be doctored:
Theodore Besterman, the Most Passionate Voltaire Scholar, collected and published as much of Voltaire's correspondence as he could from the 1950s until his death in 1974, after which his work was taken over by the Voltaire Foundation, which he founded. His work was VERY important for Voltairean scholarship; it is his editions of Voltaire's correspondence that serve as the basis for the Electronic Enlightenment database. He treats the entire Prussia-era Voltaire-Denis correspondence as authentic, and all Voltaire scholars based their analyses on his work. In 1953, it was noted by French scholar Jean Nivat that, in an October 1753 letter, Voltaire requests for Denis to return their (real) correspondence to him so he can begin work on a literary project called 'Pamela', a reference to an English novel written by Samuel Richardson. Nivat questioned whether this 'Pamela' was a work of Voltaire's which had been lost to time, since none of Voltaire's known published works seemed to have anything to do with the Pamela novel except for Nanine, which was published in 1749; Besterman rejected this and said there was no lost 'Pamela' project.
It wasn't until 1989 that French professor André Magnan proved that the Voltaire-Denis letters were fabricated by Voltaire in his French-language analysis in Dossier Voltaire en Prusse (1750-1753), and that this fabrication was the very 'literary project' that Voltaire called 'Pamela'. This very helpful English-language review of the book summarises Magnan's findings. Only 3 of the Prussian-resident-era letters between Voltaire and Madame Denis can even be called 'letters'; more than 50 others are basically an extended novel written by Voltaire in the form of letters and passed off as a real correspondence to get revenge on Friedrich in the eyes of posterity.
Any Voltaire biographies written before 1989, and even most written in the 1990s, will treat these letters and the events depicted in them as authentic. As late as 1995 French scholars were still discussing whether this series of fictionalised letters should be called 'Pamela' or something else. In the end, most modern scholars call these letters 'Pamela' or 'Paméla', and you can find analyses about them under this title, mostly from 2005 onwards in English (it took a while for English-language scholarship to catch up to the French, as often happens with new findings published in foreign languages):
-- What's in a Name? Reflections on Voltaire's Pamela (2005)
-- On the Voltaire Foundation's website the PAMÉLA text is summarised as late as 2010:
"Paméla, a reworking of letters to Mme Denis during his years in Prussia (which were long thought to be authentic), gives a very carefully constructed view of the period, where attitudes are modified, chronology manipulated, details omitted. The same is true of the Mémoires, where the perspective is different, but still issues are simplified, and evidence changed at will. Through these two texts, Voltaire speaks directly to posterity, as he seeks to claim the authority to write about himself, to create and control his image."
-- The Best of All Possible Marriages: Voltaire and Frederick in Paméla (2013)
Of course, the Electronic Enlightenment database never mentions that these letters are inauthentic either, since the annotations provided are Besterman's own. Hence some of the quotes I have provided here before are unfortunately part of the fake narrative Voltaire pushed, including this one, which
"I have been handed over, my dear, with all due formalities, to the King of Prussia. The marriage is accomplished: will it be happy? I do not know in the least: yet I cannot prevent myself saying, Yes. After coquetting for so many years, marriage was the necessary end. My heart beat hard even at the altar."
Voltaire wasn't playfully using flirtatious language here; this is "Fritz is gay!!!" controversy-stirring rhetoric written with the same intention as what Voltaire wrote in his memoirs, doubling as an allusion to Pamela's exploitative marriage in the Pamela novel. Voltaire is also being dramatic here, wanting to introduce a sense of irony, since he of course knows how the 'marriage' will end up.
It also means that the events aptly summarised by
"I wish he wouldn't always bring me his dirty laundry to clean," Voltaire says one day when he has to interrupt his own work, which happens to be an entirely new way of describing history by using the age of Louis XIV as an example. Unfortunately, he says this within hearing of La Mettrie, who tells Maupertuis, who tells the King. This is something Voltaire will only discover later, as the King says nothing to him about it, not directly. On the other hand, the various guests of the King's carefully selected table round suddenly all seem to know that the King has told La Mettrie he simply needs Voltaire for his exquisite French and for his knowledge. "I'll squeeze him dry like an orange," La Mettrie quotes Federic when Voltaire point blank asks him about this, "and then I'll throw away the peel."
... the only evidence we have for this entire scenario was written after the fact by Voltaire as part of a revenge novel in the form of fake letters. That this story is present in so many of Voltaire's biographies is a testament to how successfully Voltaire controlled the narrative of 'what went on behind the scenes in Prussia'. All we really have in regards to these events is a falsified correspondence which Voltaire himself likened to a fictional novel.
Basically, if you ever see any quotes from Voltaire to Madame Denis, or from Madame Denis to Voltaire, and they're alleged to be from 1750 to 1753 in an English-language biography written before 2010 or a French-language biography written before 2000, both you and the writer have been fooled by Voltaire across time.