Frederick the Great, discussion post 16
Jul. 14th, 2020 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnWe have slowed down a lot, but are still (sporadically) going! And somehow filled up the last post while I wasn't looking!
...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D
...I was asked to start a new thread so that STDs could be discussed. Really! :D
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-18 04:01 am (UTC)This is totally the winner :PP :D Although I guess also
what also might factor in Voltaire either inventing or spreading the rumor: Fritz himself evidently thought it was the height of hilarity to accuse someone of having STD... maybe Voltaire thought turnabout was just fair game?
is in the running for most awesome explanation :) Maybe it was just... what... snarky people did back then? accuse people of having STDs, just for fun??
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-20 06:10 am (UTC)Well, if you're young Voltaire, you can also accuse them of incest. Remember, young Voltaire's first stint in the Bastille came when he wrote satiric poetry charging that the Regent of France, Philippe D'Orleans (son of Liselotte and her very gay husband of the same name), had sex with his favourite daughter. I know David Bodanis (of the Voltaire and Émilie biography) added "it was likely true", but Jean Orieux (of the big Voltaire biography) does not think so, and while both Bodanis and Orieux have their weaknesses in German history, I trust Orieux to know his stuff in French history more than Bodanis. (For what's worth, German wiki agrees with Orieux.) Anyway, Philippe D'Orleans' reaction to young Voltaire trash talking him is very Philippe II.: first the stint in the Bastille, then he and his daughter visit the premiere of Voltaire's first drama Oedipe (the daughter even went on to watch more performances) and Philippe gives Voltaire a gold medal and 1200 livres as a present.
...compared to "he totally does it with his daughter", Fritz got of lightly with the "he's a bottoming Potsdamite" taunt, I'd say, but then I'm not an 18th century contemporary.
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-23 03:02 am (UTC)I trust Bodanis to know pretty much nothing. Though I have to say, I grabbed the first Voltaire bio I could find on Kindle, by Ian Davidson, and wow, he hates on Émilie, and he thinks Bentinck scored with Heinrich! (And Fritz was upset about that.) So I now think there are worse things than Bodanis. (Davidson is still useful for providing dates in footnotes, which I'm planning to work into the chronology as time and health allow.)
Semi-unrelated, since I mentioned Peter Keith elsewhere in this thread as a Fritzian boyfriend for whom we have some documentary evidence for sex (the only such boyfriend now that I'm leaning toward putains for Algarotti), and if my admittedly flimsy case is correct...it would make a lot of sense if the boys tried to downplay it as "masturbation practical demo and technique sharing between two totally het randy young men," because this would account for:
1) How it took FW 18 years to discover apparently through experience* that your son might commit masturbation if left to his own devices.
2) Why Peter got off so easy as to get a promotion to lieutenant (in an obscure regiment as far away as possible) instead of a cashiering for sodomy.
Ahhh. I'd been trying to remember where I read online that Fritz was sent to Wusterhausen to "repent of his sins" when Peter was sent away. English Wikipedia, Fritz article, of course, and the source cited is 1929 biographer Goldsmith. Now, I love her because she openly ships Fritz/Katte like whoa (like I wish she were alive today to post stuff on AO3), but I also hate her because she doesn't provide sources.
Ooh, now that I've opened my copy, I see that she dates it to September 1728. Which, thanks to Kloosterhuis, we know is wrong, but explains where all the fanfic with that dating comes from (including my own, pre-Kloosterhuis). I really think the archivist guy was the first one to step outside Wilhelmine's memoirs and figure out the real chronology.
Anyway, per FW's order with the later kids, "sins" in his mind could just as easily include "masturbation" and bawdy talk with Peter as open sodomy. Now, *we* know Fritz and Peter were totally getting it on, but of course they talked fast and convincingly when caught. Headcanon!
And if you wonder whether FW would fall for this...he's the father who apparently thought that the guy who wasn't interested in women was the perfect role model and sexual warden for his younger sons! (And he was, just not in the way FW intended. I'm so glad Heinrich had him, though.)
* Remember, it was only in 1731 that a royal edict went out against lending money to minors of the royal family. And it's not like FW hadn't known about Fritz's money-spending habits before the big escape attempt and trial. He was like, "Don't do it again." And then Fritz did it again.
So while on the one hand FW believed Fritz was the worst, I think specifics kept taking him by surprise. And masturbation might have been one of those.
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-23 05:26 am (UTC)How dare he. I gathered from Orieux' defensive tone about her (he's a fan!) that there's a bunch of older Voltaire biographers with a hate-on, mostly from before the publication of the (sexual) Madame Denis letters, though. (Which nixed the whole "poor Voltaire, devoted to a woman who first cheats on him with Maupertuis and then with this St. Lambert guy" story.) Older biographers who take that malicious gossip from Madame SuchandSuch that Émilie isn't a real scientist but that her teachers write all her stuff for her as true , and/or don't understand the enormity of what she achieved anyway due to lack of scientific knowledge. But a quick google tells me Davidson is a living author, so he doesn't have those excuses.
(I'm happy to report that my Mr. Pleschinski who translated and edited the Fritz/Voltaire correspondance into Germanin the 1990s thinks Émilie is amazing, as is only proper.)
He thinks Bentinck scored with Heinrich! (And Fritz was upset about that)
Does he provide source citation, and could it be Pangels? I mean, I suppose if you take the early Lehndorff entry where he's upset people think Bentinck scored with Heinrich, and nothing else Lehndorff wrote, you can believe that. Young Lehndorff going "he'd never!" is hardly an argument, Bentinck certainly tried very hard, and Lehndorff in said entry proves there were rumors. Which, given it's late 1751 or 1752 (haven't looked it up again, it's just my vague recollection on Lehndorff's own relationship with Bentinck going "shameless hussy!" to "meeting up/corresponding with my pal Bentinck again to sigh about Heinrich" fits with with these years where he goes from friends to in love with and friends with benefits with Heinrich himself), are understandable; Heinrich is still in his mid 20s, and while every gossip must know he likes men, they may not yet have gathered he likes them exclusively. (Which btw Voltaire in the 1752 anonymous pamphlet seems to have no doubt about.) Whereas later gossips no longer think of Bentinck as an option, and Pangels is the only biographer I've read so far who does. (And I don't think she does so sincerely, because how you can read Lehndorff's diaries and emerge with the idea that Lehndorff ships Heinrich/Bentinck and wanted them together while just having faithful friend interest in Heinrich himself is beyond me. That's a wilful act of falsification in the interest of no-homo'ing.)
Anyway: if Davidson's source is Pangels (with some highly selected and edited diary entries from Lehndorff as back-up), I wouldn't be surprised. However, he adds one new element when saying Fritz (same guy who in the summer of 1751 writes to Wilhelmine re: Heinrich marrying Mina, "women will do him good, muhahaa" ) was upset - does he say why? Because Bentinck wanted his political support against her husband and he thought her having an affair with one of his brothers might lead people to assume she had it? Another reason?
it would make a lot of sense if the boys tried to downplay it as "masturbation practical demo and technique sharing between two totally het randy young men,"
Sounds all extremely plausible to me. I'm still baffled why FW never discovered masturbation himself as a boy, unless the Calvinist teacher who put the fear of God and predestination into him also covered the subject with a mighty DON'T DO IT OR YOU WILL GO TO HELL and young FW was suitably impressed and didn't. Since he was an only child, and really seems to have be utterly caught by surprise that Fritz given the same education would not be just like him, the idea tat different children and youths could respond differently seems to have been new to FW.
(Btw, nothing in Beuys about Sophie Charlotte sending her lady-in-waiting to deflower him, so either Klepper made that up or Beuys thought the source was so unreliable as to not be included in her biography. Not being a biographer but a novelist, Klepper is certainly allowed to make it up.)
Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-23 06:20 am (UTC)How few excuses he has, let me show you them! Copyright 2010!1 He cites what must be every sexually explicit passage from Voltaire to Madame Denis. I've never read so many mentions of Voltaire's prick2 and her arse!
He has no mention of Pangels, though he admits his biography is select rather than scholarly. I was wondering if that was where he got it from.
He has no citation for Bentinck/Heinrich or Fritz's displeasure at all. This is the passage:
Sophie was much younger than Voltaire and full of gusto, and she may have had love affairs with other men in Berlin – with Prince Henri, younger brother of Frederick (to Frederick’s irritation) and even, most poignantly, with Wilhelm zu Schaumburg-Lippe, the younger (legitimate) son of her dead lover Wolfgang, now in his late twenties – but not with Voltaire.
Just take his word for it, I guess.
"women will do him good, muhahaa"
I was thinking of this! Though apparently, according to your original report of this line, I had to look up the original for that one, and Fritz writes "la femme", singular.
Still.
Another reason?
"Reason." You give him too much credit. :P
Heinrich is still in his mid 20s, and while every gossip must know he likes men, they may not yet have gathered he likes them exclusively.
This makes perfect sense to me.
the publication of the (sexual) Madame Denis letters, though. (Which nixed the whole "poor Voltaire, devoted to a woman who first cheats on him with Maupertuis and then with this St. Lambert guy" story.)
Unless you're Davidson, in which case, poor Voltaire, devoted to a woman who ran him ragged and held him back intellectually and couldn't commit to him, thus finally forcing him to look elsewhere for fulfillment. With her mathematical talent, and her lack of emotional control, she was probably autistic (!!) and couldn't understand how men would perceive her passionate expressions of love.
You know, I'm so glad that Kindle books exist in my time of chronic pain, but I super hate being limited to them, (plus, lately, whatever I can scan and stand to read in very small font on my phone).
The double standard of "she can't commit to one man, could be autism!" is stunning.
To be fair, he does acknowledge that Voltaire's ten year flirtation with Fritz contributed to the deterioration of their relationship in a way that Voltaire was oblivious to, BUT, at no point has he so far pathologized this. Naturally you would want to flirt with Fritz! (And have sex with your niece, I guess.) Especially if Émilie is smothering you with her demands.
Oh, and this is my favorite quote so far. It's the second paragraph of the chapter after Émilie dies:
Émilie had done her best to keep Voltaire away from Potsdam and to rein in his intellectual and creative life, and to some extent she had succeeded: it is striking how little Voltaire produced during the last four years of their life together. With her death he regained his freedom not just to go to Prussia but also to think and to write what he wanted. It was only after her death, and in the relative calm and solitude of Frederick’s court, that Voltaire was finally able to finish Le Siècle de Louis XIV.
Davidson! I can understand pre-1753 Voltaire being frustrated at being caught between Fritz and Émilie and having to choose, but you have the benefit of hindsight!
I haven't yet got to the Fritz/Voltaire breakup, but am super looking forward to seeing how he handles that, and by "looking forward to" I mean "munching popcorn."
(I'm happy to report that my Mr. Pleschinski who translated and edited the Fritz/Voltaire correspondance into Germanin the 1990s thinks Émilie is amazing, as is only proper.)
Indeed, indeed. Pleased to hear it.
1 I would have cut an older biographer some slack on the Émilie-hating. I'm cutting the 1973 Lord Hervey biographer some slack on the one expression of toxic masculinity I've run into so far (I'm only a few pages in, because I had to scan it and thus the font is so small). But 2010!
2 My heart and my prick send you the most tender good wishes. This evening I shall surely see you.
Davidson footnotes this with:
As so often, Voltaire wrote to Mme Denis in Italian. In her copy of this letter she heavily crossed out the Italian word for ‘prick’ (cazzo), replacing it with the word spirito.
Given what happened to Lehndorff's diary, I have to ask: are we 100% sure this was in her handwriting?
Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-23 10:44 am (UTC)As for the autism charge for Émilie and no suggestion of pathological reasons for Voltaire, yeah, the double standard is breathtaking. (Again, even Fritz when gossiping with D'Argens about her love life a decade after her death doesn't come up with the Rokoko equivalant of this charge.)
the relative calm and solitude of Frederick’s court
*snort* Do tell how he handles the big breakup.
Given what happened to Lehndorff's diary, I have to ask: are we 100% sure this was in her handwriting?
I assume the difference between Lehndorff's handwriting and that of his descendant was marked enough for Schmidt-Lötzen to notice at once. He, however, is tactful enough not to say who it was, while Ziebura in the introduction to her translation of the 1799 journal has no such problem. 'Twas the Countess Lehndorff who ended up giving Schmidt-Lötzen permission to publish. Apparantly this was her last ditch attempt to save her ancestor's and Heinrich's reputations before giving up. Since this means the "elle" for "lui" etc. would have been relatively recently added, I assume there was also the difference between a fresh crossing out/overwriting and Lehndorff's original faded ink.
The last one, of course, would not apply to Madame Denis trying to cross out and overwriting words Voltaire had written, since this would have been only a few decades later at most. Ditto for anyone after her trying this in the 19th century, which by the 20 century when the letters were published would have looked old as well. However, since her own letters are preserved, there are ample examples of her handwriting, and if there are not just strike outs but added words, I do trust that experts are able to tell whether or not the added words are from the same person. At any rate, considering Madame Denis sold Voltaire's library and some of his clothing to Catherine, she might have wanted to sell some of the letters, too. Catherine was definitely interested in buying up additional Voltaire letters (additional to those she had received herself), which I was recently reminded of because her literary handyman in Paris, Melchior Grimm, offered Heinrich to buy his. (However few or many Heinrich received aren't in existence anymore, and at any rate he drew the line there, because of the Fritz comments in them. Reading Voltaire's memoirs with added comments out loud for your friends is cool, but providing a foreign monarch with material, even if it's AnhaltSophie, would not be for him, it seems. Anyway, selling letters of a dead celebrity was quite common, and Madame Denis might have considered it before realising there was no way this letters would pass as anything but what they were and keeping them.
This article about the original publication of the letters in the 1950s reminds me that - as Orieux noted, too, - Madame Denis was as vehemently against Voltaire going to Potsdam as Émilie had ever been, so dies Richardson mention this?
Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-23 10:05 pm (UTC)That's *exactly* what he is! It makes Bodanis' shameless romanticization of his two favorites almost refreshing. The whitewashing gave me doubts about his scholarship, but I at least enjoyed reading it.
Seriously though, "she held him back intellectually" is a stunner I had not expected even from an Émilie hater.
Nobody could have expected this! She's keeping him from his destiny, which is to
bebreak up epically with Fritz.the relative calm and solitude of Frederick’s court
*snort* Do tell how he handles the big breakup.
Will do. Remember when Fritz made Voltaire promise to stop satirizing people and "behave in a manner which is suitable for a man of letters who has the honour of being a chamberlain to His Majesty, and who lives among honest men"? This reminded me of that. (As I did this write-up, I kept rereading that line to see if maybe I'd hallucinated it.)
Thank you for your excellent-as-always scholarship on the letters! If you'd been a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1752, I'm sure you would have voted against the Leibniz fragment being a forgery. ;)
Madame Denis was as vehemently against Voltaire going to Potsdam as Émilie had ever been, so dies Richardson mention this?
Not that I remember, but I admit I'm skimming, mostly looking for material for the chronology (once I'm capable of typing it up). I'll keep an eye out for it, though.
Oh, and re Fritz being annoyed at Bentinck/Heinrich, remember when Pangels devotee MacDonogh said Fritz wrote that one poem because he was annoyed at Voltaire for hitting on Ulrike? And some scholar wrote a whole article arguing the contrary? And you and I went and read the poem and concluded that Fritz didn't take Voltaire/Ulrike seriously enough to get annoyed, but what he really wanted was Voltaire to hit on him, and the whole poem was nothing but a broad hint best translated, "But what about meeee??"
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??? Freaking Émilie."
Fritz to biographers: My priorities are not what you think my priorities are.
Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-24 05:51 am (UTC)HAHAHAHAHA!
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: 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
From:Re: Voltaire and Madame Denis
Date: 2020-07-24 01:49 am (UTC)Was he, as some scholars think, obliquely referring to the question of possibly marrying Mme Denis? The idea seems absurd. Mme Denis was his niece, and marriage with her would be incestuous and illegal. And yet it was not absolutely impossible, in the eighteenth century, for a man to marry his niece, if he got the right papal dispensation. Charles-Marie de La Condamine, the mathematician and physicist and one of Voltaire’s friends, married his niece in 1756; and the financier Jean Pâris de Montmartel also married his niece. Voltaire investigated the question in some detail. He claimed that there may have been about forty such marriages every year; and he estimated that the cost of the papal dispensation would have been some 120,000 francs (‘once you include the small expenses’), though he went on to say: ‘I have always heard it said that it cost M. de Montmartel only 80,000 francs.’
If Voltaire was so interested in the question of marriage between uncles and nieces and what it entailed, the implication must be that at some stage he gave real consideration to the idea of marriage with Mme Denis.
Footnoted citations: Voltaire, Romans et contes, pot-pourri, vol. XIII (Éditions de La Pléiade, Paris), p. 464 (first published in 1765); Voltaire, Mélanges, La Défense de mon oncle, de l’inceste (Éditions de La Pléiade, Paris), p. 1156, (first published in 1767).
Thoughts?
Re: Voltaire and Madame Denis
Date: 2020-07-24 05:53 am (UTC)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 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: 2020-07-24 02:22 am (UTC)Davidson on the Prussian years:
1750: Voltaire is in the wrong during the whole swindle involving the banker.
1751: Things are calm and quiet and he gets a lot of work done.
1752, part the first: Maupertuis is an idiot and the Academy is filled with his stooges. Maupertuis threatens our hero with violence! (Mildred: Is this the duel challenge?)
1752, part the second: Fritz's decision to
go up against Voltaire when satire is on the lineget involved in the pamphlet war is a tactical error. And then the whole pamphlet-burning shows that Voltaire was wrong to think of him as an enlightened monarch. Time to get out of here!1753: In Frankfurt, Freytag does some bad stuff and disobeys Fritz's orders. If you want to know what's in that book of poems Fritz wants back or why he wants it, or whether Fritz is authorized to put Voltaire under house arrest there, or whether Voltaire was more than mildly annoyed, you'll have to find out from another source. This is the most boring account of the Frankfurt episode you'll ever read, especially considering how lively my writing has been up until 1750. The only exciting part is where Mme Denis almost gets raped. :/
Post-1753: Likewise, just as Émilie's death turned out to be great for his career, the departure from Prussia all worked out for the best, because the happiest time of Voltaire's life was during his involuntary exile.
Seriously a letdown as far as capturing the drama.
Noteworthy parts from these two chapters:
* 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.
* Voltaire gave Bentinck advice on how best to present her case to Fritz (Mildred: I'm trying to figure out if he's the most or least qualified person to do this); actual quote from a letter from Fritz chiding Voltaire for involving himself in her affairs which were none of his business. Oh, and this lovely quote from Fritz: "I must warn you, that if you have a passion for intrigues and cabals, you have come to the wrong place." (Mildred: Pull the other one, Fritz, it's got bells on.)
* If Davidson's correct, and it does sound plausible, the Academy vote was unanimous because the dissenters abstained. He goes for the "knowing which side their bread was buttered on" explanation:
Since Maupertuis had total power over all aspects of the Academy, notably the salaries of the members, most of them meekly did what he wanted, and on 13 April 1752 they found Kœnig guilty; those who disagreed simply stayed away.
Author of the Maupertuis bio, of course, just says it was unanimous.
* After 1753, Voltaire wanted to get back at Fritz, so he got back all the letters he wrote to Mme Denis from this period and doctored them to make Fritz look worse. This means they're all suspect, including the "dirty laundry" and "orange peel" anecdotes.
It was not until late in the twentieth century that scholars finally realised that these letters had been cooked by Voltaire and that they cannot be taken literally.
Is this true? Does Pleschinski say this at all?
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.
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.
Re: Voltaire's Fabricated Letters
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From: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: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-07-24 06:35 am (UTC)Re: Voltaire and Émilie
Date: 2020-08-01 05:26 am (UTC)He says it comes across as insulting and misogynistic either way, which, you know, Fritz is a misogynist, news at 11. ;) But given that Fritz is gay and the one forcing the marriage and he's talking specifically about the marriage when he says thus, we agree he's probably not talking about Heinrich's sexuality but about how this marriage is a really great idea, like all of Fritz's ideas.
Plus I gave Guillaume the whole passage, and he says that there would have been much more natural ways to say "women" in that sentence, even if you wanted to be misogynistic about it.
So that's the verdict from our Frenchman.
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-23 06:27 am (UTC)That's exactly what I think happened! He had the self-control to resist the sin of Onanism, his son was given proper religious instruction, QED. I mean! It's a sin! Right? Why would you do it?
Since he was an only child, and really seems to have be utterly caught by surprise that Fritz given the same education would not be just like him, the idea tat different children and youths could respond differently seems to have been new to FW.
Yep. I'm thinking of him giving Fritz the same French governess he had and expecting Fritz to somehow arrive at the same conclusion of the superiority of German, given the same upbringing. FW comes across as parentally naive in some ways.
I admit my theory is entirely a house of cards, but Peter's dismissal on the same day as Fritz's sudden need to be supervised by his governor at age 18, and the younger boys' sexual supervision starting at a much younger age makes me want to connect the dots in the same way as you cleverly connected the dots between the last child's birth, the locking up of SD's favorite son, and the sudden breakdown in FW's commitment to no extramarital sex.
...This is way more insight into FW's sex life (and lack thereof) than I frankly ever expected to have.
Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-24 05:06 am (UTC)Re: The STD thread
Date: 2020-07-24 06:32 am (UTC)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 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.