Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

[cahn]

Yuletide nominations:

18th Century CE Federician RPF
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria
Voltaire
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Ernst Ahasverus von Lehndorff
Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Anna Amalie von Preußen | Anna Amalia of Prussia (1723-1787)
Catherine II of Russia
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)

Circle of Voltaire RPF
Emilie du Chatelet
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour)
John Hervey (1696-1743)
Marie Louise Mignot Denis
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Armand de Vignerot du Plessis de Richelieu (1696-1788)
Francesco Algarotti

Comments

Émilie Tripled

[selenak]

Lauren Gunderson: Emilie. La Marquise du Chatelet defends her life tonight.

Fabulous play, of which I had seen excerpts on Youtube, and which I've finally had the chance to read. Gunderson excells at witty dialogue, she does manage to make the main scientific issues of Émilie's life comprehensible to non-scientists, and while providing ample room for Émilie's love life avoids the trap fall of biopics and bio dramas about female characters, which end up all too often are all about the romance and utterly fail to show what made female character X famous, and what drove her. Not so here. She thanks Judith Zinsser in the preface and mostly follows the outlinesof Zinssers biography, though not so much in the Voltaire characterisation. Her Voltaire is flawed and male ego is a big reason for his clashing with Émiilie re: Newton vs Leipniz and then taking up with Denis, but at the same time, Gunderson's drama does present him as sincerely loving Émilie throughout the story. It helps, of course, that she's a playwright and he's a witty character. (Notable the only one other than Émilie herself who isn't played by the three actors - "Soubrette", "Gentleman", "Madame" - who take over the roles of everyone else at different points in the drama.)


Judith Zinnser: Émilie du Chatelet: Daring genius of the Enlightenment.

Mostly I agree with cahn's take. It's extremely informative and well researched in terms of Émilie and her world, though there's the occasional glitch an editor should/could have spotted, as when Zinsser, reporting on what the Marquis du Chatelet was doing in the 1740s, says he was busy fighting for King and Country in the Austrian War of Succession against "Prussia and England". Prussia was, of course, an ally of France in the Austrian War of Succession, and the Marquis would have been fighting against Austria (and England). (BTW, Austrian Trenck does mention him briefly and approvingly as a worthy opponent when talking about conquering Straßburg.) I learned a few fascinating details unknown to me, like Louise Gottsched (wife of Gottsched the language defender and important Enlightenment figure in her own right) writing about Émilie, which I must remember to check. Zinsser also is good at pointing out several of the anecdotes about Émilie being just that, anecdotes, and unverifiable, and at giving source citations. However, in her laudable zeal of presenting Émilie as her own woman, not Voltaire's love interest, and arguing against all those years of one sided Voltaire idolisation by biographers (that is, by pro Voltaire biographers - he had of course his enemies writing about him from his life time onwards though for reasons having nothing to do with Émilie), I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie. For example, the front page picture of his book about Newton (the one he'd already been working on when falling in love with Émilie but which hugely benefited from her explaining and beta-reading and debating), which Gunderson reprints in the appendix of her play, so I could countercheck it against Zinsser's description. Now, these kind of allegorical pictures, usually meant as an indication what the book is about, were hugely popular at the time. The one of Voltaire's "Elements de la philosophie de Newton" ('Amsterdam, 1738) shows Newton in the upper left sitting on a cloud with the globe in his hand, the light beam going from him to Émilie (upper right), looking at Newton and holding a mirror, with the mirror reflecting the light downwards to Voltaire (bottom left) , or rather, on the manuscript he's writing, not on his figure directly. The symbolism seems pretty obvious to me - Èmilie illluminating Newton for Voltaire - and also the respect (Émilie is up in the heaven with Newton, and note she's looking back at him, not Voltaire). But for Zinsser, the entire picture is a subtle put down and denigration, which she sees as interpreting Émilie "only" as muse, not as scientist in her own right (bear in mind this is before Émilie starts to publish). And thus it continues. Voltaire referring to Émilie as "Madame Newton du Chatelet" in a letter? Can't be a compliment, it's a put down. And so forth. The thing is, Voltaire isn't subtle when he's quarrelling with people. And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages. (This goes as far as Zinsser speculating that Cunegonde in Candide is yet another Voltairian put down of Émilie. As far as I know, no one else ether thought that Cunegonde (short, blonde, on the voluptous side in her looks, German noblewoman and parody of romantic love interests and damsel in distress) was in any way inspired by Émiliie. She#s a parody of a sentimental novel heroine as Candide himself is the parody of a naive sentimental novel hero. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)

Zinsser by accepting the different dating of Émilie's letters to Saint-Lambert and her emphasis on his grief after Émilie's death attempts to rescue him from his himbo reputation which she says he owes to incensed Voltaire and Rousseau fans (because Saint-Lambert's post Émilie lover was the woman Rousseau couldn't get). With her so far, but I note she doesn't mention something which I thought spoke well of Saint-Lambert and Voltaire when I came across it in Orieux' Voltaire biography, to wit, that these two remained in contact through the years after Émilie's death, to the point that they got in a quarrel with Rousseau and his adlatus Clement together during the Ferney years (Voltaire being Voltaire, of course he couldn't resist jumping to Saint-Lambert's aide when Clement attacked the later in print) , and Saint-Lambert was among the Academie Francaise members greeting Voltaire when he came to Paris in his last months of life, telling him he'd been elected honorary president. Now honestly, given the zillions of correspondants Voltaire had (he wrote so many letters in his life that they still haven't all been printed yet - those still existing, that is, there are even more destroyed), and the many many people clamoring for his attention when he was being a world celebrity, I can't see another reason but Émilie as to why he'd stay in touch with Saint-Lambert, which took a conscious effort of doing under these circumstances. Conversely, Saint-Lambert lived in France, where Voltaire was a celebrity, sure, but also persona non grata in terms of the church and the crown, where a sizable number of people hadn't forgiven him for the Fritz years in Potsdam, and it could have been bad for his career to keep in touch. Again, I can't see this being about someone other than Émilie: they knew the other had loved her, and she had loved them, and that was an experience they shared and no one else did. But to bring this up would not fit with the image of Voltaire the heartless egomaniac who hadn't really cared about Émilie at all anymore when she died, if earlier, so Zinsser doesn't mention it.

All this said: the book isn't about Voltaire, nor should it be. It's about Émilie, and very much succeeds in being so.

Robyn Arianrhod Seduced by logic. Émilie du Chatelet, Mary Sommerville and the Newtonian Revolution.

I've only read the Émilie part of this so far but really like it. Heavy on the scientific side but lucidly written - the author even had the chance to read Émilie's original manuscript of her Principia translation, and describes it - and the description of Émilie's life is neither as romantisizing as Bodanis nor as defensive and feeling in need to rescue Émilie from Voltaire as Zinsser. It also settled contributes yet another opinion on something which I've seen a different interpretation on in each book I've read so far, to wit, Algarotti's "Newton for Ladies" and the connection, of lack of same, to actual ladies, especially Émilie.

Algarotti dissertataion writer: Algarotti took the basic premise of the book - narrator explains science via erotically charged banter to Marquise - from Fontenelle's earlier book from 1698. Thus, his Marquise isn't the portrait of any particular woman. She's a literary trope.

Bodanis and Zinsser: The Marquise was totally a caricature of Émilie, everyone would have seen her as such, and thus Émilie was justly pissed off. (So was Voltaire.)

Isabel Grundy (in her Lady Mary biography): Actually, the Marquise may have been partly inspired by Émilie, but also partly by Lady Mary, and I can prove it. In chapter such and such, Algarotti's narrator says that one proof of how science can benefit women is the inocculation against smallpox. Everyone at the time would have understood this as a Lady Mary allusion and homage. It was what she was most famous for.

Robyn Arrianrhod: I'm mostly with Dissertation writer. Algarotti took the premise and the idea of the Marquise from Fontenelle, not from any living woman. That's also why the book is dedicated to Fontenelle, not to Émilie. Which is one of the things she was irritated about. The other was that she thought several of his similes to explain equations were very shallow and patronizing to women. *gives examples* But she didn't think the Marquise was meant as a portrait or caricature herself, and by quoting longer from her letters than Zinsser has done, I'm proving it.

Jean Orieux: I published my Voltaire book decades ago and I'm with her. "Émilie thought Algarotti was just a shallow boy, and she didn't take him seriously."

Robin Arianrhod: I didn't say that, actually. Have same more letter quotes in which Émilie says re Algarotti, "ah well, he meant well" and that she still likes him. Anyway, IF Algarotti was thinking of any female intellectual in particular to pay homage to in this book, it was....

*drumroll*

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

Arianrhod: in setting the scene for the first 'dialogue', he used the devise of arousing his Marquise's scientific curiosity by having his narrator read her a poem about light and colours - a pem the narrator has written ' for the glory of our Bolognese savante'. Algarotti had written the poem some years ealrier, to celebrate the graduation of the young Italian Newtonian, Laura Bassi, who had received a degree in philosophy at Bologna in 1732, when she was twenty-one years old. She was only the second woman to gain a modern university degree, after Elena Piscopia (...) Several years younger than Émilie, Bssi was a prodigy who had been given an excellent education by her father. In the 1730s, when Algarotti was writing his book, Bassi was lecturing at the University of Bologna in philosophy, including 'natural philosophy', or physics. (...) she was called the Minerva of Bologna, an she gave public rather than academic lectures. Algarotti no doubt discussed her at Cirey, presumably prompting Voltaire to refer to Émilie as "the Minerva of France'.

Which brings me to another of Arianrhod's strengths: feminist context in that she sees other interesting women not just male biographers have overlooked. Also, this:

Francoise de Gaffney (Madame Gaffney): shows up in Zinsser (and Bodanis) as one of Émilie's and Voltaire's houseguests at Cirey who after being at first impressed by Émilie later is the author of some highly critical descriptions of her.

Zinsser, Bodanis, and also Gunderson in her play: Gaffney = conventional, envious society matron.

Arianhrod: Francoise de Graffigny herself was an unusual woman, and she would later use what she had learned in Cirey in her own writing career: at th time of her visit in late 1738, she was just beginning to reinvent herself as a writer, having recently left her violent, abusive husband and having lost her five children, who all died as infants. Voltaire's play "Alzire" and Émilie's version of "The Fable" would inspire Graffigny's later novel, "Lettres d'une Peruvienne" (Peruvian Letters). "Alzire" had used Peru as an exotic location to epxlore the meaning of 'natural virtue' in the context of religious tolerance. It was set during the sixteenth century Spanish conquest of Peru, and it aimed to show that ethics, or 'virtue', was based on natural human decency rather than on slavish adherence to religious ritual, pagan or Christian; in other words, it aimed to show that it was possible to be a good person without the aid of religious dogma. Émilie's "Fable" had analysed 'virtue' in a similar but broader context, with an emphasis on gender conditions and sexual stereotypes. Now Graffigny wanted to expore this idea in relation to the sexual double standard, in which 'virtue' meant one thing for women - being faithful, or at least discreet, wives - and quite another for men (...). Émilie provided the model for Graffigny's free-spirited Pervusian heroine, Zilia, who wants a life of independence - a life she realises is not considered proper for women in France. "Peruvian Letters", published in 1747, became one of the most popular novels of the century.

See what I mean?

Re: Émilie Tripled

[cahn]

Okay, this is fascinating, thank you so much for this!

I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie.

Right?? I definitely noticed she didn't like Voltaire at all, though since I had no other frame of reference for Voltaire at the time, I was willing to be convinced that he was Bad News :) Once you had done some of your Voltaire writing (both salon and fic), it was rather more clear to me that there was rather some bias on her part.

The thing is, Voltaire isn't subtle when he's quarrelling with people. And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages.

HAHAHAHAHA point taken.

I can't see another reason but Émilie as to why he'd stay in touch with Saint-Lambert, which took a conscious effort of doing under these circumstances.

Ooh, that's a good point, thank you.

Heavy on the scientific side but lucidly written - the author even had the chance to read Émilie's original manuscript of her Principia translation, and describes it - and the description of Émilie's life is neither as romantisizing as Bodanis nor as defensive and feeling in need to rescue Émilie from Voltaire as Zinsser.

This sounds... Very Relevant to my interests. :D

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

I laughed out loud, because this was also my reaction :)

The part about Graffigny is also very cool. Yeah, clearly way more interesting than Zinsser or Bodanis were willing to give her credit for.

Re: Émilie Tripled

[selenak]

Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read, especially since Arianrhod also points out that Émilie during the 1740s was voted as an honorary member into the Academia di Bologna, where Bassi taught, and they were both in the same field of science. As for Francoise de Graffigny, here I think the same issue as with Madame Denis applies, i.e. biographers of Émilie approached the supporting cast with certain clichés in their minds and didn't look beyond that. So a younger sexual rival has to be stupid and weak-willed, and an older woman who goes from admiring to critical has to be a conventional society lady.

Having googled some more, I see that Madame Graffigny is very much worth exploring. (And another illustration why you don't want to be a woman in the 18th century.) She got married to her abusive husband at age 17; they were both from Lorraine, which is a crossover plot point later. Several dead children and much marital brutality later, due to all his gambling debts she got him to sign a document obliging him to leave Lorraine and give her authority to handle the family's finances. A few years later, she achieved a legal separation. But all the debts he'd made still were also hers, and so she was really glad to find a place at the court of...

*drumroll*

Elisabeth Charlotte d'Orleans, Duchess Dowager of Lorraine, as in, daughter of Philippe and Liselotte, mother of Franz Stephan. (BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.) This was a happy time for her, and she also met a dashing officer named Leopold Desmarets, thirteen years her junior, whom she fell in (requited) love with. When FS gave up his dukedom so he could marry MT in 1737, this meant Madame Graffigny lost her patroness (since FS' mother, too, left Lorraine and didn't bring all her ladies-in-waiting with her) and had nowhere to go until finding a new job with the Duchesse de Richelieu in 1738 (wife of the BFF of Voltaire and Émilie). Which is how she ended up in Cirey in 1738, and the thirty-odd letters she wrote during her time there is why she ended up in the Voltaire and Émilie biographies.

Now, according to her English wiki entry, what happened was:

The first few weeks at Cirey seemed like a wonderful dream come true. Voltaire read from his works in progress and joined in performances of his plays. The hostess, Émilie, showed off her estate, her furnishings, her clothes and jewelry, and her formidable learning. There were constant visitors, including luminaries like the scientist-philosopher Pierre Louis Maupertuis. The conversation ranged over every topic imaginable, always enlivened by Voltaire's sparkling wit.

Yet trouble was brewing. Voltaire read from his scandalous burlesque poem about Joan of Arc, La Pucelle. Émilie intercepted a letter from Devaux which mentioned the work, leapt to the false conclusion that her guest had copied a canto and circulated it, and accused her of treachery. For a month after that, Françoise de Graffigny was a virtual prisoner at Cirey, until her lover Desmarest passed through en route to Paris and took her on the final leg of her journey.

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble. Anyway, you can see where the later Émilie-critical descriptions came from, and it had nothing to do with Graffigny being a disapproving society matron. As for her own artistic efforts, she started out trying to write as early as 1733, but didn't go into print until 1745. By then, the Duchess had died, but Madame Graffigny had managed to establish a well-frequented salon and become the centre of a circle in Paris, and by subletting the house she'd rented to support herself. Her big bestseller "Peruvian Letters" was published in 1747, and by 1748 there were already 14 editions - it really was one of the biggest bestselling books of the time. She died peacefully in 1758, of a stroke while playing cards with three old friends.

Re: Émilie Tripled

[mildred_of_midgard]

Laura Bassi: sounds really cool, and I can't believe no one before Arianrhod mentioned her in the books we've read

Dissertation author: slander!

More seriously, Bassi doesn't get a lot of page time in the dissertation, but enough that I remembered her name and knew facts about her from my reading of it.

Émilie biographers, of course, have no excuse.

*searches*

Okay, Bodanis doesn't mention her at all, but Zinsser gives two passing mentions, including acknowledging that they were both members of the Academy of Sciences in Bologna and that Bassi used one of Émilie's books in her classes. Bassi gets far more page time in the Algarotti dissertation (I wouldn't be surprised if this is because dissertation author is heavily leaning on Italian sources, and Émilie biographers more French sources.)

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble.

Evidently!

(BTW, Franz Stephan showing up as "Francois-Etienne" in the English wiki entry threw me for a moment before I realised.)

Hee. Not as much as Hans Heinrich as "John Henry" once threw me. ;)

Anyway, all very interesting women, worthy of more research, my kingdom for more time.

Re: Émilie Tripled

[cahn]

Laura Bassi and Madame Graffigny both sound really interesting! In particular I'm very happy to see that Mme. Graffigny and her situation were rather more complex than the biographies were giving her credit for. Thank you for introducing me to them :D (And now I'm really side-eyeing the Émilie bios, but whatever.)

I swear, that poem really was nothing but trouble.

Ha, yes!

Re: Émilie Tripled

[mildred_of_midgard]

You posted this Monday morning and I was busy all week and so I didn't get to this until now.

But wow, this is one of the best write-ups! The comparative approach is great, and Arianrhod wasn't on my radar. (I'm sure that cahn, like me, is having Mabinogi flashbacks. ;))

However, in her laudable zeal of presenting Émilie as her own woman, not Voltaire's love interest, and arguing against all those years of one sided Voltaire idolisation by biographers...I find she ends up going to the other extreme and simply asssuming the worst with just about everything Voltaire ever said about Émilie.

:/ Yeah, this is why it's so important in this fandom that we keep reading different takes on the same individuals and events. No one person can be trusted on every aspect.

And when he argued with Émilie about Leipniz and Newton, the whole world knew it because he published an essay about it. So you really don't have to look for hidden messages.

Haha.

*drumroll*

Laura Bassi.

Grundy and Zinsser: Who?

Dissertation author: First European woman to be offered a university position. Holder of the chair of experimental physics at the Istituto delle scienze. Shared a (female) patron with Algarotti. Recipient of praise poems for her achievements, 2 by Algarotti. Subject of an article that the Royal Librarian has just tracked down and put in the library:

Many of the tactics that Algarotti would make use of were also employed by several other scholars, both men and women, in trying to advance their careers. However, given that women faced greater restrictions than men did in trying to establish scholarly careers for themselves, they had to adapt these strategies in order to suit the conditions they faced. For an account of the tactics used by an Italian woman contemporary of Algarotti‘s in trying to establish her scholarly career, see Paula Findlen, "Science as a Career in Enlightenment Italy: The Strategies of Laura Bassi," Isis 84, no. 3 (1993).

In other words, I totally recognized her name from the dissertation when I read this, and I just get didn't get to say so because I've been SO BEHIND on comments this week. What I mostly remembered was that she had a university position, but she still wasn't treated as an equal:

Although they managed to make use of the universities and academies in order to pursue serious scientific interests, the women in these institutions were treated very differently from the men. In spite of all her scientific achievements, many of Bassi‘s contemporaries still felt that her membership in the Istituto, as well as her degree and lectureship, should be regarded as purely symbolic. She was only permitted to give three lectures per year at her initial teaching post, the duties of which also included participating in various public ceremonies. In fact, Bassi‘s frustration at the limitations imposed on her teaching by the university led her to begin giving lectures in experimental physics from her home beginning in 1738.

See what I mean?

Yep, Arianrhod definitely seems worth checking out. Like cahn, my reading list is getting unmanageably long! (Made slower by the fact that most of it is in German and the page/time ratio is still pretty low (but getting higher!).)

Thank you so much for the write-up.

Mary Sommerville

!! I researched her at one point, and thought she was super interesting, but that was years ago and I've now forgotten most of what I learned (i.e., my active knowledge has become passive). I wouldn't mind a refresher.

Re: Émilie Tripled

[selenak]

Long live comparative literature, say I. :) And see, that's what I get from having read the dissertation only once and then quickly.

Mary Sommerville: with everything else, I haven't read her part of the book yet, but yes, another fascinating woman to explore.

Re: Émilie Tripled

[mildred_of_midgard]

And see, that's what I get from having read the dissertation only once and then quickly.

This is what I get for not only having read it more slowly, but then having gone through it a second time just a few months ago, assembling my Algarotti chronology.

And yet you picked up on the Queen of Hungary bit that I missed! This is why it's so great to be part of a salon. :D

with everything else, I haven't read her part of the book yet

Not surprised! Idk how you're doing as much as you are, I'm still falling behind on comments! (Because unlike a year ago when comments were all I did, I'm now working, studying German, and starting to read again now that I'm feeling better--currently skimming a Diderot bio, will try to do a write-up at some point.)

Re: Émilie Tripled

[cahn]

(I'm sure that [personal profile] cahn, like me, is having Mabinogi flashbacks. ;))

Yup! :D