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Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19
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
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
Re: Random things
Size: as tall as my mother then. Noted.
Busy 65 years olds: MT: Ahem.
Louis XIV: Excuse me. From the time after Cardinal Mazarin died to the weeks before my own death, I was a hard working monarch. Even my time for mistresses was tightly scheduled, though you wouldn’t know it from the movies. It‘s not my fault that none of my successors were as disciplined.
Cardinal Richelieu: I did not just govern, I also wrote articles and none too successful plays in between being PM and trying to outscheme everyone who wanted me dead.
Catherine: I did all that at 65 and had a vivid sex life, too, Monsieur le Cardinal.
Goethe: Since I was to German literature what Voltaire was to France‘s, and not a royal but born a middle class boy, perhaps I am the most appropriate comparison. In addition to busily writing poetry, essays and a novel at 65, I managed the Weimar theatre, was involved in the Neptunism vs Vulcanism natural history feud and kept corresponding with half of Europe. I was no longer a minister in my Duchy‘s government, but I still was a consulting advisor to Carl August, and thus also had to show up court new and then.
first, if you want to catch your Boswell, you must catch him young, and for Voltaire it is now too late...
LOL. Well, Boswell was young when first meeting Johnson (22 years), but Johnson was over 50. It‘s not a coincidence that the LIfe manages to devote a fifth of its volume to Johnson‘s first 56 years and then devotes the rest to Johnson‘s remaining life, i.e. the time when Boswell knew him. What‘s more, some statistic fans have worked out that between Boswell living most of the time in Edinburgh during these years, and being on the Grand Tour right after his initial time in London where he had met and befriended Johnson, they spend only about 200 plus days in each other‘s company all in all. (Though of course they corresponded in between.) (Also, just how much Johnson had taken to Boswell can be seen from the fact that Boswell talked the Scotland-disliking Johnson into a journey a deux to the Hebrides - where Boswell basically had Johnson all to himself, wilthout any of the other friends and followers as competition - and this years into their acquaintance.)
The artistry in Boswell‘s Life Isn‘t that‘s a well balanced biography in the modern sense, which it‘s not, but that Boswell fulfilled his intention of delivering a „Flemish“, „Rembrandt“ type of portrait of Johnson, full of vivid personal details, giving a very vivid sense of what he was like in a way biographies until then hadn‘t and which both made it a bestseller and shocked some of their contemporaries. (I.e. Boswell‘s Johnson is a moral hero and has bad hygienic habits, and we get page to to standard (for the day) admirable, biopgrahy-worthy episodes like him squaring off against Lord Chesterfield, sure, but we also get the everyday life story of him buying the oysters for his cat Hodge himself as not to turn the servants against Hodge. And Boswell is willing to present himself as the punchline to Johnson‘s joke in order to given an impression of Johnson’s conversation in a way few writers then or now would be willing to, from their first meeting („Dr. Johnson, indeed I am from Scotland, but I cannot help it“/ „That, Sir, is what I find a great many of your countrymen cannot help“) onwards.
That‘s also where Boswell‘s Macauly-solidified 19th century reputation as a kind of idiot savant of biographers comes from, the idea being he was so stupid he didn‘t know what he was writing, how silly it made him look, with the „Life of Johnson“ a happy accident. Come the 20th century and the unearthing of Boswell‘s papers, containing not just the diaries but also the various drafts and revisions of the „Life of Johnson“ and all the notes Boswell took while researching for the Life (he used his diaries as material for all they were worth in that case, sure, but he also interviewed and corresponded with whoever he could get a hold of re: Johnson for years and years, collecting material), this was no longer viable, because these papers show how carefully composed the „Life“ actually is, that far from just including every bit he could find, Boswell made selections, kept rewriting and redrafting the book for years till it had its final form despite the fact he was under huge commerical pressure, with all these other Samuel Johnson bios coming out and seemingly draining the market, and, of course, the diaries show that he was quite aware how he came across (he keeps writing memos to himself to be more dignified, more like his father or Johnson; it never works, but unaware, he was not).
And of course, that‘s the other thing you can‘t replicate about the Life, and which is why when Arthur Conan Doyle lets Holmes refer to Watson as „my Boswell“, he doesn‘t just mean the biographer/noting down of conversation and excentricities function. Just as the few Holmes stories which aren‘t narrated by Watson don‘t work so well, expecially the one narrated by Holmes himself, the Life of Johnson lives from the Johnson-and-Boswell dynamic, and Boswell himself being as much a character as Watson is to the ACD stories. There isn‘t another biographer I can think of who is at the same time such an important part of the narrative he tells. Not least because biographers are usually encouraged to do the opposite, like journalists, if they are contemporaries to their subjects - to take themselves out of the narrative, to leave their own personality and opinions out of it.
Near contemporary case of comparison: Eckermann‘s „Conversations with Goethe“. This is Goethe in his old age, and Eckermann respectfully notes down lots and lots of what the great man has to say about subjects great and small, like Boswell did with Johnson. But you get no idea of what Eckermann himself is like from this book. And of course there is no put down from Goethe of Eckermnann in it, nothing to make him look silly or wrong. Now several of Voltaire‘s servants did apparantly write memoirs - I‘ve seen quotes in Orieux, and also in the Émilie biogrpahies - but there is, presumably, a reason why these books are only known to experts now, whereas Boswell‘s biography never got out of print.
Re: Random things
Agreed, though the presence of Elizaveta in one and Catherine in the other suggests that Voltaire sent another request in or shortly after 1762, which makes sense.
Also, if Elizaveta is correct, then she must have been asked in 1761, which implies that Fritz was asked in 1761 (difficult breakup or no, they've resumed their correspondence, and I doubt Elizaveta gets asked years before Fritz), which was a reeeeally bad year for him war/finance-wise (hence the need for the second miracle a year later), so again, I believe 6. Maybe he bought another 200 after 1763. ;)
It is interesting that Orieux says Louis wouldn't contribute, and Davidson says he ponied up for 200.
My need for numbers to match up is bugging me!
Speaking of which...
MT: Ahem.
Catherine: I did all that at 65 and had a vivid sex life, too, Monsieur le Cardinal.
Rumors abounded that she died in the middle of one of her excessive sex acts (some said with a horse, the only male big enough to satisfy her appetites), but this is mostly likely (I say this because I haven't investigated the sources myself) men hating on a sexually and politically dominant woman.
Cardinal Richelieu
Died at 57, according to Wikipedia. Perhaps it's more impressive that he managed to cram that much activity into just 57 years!
(Our Yuletide nominee the Duc, however, lived to be 92, albeit I'm not seeing evidence that he was extremely busy for the latter few decades.)
LOL. Well, Boswell was young when first meeting Johnson (22 years), but Johnson was over 50.
Weird, I took that to mean Boswell was young, but you're right, it parses better if Johnson is the one who's young. I probably parsed it that way because I knew Boswell was young and Johnson wasn't.
Anyway, Johnson in his 50s is still younger than Voltaire at 316, which is what he would have been in 2010. ;)
he keeps writing memos to himself to be more dignified, more like his father or Johnson; it never works, but unaware, he was not
I saw this in The Club, and thought it was funny.
What‘s more, some statistic fans have worked out that between Boswell living most of the time in Edinburgh during these years, and being on the Grand Tour right after his initial time in London where he had met and befriended Johnson, they spend only about 200 plus days in each other‘s company all in all. (Though of course they corresponded in between.) (Also, just how much Johnson had taken to Boswell can be seen from the fact that Boswell talked the Scotland-disliking Johnson into a journey a deux to the Hebrides
And statistics fans have further worked out that a quarter of those were on the Hebrides trip! (Everything I know, I know from one book, but it was an interesting book. ;)
Actually, to quote the numbers more precisely:
It has been calculated that, all told, he and Johnson were in each other’s company just 425 days during a friendship that lasted twenty-one years, and fully a quarter of those days were during a single journey they took together.
Re: Random things
Here's the relevant text passage, literally: The King subscribes 200 copies, Catherine II. imitates him in this, the Empress does the same, Voltaire himself takes a hundred, the Marquise du Pompadour 50, Choiseul likewise. The noble lords don't abstain, their friends follow their example, headed by the English nobility. Voltaire offers to a free copy of one of his to the literati who can't afford to subscribe. He's Voltaire at his best.
(Since he's also been Voltaire at his worst, bickering with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the previous chapter.)
While this explains Louis and Fritz (who does not get mentioned at all by Orieux if "the King" is Louis), we're still left with Catherine vs Elisaveta. Given the date, I assume the following: whoever Orieux' source was just said "the Czarina", and when doing his write up he assumed this would be Voltaire's declared fan Catherine without keeping in mind she wasn't on the throne yet. After all, events and people outside of France can be his weak spot, see also Fredersdorf as Fritz' secretary, "Marie-Christine" instead of Elisabeth Christine, Lessing (aka great German writer of the enlightenment, playwright and essay writer, who as a young man was Voltaire's translator in the Hirschel trial and got very disilluioned about him) as a subsequently famous for his poetry), staging and acting in Voltaire's plays keeping Fritz' brothers from scheming against him, and so forth.
Re: Random things
Aahhh. That makes sense. See, I assume "the King" = Louis, unless Voltaire is living in Prussia at the time (or England, I suppose), or unless the subject at hand is Fritz.
Given the date, I assume the following: whoever Orieux' source was just said "the Czarina", and when doing his write up he assumed this would be Voltaire's declared fan Catherine without keeping in mind she wasn't on the throne yet.
Well...he started in 1761, but the work wasn't published until 1764, which means it could be either or both. If I were drumming up money, I would do it as often as I could, and if my fan ascended the throne during the process, I would make a special request just to her.
staging and acting in Voltaire's plays keeping Fritz' brothers from scheming against him, and so forth.
Haha, yes. Somebody's been reading Fritz's Political Testament(s).
Fritz: Didn't work, anyway. Heinrich showing up in St. Petersburg without giving me a chance to micromanage and Fritzplain, tsk. Can you believe it?
Re: Random things
I loved all of these, but this was the one that I found most hilarious :D Go Catherine!
And Boswell is willing to present himself as the punchline to Johnson‘s joke in order to given an impression of Johnson’s conversation in a way few writers then or now would be willing to, from their first meeting („Dr. Johnson, indeed I am from Scotland, but I cannot help it“/ „That, Sir, is what I find a great many of your countrymen cannot help“) onwards.
Ah! Yes, this makes a lot of sense (and is really cool).
(he keeps writing memos to himself to be more dignified, more like his father or Johnson; it never works, but unaware, he was not).
This is also super endearing :D
And I see what you're saying about how Johnson as a character is so important.