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

Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[felis]

The whole period of FW's impending death and Fritz becoming king was really interesting to read - the mixed feelings and anxiety from Fritz re: having to leave his Rheinsberg paradise, vs. a lot of hope and encouragement from Voltaire, and then indeed the difference in Fritz' attitude once he's king (you'll see no other change in me than greater determination/efficency is what he says in February :D which ... isn't entirely wrong?). It also got across the absurdity of one man suddenly becoming an absolutist monarch I thought.

So Fritz repeatedly voices thoughts like these, which are from his first letter on the topic, February 26th: Happy if I had lived without being transplanted/ From this mild and peaceful climate/ Where my freedom flourished/ Into this scabrous, rugged, difficult terrain,/ Infected by Machiavellianism!
And then from March 23rd: When I can neither read nor work, I am like those great tobacco takers who die of anxiety, and who put their hands in their pockets a thousand times, when their snuffbox has been taken away. The decoration of the building can change, without altering in any way the foundations or the walls; this is what you will see in me, because my father's situation leaves us no hope of recovery. So I must prepare to undergo my destiny.
Privacy would be better suited to my freedom [...]. You know that I like independence, and that it is very hard to give it up in order to submit to a painful duty.

Voltaire in return writes the "I dream of my prince like one dreams of a mistress" line in one of his later replies, and I thought his very first one to the February letter was actually quite touching, from I don't know the exact state of your current circumstances, but I've never loved and admired you more to king or prince, you are always my king. I mean, I'd read about a hundred pages of Voltaire complimenting Fritz by that point and these still stood out.

(Also, in between, May 3rd, Fritz tried to put a ring on it?! ;) - May my ring, my dear Voltaire, never leave your finger. This talisman is filled with so many wishes for your person, that it must of necessity bring you happiness)

Oh, and I thought the King vs. Human Fritz thing being introduced was interesting as a symptom of the transition and the relationship, started by Fritz telling Voltaire that he should keep treating him like a normal human being, not a king (later: Voltaire in Berlin -> Fritz: "that's totally not how I meant that"), upon which Voltaire starts alternating between calling him Your Majesty and Your Humanity for a while and keeps bringing up that differentiation in various contexts (including the one where he asks Fritz the human being about his father's attitude towards him before his death, which Fritz doesn't really answer, as selenak pointed out in her write-up).

And then, November/December 1740, Voltaire in Berlin:

Voltaire:
Non, malgré vos vertus, non, malgré vos appas,
Mon âme n'est point satisfaite;
Non, vous n'êtes qu'une coquette
Qui subjuguez les cœurs, et ne vous donnez pas.

[Fritz demanding hearts but not giving his own! I have thoughts on that.]

Fritz:
Réponse à l'épigramme de ce matin:
Mon âme sent le prix de vos divins appas;
Mais ne présumez point qu'elle soit satisfaite.
Traître, vous me quittez pour suivre une coquette;
Moi, je ne vous quitterais pas.

[Says he, who would have done a "gotta go conquer Silesia, BRB" two weeks later.]

Me: Well, that didn't take long. Guys, you haven't even spent two weeks in each other's company, calm down?

Voltaire:
Je vous quitte, il est vrai; mais mon cœur déchiré
Vers vous revolera sans cesse.
Depuis quatre ans vous êtes ma maîtresse,
Un amour de dix ans doit être préféré;
Je remplis un devoir sacré.
Héros de l'amitié, vous m'approuvez vous-même;
Adieu, je pars désespéré.
Oui, je vais aux genoux d'un objet adoré,
Mais j'abandonne ce que j'aime.

Me: Okay then. There's not even a "like a" before mistress anymore now, I see how it is. (But yeah, Émilie, and Voltaire's feelings for her/her claim on him really are the continuous and strong point of contention.)

Also, editor's note on a Voltaire letter from July: "For four years they've wanted to embrace one another, for four years Voltaire has been hesitating to slip into the Prussian beau's heavenly bed. Does he know that sometimes love becomes difficult once one sees each other and grasps each other's hands daily?"

Me: Okay then, Pleschinski! Nobody forced you to phrase it that way I guess. [Yes, okay, he means canopy bed, I just translated too literally. But still.]

--

Other than their relationship troubles, I was very entertained by Voltaire's travel adventures, be it his descriptions of staying at a Prussian residence (?) in Den Haag - There are also books that only rats have read for fifty years, and which are covered with the largest cobwebs in Europe, lest ignorant people approach them. - or his reaction when, on the way to Berlin in November, his carriage breaks down in the middle of nowhere:

A servant goes to one side to ask for help from Westphalians who believe they are being asked to drink; another runs around without knowing where to. Du Molard however, who promises to describe our trip in Arabic and Syrian, is resourceful as if he were not a scholar. He goes to explore, half on foot, half in a cart, and I ride, in velvet breeches, silk stockings and slippers, on a restive horse. [...] On arriving at Herford in this state, the guard asked me my name; I replied, of course, that my name was Don Quixote, and I enter under this name.

And then, once again stuck in the middle of nowhere on his way back, he writes a lot of verses dissing Westphalia, praising Berlin, and then brings Algarotti into the conversation as a virtual third person to adress, just to start dissing Italy. (Quite lewdly, too, not least by using the accusation of sodomy as an insult - against the Venetians in this case - so that's certainly one more data point for his consistency in that regard, what with using it against Fritz later.)

--

Then it's wartime and there are two letters from 1742 that Pleschinski didn't include (possibly too much relationship back and forth) but which I found rather ... illuminating:

Voltaire (May 26th):
[...] I don't like heroes much, they make too much noise;
I hate these conquerors, proud enemies of themselves,
Who in the horrors of fighting
Have placed supreme happiness,
Seeking death everywhere and making suffer
A hundred thousand men, their fellows.
The more their glory shines, the more hateful they are.
O heaven! that I must hate you!
I love you though, despite all this carnage
With which you soiled the fields of our Germans,
Despite all these warriors that your valiant hands
Pass to the dark shore.
You are a hero, but you are a sage;
Your reason curses inhuman exploits
Where you forced your courage;
In the middle of the cannons, on the dead piled up,
Facing death, and focussing victory,
The blood of the unfortunates cementing your glory,
I forgive you everything, if you moan.

I think of humanity, Sire, before thinking of you; but after having, as Abbe de Saint-Pierre, wept over the human race whose terror you become, I give myself up to all the joy that your glory gives me. This glory will be complete if V. M. forces the Queen of Hungary to receive peace, and the Germans to be happy. You are the hero of Germany and the arbiter of Europe; you will be the peacemaker, and our opera prologues will only be for you.
[...] V. M. has not so far deigned to inform the world of the details of this day; you had, I believe, something else to do than relationships; but your modesty is betrayed by a few eyewitnesses, who all say that one owes the victory of the battle only to the excess of courage and prudence that you have shown. They add that my hero is always sensitive, and that the same man who has so many people killed is at the bedside of M. de Rottembourg. This is what you do not say, and which you could nevertheless confess, as things which are all natural to you. [...]

Fritz responds (June 18th):
I hope that, after making my peace with the enemies, I can in turn make it with you. I ask for the Century of Louis XIV to seal it on your part, and I send you the report that I made myself of the last battle, as you ask me.
Rottembourg's health begins to recover; it is entirely out of danger. Do not believe me cruel, but reasonable enough to choose an evil only when it is necessary to avoid a worse one. Any man who decides to have a tooth pulled out, when it is decayed, will fight when he wants to end a war. To spill blood under such circumstances is really to spare it; it is a bleeding given to a delirious enemy, and which gives him back his common sense.

... and then Voltaire writes his ode to MT, so more bickering.

Also: more Émilie bickering, because Fritz is still jealous. At first, the specifics confused me a bit - Fritz insinuates sex, Voltaire gets all huffy - but then I found the following in cahn's Émilie write-up:

Voltaire: I am too old for sexual relationships, being 47 and all, "the twilight of my days." [He lived to be 83.] Nay, I only want pure love unsullied by physical considerations.
Émilie: I'm not really happy about this, but I love you, so, okay.
D, who happens to be walking by at the moment: He means he doesn't want sex with her, huh?
Voltaire: *has affair with niece*
Émilie: ????
Voltaire: Uh, yeah, D was right. I meant I didn't want sex with you. Um. Open relationship?

Which I guess explains it. I certainly raised a very skeptical eyebrow when I read Voltaire's "I'm so old, I don't have sex anymore, my relationship with Émilie is all virtuous" claim. As did Fritz. Voltaire meanwhile is apparently still insulted that Fritz invited Gresset to Berlin and tells him "why don't you write to young and virile Gresset about his sex life instead (but of course, the guy wasn't man enough to follow your invitation now, was he) ... jealous, who, me? what?". Me: amused.

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[selenak]

Me: Well, that didn't take long. Guys, you haven't even spent two weeks in each other's company, calm down?

Not to mention that in between writing these love messages, Fritz kept bitching about Voltaire wanting him to pay his travel expenses and wrote that icy "no court fool was ever so expensive" line to one of his other correspondants, which is Fritz at his most Son-of-FW-like.

And yes, Pleschinski ships them. I spend a couple of days with him last year in a workshop, and he says they totally deserved each other. Mind you, Orieux - who doesn't ship them, because he'd rather have Voltaire had that kind of relationship with French monarch - uses romantic language as well, what with describing Fritz' plan to make Voltaire having to flee France by faking a poem and leaking letters and concluding "then he'd be forced to fall in the arms, or rather paws of his royal admirer".

Incidentally, if you have Audible, there's a one hour special on Fritz and Voltaire Radio Bandenburg did using Pleschinski's edition as the text source (Christian Brückner speaks Voltaire). This is also Pleschinski approved, as opposed to the Walter Jens-Loriot version, about which he has issues.

At first, the specifics confused me a bit - Fritz insinuates sex, Voltaire gets all huffy

In addition to what was going on re: Émilie and Madame Denis, there's another factor to consider here, because the way it came across to me, Fritz was insinuating sex with Émilie was the main reason why Voltaire remained with her instead of moving to Prussia to be with Fritz. Hence Voltaire's reaction.

As you might recall from our various write-ups, Fritz still gossips about Émilie's sex life yeas after her death, and after his breakup with Voltaire, in the middle of the 7 Years War, with the Marquis d'Argens. (When he insists that surely, Émilie/Maupertuis was at the source of Voltaire's turning against Maupertuis.) And of course there's the letter after his first meeting with Voltaire where he's confident he'll woo Voltaire away from her because "my purse is more filled than the Marquise's". (Which shows you how little Fritz knew about who contributed what to the Émilie and Voltaire household; while Voltaire had benefited from Émilie and her husband giving him shelter back when he would have been arrested for a third time, he'd put actually more money into Cirey than the du Chatelets did. That he wanted Fritz to pay his travel expenses was another issue - he had the not unfounded opinion a King could afford this. But Voltaire was that rarity, a wealthy writer, and he had taken care to be not dependent on any single patron for this.)

Anyway, my point here is, Fritz attempting to explain Voltaire/Émilie by sex or money or both shows a frustrated jealous rival.

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[felis]

(Oh, hey, Christian Brückner! Loved his Sayers' audiobooks back in the day.)

because the way it came across to me, Fritz was insinuating sex with Émilie was the main reason why Voltaire remained with her instead of moving to Prussia to be with Fritz. Hence Voltaire's reaction.

Oh, absolutely, I got that vibe from Fritz as well, and so initially, Voltaire's reaction seemed to make some sense, except then he went all "no sex with Émilie at all, how dare you, and anyway, I'm too old for that now" which made me call BS and so I went and checked the records, i.e. rheinsberg. :D

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[mildred_of_midgard]

went and checked the records, i.e. rheinsberg. :D

I love this. :D

Also, one time cahn wanted to call BS on something she was reading (or at least question it), and she checked a fic of mine, because she knew I would have put what she was looking for in the author's notes, and sure enough, it was there. I'm still proud that my AO3 author's notes are a historical reference!

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Thank you for all the wonderful quotes!

I mean, I'd read about a hundred pages of Voltaire complimenting Fritz by that point and these still stood out.

I actually laughed out loud. ETA: Okay, I just read it again while previewing my comment, and I laughed aloud again. :D

I replied, of course, that my name was Don Quixote, and I enter under this name.

I had run across this anecdote, but had forgotten. Lol!

Algarotti into the conversation as a virtual third person to adress, just to start dissing Italy. (Quite lewdly, too, not least by using the accusation of sodomy as an insult - against the Venetians in this case - so that's certainly one more data point for his consistency in that regard, what with using it against Fritz later.)

Mind sharing the exact quote? I mean, on the one hand, nobody disses Italy more than Algarotti in the 1730s, but considering that Algarotti is a Venetian *and* Voltaire writes a pornographic slash poem to Fritz about Algarotti and the French envoy's secretary Lugeac, comparing them to Socrates and Alcibiades, it's interesting that he breaks it out as an insult on this occasion. This is in 1740, right? The slash porn is from December 1740.

Me: Okay then, Pleschinski! Nobody forced you to phrase it that way I guess. [Yes, okay, he means canopy bed, I just translated too literally. But still.]

As selenak points out, it's not accidental! He's come out as a Fritz/Voltaire shipper!

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[felis]

This is in 1740, right? The slash porn is from December 1740.

The letter is from December 6th, so I guess he was on a roll? Or did he sent the poem at the same time? It's all in verse, the original French starts here (quote on the next page) and a rough translation of the relevant passage would be:

[Berlin]
Make[s] you forget the fate
of Italy and France.
Of Italy! Algarotti,
How do you find this language?
I see you, struck with outrage,
Look at me as an enemy.
Moderate this boiling courage,
And respond to us as a friend.
[... insults: smelly lagoons, whores, a useless doge, etc]
A soft, weak, infatuated people
Of ignorance and deceit,
Buttocks often chipped[/tattered],
Due to the efforts of the old sin
Which is called sodomy:
Voilá, the sketched portrait
Of the very noble lordship.
Now is this worth, please,
Our adorable Frédéric,
His virtues, his tastes, his homeland?
I make the whole public judge.

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[mildred_of_midgard]

He must have been on a roll: the Algarotti poem is dated to December 15, 1740.

Translation MacDonogh's, as he gives it in full, and Blanning only a short excerpt (you can guess which one :P):

Mais quand, chez le gros Valori,
Je vois le tendre Algarotti
Dresser d’une vive embrassade
Le beau Lugeac, son jeune ami,
Je crois voir Socrate affermi
Sur la croupe d’Alcibiade;
Non pas le Socrate entêté,
De sophismes faisant parade,
A l’oeil sombre, au nez épaté,
A front large, à mine enfumée;
Mais Socrate Vénitien,
Aux grands yeux, au nez aquilin
Du bon saint Charles Borromée.
Pour moi, très-désintéressé
Dans les affaires de la Grèce.
Pour Frédéric seul empressé
Je quittais l’étude et maîtresse;
Je m’en étais débarrassé;
Si je volais dans son empire,
Ce fut au doux son de sa lyre;
Mais la trompette m’a chassé.

Whenever, with fat Valori
I see tender Algarotti
Stiffen, with an electric pass,
Lugeac, his young friend so pretty,
I seem to see Socrates at last
Clasped to Alcibiades’ arse;
Not that stubborn Socrates whose
Sophisms showed a man of class,
He of somber eye and snub nose,
With forehead broad and defiant pose;
But a Venetian Socrates
With Roman nose and eyes which tease
Like Charles Borromeo’s, they said.
For me, quite disinterested
In the things that went on in Greece,
For King Fredericks sake alone
I quit my love and lost my peace;
I abandoned all that I own;
If I hurried to his empire,
It was to the soft strains of the lyre;
But the trumpet has sent me home.

So yeah, he goes for the "Venetian" line again.

Voltaire is coming across as one of those "Some of my best friends are gay! (but I'm still a homophobe)" types.

For me, quite disinterested
In the things that went on in Greece,
For King Fredericks sake alone

So basically, gay for Fritz. :P

(For those new here, this is a running semi-joke: we don't think they went beyond hand-kissing or that Voltaire suddenly discovered he was sexually into Fritz, but the sexually-charged romance is undeniable. And just as you can have a het romance without sex, you can have a gay one too. Hence "gay for Fritz".

I started saying it once I discovered the "I have been given in marriage to the King of Prussia" line was made up after the fact to trash Fritz, to which I said, "Look, we all know Fritz is gay, Voltaire; this makes *you* look gay. :P :P :P"

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[selenak]

My own thoughts can be summed up in one sentence: someone is still miffed Algarotti got a "come to me at once!" summon in June 1740 and he did not. :)

(And neither of them knew Fritz' old teacher got exactly the same letter, just like Manteuffel and Voltaire got the same golden Socrates-Alcibiades gift. Fritz: thrifty reuser:)

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[mildred_of_midgard]

someone is still miffed Algarotti got a "come to me at once!" summon in June 1740 and he did not. :)

AHAHAHAA, yes, you are right!

Fritz is miffed that Voltaire keeps leaving him in the 1740s, Voltaire is miffed he didn't get the immediate invitation, Fritz is miffed Voltaire won't come without Émilie, Voltaire is miffed Fritz won't invite Émilie...

Pleschinski: OTP. They deserve each other.

Fritz: thrifty reuser:)

Fritz: Time is money!

Re: Reading more Fritz/Voltaire letters (1740-42)

[cahn]

This is so great!

(Also, in between, May 3rd, Fritz tried to put a ring on it?! ;) - May my ring, my dear Voltaire, never leave your finger. This talisman is filled with so many wishes for your person, that it must of necessity bring you happiness)

heeee! This is amazing.

Depuis quatre ans vous êtes ma maîtresse,...
Me: Okay then. There's not even a "like a" before mistress anymore now, I see how it is.

AHAHAHA. I love this. These guys!

Me: Okay then, Pleschinski! Nobody forced you to phrase it that way I guess.

I am delighted by Pleschinski shipping them :D