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Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20
Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D
(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D
(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)
Diderot and Catherine
Diderot and d'Alembert decline her offer, d'Alembert humorously. Some of us have seen this quote before, but I'll repeat it:
D’Alembert quipped that he would have made the trip to Saint Petersburg, but he was too “prone to hemorrhoids, and they are far too dangerous in that country.” This was, of course, a joke made at Catherine’s expense: the Russian government had announced to the world that her late husband had died from complications related to piles, although virtually everybody knew that he had actually been murdered shortly after the coup by Catherine’s lover’s brother.
Wikipedia disagrees that we know that this "actually" happened, but in terms of what d'Alembert believed, certainly.
So Diderot and d'Alembert settle on a compromise of trying to get other famous French intellectuals and artists to go to St. Petersburg without actually going themselves. Do as I say, not as I do.
But one day, Catherine discovers that Diderot is short of money and trying to sell his famous book collection. She agrees to buy it for the asking price, with two additional terms:
1) That the collection remain in Diderot's possession for his lifetime.
2) That he act as her curator of this collection and accordingly accept a stipend from her.
In other words, free gift. Woot!
Catherine: This is how I poach people from Fritz.
But then, the payment gets delayed, and eventually Diderot has to write to Catherine asking what's up with that.
Catherine: Sorry! Incompetent underlings, you know how it goes. But since I don't want this to happen again, how about I pay you for the first fifty years of your curatorship up front? Fifty years from now [Diderot was 52], we can meet again to renegotiate the terms. (Yes, she really wrote that last bit as a joke.)
Diderot: OMG, Catherine is the best! So enlightened, so generous! Maybe I should go to St. Petersburg--just for a visit, mind you--and I can be the intellectual who influences a powerful ruler and gets my ideas put into practice. It'll be just like Socrates and Alcibiades, Seneca and Nero, Voltaire and Fritz!
No, he didn't say the last sentence, but I was reading the previous part thinking, "...Why do I feel like this is going to end badly?"
So Diderot goes to St. Petersburg. On the way, this happens:
Fritz: You should totally stop off in Potsdam on the way! I'd love to meet you in person. *bats eyelashes*
Diderot: I will detour around Potsdam specifically to avoid meeting you. You can't fool me, Old Fritz, it's 1774 and I've heard about you!
Fritz: *writes sour-grapes pamphlet trashing Diderot's literary career*
Fritz: *sends numerous copies to St. Petersburg*
Me when I read that: OMG, of *course* he wrote a pamphlet, it's like a reflex at this point. Also, you're not exactly disproving his point, Fritz.
So then Diderot's in St. Petersburg, and it's all informal fun times with the Empress, who really likes him and spends tons of time with him, and they talk about his liberal ideas, and she's totally on board. (This is 1774, so in between Heinrich visits.)
Until he realizes that nothing is actually changing. She's happy to chat philosophy with him all day, but it remains theoretical.
Diderot: Why are you all talk? You could actually change things.
Catherine: [actual quote] All your grand philosophies, which I understand very well, would do marvelously in books and very badly in practice. In your plans for reform, you forget the difference between our two roles: you work only on paper which consents to anything...whereas I, poor empress, work on human skin, which is far more prickly and sensitive.
So Diderot, who's resented for his royal favor by the court nobles, who are all eagerly reading Fritz's pamphlet by now and making life hard on him, becomes disillusioned.
Diderot: Catherine, you're nothing but a despot masquerading as an enlightened monarch! I'm leaving.
Me: Diderot, it's called "enlightened despot" for a reason.
Diderot: *leaves Russia, detours pointedly around Fritz again*
On his way back, he tells Catherine that he has a copy of her (published, at least) book expressing her political thinking, and he's going over it with a red pen with an eye toward publishing his commentary. She has her people break into his room, go through his things, and filch the copy.
It's like Fritz and Voltaire if both had been sane!
Now totally disillusioned, Diderot starts writing more incendiary stuff, much of which (like the "regicide is totally cool") doesn't get published until after his death. One thing that does get published is a satirical manual on ruling (the "mirror for princes" genre) that's full of advice to monarchs, like "only form alliances in order to sow hatred" and never, ever "raise one’s hand without striking." Curran says this satire was aimed mostly at Fritz, but also partly at Catherine. I immediately want to call it the Anti-Anti-Machiavel.
On the flip side of Fritz being terrible, Diderot's co-author, the one who, unlike Diderot, *did* put his name and picture on one of the most incendiary books, the "slavery is bad, colonialism is bad, Europeans are complicit, btw Louis [tu] the French Revolution is coming for you" book, predictably had to flee the country, and he ended up taking refuge in Prussia in 1781.
Fritz: See? "Enlightened" *and* "despot." Why choose, when you could be both?
Oh, speaking of which, the author of this book would have me believe that Voltaire was advocating for Diderot and company to take refuge not just in Cleves in 1766, but in *Potsdam*...in 1758. For those of you who are weak on dates, in 1758, Prussia and France were at war with each other in the Seven Years' War. Citation: letter from Voltaire to the Count de Tressan on February 13, 1758.
Zomg, wait. That's three months after Rossbach!
Oh, also, in February 1758, Voltaire has only been speaking to Fritz again for about 6 months. I reeeeally want to see this letter.
Re: Diderot and Catherine
Anyway, hence: reaaaaaaaally long German wiki entry on Diderot, which gives me these gems I didn't spot in the English wiki entry: Fritz presented his Diderot-replying pamphlet to Voltaire and D'Alembert first for checking, and with a letter adressed to both of them saying this:
“You are surprised that there is a war in Europe that I don't know about. You know that the philosophers with their constant declamations against those whom they usually call robbers made me peaceable. The Empress of Russia may wage war as much as she will; she has received a dispensation from Diderot for a fair amount of money to let the Russians and Turks beat each other. I, who fear the philosophical censorship, the encyclopedic excommunication and do not want to commit a crime of the Laesio philosophiae, keep quiet. And since no book against subsidies has yet been published, I believe that I am permitted under civil and natural law to pay my ally the contribution owed to him; and I am quite right with those teachers of the human race who presume the right to scourge princes, kings and emperors who do not obey their rules. - I have recovered from the work: 'Experiment on Prejudices', and I am sending you some remarks which a friend of mine made in solitude about it. I think that the views of this hermit very often agree with your way of thinking as with the moderation you observe in all of your writings. "
Buuuuuuuurn. And bless.
I want to see that Voltaire letter, too.
German wiki claims that while Diderot's journey to St. Petersburg was in 1774, his publication of Seneca was in 1778, and despite his disillusionment with Catherine, it actually contains a defense of her against the accusation that she was a second Agrippina (on account of the husband killing)
Also interesting for posterity: Diderot's library, like Voltaire's (which Catherine had also bought, from Madame Denis), ended up forming the basis for the Russian National Library. (Founded in 1795.) Alas, its content and the listing of which books had come from which philsopher got dispersed during the (Russian) revolution, and only could partially and painstakingly be reconstructed later. In addition to paying for the library itself and paying Diderot as "custodian", Catherine paid 16 000 livres transport costs to bring the library from Paris to St. Petersburg. In conclusion: Catherine = despot to her core, but never cheap.
Re: Diderot and Catherine
Citation: letter from Voltaire to the Count de Tressan on February 13, 1758.
While I do not have access to E-Enlightenment, the letter can be found here - and while he mentions Diderot, I do not see that it says what it's supposed to say about Potsdam, but my French is rather rudimentary, so maybe I'm missing something.
ETA: Given that I ended up in these parts because I wrote about being charmed by Fritz' physics experiments, Voltaire's explanation for why he gave up on physics in this very letter is quite funny to me, though. :D
Re: Diderot and Catherine
I do not see that it says what it's supposed to say about Potsdam, but my French is rather rudimentary, so maybe I'm missing something.
No, I don't see it either. In that case, it's uncited (the footnote leading to the citation of this letter was actually the sentence prior to the one referring to Potsdam, but I was hoping from the way he wrote it that it was all from one letter instead of the subsequent sentences being TOTALLY UNSOURCED, which unfortunately would be totally in character for this author).
Well, in that case, I'm not accepting that Voltaire told Diderot et al. to go to Potsdam in 1758 unless I see some evidence. Thanks again for checking!
Re: Diderot and Catherine
That said, browsing some of the surrounding letters, I am kind of wondering if the idea was floated by someone else in some way, or maybe earlier, because in his letter to Tressan on March 3rd, Voltaire writes:
Je vais planter aux Délices; de là je reviens à Lausanne pour nos spectacles; cela est plus sensé que d’aller en Allemagne, Je ne regrette aucun roi, aucun prince;
The "is more sensible than going to Germany" is an odd phrasing if somebody hadn't presented it as an option at some point, isn't it? ...or he's just commenting on his own history, who knows.
To D'Alembert on March 7th:
Comptez qu’on ne vaut pas mieux à Berlin qu’à Paris, et qu’il n’y a de bon que la liberté.
and on March 25th:
J’ai reçu depuis peu une lettre du cacouac roi de Prusse ; mais j’ai renoncé à lui comme à Paris, et je m’en trouve à merveille.
The German wiki article on the Encyclopédie says that Fritz offered to have it printed in Berlin and invited D'Alembert to do just that - unsourced and without a specific date attached, but I'd think that should have been years earlier?
Re: Diderot and Catherine
Uh, yeah, that sounds like Voltaire's saying *not* to go to Berlin. I'm side-eyeing the Diderot biographer!
J’ai reçu depuis peu une lettre du cacouac roi de Prusse ; mais j’ai renoncé à lui comme à Paris, et je m’en trouve à merveille.
For those who, like me, might be wondering, French Wikipedia tells me:
Cacouac is an anti-enlightenment term coined around 1757 by the opponents of the Enlightenment philosophers, with a view to mocking more particularly the authors of the Encyclopedia. This neologism combines the Greek adjective kakos (bad) and the word quack, and means wicked...Delighted with this opportunity to exercise their sense of derision, the Encyclopedists were quick to take up the term for themselves.
They were indeed, since Wikipedia tells me "the word made its first appearance in October 1757," and Voltaire's letter is from March 1758!
A bit more context from Voltaire's letter:
All the cacouacs should compose a pack; but they separate, and the wolf eats them. I recently received a letter from the cacouac King of Prussia; but I have given up on him like Paris, and I am very happy with that.
Again, sounds like he's saying not to go to Prussia (but is giving Fritz membership in the pack of scorned Enlightenment proponents, aww).
Re: Diderot and Catherine
Again, sounds like he's saying not to go to Prussia (but is giving Fritz membership in the pack of scorned Enlightenment proponents, aww).
Not to mention: if he's given up on Fritz like he's given up on Paris, that means he's not given up at all. :) Not just because he'll return to Paris at the end of his life, but because, as Orieux notes, Voltaire had a habit of writing "we in Paris" years and years after he had left it, and at the time with no prospect of seeing it again. Orieux: "He is both the most cosmopolitan and the most Parisian" of French enlightenment writers, and his hometown formed part of who he was.
Re: Diderot and Catherine
But we already knew that. :)
More seriously: "can't live with you, can't live without you" seems to describe his relationship to both.
Voltaire giving up on Fritz ... or not
Heh, yes! Some of these had quite the "I'm trying to convince myself" vibe.
And apropos giving him up, Darget apparently asked him how it happened that they are talking again, and Voltaire has this to say (January 8th, 1758):
You ask me, my dear and former companion from Potsdam, how Cinéas reconciled with Pyrrhus. It is, first, that Pyrrhus made an opera of my tragedy of Merope, and sent it to me [in 1756]; it is that afterwards he was kind enough to offer me his key, which is not that of paradise, and all his favors, which no longer suit my age; it is that one of his sisters, who has always preserved his kindness to me, has been the link of this small trade which is sometimes renewed between the hero-poet-philosopher-warrior-cunning/malicious-singular-brilliant-proud-modest, etc., and the Swiss Cinéas retired from the world.
Re: Voltaire giving up on Fritz ... or not
Made for each other, indeed.
Re: Voltaire giving up on Fritz ... or not
Anyway, that is a golden quote, and I love every word of it. The multiword description of Fritz most of all, but then the detail of the opera.
Re: Voltaire giving up on Fritz ... or not
Yes, that was amaaaazing. Voltaire's way with words is second to none.
Re: Diderot and Catherine
un jour, en soufflant mon feu, je me mis à songer pourquoi du bois faisait de la flamme ; personne ne me l’a pu dire, et j’ai trouvé qu’il n’y a point d’expérience de physique qui approche de celle-là.
I'm sorry, it is impossible for me to read this as anything but "So I was supposed to write this essay on Fire and I just could not make head or tail of how it worked at all, to the extent that Émilie had to write her own contribution just to point out how ludicrous my science was!" :)
Re: Diderot and Catherine
Nope...? I'm not sure of the context behind what Voltaire is writing here, but it evidently doesn't include any idea for refuge in Potsdam. Here's the part of the 13th of February 1758 letter pertaining to Diderot:
[Talks about Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie and then...] "If you were still in the guards, is it not true that you would have arrested this Father Chaplain who preaches like the other Chaplain wrote verses, and who has the insolence to condemn before the king, a book bearing the seal of the King? These scoundrels there may be right to cry out against the truth, and to sound the alarm when their enemy is at the gates; but we are not right to endure their impertinent and punishable clamor.
This is the time when all philosophers should come together. Fanatics and rascals form large battalions, and scattered philosophers allow themselves to be beaten in detail; they are slaughtered one by one, and while they are under the knife, they fall out together and lend arms to the common enemy. D'Alembert does well to quit, and the others are cowardly to continue. If you have any credit on Diderot and others, you will take the action of a great general to urge them all to join together, to walk closely, to demand justice, and not to resume the work until they have obtained what they must be given: justice, and honest freedom. It is infamous to work on such a work as one paddles in the galleys. It seems to me that the exhortations of a man like you must carry weight."
On a miscellaneous note, from the same letter, Voltaire hates physics: "Besides, I hardly see anything but charlatanism; and except the discoveries of Newton and two or three others, everything is an absurd system."
I did find Voltaire writing about Fritz to the Count de Tressan on the 12th January 1759:
"Put me, please, at the feet of the King of Poland. He does good to men as much as he can. The King of Prussia does more verses, and more harm to mankind. He told me the other day that I was happier than him. Really I believe it."
But aside from that, not much else related to Prussia. Their correspondence is more Poland related.
Edit: Damn, just noticed Felis answered this one. Whelp, at least there's an English translation lol