Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20
Oct. 19th, 2020 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnYuletide 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!)
Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-10-28 01:05 pm (UTC)Anyway, Dashkova talking, "he" is Peter, at this point still Grandduke, but his aunt is in ill health: He astonished me with a remark very characteristic of the simplicity of his head and of the goodness of his heart, but which, bye the bye, was expressed with so much more point than was found in the usual tenor of his conversation, that I never ceased to wonder, until I chanced to discover the person who had adroitly inserted it in to his brain for the occasion.
"My child," said he, "you would do well to recollect that it is much safer to deal with honest blockheads, like your sister and myself, than with great wits who squeeze the juice out of the orange, and then throw away the rind."
I affected neither to understand the import nor the application of his words, and merely reminded him, in reply, how distinctly his aunt, the empress, had signified her wishes that we should play no less attention to the grand duchess as to his imperial highness. Here I must take an opportunity of rendering justice to my sister the Countess Elizabeth, who sufficiently understood our differences of character never to expect those attentions from me which her situation procued her from the rest of the court.
Well! On the one hand, it would be just like (P)Russian Pete the fanboy to learn a Fritz quote by heart and use it in conversation, which would indicate that by the early 1760s, which is when this conversation takes place, the story of Fritz having said this about Voltaire was making the rounds through Europe and beyond. This would predate the publication of Voltaire's memoirs and is of course completly independent from his rewriting of his letters to Madame Denis. Which would argue that at least the rumor of Fritz having said this was nothing something Voltaire had to invent from the letters and the memoirs.
On the other hand: Princess Dashkova does not write this story down when it happened, she recounts it decades later when Catherine, Voltaire, Fritz et al are already dead. By which time, of course, Voltaire's memoirs were published, and being an eager reader of Voltaire (who met him later and felt let down by Denis being "an ordinary woman, and this the niece of Voltaire!"), she certainly must have read them.
Which means the answer as to whether Peter actually said this to a young Dashkova, thereby using a quip attributed to his hero, is... maybe?
Re: Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-10-29 07:25 pm (UTC)I take it she doesn't specify who this is? Because it can't exactly be Fritz, he and P(R)ussian Pete aren't communicating yet.
Also, devil's advocate: I'm not sure this has to be a Fritz quote? It could easily have been a saying going around. Googling turns up a few hits for a metaphorical use of "squeeze the orange and throw away the peel/rind." Admittedly all 20th and 21st century, but in very disparate genres, and I could see people coming up with it independently. Though I suppose it's possible Arthur Miller got it from Voltaire, and then everyone else got it from "Death of Salesman" (read this in school, had totally forgotten about the "You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away- a man is not a piece of fruit!" quote.)
Ah, wait, rephrasing to "throw the peel away," I get a late 19th century book of common-man proverbs/cliches. "Those who make so very much of you either mean to cheat you, or else are in need of you: when they have sucked the orange they will throw the peel away." John Ploughman's Talk, 1867, published in a religious magazine. Does not read like the author knows his Voltaire.
Hmm, looks like a move called The Sword of Gideon (1986) popularized the same analogy with lemons: A father cautions his son against the Israeli secret service. The father plucks a fresh lemon from the tree and squeezes it while the son is watching attentively. He then says to his son: ‘this is what they’re going to do to you. When they’re done with you, they will discard you just like this lemon’, he said, while throwing the fruit away, and I get quite a few hits for "squeezed lemon syndrome."
Could be Fritz, of course! Though, wouldn't Fritz's supposed quote and Peter's use of it be at odds with Peter's Fritz-worship? Or would he take the phrasing while disbelieving that Fritz would do such a thing? Or was his hero-worship compatible with Fritz being a great wit who squeezes the orange? Or did someone give him the quote without telling him it was attributed to Fritz? Fritz, after all, is not a great wit or even a writer of poetry or player of the flute! He likes to smoke and hunt, as we all know. :P
Which means the answer as to whether Peter actually said this to a young Dashkova, thereby using a quip attributed to his hero, is... maybe?
And, of course, there's always the "Dashkova invented it" option.
It would be interesting to find a version of this saying that predates, say, 1740, but so far I haven't turned any up.
Re: Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-10-30 06:27 am (UTC)Alas no, she does not. BTW, keep in mind that this is a two edged anecdote. Yes, she's snarky about Peter, but given she feels Catherine was ungrateful to her thereafter, she also does a bit of shading and burning in the guise of letting Catherine's loathed husband predict this.*
Anyway, assuming she didn't make the story up entirely:
Though, wouldn't Fritz's supposed quote and Peter's use of it be at odds with Peter's Fritz-worship?
Not necessarily? Because of the context, i.e. Fritz saying this about Voltaire. Given Catherine really was a Voltaire fan even before getting on the throne and needing him for good publicity - there are enough letters from her in her Grand Duchess days referencing his works and praising them to testify to this - I could imagine Peter feeling satisfied about his wife's hero getting properly dissed and put in his place by a superior monarch.
*Not that old Dashkova has softened on Peter in general. She's still 100% Team Disposing Him Was A Patriotic Necessity. (And Team He Was a Russia-Hating, Fritz-Fawning Idiot.) However, whom she really hates are the Orlovs, Grigorij and Alexej both. She claims she had no idea that Grigorij Orlov and Catherine were an item before the coup, and says Alexej Orlov murdering Peter would have nearly ruined Catherine and almost destroyed the achievement of what had until then been a bloodless revolution carried by public acclaim. She insists that Catherine herself was innocent, however, as proven by the letter Alexej Orlov wrote to her after the deed was done which didn't come to light until after Catherine's death (when her son Paul found it among her papers and exclaimed he was very relieved to finally have it settled in his mind his mother didn't kill his father).
Re: Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-11-01 04:01 pm (UTC)True, but that's why I included "Peter's use of it": he's presenting the practice of throwing away orange peels as reflecting badly on the person who does it. I still consider it at least possible he doesn't know this is Fritz (if it is), and that it's come to him through an intermediary.
when her son Paul found it among her papers and exclaimed he was very relieved to finally have it settled in his mind his mother didn't kill his father
I should learn Russian someday so we can evaluate all the evidence properly. *g* #EternalOptimist
Re: Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-11-01 06:47 pm (UTC)On a Voltairian note, while looking up quotes to type them again elsewhere I was reminded that Voltaire wrote the following to his other niece, Madame de Fontaine, i.e. not Madame Denis and hence presumably not part of the reworked correspondance:
Berlin, September 23rd, 1750: I wish I could sacrifice the King of Prussia for your benefit, but I can't. He's a King, but it's a sixteen-years-long passion that connects us; he's swept me away. I imagine nature has created me for him. Our taste is so eerily alike that I forgot he's master over half of Germany. And that the other half trembles in front of him, that he's won five battles and is the greatest general of Europe, that he's surrounded by six foot tall professional killers. All of this should have caused me to run a thousand miles in the other direction, but the philosopher in him has reconciled me with the monarch, and I have only found him to be a great man who is good and sociable.
Re: Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-11-01 07:04 pm (UTC)Oh, sure, but I was thinking of modern scholarship evaluating the evidence, for the same reason I have to learn German to study people who wrote in French. Imagine if you only knew French and read Catt's memoirs! ;)
he's swept me away.
Swept you off your feet, you say? ;)
I have only found him to be a great man who is good and sociable.
Ah, the honeymoon phase.
That's a great quote to remember, thank you. Filing that one away.
Re: Return of the Orange Peel (in unexpected places)
Date: 2020-11-01 11:19 pm (UTC)Oh man. This is great!