Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20

[cahn]

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!)

Comments

Re: Boswell in Prussia: Meeting Mr. Mitchell

[mildred_of_midgard]

for instance, maybe don't diss Schiller when one hasn't even seen the play in question and doesn't know what German academics might be lurking
well actually this is maybe not a good example because that happened to turn out really REALLY well

Do it again, do it again! :D :P

the infancy of painting people generally wrote 'this is a cow'. So from Sir Joe's mouth commeth a label with these words 'I am an Ambassador'.

Yeah, this was great. Btw, what infancy of painting is he thinking of here, do we know? Greek vases had people (human and divine) labeled, but not usually cows. I'm drawing a blank on "this is a cow" examples.

Re: Boswell in Prussia: Meeting Mr. Mitchell

[selenak]

He may have meant literally children painting, and writing "this is a cow" next to it?

Re: Boswell in Prussia: Meeting Mr. Mitchell

[cahn]

This is what I parsed it as, as I'm forever asking my 5-year-old what it actually was that he drew (and sometimes he helpfully labels things), although I guess it's true that that's not what the phrase is most likely to mean in modern English (no idea if it's changed since then).

Re: Boswell in Prussia: Meeting Mr. Mitchell

[mildred_of_midgard]

Really? I tried and tried to parse it that way before I said anything, and I'm still trying, and I can't. "Infancy of painting" means "when painting was first being developed" to me, not "when infants paint." I don't think it's changed since then, and even if it has, surely if you meant an ongoing habit of small children you would say "write," not "wrote"?

Maybe he's extrapolating from the practices of small children back to the invention of painting?

Re: Boswell in Prussia: Meeting Mr. Mitchell

[cahn]

Yeah, I don't think it is a parsing that really makes sense. But I did understand it that way because it made more sense with my personal experience :)