It's the fact they then went back to writing each other that slays everyone.
If they had just made up, I think people would have understood. If they'd been in a cycle of "get back together"/"break up"/"get back together", it would have been popcorn time and people would have thought, "Clearly this isn't working, why can everyone but the two of them see it?"
But two decades of praising each other and making scathing remarks in the same breath confused the hell out of *everyone*. :P It was the simultaneity that made everyone go WTF.
Macaulay: It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was his real feeling towards Frederick. It was compounded of all sentiments, from enmity to friendship, and from scorn to admiration; and the proportions in which these elements were mixed changed every moment. The old patriarch resembled the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His resentment was not extinguished; yet he was not without sympathy for his old friend.
(And the same goes for Fritz; he's just describing Voltaire's decision to try to talk Fritz out of suicide after Kolin.)
So he did, and even built a church. ("To God, from Voltaire", wasn't that the dedication?) And let's not forgot the "I'm sorry if you're insulted" repentenance document to penned on his deathbed
I did not forget! These were all on my mind. :)
On the one hand: this is like later 19th century historians deciding unilaterally that the "she cried, but she took" etc. crack about MT and the first Partitioning of Poland was too good to hail from some minor figur and had to come from Fritz, and nearly every biographer until this day following suit.
I know, that's why I said "Not very scientific." :P My feelings and my methodology are two different things.
I'm still disappointed that that crack turned out not to be Fritz's. That was the one that, 22 years ago this month, in the very first biography of Fritz I picked up, as I was just starting out in the 18th century fandom, turned me from "This guy seems really interesting" to "This guy is my problematic fave FOR LIFE! He's going into my novel!"
Oh, well. :)
(If you want an argument against Voltaire picking up the bonmot from someone else.)
Yeah, I had rejected the idea of Voltaire reading the report. What I think is much more likely is independent observations. All my training in the comparative method teaches me that the same idea cropping up in multiple places is radically more likely to be a single idea that originated once and spread if it's false; if it's something everyone can observe for themselves in reality, multiple people are likely to come up with it on their own. This is why, if you're grading papers and looking for cheating, two students coming up with identical wrong answers is far more diagnostic than identical right answers. (I say this from painful personal experience with having to haul students in front of the Dean for disciplinary action.)
So Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz both calling Major Schack Major "Schenk"? Likely that they had collaborated or had a common source. Two people observing that FW liked tall soldiers and Fritz liked good-looking ones? That's just reality. ;)
Re: Voltairean Matters
If they had just made up, I think people would have understood. If they'd been in a cycle of "get back together"/"break up"/"get back together", it would have been popcorn time and people would have thought, "Clearly this isn't working, why can everyone but the two of them see it?"
But two decades of praising each other and making scathing remarks in the same breath confused the hell out of *everyone*. :P It was the simultaneity that made everyone go WTF.
Macaulay: It would probably have puzzled Voltaire himself to say what was his real feeling towards Frederick. It was compounded of all sentiments, from enmity to friendship, and from scorn to admiration; and the proportions in which these elements were mixed changed every moment. The old patriarch resembled the spoiled child who screams, stamps, cuffs, laughs, kisses, and cuddles within one quarter of an hour. His resentment was not extinguished; yet he was not without sympathy for his old friend.
(And the same goes for Fritz; he's just describing Voltaire's decision to try to talk Fritz out of suicide after Kolin.)
So he did, and even built a church. ("To God, from Voltaire", wasn't that the dedication?) And let's not forgot the "I'm sorry if you're insulted" repentenance document to penned on his deathbed
I did not forget! These were all on my mind. :)
On the one hand: this is like later 19th century historians deciding unilaterally that the "she cried, but she took" etc. crack about MT and the first Partitioning of Poland was too good to hail from some minor figur and had to come from Fritz, and nearly every biographer until this day following suit.
I know, that's why I said "Not very scientific." :P My feelings and my methodology are two different things.
I'm still disappointed that that crack turned out not to be Fritz's. That was the one that, 22 years ago this month, in the very first biography of Fritz I picked up, as I was just starting out in the 18th century fandom, turned me from "This guy seems really interesting" to "This guy is my problematic fave FOR LIFE! He's going into my novel!"
Oh, well. :)
(If you want an argument against Voltaire picking up the bonmot from someone else.)
Yeah, I had rejected the idea of Voltaire reading the report. What I think is much more likely is independent observations. All my training in the comparative method teaches me that the same idea cropping up in multiple places is radically more likely to be a single idea that originated once and spread if it's false; if it's something everyone can observe for themselves in reality, multiple people are likely to come up with it on their own. This is why, if you're grading papers and looking for cheating, two students coming up with identical wrong answers is far more diagnostic than identical right answers. (I say this from painful personal experience with having to haul students in front of the Dean for disciplinary action.)
So Wilhelmine and Pöllnitz both calling Major Schack Major "Schenk"? Likely that they had collaborated or had a common source. Two people observing that FW liked tall soldiers and Fritz liked good-looking ones? That's just reality. ;)