Lettres Juives: I haven't read them yet, but I see Nicolai's advertised translation is completely online, so I might if I can find the time. From the descriptions I've read, the basic premise is one popular at the time, a letter novel written from the pov of a fictional outsider - D'Argens in addition to the Lettres Juives also wrote the Lettres Chinoises - commenting on the manners of the writers' own country, or continent. Madame de Graffigny used the same premise for her Lettres Peruviens, where the letter writing outsider is a Peruvian (an Indian one, not a Spanish one), and she's bound to have read D'Argens bestseller. And amazingly, the concept survives into the 20th century - if you've ever read Herbert Rosendorfer's "Briefe in die chinesische Vergangenheit", they're a case in point. Lettres Juives has a Jew as the letter writer, commenting on first France, then other European countries.
Mind you, depressingly for D'Argens, Casanova isn't wrong (and it's telling that this became true even within D'Argens' own life time). The only member of the Sanssouci table round who didn't need Fritz either to become famous or stay famous, and whom people today can still discuss without as much as mentioning Fritz, remains Voltaire.
As more then one historian and biographer has observed, this tells you something. Mind you, it's not that Fritz didn't try to get the best and the brightest of his time when he was young, in 1740. It's that later on, he stopped being approachable for new cultural developments, and where he did read newer first class writers and invited them to Prussia, like Diderot and D'Alembert, they either didn't stay (D'Alembert) or didn't come in the first place (Diderot). And of course, by ignoring the entirety of German literature exploding around him in the second half of his life, he ensured not befriending any of its representatives, either.
The only member of the Sanssouci table round who didn't need Fritz either to become famous or stay famous, and whom people today can still discuss without as much as mentioning Fritz, remains Voltaire.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Moses Mendelsohn (aka Nicolai, Volume I, b)
Date: 2021-02-27 12:17 pm (UTC)Mind you, depressingly for D'Argens, Casanova isn't wrong (and it's telling that this became true even within D'Argens' own life time). The only member of the Sanssouci table round who didn't need Fritz either to become famous or stay famous, and whom people today can still discuss without as much as mentioning Fritz, remains Voltaire.
As more then one historian and biographer has observed, this tells you something. Mind you, it's not that Fritz didn't try to get the best and the brightest of his time when he was young, in 1740. It's that later on, he stopped being approachable for new cultural developments, and where he did read newer first class writers and invited them to Prussia, like Diderot and D'Alembert, they either didn't stay (D'Alembert) or didn't come in the first place (Diderot). And of course, by ignoring the entirety of German literature exploding around him in the second half of his life, he ensured not befriending any of its representatives, either.
Re: Moses Mendelsohn (aka Nicolai, Volume I, b)
Date: 2021-02-27 01:35 pm (UTC)And Euler, but your point stands.