Knaves date: over to cahn, I don't have the Voltaire biography with me right now.
Thank you for providing all three letters! BTW, this reminds me of Lady Mary's biographer pointing out that the "Embassy" letters as they were published, while being based on her diaries and some actual letters, were of course a literary creation (same for Algarotti's "Letters from Russia" and for Bielfeld's Letters), because rl letters, like Voltaire's here, repeat information (and sometimes descriptions and jokes) for different correspondents, whereas these published "Letters" books are offering a progressing narrative which never does that. Given that shared friends like the D'Argentals must have been concerned for Émilie, too, and awaiting the news about her giving birth urgently, I'm not surprised he wrote to three different people the same day with the same basic letters set up.
It's written in the same vein and context, but it has a more noticable "having kids = way easier than writing books" slant towards the end, so if you only read this one, you might get the wrong impression:
True, but I'm assumung Zinnsser would have read all Voltaire letters referring to Émilie as part of her research, especially all written in the month of her death, so she did know the context. Let's face it, scholars setting out to prove a theory will who then end up only quoting what they think supports that theory and ignoring everything else are more common than not....
Oh, yeah, I didn't mean to say that Zinsser wouldn't have known the context or didn't pick and choose what suited her best; it was more a general observation.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: My reading of Orieux
Date: 2021-04-11 05:03 am (UTC)Thank you for providing all three letters! BTW, this reminds me of Lady Mary's biographer pointing out that the "Embassy" letters as they were published, while being based on her diaries and some actual letters, were of course a literary creation (same for Algarotti's "Letters from Russia" and for Bielfeld's Letters), because rl letters, like Voltaire's here, repeat information (and sometimes descriptions and jokes) for different correspondents, whereas these published "Letters" books are offering a progressing narrative which never does that. Given that shared friends like the D'Argentals must have been concerned for Émilie, too, and awaiting the news about her giving birth urgently, I'm not surprised he wrote to three different people the same day with the same basic letters set up.
It's written in the same vein and context, but it has a more noticable "having kids = way easier than writing books" slant towards the end, so if you only read this one, you might get the wrong impression:
True, but I'm assumung Zinnsser would have read all Voltaire letters referring to Émilie as part of her research, especially all written in the month of her death, so she did know the context. Let's face it, scholars setting out to prove a theory will who then end up only quoting what they think supports that theory and ignoring everything else are more common than not....
Re: My reading of Orieux
Date: 2021-04-11 06:42 pm (UTC)