Another conversation I didn't get to participate in due to salon hiatus was this one:
felis: Came across this [quote] by Fritz from a November 1773 letter to Voltaire:
Everything depends, for man, on the time when he comes into the world. Although I came too early, I do not regret it; I saw Voltaire; and if I no longer see him, I read him, and he writes to me.
Fritz thinking he was born too early was new to me, so I looked up the letter - and the quote comes at the end of a long passage where he is being sarcastic in response to Voltaire's sudden crusading ways:
[See the original post for the full passage.]
So, definitely sarcasm, but I'm wondering if there's still a kernel of truth here. Because I also remembered this quote to Voltaire from almost 40 years earlier: I don't feel made for the century we live in (July 1737). I already wondered which century he felt made for back then, but kind of assumed it would be an earlier one for some reason, which is why the 1773 quote surprised me. Hmmm. Where would Fritz time-travel to, if he could?
This finding was super exciting to me, because I had run across that "I came too early, but I didn't regret it because I saw Voltaire" quote before, but only in an unreliable source. When I tried to track it down, I found only this letter, written in 1775. Which says the same thing, but didn't have the "I came too early" in those exact words, so I knew there was another quote out there that I hadn't found. Thank you, felis!
This letter is another of Fritz's anti-German diatribe, but unlike the letter felis found about feeling that he was born too soon, this one isn't not sarcastic but completely straight. Courtesy of Google Translate:
Our Germans have the ambition to enjoy in their turn the advantages of the fine arts; they strive to equal Athens, Rome, Florence and Paris. Whatever love I have for my country, I cannot say that they have succeeded so far; they lack two things, language and taste. The language is too wordy; the good company speaks French, and a few school cooks and a few teachers cannot give it the politeness and easy tricks which it can only acquire in the society of the great world. Add to that the diversity of idioms; each province supports its own, and so far nothing has been decided on the preference. For taste, the Germans lack it on everything; they have not yet been able to imitate the authors of the century of Augustus; they make a vicious mixture of Roman, English, French, and Germanic taste; they still lack that fine discernment which grasps the beauties where it finds them, and knows how to distinguish the mediocre from the perfect, the noble from the sublime, and apply them each to their proper places. Provided that there is a lot of r in the words of their poetry, they believe that their verses are harmonious; and, for the most part, it is nothing but a mishmash of bombastic terms. In the story, they would not omit the slightest circumstance, even though it would be unnecessary.
Their best works are on public law. As for philosophy, since the genius of Leibniz and the big monad of Wolff, nobody gets involved any more. They believe they are successful in the theater; but so far nothing perfect has appeared. Germany is today as was France in the time of Francis I. The taste for letters begins to spread; we must wait for nature to give birth to real geniuses, as under the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin. The soil that produced one Leibniz can produce others.
I will not see these beautiful days of my homeland, but I foresee the possibility. You will tell me that it may be very indifferent to you, and that I make the prophet at my ease by extending, as much as I can, the term of my prediction. It's my way of prophesying, and the surest of all, since no one will deny me.
For myself, I take comfort in having lived in the century of Voltaire; that's enough for me. May he live, may he digest, may he be in a good mood, and especially may he not forget the solitary one of Sans-Souci. Vale.
So, ignoring the part where he's completely out of sync with the majority opinion on the value of German literature during his time, it's interesting to me because he does believe he was born too soon, he is emotionally invested in Germany's future success as he sees it, and he names the same centuries Selena talks about as his likely time-travel destinations: Athens, Rome, Florence, and Paris. But where Selena guesses *after* the death of Mazarin, Fritz mentions Mazarin and Richelieu--but I can't tell if he's just saying that that's when people like Corneille and Racine were born, but they reached their heyday after Mazarin's death under Louis XIV, which is when Fritz would like to visit.
It is interesting that he says he was born too early instead of too soon. It makes sense if he means "born too soon in Germany," but that tells you he's identifying pretty hard as a German here.
As far as Greece is concerned, he'd probably want to meet Socrates, Plato et all and go for the age of Pericles instead.
Agreed, that was one of my guesses before Selena made it. Incidentally, speaking of Pericles, the thing that brought Fritz back on my radar when I was studying Greece in early 2019 was discovering that 19th century military historian Hans Delbrück wrote a book called Die Strategie des Perikles erläutert durch die Strategie Friedrichs des Grossen (The Strategy of Pericles Explained Through the Strategy of Frederick the Great). Which made me check to see if MacDonogh (the most encompassing biography I owned at the time) had made it into Kindle yet, which it had, and the rest is history, thanks to cahn. ;)
And, rather tangentially, speaking of the classics, selenak, you neglected to tell me when you were giving us a rundown on Maecenas that the German word for patron is "Mäzen"! I ran across it on my own in my reading, tried to figure out where it came from, because it sure didn't look like a normal German word, and then had a big DUH moment. Sharing this tidbit with cahn!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Born too soon
Date: 2021-06-27 06:18 pm (UTC)Everything depends, for man, on the time when he comes into the world. Although I came too early, I do not regret it; I saw Voltaire; and if I no longer see him, I read him, and he writes to me.
Fritz thinking he was born too early was new to me, so I looked up the letter - and the quote comes at the end of a long passage where he is being sarcastic in response to Voltaire's sudden crusading ways:
[See the original post for the full passage.]
So, definitely sarcasm, but I'm wondering if there's still a kernel of truth here. Because I also remembered this quote to Voltaire from almost 40 years earlier: I don't feel made for the century we live in (July 1737). I already wondered which century he felt made for back then, but kind of assumed it would be an earlier one for some reason, which is why the 1773 quote surprised me. Hmmm. Where would Fritz time-travel to, if he could?
This finding was super exciting to me, because I had run across that "I came too early, but I didn't regret it because I saw Voltaire" quote before, but only in an unreliable source. When I tried to track it down, I found only this letter, written in 1775. Which says the same thing, but didn't have the "I came too early" in those exact words, so I knew there was another quote out there that I hadn't found. Thank you,
This letter is another of Fritz's anti-German diatribe, but unlike the letter
Our Germans have the ambition to enjoy in their turn the advantages of the fine arts; they strive to equal Athens, Rome, Florence and Paris. Whatever love I have for my country, I cannot say that they have succeeded so far; they lack two things, language and taste. The language is too wordy; the good company speaks French, and a few school cooks and a few teachers cannot give it the politeness and easy tricks which it can only acquire in the society of the great world. Add to that the diversity of idioms; each province supports its own, and so far nothing has been decided on the preference. For taste, the Germans lack it on everything; they have not yet been able to imitate the authors of the century of Augustus; they make a vicious mixture of Roman, English, French, and Germanic taste; they still lack that fine discernment which grasps the beauties where it finds them, and knows how to distinguish the mediocre from the perfect, the noble from the sublime, and apply them each to their proper places. Provided that there is a lot of r in the words of their poetry, they believe that their verses are harmonious; and, for the most part, it is nothing but a mishmash of bombastic terms. In the story, they would not omit the slightest circumstance, even though it would be unnecessary.
Their best works are on public law. As for philosophy, since the genius of Leibniz and the big monad of Wolff, nobody gets involved any more. They believe they are successful in the theater; but so far nothing perfect has appeared. Germany is today as was France in the time of Francis I. The taste for letters begins to spread; we must wait for nature to give birth to real geniuses, as under the ministries of Richelieu and Mazarin. The soil that produced one Leibniz can produce others.
I will not see these beautiful days of my homeland, but I foresee the possibility. You will tell me that it may be very indifferent to you, and that I make the prophet at my ease by extending, as much as I can, the term of my prediction. It's my way of prophesying, and the surest of all, since no one will deny me.
For myself, I take comfort in having lived in the century of Voltaire; that's enough for me. May he live, may he digest, may he be in a good mood, and especially may he not forget the solitary one of Sans-Souci. Vale.
So, ignoring the part where he's completely out of sync with the majority opinion on the value of German literature during his time, it's interesting to me because he does believe he was born too soon, he is emotionally invested in Germany's future success as he sees it, and he names the same centuries Selena talks about as his likely time-travel destinations: Athens, Rome, Florence, and Paris. But where Selena guesses *after* the death of Mazarin, Fritz mentions Mazarin and Richelieu--but I can't tell if he's just saying that that's when people like Corneille and Racine were born, but they reached their heyday after Mazarin's death under Louis XIV, which is when Fritz would like to visit.
It is interesting that he says he was born too early instead of too soon. It makes sense if he means "born too soon in Germany," but that tells you he's identifying pretty hard as a German here.
As far as Greece is concerned, he'd probably want to meet Socrates, Plato et all and go for the age of Pericles instead.
Agreed, that was one of my guesses before Selena made it. Incidentally, speaking of Pericles, the thing that brought Fritz back on my radar when I was studying Greece in early 2019 was discovering that 19th century military historian Hans Delbrück wrote a book called Die Strategie des Perikles erläutert durch die Strategie Friedrichs des Grossen (The Strategy of Pericles Explained Through the Strategy of Frederick the Great). Which made me check to see if MacDonogh (the most encompassing biography I owned at the time) had made it into Kindle yet, which it had, and the rest is history, thanks to
And, rather tangentially, speaking of the classics,