18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 35

[cahn]

In the previous post Charles II found AITA:

Look, I, m, believe in live and let live. (And in not going on my travels again. Had enough of that to last a life time.) Why can't everyone else around me be more chill? Instead, my wife refuses to employ my girlfriend, my girlfriend won't budge and accept another office, my brother is set on a course to piss off everyone (he WILL go on his travels again), and my oldest kid shows signs of wanting my job which is just not on, sorry to say. And don't get me started about Mom (thank God she's living abroad). What am I doing wrong? AITA?

Comments

Re: Backlog Reading - Wilhelmine and Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm wondering if the random (or even not-so-random) cutting of passages in the English version might make it less readable in the end, because it impacts context and flow?

But I read it in German! (I've never read v2 in English, lol.) My first thought was that maybe you read the shorter English version, but then I thought, no, surely you read it in German. And Cahn read it in English, so--congrats, you have more tolerance for Bayreuth intrigues than we do! :)

"Seine Vorliebe für scharf gewürzte Speisen sind legendär."

Ah, yeah, I would have caught that, but then I would have read it like 3 times going, "Is it me? Is this a thing you can do in German that I just don't know?" But that's a syntax error that people make in English too--even I have when not proofreading closely.

I'm actually much more interested in how you'll cope with the letters themselves, particularly the rather phonetic spelling, nevermind the grammar. :D

Hahahaha, me too! There's a reason I'm holding off. :P

I also remember that Selena mentioned how selectively and out of context he quoted Lehndorff's description of Fredersdorf, calling him "hateful" even.

Oh, right. Argh, yes. And of course the wiki claim. Well, he's a urologist (iirc), not a historian (and we've seen historians do much worse).

re: Richter vs. Fahlenkamp - I was only thinking of the organizational approach, not their attitudes as editors... because it makes it harder to see whether things have been cut from a letter because they don't fit the topic at hand.

Fair, fair!

Yeah, definitely a repeated typo. "Notwenig" doesn't exist.

What I thought, so thanks for confirming! (Fahlenkamp and Schultz editors both dropping the ball here.)