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cahnBackground: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2023-12-31 12:34 pm (UTC)Now, given that Hotham Jr. never seems to have contacted Lehndorff again after they tearfully parted once Fritz had refused permission to Lehndorff, I'm tempted to go with "they'd have split in GB as well eventually", but that doesn't have to be the case - maybe Hotham very sensibly decided against a long distance affair and did not want to settle in Prussia (I don't blame him in the slightest). Maybe he even realised Lehndorff still had unfinished business with Heinrich. All of which still doesn't exclude the possibility that their infatuation of early 1755 could have turned into something permanent IF Lehndorff had gone to GB with Hotham (thereby proving his commitment and priorities). Since in mid 1756, the 7 Years War kicks off, it's unlikely Lehndorff would have had the chance to go back to war-torn continental Europe in the next few years, thus solififying his British existence. Post War, he might have returned because his brother would have died either way, thus making Lehndorff the heir of Steinort, and that's an independent income, but it's also possible he could have found a position at the Georgian court, or been made an envoy, a career he fancied.
OR: it's also possible Lehndorff quickly finds out Hotham isn't the love of his life after all once they live together, the Brits are snobs looking down on German courtiers, and Heinrich is now in danger, OMG, and in a gallant romantic gesture (aided by disillusionment with Albion) he goes back with the next courier bringing mail to Mitchell.
Votes?
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-01 03:34 am (UTC)Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-01 06:03 am (UTC)wasn't it the first half of the 20th century by then?
Yeah, like 1907.
but I can dream!
Agreed! I was being all boringly realistic and agreeing with Selena's original comment:
I mean, it's of course entirely possible that he'd have truly been happy with Hotham there, and wouldn't have regreted his choice, but, you know: it's 1756, the war starts, and England explodes into Fritzmania. Also Heinrich transforms into a war hero. Somehow I can't imagine AU!Lehndorff in England thinking "yeah, good thing I got out of in time" , as opposed to "OMG! The Russians are at Steinort, is my mother alright, hope my siblings have told her to move to Berlin in time! And ZOMG what about Prince Heinrich!!!!"
It's hard for me to disagree with "ZOMG what about Prince Heinrich!!!!" But, he might still have made a success of his new life with Hotham. People are adaptable.
The real problem is that we know virtually nothing about this Hotham guy, which makes it hard to draw informed conclusions about his relationship with Lehndorff.
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-02 01:55 pm (UTC)not that Fritz noticed. I mean, yes, Schiller made it into the early 19th century, and Goethe didn't die until 1832, writing till the very end, but I'd still put him squarely into the 18th century category. So the 18th century is basically our Elizabethan age with Shakespeare and Marlowe in German literature, one big difference to English literature school canon. :)Mildred, didn't you guys at least do some Boswell/Johnson? I mean, I didn't expect them to assign you Lord Hervey, Lady Mary or Alexander Pope, but my guy Boswell writing the first modern biography is considered v. v. important, surely?
Hotham: too true, that's my personal impendiment to shipping them. I mean, Lehndorff sounds adorably smitten for those few months, and it would have been a relationship between equals the way the one with Heinrich could not be, but not knowing how Hotham felt or was...
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-02 02:09 pm (UTC)Nope! As I recall, and my memories have faded, they told us who Johnson was and maybe gave us a couple sample definitions from the dictionary, but no assigned reading.
I mean, I didn't expect them to assign you Lord Hervey, Lady Mary or Alexander Pope
Ha! Pope was the guy we were actually assigned! We were supposed to read Rape of the Lock, and no one did, and because it was AP English, the teacher was like, "I'm just preparing you for the AP exam. If you don't want to be prepared, that's on you." And so we never actually read him or discussed him in class.
There was *probably* some shorter poetry and *maybe* a play, but nothing that I'm remembering, so maybe not.
but my guy Boswell writing the first modern biography is considered v. v. important, surely?
Nope! I could be wrong in this, but I don't think they even told us who Boswell *was*. I remember learning about him in my outside reading. Definitely no assigned reading from him, either way.
So the 18th century is basically our Elizabethan age with Shakespeare and Marlowe in German literature, one big difference to English literature school canon. :)
Yeah, we were up to our ears in Elizabethan stuff, no time for the 18th century!
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-04 02:32 am (UTC)In fact now that I look back, we did very little solid 18th Century lit, now that I go back and look at our textbook (Norton anthology). I do have an extended version (we used the one-volume version, I have the two-volume Norton). The two-book volume has both Johnson (a lot of Johnson!) and Boswell and Pope and even a couple of poems by Lady Mary (which may not have been in our one-volume anthology), but the only solid pre-Romantic we did was Swift. I think our teacher must have just liked the Romantics more, because we did a lot of the Romantics.
(There is no Hervey in here, either. There is Christopher Smart, whom I love, but I was introduced to him through Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb, which the choir at music summer camp did, and not through school.)
The thumbnail bio sketch of Lady Mary in my Norton is great; it leaves out a lot, of course (it's only like a paragraph) but even in that short space one can see the person who wrote it was clearly just as intrigued by her as we are :D It starts out, "In her early teens Lady Mary Pierrepont did something that well-bred young women were not supposed to do: she secretly taught herself Latin." (Did we know this? If so I had forgotten!) It goes through her intro of inoculation, and then this gem of a sentence on the whole Algarotti affair: "In 1739 she traveled to Italy hoping to see [Algarotti]; but the passion that had kindled in their letters was soon quenched when he failed to join her." Aw, Lady Mary.
ETA:
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-04 09:39 am (UTC)William Blake: I've always seen him as sui generis, not really fitting into any of the art movements of his era though fitting with later ones (like the Impressionists in Turner's case whom he did not live to meet).
What Swift did you read? Gulliver or the baby eating proposal?
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-04 03:23 pm (UTC)I remembered!
(She should have met Émilie! Dammit.)
Right?! I want to live in *that* universe.
What Swift did you read? Gulliver or the baby eating proposal?
So for the last few days, I've been racking my brain trying to remember if I read "A Modest Proposal" for class, or on my own and possibly brought it up in class. I *think* it's the second one, but it's not impossible I was actually assigned some Swift in AP English and had forgotten it when I said I couldn't think of anything we were assigned other than the Pope poem we collectively didn't read.
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-05 05:15 am (UTC)We read Gulliver, and I'm trying to remember if we actually were assigned Modest Proposal or if he just told us what it was about and then I went to read it. (This was a thing he did; he also, for example, "warned" us about how salacious the Miller's Tale was, at which point a bunch of us went and read it outside of our assigned class reading. To be fair he also told us he thought D.H. Lawrence's novels were boring (we read a short story of his, which I liked), and I still have not read any of them.) I think he may have actually assigned it, though.
Literary Chat
Date: 2024-01-05 09:59 am (UTC)Blake: anyone who sees and talks to the Prophet Ezekiel as a boy would fit more with the Romantics than with the Enlightenment, but the Romantics would still go...? Mind you, I seem to recall Blake and his wife hung out with Mary Wollstonecraft (the feminist pioneer, mother of Mary Shelley) for a while and through her also knew Mary Shelley's Dad William Godwin, which would put them on the revolutionary or at least progressive side of thought in the late 18th century.
I must admit I still haven't read Gulliver proper, just the (presumably very bowlderized) edition for kids I was given as a child. But I just thought of another 18th century author from the early part of said century whose most famous work you may have read (also in edited for kids version) - Daniel Defoe, i.e. Robinson Crusoe. (I did read the edited for kids Robinson as a child as well. But! I also tackled Moll Flanders as an adult. And I've been meaning to get around to his Plague journal. Also, I just found out as a young man he was a follower of Jemmy's and participated in that doomed attempt to topple James II and make Jemmy King, escaping to France just in time.
Re: Literary Chat
Date: 2024-01-06 11:34 am (UTC)I have a memory of tackling the actual Gulliver's Travels too at the same age, but either I'm misremembering or else it was way over my head--there were a lot of books I "read" beginning to end, but didn't exactly get a lot out of them. I read above my reading level a lot.
Re: Literary Chat
Date: 2024-01-07 10:08 pm (UTC)I also did notice a lot of Defoe in my Norton! We did not read any Defoe in class (my teacher really doesn't seem to have been super fond of the 18th century, or maybe it's that the 18th C entries are mostly prose and he preferred poetry -- most of what I remember reading from that class is poetry, although obviously there were exceptions like Swift), but I am pretty sure I a kids version of Robinson Crusoe way back when which I remember very little about.
Totally random: I'm also remembering that year we had a take-home essay test (we were given something like 3 days to complete it, but could work on it anytime within those three days) where we had to cast Hamlet with the writers we were studying, and I cast Swift as Prince Hamlet. (Definitely the best essay prompt I got in high school!) I don't remember any of my other casting, or even what centuries we had to work with -- I may have to go see if I still have that test somewhere.
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-04 03:18 pm (UTC)Sorry,
ETA: [personal profile] selenak's other post made me remember that we did do a lot of William Blake, at least some of which was in the (very late) 18th C. But of course he is considered a Romantic :)
Right, Blake, I think we did at least one Blake poem! Like I said, we did various short poems, and if we did something 18th century and it didn't stick in my brain, then I have no way of remembering we did it. Blake is ringing a faint bell. I had mentally classed him as 19th century, though--my brain tends to do that with anyone who fits in a category that I think of as 19th century.
I don't have my anthology textbook, nor even remember what it was called or who the publisher was, so I have no way of checking what Blake poem it was. It may have been "Tyger, Tyger", or I may just know that one from osmosis.
Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-01 06:09 am (UTC)Re: Lehndorff AU!
Date: 2024-01-02 01:47 pm (UTC)On a musical note, and remembering how much fun we had with our two playlists for Fritz, one with pop songs and one with classical music, how about doing at least one for Émilie?
Playlists
Date: 2024-01-03 10:01 am (UTC)Émilie playlist: ooh, I like the idea, I'm just not sure if I remember her life well enough to come up with appropriate songs. Do you have anything in mind?
I also remember we tossed around the idea of a Heinrich playlist, to which my two contributions so far were "The Fire Inside" (still one of my lifelong favorite songs) and "Who Needs You Baby", which I don't love as *music*, but the lyrics totally capture his "can't live with you, can't live without you" relationships (heterosexually, of course).
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-03 03:03 pm (UTC)- Émilie as the daughter of nobility and privilege but finding out growing up she's interested in books and science more than anything else
- Émilie and her husband: not passion, but a good friendship and a sensible arrangement at the same time
- Émilie/Science OTP: she starts to seriously study
- Émilie also discovers the joy of sex (doesn't have to Émilie/Richelieu (the other one), more like Émilie/ her pre Voltaire lovers, whom she had affairs with while managing to remain friends afterwards (for the most part)
- Émilie/Voltaire (first stage): falling in love/building Cirey together/collaboriation
- Émilie/Newton: (not just covered by Émilie/Science, I think Newton is worth an extra song, given the translation will end up her Magnum Opus)
- Émilie & the Academy: she spars with some members and is patronized as a woman, but while her essay doesn't win top prize, it will get published
- Émilie/Voltaire (second stage): differences start to show, from scientic (Leibniz) to personal (sex), they argue a lot, but are still crazy about each other; also, jealousy (Fritz, among others)
- Émilie & her children: she arranges a sensible marriage for her daughter just as expected as a woman of her class, tries to get her son interested in maths via a book, but both of them are essentially raised by other people - what is it like for her, being a long distance mother of her time?
- Émilie/Voltaire (third stage): Madame Denis, Saint-Lambert, big explosion, tentative reconciliation
- Émilie/Saint Lambert: falling in love one more time, and first time with a younger man
- Émilie - Principia - Pregnancy: she tackles her most challenging work - and she's pregnant; will she manage to give birth to both?
- Death and Immortality: Émilie dies (with her three main guys at her side) but what she has created will live forever
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-03 05:12 pm (UTC)Selena: Never fear, the Cliff Notes is here!
:D
So, that was most helpful, thank you. I did a first pass just at the songs on my phone at lunch, and here are the thoughts I had:
"The Middle" (Jimmy Eat World) for Émilie & the Academy. This song has always annoyed me, because "it's only in your head you feel looked down on" is basically gaslighting for every bullying victim who I would think would be the intended audience for this song. But otherwise, I like it.
"That's What I Like About You" (Trisha Yearwood) for Émilie/Voltaire (first stage). Couldn't find a video with lyrics, so lyrics are here.
"Chemists Know" (University of Irvine) for Émilie/science OTP.
"Standing Outside the Fire" (Garth Books) for Émilie discovering the joy of sex. I like this one especially because I always felt the song was limiting itself too much in focusing on romantic/sexual relationships; the mood applies just as much to living your best life in every way possible. And that fits Émilie very well. Plus: fire! :D Lyrics here.
For death and immortality, I'm tempted by "Remember" (Josh Groban), but it doesn't specifically talk about your achievements outliving you. If you know the story is from the Troy soundtrack, you can read that between the lines, but taken strictly at face value, it's not giving Émilie the kind of credit that I want to give her. Will ponder this one.
I will give it some more thought later, and branch out to songs not on my phone!
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-04 02:13 am (UTC)But! Of course we must have on the playlist "She Blinded Me with Science" :D
I really wanted one of the Hamilton songs to work for immortality-past-death but none of them quite do.
I also kind of want one of the Candide songs, for obvious reasons. Maybe Make Our Garden Grow? It doesn't 100% fit but I just kind of imagine her and her three guys singing it as part of the Emilie/Saint Lambert era...
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-04 08:29 am (UTC)For near the end of Émilie's life, not capturing the legacy aspect but working on her emotional resolutions, The Scientist? (Coldplay original with lycris, Miley Cyrus cover version for the female vocal.
For the big Denis/Saint Lambert argument with Voltaire, well, I will survive by Gloria Gaynor is a classic for a reason, if perhaps a bit too final given that they did not separate for good at this point.
For Émilie's achievements outliving her, well, there's Emily, which happens to be a song about a female physicist, though not Émilie du Chatelet.
Isaac Newton has his own song, I see. :) But I also like this oneBonjour.
Using something from Candide would be good, but nothing quite fits, content wise; otoh, thinking of Leonard Bernstein, how about Something's Coming for young adult Émilie?
I'm still stumped on the marriage and the kids, though.
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-04 09:20 pm (UTC)Likewise, a number of both your Fritzian and Émilie choices were new to me!
For the big Denis/Saint Lambert argument with Voltaire, well, I will survive by Gloria Gaynor is a classic for a reason, if perhaps a bit too final given that they did not separate for good at this point.
For a tentative reconciliation, how about How Do You Do (Mouth and MacNeal)?
For Émilie's achievements outliving her, well, there's Emily, which happens to be a song about a female physicist, though not Émilie du Chatelet.
I approve the song, but
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
Somebody I found when googling my protest: "That's backwards! But I choose to believe it's a deliberate authorial choice."
Me: *unconvinced*
:P
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-05 05:24 am (UTC)Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-05 09:14 am (UTC)Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-05 05:23 am (UTC)Something's Coming is great! I haven't listened to the rest yet.
Re: Playlists
Date: 2024-01-04 09:22 pm (UTC)...I did not realize that was a song! See,
Speaking of, afaik it's never been set to music, but this poem from Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad is very appropriate: Love and Tensor Algebra.