Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 47

[cahn]

We haven't had a new post since before December 25, so obligatory Yuletide link to this hilarious story of Frederick the Great babysitting his bratty little brother, with bonus Fritz/Fredersdorf!

Comments

Re: "Charles Edward Stuart", by Frank McLynn (1988)

[selenak]

Good grief. Sounds familiar from other works of a biographical nature about other subjects, though. I mean, we'd like to think 1988 is too late for homosexuality to be seen as being the result of something wrong and an implied disaster per se, but... sadly no. That's why I'm always impressed when earlier biographers don't go that road (and wear my cheering hat for 19th century novelist, poet and travelogue author Theodor Fontane who doesn't use the word "gay" or "homosexual" for Heinrich but does use "love" without the qualifier "paternal/fraternal" when talking about Heinrich's relationships with his boyfrfiends. (And the description of Heinrich's relationship with his last boyfriend, the French emigré comte, as "the last warming beams of the setting sun" is such a lovely phrasing (and manages to get around 19th century Prussian censorship). All in the chapter on Rheinsberg which starts with: "Heinrich was cool, and if he didn't have the bad luck of being the little brother of even cooler Fritz, we Prussians would be fanboying him". And there's no 19th century code talk for the same sex inclination being in any way warped or degenerate or feminine or what not. This makes Fontane more progressive than 20th century biographer Charlotte Pangels who insistes that only Voltaire ever said Fritz was gay, so he wasn't, and that Heinrich wasn't gay, either, and Lehndorff was a hopelessly devoted...matchmaker who wanted Heinrich and Countess Bentinck to hook up.

Anyway, back to your guy. My symphathies, it does suck if the biography with the best collection of data also spouts those attitudes. If there's one thing worse than psychoanalizing, it's telling the readers who is and isn't sexually attractive in the author's pov. Ugh.

Anyway

Re: "Charles Edward Stuart", by Frank McLynn (1988)

[luzula]

Thanks for the sympathy. I'll just try to look past those bits...

And the description of Heinrich's relationship with his last boyfriend, the French emigré comte, as "the last warming beams of the setting sun" is such a lovely phrasing
Awww, that's lovely.