FRÉDÉRICII DE PRUSSE. "Perhaps this geometry will show him t - Lot 40

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  3. FRÉDÉRICII DE PRUSSE. "Perhaps this geometry will show him t - Lot 40
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Lot n° 40
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FRÉDÉRICII DE PRUSSE. "Perhaps this geometry will show him t - Lot 40
FRÉDÉRICII DE PRUSSE. "Perhaps this geometry will show him that he has a soul..." Letter signed "Frederic", in French, addressed to Voltaire. Potsdam, December 12, 1770. One p. in-4. "This damned philosopher, against whom you are angry, is not content with endless reasoning, he begins to dream, and he wants me to send you his reveries. To get rid of his importunities, I was obliged to comply with his wishes. I've enclosed these musings with my letter. Don't accuse me of indiscretion if this jumble bores you, and put it in the category of Bluebeard and A Thousand and One [Nights]. I advised him, to correct his taste for imagination, to study transcendental geometry, which will dry up his brain of what is too poetic, and make him a worthy colleague of all our serious Tudish philosophers and professors of "-us". Perhaps this geometry will show him that he has a soul, as most of those who believe in it have never thought about it. I don't think, as you say, that Mustapha [Turkish Sultan Mustapha III, at war with Catherine II], or many others, are worried about it. It is only those who follow the meaning of the Greek sentence Connois-toi toi-même who want to know what they are, and who as they advance in connoissance, are obliged to forget what they believed. The Great Cordelier of St. Peter [Pope Clement XIV, a former Franciscan] seems to me a man who knows what he's about, but he's paid not to reveal the secrets of the Church, and I'd wager he'd be more bothered about Avignon than about the Heavenly Jerusalem. As for me, I warn myself to be discreet, and not to pester a man to whom one must be conscious of robbing him of a moment. [S]es momens sont si bien dépensés que je lui souhaite beaucoup en et qu'il puisse durer autant que sa statue, vale..." A "joke" by the philosopher-king. FrédéricII announces the dispatch of a "Facétie à M.de Voltaire. Rêve", a short literary piece celebrating Voltaire's fight against the "infamous": "And I was in admiration, and I said to the genius: - "Who is the hero who works these miracles? - "The hero who has so well earned your admiration," he replied, "is Voltaire's François-Marie Arouet; if he had more names, he would have immortalized them all." Voltaire thanked him in a letter dated January 11, 1771: "Your sacred vision was brought to me. As I read, my head cleared, my blood circulated, my soul was reborn; from the second page I regained my strength, and by a singular effect of this heavenly medicine, it restored my appetite by disgusting me with all other foods." FrédéricII also sent this mockery to d'Alembert, who thanked him in a letter dated January 3, 1771, referring to Voltaire as the "great and mortal enemy of fanaticism, who has the honor of being so gloriously celebrated by the philosopher of kings and the king of philosophers". Voltaire and Frederick II: forty years of close, tormented relations. A great admirer of French culture, Frederick II began corresponding with Voltaire as early as 1736, before he acceded to the Prussian throne, and they forged a bond of esteem (and mistrust). In 1740, Voltaire took part in the publication of the monarch's Anti-Machiavel treatise, and in 1742-1743 carried out diplomatic missions on his behalf during LouisXV's War of Austrian Succession. In 1750, following personal and literary setbacks, he accepted the King's invitation to settle with him in Prussia, but Frederick II had abandoned some of the philosophical audacities of his youth in his governing practices, and moreover did not entrust Voltaire with the advisory role he had hoped to fulfill. After leaving the Prussian court in 1753, he was detained for a few weeks in Frankfurt on Frederick II's orders to return certain manuscripts deemed indiscreet, but he would exaggerate the reasons for his departure. Ten years later, they would resume their epistolary relations in the same tone of philosophical banter as before.
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