wednesday books would like fewer things to be on fire

[landofnowhere]

King Lear, Shakespeare. Read-aloud -- just the first half. I still don't particularly like any of the characters, but it is a well-plotted play and the language is very good. I like the fool's baffling prophecy that ends "This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time" and would like to see it used transformatively in fiction.

La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, George Sand. Sequel to Consuelo. I'm a bit over halfway through and OMG is this a trip! This starts a year after Consuelo, with Consuelo established as an opera singer in Berlin, which unfortunately she finds rather cold and depressing. The book starts with politics at Frederick the Great's court, where Consuelo quickly fits herself drawn in over her head. (It includes a couple cameos by Voltaire, and also George Sand wants us to know her opinion regarding Frederick the Great & Voltaire breakup. To rephrase her take in AITA terminology, she says that although biographers of her time consider Voltaire to be NTA, really ESH and in some ways Frederick acquitted himself better.) The result of all this intrigue is that Frederick the Great imprisons Consuelo in a tower and then forgets about her. Consuelo spends a few months of mostly-peaceful imprisonment (where she composes music, befriends a robin and the warden's neuroatypical teenage son -- this bit felt like it might have been an influence on Frances Hodgson Burnett), before her escape is arranged by a secret society of people who all wear masks.

At this point I had been getting disappointed that, despite George Sand's unconventional lifestyle, Consuelo is actually pretty conventional in morality -- her strength and purity is tied to her chastity. However! In the course of the daring escape, she wakes up to find herself snuggling with her masked rescuer, kisses him, and instantly falls in love despite never having heard him speak or seen him without his mask.

Since then she's been a guest of the mysterious secret society, trying to figure out WTF is going on while juggling her feelings for the stranger, her respect for her dead husband (to whom she was married for all of two hours before his apparent death), the possibility that he might not actually be dead (at the least he has a doppelganger running around), and her curiosity and desire to join the mysterious secret society (even as I'm going, "no, it's a cult, get out!"). And she may have escaped Frederick the Great, but she certainly hasn't escaped politics. I have no idea if this will stick the landing (so many loose threads) but it's wild!

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Is the masked stranger Consuelo's apparently dead husband?? That seems like too much AND YET...

I love your write-ups of Consuelo's adventures. They're such a trip!

[landofnowhere]

I have been wondering this too! It seems as plausible as anything else and yet I have no idea!

Glad you've been enjoying being along for the ride -- it really is a trip, and there are tons of details I've skipped, like the secret midnight dinner party that Consuelo has with Frederick the Great's sister and one of her ladies, which was delightful, but has been completely eclipsed by the Secret Society of Masked People!

[selenak]

To rephrase her take in AITA terminology, she says that although biographers of her time consider Voltaire to be NTA, really ESH and in some ways Frederick acquitted himself better.

I was going to ask you before and forgot: what do these acronyms mean? I mean, I can guess a bit from the context, but I would like to know the exact words.

Also, on the assumption that it means biographers of her time think of Voltaire was the more wronged one when it was really Frederick - that depends on which 19th century biographers of which nationality we're talking about. German-speaking historians who were all very uncritical Friedrich fanboys in most of the 19th century completely sided with him, and in the 18th century in their own life time the Germans found Voltaire ungrateful (since they thought Frederick was already doing him a big favour by having offered him a place at his court to begin with) and the French were offended that Voltaire was so unpatriotic as to go in the first place, though there was also the overwhelming sense that these two deserved each other among people not fannish for one or both. (And then partisans of either were stunned when they started to be pen pals again after all the trash talking of each other.)

Now, I'm very willing to believe French 19th century historians were whitewashing Voltaire and vilifying Frederick, and George Sand reacted against that. (Not having read the German historians who were whitewashing Frederick and vilifying Voltaire.) But for me, while both acted badly and hilariously in their epic breakup (and not only then), what it comes down to is this: only one of them was an absolute monarch who could and did abuse his power during said breakup. Frederick having Voltaire and his niece arrested in Frankfurt - which wasn't even part of his realm where he had the power to do so, so in addition to everything else, this was a diplomatic incident - in order to get his poems back was blatant power abuse. That he could have done even more without impunity because he had an army and Voltaire did not doesn't make it better but emphasizes that Voltaire, while anything but a saint, still was armed only with the power of trashtalking in that fight, so really: keep those zingers coming, Voltaire, he's earned them, and then some.

(Frederick's post-break up attitude towards Voltaire can be summed up by the scenes described by more than one witness from the 7 Years War where it's "Voltaire's the worst! Let me tell you the details of how he's the worst! OMG, what's this, a new Voltaire letter to me! Gimme! Must read! Must answer! Go away, leave me alone with my latest Voltaire letter!")

[landofnowhere]

NTA = Not the Asshole, ESH = Everyone Sucks Here.

[selenak]

Ah, thank you! ESH is a fair assessment of the breakup! (Minus the caveat about the power differential.)

[landofnowhere]

And here's the original:

"À ces chagrins domestiques vint se joindre la brouille définitive de Voltaire avec le roi. Presque tous les biographes ont déclaré que, dans cette lutte misérable, l'honneur était demeuré à Voltaire. En examinant mieux les pièces du procès, on s'aperçoit qu'il ne fait honneur au caractère d'aucune des parties, et que le rôle le moins mesquin est peut-être même celui de Frédéric. Plus froid, plus implacable, plus égoïste que Voltaire, Frédéric ne connaissait ni l'envie ni la haine; et ces brûlantes petites passions ôtaient à Voltaire la fierté et la dignité dont Frédéric savait prendre au moins l'apparence."

[selenak]

Based on the sources available to her mid 19th century, I can totally see how she got to that conclusion (which btw is elegantly phrased), but I have to say, Frédéric ne connaissait ni l'envie ni la haine cracks me up. I mean, this is totally the image he worked for! (And also, she's absolutely right these "little passions" were very much part of Voltaire. More about V in the other comment.) But good lord, did Frederick ever know envy/jealousy and hate. Leaving aside all the complicated family relationships where this is demonstrated a plenty and sticking solely to a Voltairian context, he was ragingly jealous of Émilie du Chatelet for as long as she was alive, having identified her as his main competition for Voltaire, and could be incredibly petty about her because of that. Though decades later, after Voltaire's death, also repentant: Frederick's obituary speech about Voltaire contains a lovely Émilie passage, acknowledging her as a scientist and what she had meant to Voltaire as a person in a way his younger self had not been able to.)

[landofnowhere]

So yeah, Sand does not pull any punches about Frederick the Great being an awful person who does terrible things with his absolute power, but she does present him as interesting and human.

But philosophically, she's in dialogue with Voltaire (pretty sure someone could write a thesis on this), who she sees as intellectually facile and lacking heart -- she makes some comments about Voltaire having no taste in music, and in these books taste is music has been established as a pretty good indicator of character.

(Which is part of why Frederick the Great is one of the more interesting characters in the book -- he's a bad person in ways that don't come down to "has bad taste in music", but rather stem from being corrupted by absolute power. If you do want to read just for the Frederick the Great bits, I'd start with the bit at the end of *Consuelo* where Frederick is incognito as Kreutz, and then jump to the beginning of *La Comtesse de Rudolstadt*)

[selenak]

Which is part of why Frederick the Great is one of the more interesting characters in the book -- he's a bad person in ways that don't come down to "has bad taste in music", but rather stem from being corrupted by absolute power.

That does sound very readable indeed. (And also, fair assessment. Among many other things, he's what happens if you've learned through years of parental abuse that you either have no power or all the power, and there is no in between, and then he gets all the power.)

But philosophically, she's in dialogue with Voltaire (pretty sure someone could write a thesis on this), who she sees as intellectually facile and lacking heart -- she makes some comments about Voltaire having no taste in music, and in these books taste is music has been established as a pretty good indicator of character.

I think it also comes down to both (Sand and Voltaire) being very much embodiments of their respective times. Sand, at the point of her life where she writes these novels, is very much 19th century and Romanticism. Voltaire is 18th century and Enlightenment, which Romanticism for the most part was opposed to. My favourite summing up of Voltaire is from a 20th century biographer, Jean Orieux, who wrote in his preface:

This glittering creature managed his affairs in a continuity without weakness. With fifteen, young Arouet knew what he wanted to become, and he knew it with a deciveness and an ambition which are incredible. He had understood that he needed to become both a very rich man and a very great poet. He achieved both aims. His social success is achieved in tandem with his literary success. Even as a schoolboy he had concluded that talent without money meant only misery, and money without talent stupidity. He didn't feel himself meant for either variation.

Some say he wasn't "serious". Indeed. He did all not to appear so, but his importance is far greater. We tend to forget a bit that we all in the core of our being are marked by the encounter with Candide. Voltaire was the embodiment of a mentality which had doubtlessly existed in France before him, but which only by his pen has been given its definite form. When he gave to this mentality and this humanism, which had been already known to Molière and La Fontaine, Marot and Montaigne, the splendid form of "Micromegas" and the "Lettres", we became more French than we'd ever been before him. Even those of us who turn against this revelation, think, write and speak in a way that shows the Voltairian imprint. Mallarmé has said: The world was made in order to end up in a book. Can't one also say that a Frenchman ever since the farces of the middle ages has only been made to end up in a beautiful narration named "Candide"?
While Voltaire made his genius - and the French genius - sparkle in all of Europe, he didn't care about national propaganda. There isn't a trace of patriotic bragging in him. He's above such particularism. (...) For him and those who understood him, there has been a Europe: the Europe of the Enlightenment, the most civilised and most human of mother countries. His borders were those of the mind. In this society, which consisted of the elites of the various nations, he saw the triumph of civilisation: we can say it was a triumph of Voltaire.

(...) Voltaire is a man for fighting, the daily struggle for happiness. Not a mythical but an earthly happiness reachable by all. The point is to free man of tyranny and misery. Humans can only be happy if they use all the possibilities of a human being, and that means if they live in freedom and wealth. Fanaticism, stupidity, poverty result in ignorance, slavery and war. (...) The greatness of Voltaire manifests itself in his sense of human solidarity. This man without a God believed in human beings - without too many illusions. To him, man was the masterpiece of creation. Any attack on freedom and justice he found therefore unbearable. When Calas was hanged, drawn and quartered in Toulouse, you could here in Geneva the cry of Voltaire who felt the torture as well. Not Calas alone was concerned, but all humanity has been violated in him: Voltaire, you and I. And thus you and I are the ones Voltaire then defended. (...)

Voltaire is always fascinating: in the good sense... and in the bad sense. He had countless flaws, and some true vices, dancing, whirling, fluttering vices, vices like lightnings and vices like reptiles: an odd assembly. These flaws, we've left a respectful place in the story of his life. As his friend Bolingbroke once said of Marlborough: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his flaws." One can forget Voltaire's flaws, but only after knowing them first. We have uncovered them with the same dedication as his virtues, and will leave the reader the satisfaction to either forget them or, according to their taste, to enjoy them.

(Bad taste in music, though, he'd have taken offense to, what with having gone through the trouble of staging opera performances both in Cirey with Émilie and in Geneva, where the Calvinist city fathers were indignant about it. I mean, from our pov George Sand is right, because both Voltaire and Frederick were firmly stuck in the first half of the 18th century with their musical taste and refused to move on, which meant no realisation of the genius of Gluck, and they probably wouldn't have gotten Mozart, either, if they'd come across him. But he did care for music, a lot. It's also very Romantic thing to believe that love for good music equals heart and/or character. (Step forward, Richard Wagner, awful human being, but undoubtedly great composer who adored Beethoven as much as any Sand contemporary.)