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Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt cover

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt

Chapter 111: 105. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
By Alexander von Humboldt
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesGerman LiteratureHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

A curated correspondence collects letters from Alexander von Humboldt to his friend and confidant Varnhagen von Ense, supplemented by diary excerpts and letters from other contemporaries. The missives blend personal friendship with professional exchange, discussing scientific observations, lectures, manuscripts, travels, and reactions to peers and events. Editorial apparatus preserves original phrasing and provides contextual notes and extracts that illuminate relationships and chronology. The selection highlights the writer’s methods of observation, precise descriptive habits, and modes of intellectual collaboration. Together the documents form a compact portrait of an engaged scholar whose private reflections and public endeavors intersect across a wide range of topics.

105.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, January 25th, 1846.

After an official feeding, at court, of the “knights of the peace,” whose unworthy chancellor I am—after some sorrowful hours at Buelow’s, whose state becomes every day more precarious—after a ball at the Chateau, from which I am just returned, I cannot seek repose without sending you my preliminary thanks for your ecclesiastical gifts. I am delighted at the review of a poetical period, the precursor of a nobler one—or, to speak more correctly, of one more pregnant with life. I will, however, turn away from the long “Ode of Grief,” from “The Blue and the Black Eyes,” from “Besser’s Merry Wig,” and recur with new pleasure to your “Zinzendorf.” This is a grand, well-executed life-sketch, a figure towering above all other things, which, in a different direction, attract the interest of our time. Your “Zinzendorf” was also constantly admired by my brother. How much the interest is enhanced by all that we see or rather expect to see! But where, among the intellectual “glaciers” of the present time, are those who could compare themselves with Zinzendorf, Lavater, and Stilling?...

Most gratefully yours,
A. Humboldt.
Saturday Night.

I told Ranke to-day, very frankly, how much I was disgusted at what he presumptuously did at a meeting of the Academy, when I was not present, against Preuss, a much nobler character than he is. Have you not received yet the journals, in which I am immoderately praised and reproved (“North-British Review” and “Quarterly Review”)? In Germany, my prose is frequently blamed as being too poetical; but the “Quarterly Review” finds it languishing, lifeless, and “not a vivid description.” How differently different nations feel!