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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 132: 126. 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.

126.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, December 6th, 1846.

There will be perhaps some delay, my dear friend, in your receiving the “Cinq jours de Berlin,” in which I am spoken of by the Berliners (who are introduced as speaking themselves), as a tolerably pleasant tattler, but in which I am alluded to rather unkindly, as to my moral character. If all my speeches lack consistency, I apprehend for the durability of the system of the world, the Kosmos. Mr. Barrière will probably have called on you the sixth day, and you will have suggested all that to him. The paper contains some excellent things, Cracoviana, about the vote of Prussia and Mr. de Kanitz.

I send you for your autograph collection a flattering letter of Mignet, and a letter of mine, written in 1801, at Carthagena, in South America, at a turning point in my life, and addressed to “Citizen” Baudin, who, on board of the Perron, made a voyage round the world. This letter was written at a time when probably people in Europe had ceased to be addressed any more as “citizens.” Baudin, instead of doubling Cape Horn, and receiving me at Lima, went round the Cape of Good Hope to Australia.

Your old friend,
A. v. Humboldt.
Sunday.

I inclose an excellent letter of my brother to Koerner, which will be published in the sixth volume; but you must return this copy.