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 142: 136. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

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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.

136.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Potsdam, October 15th, 1849.

I hope, my dear friend, that my “Views of Nature,” enlarged, and, for two-thirds of it, almost re-written, are at last in your hands! It was owing to an unfortunate confusion, occasioned by my long absence from Berlin, that this my favorite work was so long in reaching my favorite reader. Perhaps you will derive a brief pleasure from contrasting the picture of the nocturnal din of the words with that of the stillness of high noon—vol. i., pp. 333 and 337; or from glancing at the golden visions of young Astorpileo, vol. ii., 352.

In love and friendship, yours,

In haste.

A. v. Humboldt.

Increase your collection of autographs by a very agreeable letter from the man who now lives in Brussels. The phrase “votre fortune morale” is used with great freedom. But the newspaper, all disfigured with bloodstains! What a, year, in which all the feelings of the heart run wild!