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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 150: 143. 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.

143.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Potsdam, July 2d, 1850.

In the gloomy period of reaction, I am delighted to receive so pleasing a memento at your hand, my dear friend. I am also glad of your journey to Kiel, to the little region where German spirit finds an expression free and consistent. The state of public affairs is like the water-bottle shaken by D’Alembert, in order to produce a mixture of bubbles of different shapes. “Calculez moi cela,” he said, in irony of hydraulic science, of which he was himself so great a professor. Many a bubble will burst before the diplomatists find time to calculate its evanescent figure.

I shall render my heartfelt thanks to Herr von Froloff. I made a futile effort to dissuade him from inserting a mass of explanations and metaphors, intended to facilitate comprehension. He wished to accomplish what is absolutely impossible, and seemed to have but little understanding of the form of composition. I shall say nothing more to him about all that. Hybrids are never successful in literature.

I was extremely unwell, confined to my bed even; but now, in spite of the dispersion of all matters of interest, I am well, industrious, and not cheerful.

In friendship as of old, yours,
A. v. Humboldt.