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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 161: 153. 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.

153.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, August 31st, 1853.

For once in this gloomy time, when a fell simoom blows from the Pruth to the Tajo, I have had a real and a keen delight—your return, your encouraging message, and even the assistance I implored. Your superb letter finds me at the bon à tirer of a little, I hope unpretending, preface to the sonnets. As it will be unfortunately impossible to-morrow (on Friday the King arrives at Potsdam, when I must hand him a good many things, according to promise), I take the liberty of sending you my proof sheets this evening.

I beseech you to be severe in your treatment of these sheets, with which I have incorporated a remarkable fragment (in illustration of the ideas and frames of mind manifested in the “Letters to a Lady Friend”) and to note on a separate piece of paper what I ought to alter, and especially what I ought to substitute. I follow you implicitly.

I dislike the phrase on page 4, “Schoen errungene Himmelsgabe.”[58]

The pious fragment is an autograph, nearly illegible, and requiring some emendation in the construction of the sentences; thus on page 11: Perhaps you prefer the phrase “bei Anerkennung.” The phrase is heavy, even now.

On p. 14 you will not disapprove of “eben nicht,” in place of “haben nie gerade,” which is still more vernacular. The four lines stand there like a fallen aerolith. They must be preserved at all hazards, if only on account of their freedom.

Could not you help out page 13 below somewhat? Is the close of the phrase “voice of conscience—has laid” clear to you? It is not so to me. Perhaps a few words would make the sense clear.

Roma, the verses to me from Albano, and all the choruses and Pindarus will form another volume.

With old affection and profound esteem,
Yours,
A. v. Humboldt.

The saddest news of Arago’s family; swollen hands and feet, diabetes, and almost blindness! Forty years of life go with him!!