WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
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 182: 174. VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT.
By Alexander von Humboldt
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

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.

174.
VARNHAGEN TO HUMBOLDT.

Berlin, March 14th, 1856.

Your Excellency’s kind and precious gift come into the seclusion forced upon me by the rude relapse of winter, brighter and more enlivening than the sunbeams which accompany them! Receive my repeated thanks and the assurance that I know how to appreciate every one of them, and most of all the beneficent intention, which remember me so well, and gladden my heart so cheerily! The pencil lines of the dying Heine are a valued keepsake, and shall be continued to be devoutly treasured in the envelope superscribed by your Excellency. The boon of to-day, the significant combination of Archimedes and Franklin in reference to their tombstones, I have also read with the warmest appreciation.

I see that you do not dread the wind or the weather, and that, fortunately, you need not dread them, when a duty of honor is to be performed. The present time imposes curious tasks upon us! The death of a chief of police in a duel is probably unprecedented in the communities of modern Europe. The summoning of a Minister of Foreign Affairs to Paris, to attend at the close of important negotiations, with a box of writing sand from the Mark,[80] has also a fabulous aspect. However, Allah is great!

In the most faithful reverence and most grateful devotion, I remain immutably

Your Excellency’s most obedient,
Varnhagen von Ense.