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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 19: 17. 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.

17.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, October 28th, 1834.

You have encouraged and cheered me by your amiable letter, and your still more amiable solicitude. You have quite entered into the spirit of my efforts. But the expression of my affectionate confidence in you [a manifestation of the acknowledgment of your talent in the Humboldt family] has rendered you too considerate and inclined to praise. Your remarks have a degree of refinement, of taste, and acuteness, which makes emendation a highly pleasant task. I have adopted all, or nearly all—more than nineteen-twentieths. Some obstinacy, however, must always be allowed an author. I beg a thousand pardons for sending you some sheets, in which (towards the end of the Discourse) I had not corrected the newly-annexed parts. Some sentences were really confused. You will permit me to call one of these days, and thank you personally. I will then show you the emendations at the end of the discourse. How happy I would have been to have laid some of these travels before her, the dear departed one!

Yours gratefully,
A. v. Humboldt.

I would there were in Germany as excellent a book of synonyms as the inclosed one, which, I am sure, you did not see before now. Abbé Delisle has advised me to use it, and indeed it spares much time; if a similar word is wanted, one finds it at once. I shall come and take the book back.