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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 207: 199. 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.

199.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, March 19th, 1857—at Night.

How should I deny myself the pleasure to thank you, the dearest, ablest, and most attached of my friends. Not indulgence—no, praising expressions on my address to Boeckh—a praise of form, of the vesture of thought—has been my lot from the lips of the master of language, and of the delicate turns of good-will. You caused me great joy, more than you anticipated. What my nervous affection was, which produced a paralysis of such short duration, with the functions of the brain remaining entirely free, with pulse unchanged, with preservation of sight, and of all motion of the extremities subject to will, I cannot divine. There are magnetic storms (the polar light), electric storms in the clouds, nervous storms in man, heavy and light ones—perhaps, also, sheet lightning, foreboding the others. I had serious thoughts of death, comme un homme qui part, ayant encore beaucoup de lettres à écrire. Other interests, which for ever remain alive in me, bind me to the memories of yesterday!! I believe myself in full convalescence; but as I had to rest much on the bed without occupation, sadness and displeasure of the world have increased in me. This I say to you alone. I shall soon come to you, and thank you orally from the depths of my soul. All around us puts us to shame.

In most intimate friendship, your most faithful

A. v. Humboldt.

Varnhagen writes in his diary, March 19th, 1857: “Unexpectedly a letter from Humboldt! I had written under my congratulation, that these lines were not so immodest as to expect an answer. But he, nevertheless answers, and in the most obliging, most heart-gladdening manner. He gives a remarkable report of his sickness. The bad reports were all untrue, at least exaggerated; he never lost consciousness or language, his pulse remained as usual. Yet he did not conceal from himself, that it might be the end.” “I had serious thoughts of death, comme un homme qui part, ayant encore beaucoup de lettres à écrire!” Grand and fine is what he adds: “Other interests, which remain for ever alive in me, bind me to the memories of yesterday!! (of the 18th of March!)[92] I believe myself in full convalescence, but as I had to rest much on the bed without occupation, sadness and displeasure with the world have increased in me. This I say to you alone.”