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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 32: 30. 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.

30.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Saturday, July 1st, 1837.

To-morrow to Tegel,[16] and on Monday I depart for the eternal spring,[17] at which the sight of the Prince of Warsaw will not lessen my sadness; I cannot, therefore, thank you personally. Sophie Charlotte[18] and Hegel’s Philosophy of History will accompany me, and both will delight me greatly. My soul rather turns to you. I shall certainly find a torrent of ideas in that Hegel, whom his editor, Gans, in so masterly a manner has not deprived of his great individuality; but a man who is as I am, like an insect, inseparable from the earth and its natural variations, feels himself uneasy and constrained at an abstract assertion of totally unfounded facts and views on America and the Indian world. At the same time I appreciate what is grand in the conception of Hegel.

With you all is profound and subdued, and you possess what is wanting in the other, unceasing grace and freshness of language.

A. Humboldt.

I have badly arranged my life; I do every thing for becoming prematurely stupid. I would gladly abandon “the European beef,” which Hegel’s phantasy presents as so much better than the American, and I could almost wish to live near the weak inanimate crocodiles (which, alas! measure 25 feet). Pp. 442–444, are certainly made more palatable to me by our noble friend.