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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 41: 39. 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.

39.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Wednesday Afternoon, Feb. 26th, 1840.

I deem myself unfortunate, dear friend, in having missed you. I have been suffering from a miserable little boil on my foot, and went to-day (for the first time) to my neighbor, Leopold von Buch. Best thanks for Sesenheim.[23] You certainly were right in snatching the little work from oblivion, a work which possesses a German character in the highest degree, and derives a tender interest from your preface. There is in this little work a nice appreciation of what must ever be important and sacred to a German in his literature. The author searches Sesenheim and Drusenheim as others do the Troade. The proper names, alas! are less poetic. The passages (p. 12 and 13), are written in a charming style; afterwards the philologist becomes heavy and doubtful about what he only half examined; doubtful, as if he had superficially read an old code. Whether the sisters of Friederike, “of whom one has not to care at all” (p. 48), whether the Catholic clergyman who, according to some, caused, and according to others, did not cause, and then did cause her fall, will rejoice at all this, I do not dare myself to decide. About the Troade and the Skamander, they never could exactly determine, and Helen had to suffer much from Hellenic gossip.

In old friendship most gratefully,

Yours,
A. v. Hdt.