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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 97: 91. 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.

91.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Berlin, September 6th, 1844.

I understand as well as you do, my dear friend, that the speech[41] in question must necessarily have produced a great sensation and excitement in our “north,” as well as under the sluggish Pole. He really excels in flowery eloquence. The figures which he presents are hardly new; but a certain delicacy of expression, and a nice perception of the “harmonious” in oratory, cannot be denied him. There is really something noble in the passion for speaking, upon every occasion, to thousands of people. His generosity in sheltering “high officials under the veil of the royal purple” will be but indifferently acknowledged. Does he, by this course, deliver over to our assaults those small fry who obscure the day? I am sorry that such a highly gifted prince, acting under the most benevolent incentives, and preserving the full vigor of his mind, which constantly urges him to action, is, in spite of his good intentions, absolutely deceived as to the direction in which the state is impelled. When Parry, with a number of Esquimaux dogs, had started for the North Pole, dogs and sledge were continually driven forward. When, however, the sun broke through the mist, so that the latitude could be taken, it was ascertained that the expedition had unwittingly been carried backward several degrees. A floating field of ice, drifting in a southerly current, was the surface on which they seemed to advance. Our ministers are the drifting, icy surface. And may not the current be “the dogmatische Missions-Philosophie?”

A. v. Ht.

It is now certain that the Empress (of Russia) will not come. The King will, on the 15th, be in Sans Souci.