The best novelist in the France of her time - before Stendhal - perhaps, which isn't saying much; her sometime lover, Benjamin Constant, wrote *Adolphe*(1816), which is still read. HCR didn't think she was a numbskull - he enjoyed her company & recognized her power over men (vide Wieland). But from HCR's or Heine's she understood more about the way German people lived than she understoood German books. I think that like many of us she was a numbskull in certain respects & intelligent, gifted etc in others. Of course she was very witty - in French - and capable of putting the wind up Napoleon. I actually think she looks charming in the painting on Wikipedia.
As regards jokes: I've never heard a French person tell one, although they can be very witty and/or humorous. They usually can't speak any foreign languages. Germans, on the other hand, tell good jokes but are seldom witty though often very ironic. They often speak foreign languages. No conclusions, just thoughts. I may have met the wrong people.
mj
Wenn vollkommene Herrschaft über seinen Gegenstand die freie kunstreiche Ausbildung desselben möglich macht, so können doch die künstlichen Schraubengänge der Polemik nicht die Form der Philosophie sein.
If perfect mastery of one's subject makes its free, artistic development possible, then the merely artificial turns of the polemical screw cannot be the form of philosophy.
F.W.J. Schelling
----- Original Message -----
From: Judy Prince
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 3:20 AM
Subject: Re: Thoughtmesh Snap
Oh Martin, it's hard to believe that Madame de Stael is either a complete
numbskull [HCR] OR The Best Novelist in France and wittiest
conversationalist of her day [Ticknor, Goodden]; she may be statured
somewhere in between, but one needs answers for such a pivotal figure.
Schlegel's said to've sent her a letter claiming he'd be her 'love slave'
if she would have him. From the paintings of her, she seemed an unlikely
physical charmer, but...she seemed to be a mind-charmer, her *De
l'Allemagne* considered The Consummate account of Germany of that day.
Others say that she was the only person Napoleon feared, and he did seem to
have a bit of a longlived problem trying to get her out of France, fearing
her getting folks 'to think, who've never thought before'. I've ordered
Herold's and Fairweather's biographies of de Stael to get a broader view of
this politically powerful persuasive person.
Judy sleepy bloke
2009/5/11 Martin Walker <[log in to unmask]>
> In his memoirs, Henry Crabb Robinson describes meeting Mme de Stael and at
> her request giving her tips about German literature and philosophy, which
> she had an extremely vague grasp of, since she had no German to speak of.
> She remained impervious to the poetry of Goethe, whom Robinson attempted to
> reveal to her: one of his subtlest & wittiest epigrams left her cold because
> "she was precisely what Charles Lamb supposes all the Scotch to be -
> incapable of *feeling* a joke." Likewise she got Kant all wrong,
> apostrophising him in her *De l'Allemagne* as "un coeur sensible"! In
> Weimar, Voss, Goethe and Schiller abominated and avoided her. It does seem
> rather likely that Mr Ticknor was pleased to hear a cheap witticism directed
> at Fichte's philosophy because he himself had also understood nothing. Years
> later she engaged A.W. Schlegel as a tutor for her children - years later
> she told H.C.R. that she could not have written her book without Schlegel's
> aid. She told H.C.R. that anything she did not understand was not worth
> understanding. Na ja. If you want to learn something of German letters in
> the great age of the Klassiker, Romantiker & Philosophen, you would do
> better to read the relevant parts of H.C.R.'s diaries, letters & memoirs
> (which are online at the Internet Archive -
> http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=henry%20crabb%20robinson%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts)
> plus Heine's little book *On the history of religion and philosophy in
> Germany*.
> mj
>
> Wenn vollkommene Herrschaft über seinen Gegenstand die freie kunstreiche
> Ausbildung desselben möglich macht, so können doch die künstlichen
> Schraubengänge der Polemik nicht die Form der Philosophie sein.
> If perfect mastery of one's subject makes its free, artistic development
> possible, then the merely artificial turns of the polemical screw cannot be
> the form of philosophy.
> F.W.J. Schelling
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Max Richards
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:37 PM
> Subject: Re: Thoughtmesh Snap
>
>
> Quoting David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > Judy
> > I always recall the joke about the great German philosopher who had
> > distilled his teaching into three volumes: twenty years had passed by
> and
> > volumes one and two had appeared but everyone was waiting for the third
> > volume because all the verbs were in that.
>
> Apropos... Richard Holmes in the current NYRB online discusses recent
> books on
> Madame de Stael...[Goodden wrote one of them]:
>
> The American traveler George Ticknor gave a memorably funny picture of her
> working over the philosopher Fichte, and sorting out his entire
> metaphysical
> system in less than "fifteen minutes or so." Goodden characteristically
> quotes at
> length this piece of intellectual ping-pong, which de Staël ends with a
> convincing smash:
>
> Ah! c'est assez, je comprends parfaitement Monsieur Fichté. Your system is
> perfectly illustrated by a story in Baron Munchausen's travels.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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