Six Degrees....

[selenak]

On a lighter note: in ye olde 1990s, there used to be this party game, which became a stage play: "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Meaning you could connect anyone in the world to Kevin Bacon in six steps, maximum.

Well, after one year of 18th century source reading with my comrades in armys mildred_of_midgard and cahn, I have concluded that the Age of Enlightenment equivalent clearly is "Six Degrees of Francesco Algarotti". Meaning not only that you can connect anyone to Francesco Algarotti in six steps, maximum, but some of these steps probably include people who have had sex with Algarotti, or tried to habe sex with Algarotti, or wrote about other people having sex with Algarotti.

If you don't know who Francesco Algarotti was, never mind. A year ago, neither did I. But believe me: six steps. Maximum. Try me. (Or the above mentioned ladies.)

Comments

[selenak]

Byron definitely was in Pisa, yes. Even better: I've now found a paper someone wrote specifically about Lady Mary as an influence on Byron. Abstract:


Byron’s admiration for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was exceptional in a period when her reputation was still suffering from Alexander Pope’s and Horace Walpole’s virulent misogyny. Byron was fascinated by her and claimed to have read her Turkish Embassy Letters (1763) by the age of 10. His letters reveal an erotic attraction towards this scholarly woman. When he was residing in Venice, he discovered the passionate letters that Montagu had sent to her young Venetian lover over 60 years earlier. These letters reveal a series of performative sexual identities constructed in relation to a lover. This article argues that Byron can be productively read through his alliances with earlier, sexually transgressive literary figures. More specifically, Montagu’s works, as well as her queer ethnomasquerades, were influential in his writing of Don Juan (1819), and also in his creation of a Byronic celebrity persona. For both writers, philhellenist and Orientalist discourses enable possibilities of self-imagining and celebrity spectacle. Montagu’s depictions of passionate travelling and heroic sexuality reveal continuities across the borders of canonized literary periods

The entire work is here. Haven't read it yet, am planning to, but Byron reading Lady Mary's love letters to Algarotti has to count as one and a half steps, surely!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, neat!

Byron reading Lady Mary's love letters to Algarotti has to count as one and a half steps, surely!

I agree! Though by this definition, you and I are pretty close to Algarotti too. ;) How many steps is writing me Algarotti/Peter Keith?

Speaking of which, mobster AU author is planning a Fritz/Algarotti/Katte/Keith foursome, in that AU where Katte turns out to have been alive the whole time and they reunite in their fifties.

Iow, in which everyone's Algarotti number becomes 1. :D

[selenak]

You and I aren't able to meet Lady Mary's granddaughter, though, nor am I likely to write something on the scale of Don Juan (which really is one of the greatest verse epics ever, and hilarious to boot). :)

(I will write you Algarotti/Peter Keith, though, in an exchange you sign up for.)

Most importantly, though: seems we have Byron to thank for the fact these letters are available for us to read:

When George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) occupied the Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice, it was widely believed to have been the residence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) over sixty years earlier. It was when he was residing here that Byron began work on Don Juan, and it was also from here that he discovered the extraordinary letters that Montagu sent a young Venetian scholar, Francesco Algarotti. These letters explain Montagu’s exile, and provide a passionate complement to the dry letters detailing her health and expenses which she was simultaneously sending her husband, and which were published in 1803. Her family had been rigorous in their censorship and consequently her published works, as well as her 1803 biography, made no mention of this affair. Fascinated, Byron thought her correspondence “very pretty and passionate” and their “sentiments beautiful”. He sent six letters, together with other correspondence, to his publisher, John Murray. The correspondence included some letters by Montagu’s friend, Lord Hervey, a rival for Algarotti’s attentions. Montagu and Hervey shared an erotic infatuation for the Venetian philosopher whose “tastes were predominantly if not entirely homosexual”. Despite some unkindness over this rivalry, Hervey and Montagu were close friends throughout their lives. They even collaborated over verse; their voices circling the feminine scholar’s absence. Byron suggested that “a small and pretty popular volume” might be made of their letters, and he promised to “hunt” for more. However, there is no more mention of the letters, and the volume was never published.

Having browsed through the entire paper, Byron really developed a big literary crush on Lady Mary. Quote:

In his ‘Letter to John Murray Esq’ during the Bowles/Pope Controversy in 1821, (Byron) exclaims: “I admire her so much, – her beauty, –
her talents […] She was an extraordinary woman – she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song worthy of Aristippus.” He enthusiastically cites lines from her poem ‘The Lover’:

And when the long hours of the Public are past
And we meet with Champaigne and a Chicken at last,
May every fond pleasure that moment endear!
Be banished afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the Crowd
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud
Till lost in the Joy, we confess that we live,
And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.

The depiction of a private intimacy threatened by honour, reputation and scandal, as well as coquettes and “the long hours of Public”, must have appealed to him. Moreover, the sensual pleasures of food are linked to a hedonistic friendship where “the Freind, and the Lover be handsomely mix’d” (line 34). Byron exclaims:

"what say you to such a Supper with such a woman? And her own description too? – Is not her ‘Champaigne and Chicken’ worth a forest or two? – Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this Stanza contains the ‘purée’ of the whole Philosophy of Epicurus."

And, something I recalled before reading this paper, there's an homage to Lady Mary in Don Juan: When Don Juan arrives in Turkey he enjoys “the very view/ Which charmed the charming Mary Montagu” (5, 3); the same view that presumably charmed Byron when he followed in her footsteps.

So: Lady Mary might have loved Algarotti in vain, but: the bisexual male sexpot of the Romantic Age fell for her (and not Algarotti) through her writings, big time.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Most importantly, though: seems we have Byron to thank for the fact these letters are available for us to read:

Ooh, that is so awesome! Thank you, Byron!

So: Lady Mary might have loved Algarotti in vain, but: the bisexual male sexpot of the Romantic Age fell for her (and not Algarotti) through her writings, big time.

Can't argue with his tastes!

I will write you Algarotti/Peter Keith, though, in an exchange you sign up for.

WELL OKAY THEN. I can see I'm going to have to sign up for an exchange sooner or later. :D