Peanut

If you don't mind me asking, can you please describe the relationship of the "two toxic old men" to a person like me, who doesn't know much, but is willing to learn?

Fritz and Voltaire? With pleasure!

So, in 1736, Frederick, then the crown prince of Prussia, sent some fanmail to Voltaire. Being the attention whore he was, especially when it came to royalty, V responded with great enthusiasm and the two struck up a correspondence full of mutual flattery. At one point V enlisted his friend Thieriot to help send literary news (he was supposed to be paid: he wasn't, ever) and he...sent a lot of gossip about Voltaire. Another important thing is also that Émilie du Châtelet, V's long-term lover, and Fritz HATED each other. And it's also generally agreed that Fritz was gay.

1740 comes around, Fritz's awful dad finally croaks, and he becomes king and wants to, in his own words, possess Voltaire. He and Voltaire met in person for the first time in September, briefly, then again in November where V spends his birthday in Prussia. Party time. The correspondence from during that visit is amazing, V wants to leave, Fritz begs him to come back and says he'll kiss him on Friday, V tells Fritz he loves him more than Émilie, they call each other mistress, Fritz complains that V is expensive behind his back but he'll win over Émilie because he can pay him more, V says he's not interested in Greek affairs (read: gay stuff) despite the flirting but he is there for Fritz, Émilie begs V to come back saying she's sick and gets V's friend Cideville to send him a poem about how hot she is, etc etc.

At some point, Fritz tried to force Voltaire to come to Prussia by spreading gossip in France that'd force him out of the country and iirc succeeded, but I don't remember which visit was that off the top of my head.

They briefly meet again in 1742. In 1743, Voltaire was sent to Prussia as a spy, at which he was hilariously godawful (Fritz answered most of his diplomatic questionnaire with jokes). After Émilie died in 1749, V moved to Prussia in 1450, which went fine at first, but they slowly started to realise they really can't fucking stand to live with each other. Voltaire got involved in a financial scandal and also royally pissed off Maupertuis (Émilie's former lover, president of the Berlin Academy) and with that Fritz, culminating in Fritz burning all copies of Diatribe du docteur Akakia.

V resigned and left in early 1752, but he was (unlawfully, Fritz had no authority there) detained by an agent of Fritz's in Frankfurt because he took a book of poetry in which Fritz satirised other European leaders. What followed was a very entertaining mess of miscommunication (please do yourself a favour and read the correspondence from that time, google translate does the job fine) and theatrics on Voltaire's part, who kept insisting he was just a sick old man who only wanted to go take the waters. He writes to everyone, his niece and current lover writes to Wilhelmine, V at some point pulls a gun on someone, Freytag writes to Fritz like "he looks like a skeleton, is he really sick or does he always look like that?," eventually V's luggage in which the book was in gets delivered, he coughs it up, but he still isn't let go, eventually Fritz himself has to write to Freytag like "yo, wtf is going on." It's a disaster and it ruins their relationship for good.

Voltaire is so pissed off that he writes a memoir about his experiences in Prussia where he outs Fritz (...and also his brother Henri) as gay in no uncertain terms several times and also edits a few letters to his niece in the vein of Richardson's Pamela, painting himself as a poor victim of the seductive king. Which...lmao, really, V? Really? I translated the first one here, currently working on the second. Though those letters weren't discovered to be edited until 1991, so many older biographies just take them as fact.

Anyway, the two stopped writing to each other for a while. They reconnected at the urging of Fritz's sister Wilhelmine when the Seven Years War was going badly and Fritz was suicidal, and it went well on the surface, but Voltaire kept writing to his friends about how he's totally over Fritz, he hates him, he wishes he was hit by a cannonball, he ridicules his suicide letter behind his back, etc. Fritz also keeps shit-talking Voltaire behind his back the whole time, but is overjoyed when he gets a letter. As an example of later correspondence, here's a translation of an excerpt from the "it's good that you're such a colossal dick or your perfection would embarrass humanity" letter. Either way, they slowly reconciled and kept writing to each other until Voltaire's death.

I know I left a ton out and I wrote it pretty much all from memory so could be that I fucked up the details, but I hope it helps. Wish I could include some more letter excerpts because they're fantastic, but it's long as it is.

Sources

If you want a good intro on these two, read the bios by Nancy Mitford - she has the fatal flaw of not citing shit but they're short and fun and easy to find and she's one of the few who are able to see that both of them were a total mess. For more academic sources, there's Aldridge (pro: cites letter numbers in-text, very balanced when it comes to Fritz, con: impossible to find) or Besterman (pro: most comprehensive, dude compiled his letters so he knows his shit, con: big bias against Fritz) for Voltaire and...hm, I'm trying to think of a Fritz biographer that'd have any info on those two. Blanning hasn't much and I've yet to get around to MacDonogh, so I can't say where that one is good and bad.

“I’ve read many books today and I’m as happy as a king!” Fritz once said to Catt.

didn’t make any new art and probably wouldn’t until i finish the de Catt chinese translation project, so here’s a pile of my favs from this year, and a few words on their making

the first picture is a direct product of looking at Adolf Menzel’s painting (above), second is taken from translating de Catt’s memoirs, an entry where Frederick was drawing sanssouci and designing his own tomb. third, from reading d'Alembert’s letters while the pose comes from me realizing that a perfect JC Leyendecker picture is on my wall (below):