A Woman, A Man, and Two Kingdoms

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Summary: True friendship revealed through 25 years of letters.
Review: I loved this book, not only for it's inside view into pre-French Revoltionary France and Naples but also for its rich portrait of friendship between a man, a woman and literally two kingdoms, France and Italy. Ample biographical information is inserted between the letters helping us understand the characters and their lives. In particular we follow Madame D'Epinay and her role as a female in the Enlightenment. She had a brilliant mind and a sensitive spirit, only held back by her frail body and the era in which she wrote. The letters end with D'Epinay's death. Galiani states that we do not out survive our true friendships, something of us dies also. During this twenty-five year correspondance we meet other important figures such as Catherine The Great and the young Mozart and Voltaire. If you appreciate the power of letters and their ability to reveal a life and you are interested in the Enlightenment, this book is not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating lives! Incredible times! Historical yet personal
Review: This books transports you back to the 50-year span preceding the French Revolution. It reproduces and describes the letters passed between Mme. D'Epinay, a French aristocrat and the Abbe Galiani, a Neapolitan priest diplomat during a twelve year period. But before launching into these letters we are provided with a rich background of the times and lives of these two protagonists. Through it one has the opportunity to experience life as it was lived by the European upper classes of that time. It is startling to be directly exposed to the mindset of such peoples. How natural it was to promote cultural gatherings at one's estate for the sake of diversion and fun. The unmasked and unaffected vanity common and widely accepted within that society. The book provides the reader with the ability to relive relevant and marking events and thoughts that made enormous impact in world history side-by-side with mundane and trivial daily occurrences to one's life. Here and there one is presented with "unpublished" thoughts from Voltaire, Diderot, Grimm, the Neapolitan Prime Minister Tanucci, Rousseau and many other personalities. The absolute brilliance of Mozart, Galiani himself, the greatness of Catherine, Empress of Russia is constantly shared with the reader via anecdotes and dialogues established among these figures. The book is so powerful, so skillfully presented and sequenced to the point of making the reader forget that someone did extensive research, collected thoughts, inserted views and actually wrote it. Francis Steegmuller offers us a delightful reading.