TO THE SOLOMON OF PRUSSIA
Exquisite dishes entice the
Prussians,
Have changed them into
Epicureans.
**
Illusion, deception, and
hunger
Might make as all
anthropophages.
Save Lord. Let the King
hear us when we call.
Psalms20:9
SIRE
I am a poor devil, crazy about my
bastards, whom I have just bestowed on a young man, lost for his country, but
worthy to be president of the Academy of Sciences, by which he has been crowned
for a treatise that is as nasty, as this century, which lets the magi die for
hunger, rather than throwing them into a burning fiery furnace.
Your Majesty is what the wise men
of the century call a Supreme Being of the Earth, and You Sire, have made the
superiority of Your Genius shine far beyond all other kings, by so many wonders
that the LORD of the Jews has made your name glorious beyond all the Idols of
the Nations.
The Magus of the North adores you,
Sire!, with a devotion which rivals inspired the Wise Men of old from the East.
Blessed be the LORD thy God who has judged the ends of Prussia , who
has given strength unto his King, exalted the horn to His Anointed, and
fulfilled the good promise given to Your fathers five hundred years ago.
Because the Eternal God has loved his people, SOLOMON has been made KING over
all the Prussians!
But where are the temples?, the
altars?, priests consecrated to the religion of the Supreme Being of Prussia?
The sublime taste of Your
Majesty, like the Spirit of Christianity, desires no worship but in the spirit
and in truth, nor any altars but the hearts of his subjects, nor any ministers
but those who love and preach the truth, who love and practice virtue. But
where is this chosen generation? this royal priesthood? this holy nation? This
peculiar people who show forth the virtues of him, who has called them from the
darkness to his marvelous light? Where age the magi who present their bodies a
living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to your Majesty, who in all his states
desires only a reasonable service?
O God! The heathens are come into
Thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled! – Oh Lord! Remember the
reproach wherewith THINE enemies have reproached the footsteps of his Anointed-
-
Your century, Sire!, is a day
only of trouble and of rebuke and blasphemy. All the sarcasms, countless and in
good standing, against the Providence of the Father, who is in heaven, against
the gospel of his Son, and against the manifold works of the Holy Spirit, are
just smiles and songs compared to the sacrilegious thoughts and words by which
Your August Name is blackened, and the Wisdom of Your Kingdom and the Oracles
of Your Will and of Your Spirit.
The greatest Monster in society,
as one of this modern writers says, is a Free-thinking Slave. It is clear then,
just how far all your subjects will debase themselves through the insolence and
corruption of these beaux-esprits,
whose ingratitude surpasses that of famous rebel Absalom. The Jews did not
imagine their God so ravenous for the flesh of bulls and blood of goats that we
would have been accustomed to the idea of a Genius voracious of the sweat and
blood of the children of his Kingdom in order to fatten a little dogs, on whom
an idolatrous Century lavishes mausoleums, despite the divine principle of
thrift. But I would rather chew my stammering tongue in order to spit in the
face of Your Enemies, an I would rather, as St. Paul says, give my body to be
burned, than translate or abridge all the abominations established in the Holy
place of the Supreme Being of Prussia. May the Posterity that reads them not
pay attention!
…
(J. G. HAMANN: Writings on
Philosophy and Language; CAMBRIDGE TEXTS ON THE
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, Cambridge
University
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