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Catherine the Great (ruled 1762-1796) was a prolific letter writer and her missives offer a uniquely intimate view of her personal life and political development (to say nothing of her humor and her passion). Oxford University Press has released a new translation of letters spanning the full length of her reign. These three are from later in her life, as she was fghting wars on two fronts, with Sweden and Turkey.
1784
To Friedrich Melchior Grimm
Catherine exuberantly recounts her activities as an enlightened ruler, a role that she viewed as intimately linked to her cultivated aesthetic tastes. After the secularization of Church estates in 1764 (much to Voltaire's delight), Catherine continued Peter the Great's policy of close state control over Church affairs, and in April 1784 she approved a new census and reform of the clergy. But her joy was brutally interrupted by the sudden death of her beloved favorite Alexander Lanskoy on 25 June 1784.
at Tsarskoe Selo, this 7 June 1784 I rose at half past six, and I wrote the following in a certain memorandum that I am writing and that we call "materials": "NB convents and religious communities are bad legatees: either they manage poorly, or they manage so excessively well that they become unjust." This fine reflection immediately spawned the idea that I should write to you to tell you that I heard the astonishing Todi sing for the second time yesterday, and that I lost my head over this singer (who is, in my opinion, one of a kind). She proves to me that perfection has its incontestable rights and that the rights of perfection are such that they steal the souls of the wise and the ignorant. Now that I've told you this, can you tell me how and why the first and the second idea could go hand in hand and follow one another in my head? I see no analogy between them, unless they were conjoined by my desire to communicate to you both one and the other.
this 2 July
When I began this letter, I was living in happiness and joy, and my days passed so quickly that I knew not what became of them. It is no longer so: I have been...