Voltaire quote in Mason and Dixon

[Dave Monroe]

Courtesy of the very great Pierre-Yves Petillon ...

The quotation is from Voltaire's Letter to Charles
Augustin Feriol, comte d'Argental, and Jeanne Grace
Bosc Du Bouchet, Comtesse d'Argental, dated
Brussels May 5, 1741 Letter nr 2323 in "Voltaire's
Correspondence", sous la direction de Theodore
Besterman,  Genève 1955, vol. XI (1741). As the
Besterman edition runs to over 100 volumes, how likely
is it that this could have been TRP's source? The
sentence is quoted in a book on Vaucanson. André DOYON
& Lucien LIAIGRE: "Jacques Vaucanson, Mécanicien de
Génie", PUF Paris 1966. With a Trystero-like spelling
mistake, "fit" instead of "fît", that might be a
*clew* -not that the difference will show on the Net,
but just in case.

[...]

*Catherine Nicole LA MORE or LA MAURE is an opera
singer Voltaire mentions several times.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9705&msg=14103&sort=date

Cf. "some Soprano" (M&D, p. 668)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9805&msg=26683&sort=date

Never any shame in using the archives ...

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

Though I really ought to have done that one myself ...

--- Damian Hey <dhey92000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello, folks,
>  
> I need help finding the origin of a quote.
>  
> In Mason and Dixon, pg. 668, the infamous
> Mechanickal Duck reads a quote attributed to
> Voltaire.  The quote Pynchon writes in the novel is
> "...sans la voix de la Le More et le Canard de
> Vaucanson, vous n'auriez rien que fit ressouvenir de
> la gloire de la France." ...

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