Stenio Solinas

How would have been Federico II and Voltaire in the twofold Jean Cocteau's casting directed by Leni Rifenstahl...who knows! A 50s screenplay never realised as all the projects the author of Olympia nursed in the post-war. It seems to see him, Cocteau, while in the “yellow room“ of the Sans Souci castle, prepares his witticisms and practice his intelligence so to impress the emperor. And here he is, dressing the Prussian blue uniform, wearing which J. G. Zisenis portrayed his legitimate owner in 1763, practising the role of the great Frederick behind that so simply and linear desk of his, with golden shutting and joints to underline his kingliness. And it seems to see the Riefenstahl's telecamera intent on shooting the “white and rose room“ dedicated to Italy, stopping on the Capitoline Forum painted by Panini and then superimposing it with the Mount of the ruins that can be glimpsed in the distance from the columns of the honour courtyard. Or still, passing a flight of statues of the Greek Pantheon that together with the four elements, fire, water, air and earth crown the terrace rond-point. At half an hour from Berlin, at ten minutes from Potsdam, Sans Souci was the 'buen retiro' of Frederick
the Great, the thoughtless abode of whom believed he was destined to humanities and music, feeling uneasy with the paternal militarism of a Sergeant-King to whom that “Frenchified” son. Really, they were the two faces of the same medal, the youngest compelled to deny and to resist against the elder to avoid being squashed and while being the elder prone to overwhelming as trend of life and thought. The result was this unicum in the history of a prince that was philosopher, musician, great warrior, mendacious and notwithstanding man of honour, without scruples and endowed with magnanimity, unable to love and notwithstanding adored, the most rational in his moves and behaviours, and nevertheless the founder of that egomaniac vocation leading Prussia                        to sink the Habsburg empire. At Sans Souci all was built according to the tastes and the desires of the sovereign. The “Frederick's rococo “, as it will be called, celebrates here its magnificence and triumphs. The marble hall with the cupola at the centre of the building, the music hall adorned with putto, hauling in the nests of abundance, bunches of grapes, greyhounds' heads, beauties at bath painted on walls, the library with the golden sun shining from ceiling, the art gallery lining up the Venus of Van Dyck, the extraordinary unbelieving Thomas touching Christ's chest of Caravaggio, the death of Cleopatra of Guido Reni, the Amazones of Rubens, the orientalism of Jean Lievens... Giving up the grandeur of the representation prince life and the court as mere pomp, centralizing over him any decision, Frederick took away its power to aristocracy. “The king has a Chancellor who never speaks, a great master of hunting who does not dare to kill a quail, a majordomo not ordering anything, a cupbearer who does not
know if there's wine in the cellar, a great sheer bearer not authorized to saddle a horse, a great chamberlain having never handed him a shirt, a great master of the wardrobe who does not know the court tailor“, a French diplomatic contemporary of him will say ironically. But the MIrabeau's opinion, “ Prussia is not a State owing an army, but an army having a state“, is to be reviewed and corrected: nobody better than Frederick used the army on State's service, with the only aim of his to keep it and to aggrandize it. “Qu' importe de vivre si on ne fait que vegéter!” In this phrase Frederick encloses the meaning of an existence and a policy. Hopeless about man as such, wondering about the main topics of existence, but aware that the metaphysics isn't but an 'endless sea of shipwrecked “, fearing nothing and hoping nothing he gave the imprint to his times on the trace of a will of power and the dream of a state that could embody it. He ended his speech to the officers of the regiments departing from Berlin to the Seven Years War as follows: “Set you out towards the rendez-vous with fame “. Glory was the motive power of his character. In the imperial study of Sans Souci a portrait immortalizes him on horse, rounded by his General Staff, the blue uniform with which he was embalmed and buried. His grave is few paces far, among the bones of his dogs, on the terrace dominating the park below. A slab of marble, engraved with his name Friedrich Der Grosse. A Venus and a Cupid keep vigil. And none epitaph suits better than the words Goethe employed to fix his character: “To grandeur and excellence it suits intransigence“.

 

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