Talk:Princess Isabella of Parma

message: ...would it be fair, then, to consider Isabella Maria to have been a lesbian? DS 01:30, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the very first sentence of lesbian uses the word "exclusively", so I would say that no, we couldn't count her a lesbian, since we have no evidence (or at least, there's none presented in the article) that she wasn't also attracted to men.  We certainly have evidence, though, that she had sexual relations with men.  Binabik80 02:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As a matter of fact, this article presents somewhat of a skewed impression—it was not uncommon for women (and, at times, even men) to speak of familial love in such terms in those days—in modern English, the expressions used have a different connotation.  Such language was often used to show religious love for God, as well.  Take St. John of the Cross' poem "Dark Night of the Soul", which refers to his relationship with God as that of between "lover" and "beloved one."  (Though he was Spanish, the idiomatic usage carries equally into the English of his day, and some time after) The Jade Knight 03:24, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Quite.  Is there any indication that this expression of love had any sexual element? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: None whatsoever, to my knowledge.  The Jade Knight 18:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A claim that Isabella Maria was lesbian or bisexual needs to be sourced. Pending that, I will remove the category from the article. Thuresson 10:36, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  By modern standards... 

message: 'The princess spent most of the time in the Viennese court not with her husband, but with his sister, Archduchess Maria Christina... in what seemed to be a romantic lesbian affair... Both were united not only by his interest in music and art but also by a deep mutual love.'
His interest in music? Who is 'he'? (maybe mis-translated from German) Valetude (talk) 04:26, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree there's a typo error. Suggest we chage to "an" rather than "his". Contaldo80 (talk) 12:16, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship with sister-in-law 

message: Does anyone know if and where the original texts of the Isabella–Christine correspondence are kept, and whether they have been published online? Two fragments of two letters are quoted in this article, but they go back no further than a 1935/6 English translation by Margaret Goldsmith, who gives no context at all:
Isabella seems to have spent most of the hours when she was separated from her sister-in-law in writing to her. She was unhappy in this love affair. To her it was the grand passion of her life, whereas for Marie Christine it was obviously merely one of these attachments to a woman which many girls form before they are married. " I am writing to you again, cruel sister," Isabella once wrote, " though I have only just left you. I cannot bear waiting to know my fate, and to learn whether you consider me a person worthy of your love, or whether you would like to fling me into the river. I cannot tolerate this uncertainty, I can think of nothing but that I am madly in love. If only I knew why this is so, for you are so cruel that one should not love you, but I cannot help myself." " I am told," Isabella wrote on another occasion, " that the day begins with God. I, however, begin the day by thinking of the object of-my love, for I think of her incessantly."
We don't know where or when these letters were written, not even in which language. French? German? Élisabeth Badinter published some of the letters again in her 2010 book « Je meurs d’amour pour toi ». Lettres à l’archiduchesse Marie-Christine, 1741-1763. But they are in modern French spelling. And so is the version of these quotes on French Wikipedia:
« Je vous écris encore, sœur cruelle, bien que je sois à peine partie, je ne peux supporter d'attendre de connaître mon destin, et de savoir si vous me considérez digne de votre amour, ou bien si vous voulez que je me jette dans le fleuve ... Je ne réussis à penser à rien, seulement que je suis très amoureuse. »[réf. nécessaire] Dans une autre lettre, elle écrivit :
« D'habitude je dis que le jour commence en pensant à Dieu. Cependant je débute le jour en pensant à l'objet de mon amour, c'est pour cela que je pense continuellement à elle. »[réf. nécessaire]
First of all, the French Wikipedia does not cite any source for this quote (those '[réf. nécessaire]' were added by me today). I suspect the quote could be in Badinter's book, but we'd need to know the exact page to verify it. Moreover, this text was already on fr.wiki in 2007, and it was translated from Italian, again without a source. And finally, French scholars may correct me, and can probably add more, but I see at least two discrepancies between the French and English texts:
1. Goldsmith suggests Isabella was afraid Christine would murder her by "fling[ing] me into the river", but fr.wiki has Isabella contemplate suicide: "or if you want that I throw myself into the river".
2. Goldsmith has Isabella say 'I am told that the day begins with God.' where the French texts reads "Normally, I say the day begins with thinking about God."
These are significant differences that give the sentences divergent meanings. Goldsmith portrays Isabella as passive in both, whereas the fr.wiki makes her active: she decides her life's end, and she decides what to think first thing in the morning.
So what did the original letters say? Does anyone know? Badinter mentions they corresponded both in German and in French, and in the 18th century the spelling was different from what it is today, which makes it harder to search for the exact quotes online. I've not been successful so far. I did find some fragments of other letters from Isabella to Christine in German as rendered by Adam Wolf in Marie Christine, Erzherzogin von Oesterreich: 2 Bände in 1 (1863) and some French fragments in Un manuscrit inédit d'Isabelle, Infante de Parme, archiduchesse d'Autriche, 1763 (1867). In both, Isabella uses the informal second person singular: 'Du/Dich' and 'tu/toi'. E.g. both quote a letter of September 1763 to Christine, saying: "...because she [the Empress] knows you are my friend and that/how much I love you." (French: car elle [l'impératrice] sait que tu es mon amie et combien je t'aime; German: denn sie [die Kaiserin] weiß, daß Du meine Freundin bist, daß ich Dich liebe.) The problem is that fr.wiki uses the second person plural, 'vous/votre', which can also be used as a formal second person singular. This is inconsistent with the 1863 and 1867 German and French informal personal pronouns. So I have some real doubts about the authenticity and reliability of the quotes on Wikipedia as currently displayed, and would love to know what the original letters said in the original language(s). Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 02:40, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I've found that this quote was added to the en.wiki entry in August 2006. The only source at a time was from what appears to be a Dutch amateur historian, Guus Beltman, who later moved it here. Although he provides a bibliography, Beltman does not specify the book nor the page he found this quote. All works he references are either in English or German, none in French; Goldsmith is not amongst them. It's possible he translated the quote from German himself, but I doubt it because the English is archaic. And although Beltman's provided translation is not the same as Goldsmith's, it closely resembles it: they differ in only 5 places, otherwise they are word for word the same, in the same pre-war English style, which leads me to believe the translations have a common source. I've sent Beltman a message, hopefully he can help us resolve the question. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:28, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original 'love letters' texts