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    Candide and Other Works
    Candide and Other Works
    Candide and Other Works
    Ebook254 pages3 hours

    Candide and Other Works

    By . Voltaire and James Fowler

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    With an Introduction and Notes by James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in French, University of Kent

     

    Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: organised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants' greed, colonial ambition and the hopeless complacency of Leibnizian philosophy that believes 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds'. Through this rites of passage story, with his central character, Candide, a naïve and impressionable young man, Voltaire attacks the social ills of his day, which remarkably remain as pertinent now as ever.


    Zadig is a tale of love and detection. Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by this story when he created C. Auguste Dupin in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', a story which established the modern detective fiction genre. The Ingenu recounts how a young man raised by Huron Indians discover the ways of Europe.  Nanine is a sharp three act comedy concerned with marital dilemmas. In all these works Voltaire manages to combine humour with trenchant satire in a highly entertaining fashion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordsworth Editions
    Release dateJul 15, 2015
    ISBN9781848705999
    Candide and Other Works
    Author

    . Voltaire

    Imprisoned in the Bastille at the age of twenty-three for a criminal libel against the Regent of France, François-Marie Arouet was freed in 1718 with a new name, Voltaire, and the completed manuscript of his first play, Oedipe, which became a huge hit on the Paris stage in the same year. For the rest of his long and dangerously eventful life, this cadaverous genius shone with uninterrupted brilliance as one of the most famous men in the world. Revered, and occasionally reviled, in the royal courts of Europe, his literary outpourings and fearless campaigning against the medieval injustices of church and state in the midst of the ‘Enlightenment’ did much to trigger the French Revolution and to formulate the present notions of democracy. But above all, Voltaire was an observer of the human condition, and his masterpiece Candide stands out as an astonishing testament to his unequalled insight into the way we were and probably always will be.

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    • 3/5
      I did not find "genius" when I read this book. I was disappointed. Everyone at one time praised Voltaire as being some sort of god that he tried to replace with reasoning. Maybe they favored his philosophy and therefore favored what he wrote. An optimistic hayseed confronts reality and is shown how stupid his attitude is in the real world.
    • 4/5
      I confess I didn't read all of the stories here, but the three earlier tales (Candide, Micromegas and Zadig) are all well worth while. Zadig in particular is the kind of thing I dislike- Arabian-Nights inspired strings of deeds aren't really my cup of tea- and yet it went down reasonably well. Micromegas is fine, but there's not much reason to read it instead of Gulliver's Travels. The main attraction, on the other hand, really is a doozy.

      'Candide' actually shocked me, which is impressive, because I usually roll my eyes at 'shocking' books (I'm looking at you, Will 'let's have a main character fellate a dead dog' Self), but Voltaire's fairly simple descriptions of war and war-crimes are, for whatever reason, still very moving. You'll get plenty of intellectual stimulation too- a 'perfect' plot that gets shredded by actual events, human folly and evil, and one of the all time great closing lines. I imagine I'll find myself re-reading Candide many times. Not so much Zadig or Micromegas.
    • 5/5
      Voltaire is a famous philosopher of the Enlightenment, and Candide his most famous work. It's very short, less than a hundred pages, and the edition I read filled out the book with three other novellas, Zadig, Ingenu, The White Bull and a short story Micromegas. Although Candide is the most celebrated work in the book, it wasn't necessarily my favorite--but I did find it amusing. Candide is a satiric send-up of Leibniz's theory of optimism through Candide's mentor Dr. Pangloss, who believes we live in "the best of all possible worlds" even in the face of increasingly insane disasters. I thought particularly funny the "genealogy of syphilis" where Pangloss traces the lineage of his infection back in a "direct line from one of Christopher Columbus's shipmates." I also rather loved the iconoclastic and grumpy twitting of classics by Pococurante. I might not agree with his lambasting of Homer and Virgil (though I though he was dead on about Milton) but I agreed with his principle that "Ignorant readers are apt to judge a writer by his reputation. For my part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makes for my purpose." The short story Micromegas deals with giant visitors to Earth from the star Sirius and the planet Saturn and scoffs at humans' self-centeredness. I think I loved Zadig the most though. The opening gives a nod to 1,001 Arabian Nights and tells the story of Zadig of Ancient Babylonia. He offers up a deduction early on that would make Sherlock Holmes proud and enough wisdom to make Solomon feel abashed. I loved the irreverence of Ingenu (in another edition known as Master Simple). In it a young man raised by the Huron Indians in Quebec confounds others with his reactions to things French, particularly on religious matters. Being convinced to convert to Christianity, for example, he goes about trying to find someone to circumcise him, since that's obviously what the Bible requires, then insists the only way for him to be baptized is in a river, and refuses to recognize the authority of the Pope. The White Bull is also quite fun, as involved are just about every animal who had a role in the Bible--particularly the serpent from Eden whose dialogue with a Princess seems to spoof Milton. The stories aren't what I expected from what the introduction called "fables of reason" meant to elucidate philosophy. They're not at all dry or inaccessible and were quite fun with lots of lines I'd be tempted to quote if there weren't so many that were wise, witty and striking. These short satires reminded me quite a bit of Swift's Gulliver's Travel only with less bathroom humor and more good-natured.
    • 4/5
      This classic is a must read if you enjoy satire. It's funny and clever; an interesting read at face value and an intriguing read when read in-depth. This version of the translation is good and the notes are really helpful for decoding some of the metaphors and allegories. All in all, this collection is a good selection of Voltaire's works and a great introduction to the genre.
    • 2/5
      One of the classics, it's a bit tough to get through as everything is a metaphor for something else, but it's an interesting read.

    Book preview

    Candide and Other Works - . Voltaire

    Trayler

    Contents

    Introduction

    Further Reading

    Candide

    Part One

    1. The Castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh

    2. Running the Gauntlet

    3. Escape into Holland

    4. Pangloss on the Pox

    5. The Death of the Anabaptist

    6. An Auto-da-Fé

    7. Cunégonde Re-found

    8. Cunégonde’s Story

    9. Deaths of the Jew and the Inquisitor

    10. Embarkation for the New World

    11. The Old Woman’s Story – 1

    12. The Old Woman’s Story – 2

    13. The Governor of Buenos Aires

    14. Flight to Paraguay

    15. The Jesuit Baron

    16. The Girls and the Monkeys

    17. El Dorado – 1

    18. El Dorado – 2

    19. The Dutch Shipmaster

    20. Martin the Manichaean

    21. The Nature of Mankind

    22. A Rich Dark Stranger in Paris

    23. ‘To Encourage the Others’

    24. Paquette and Friar Giroflée

    25. Senator Pococurante

    26. Supper with Six Kings

    27. Voyage to Constantinople

    28. The Galley-slaves’ Stories

    29. Cunégonde Found Again

    30. Philosophy on the Propontis

    Part Two

    1. Candide Sets out Again

    2. The Hospitable Persian

    3. A Favourite of the Sophi

    4. Candide Loses a Leg

    5. Governor Candide

    6. Candide’s Seraglio

    7. Zirza’s Story

    8. The Abbé Again

    9. Candide is Disgraced

    10. Pangloss and the Officer

    11. Candide and the Lapp Wife

    12. The Newtonians and the Parricide

    13. Zenoida’s Story

    14. The Wooing of Zenoida

    15. Volhall Intervenes

    16. The Jealous Cunégonde

    17. Candide Meditates Suicide

    18. The End of Pangloss

    19. The Last of Cunégonde

    20. ‘Everything is Not Too Bad’

    Introduction

    Candide is Voltaire’s greatest and most popular philosophical novel. It is a perceptive satire on the all-embracing optimism (‘All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’) propounded by the German philosopher and mathematician Leibnitz (1646–1716). It was published simultaneously in Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, London and Paris on 22 February 1759 and became a bestseller overnight. It is generally regarded as one of the great works of the Enlightenment – the liberal rationalist movement which swept across Europe in the eighteenth century as a counterpoint to civil and ecclesiastical privilege – and a classic work in the literary history of the world.

    The publication of Candide was a masterful coup with four main aims: maximising publicity and royalties, frustrating pirate editions and flooding the market before the book could be suppressed. The plan succeeded brilliantly and Candide was not placed in the Vatican’s ‘Index of forbidden books’ until 24 May 1762. Dr Pangloss, tutor to the hero, Candide, is used by Voltaire to personify the resolute optimist in Candide. Pangloss sticks to his beliefs through the direst events and evidence to contradict his faith. Misadventures begin when the young Candide is expelled from the Westphalian castle of Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh for making love to the Baron’s daughter, Cunégonde. Following this, Candide, Cunégonde and Pangloss embark on a series of the most disastrous adventures which encompass Candide’s conscription into the Bulgarian army, his fierce beating almost to death, being present at the terrible Lisbon earthquake on 1 November (All Saints Day) 1755, condemnation and pursuit by the Inquisition, his flight to El Dorado, which he leaves loaded with riches only to have them swindled from him in France, and further travels to England, Venice and Turkey. Candide is finally reunited with Cunégonde and Pangloss and all three settle down on a small farm where Candide tells them ‘we must cultivate our garden’. The manuscript version of Candide is now preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris. Although also used by Boccaccio, Cervantes, Rabelais and Swift, the medium of the conte philosophique (philosophical tale) was one that Voltaire made his own.

    Voltaire delights and dazzles the reader with his storytelling, while educating, challenging and instructing. His aim was to turn the ‘brutish beasts’ of received beliefs into the rational, questioning humanity which was the goal of the Enlightenment, and which has come to characterise our own age. His success can be measured by the continuing popularity of Candide to the present day.

    Voltaire is the pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet, the eminent French genius of the Enlightenment. He was noted as a correspondent, critic, dramatist, historian, moralist, novelist, poet, polemicist and satirist. Voltaire was relentless in his attacks on intolerance, evil, superstition and unjustified privileges – particularly those supported by the Church. Unusually, he combined literary and satirical skills with the abilities of a master storyteller. Born in Paris on 21 November 1694, Voltaire was the second son of a successful lawyer. His mother died when he was six years old and he was educated at the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand, a very highly regarded school. He became a law student but passed his time in smart, liberal society. In 1713 he was posted to the French embassy in Holland, but was summarily called home to prevent his eloping with a Protestant girl, Olympe Dunoyer. In 1716 he was suspected of writing a satire against the Regent, Phillipe d’Orléans, and internally exiled to Sully-sur-Loire. In May the following year he was arrested and imprisoned in the Bastille without trial following another political satire. He was released in April 1718 and banished for six months to Châtenay, about six miles from Paris.

    In June of that year he adopted the pseudonym Voltaire, and in November staged his first major work, Oedipe, to great acclaim. The year 1723 saw the publication of his epic poem on the subject of religious intolerance, La Henriade (about Henry of Navarre), which sealed his reputation as a literary colossus. He almost died of smallpox in the same year and was saved, as he observed, only by drinking huge quantities of lemonade. In April 1726, after a fierce altercation with the aristocratic de Rohan family, he was again consigned to the Bastille and subsequently sent into exile abroad, in England, in May.

    During Voltaire’s exile in England (1726–8) he discovered the work of the English scientist Sir Isaac Newton and met Bolingbroke, Pope and Swift. From 1729 to 1750 he lived in France and even enjoyed some favour at court with the support of Madame de Pompadour. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1743, and to membership of the Académie Française in 1746. His philosophical work, Zadig, was published in 1748, and he travelled to the court of Frederick of Prussia in June 1750. Micromégas was published in 1752. In 1759, the year of the publication of Candide, Voltaire settled at the Château de Ferney near Geneva where he was to live for the rest of his life. More publications appeared: Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764), L’Ingénu (1767) and Le Taureau Blanc (1773–4). In 1778 he returned to Paris for the production of his tragedy, Irène, and was fêted by the people of the French capital. It proved too great a strain and he died on 30 May. Fearing refusal of burial by the Church authorities, for so long the target of Voltaire’s satire, his supporters smuggled his body out of Paris, to Scellières in Champagne, for burial. His remains were subsequently removed from Scellières in 1791, to lie in the Panthéon in Paris.

    Further Reading

    W. H. Barber, Voltaire – Candide, 1960

    T. Besterman, Voltaire, third edition, 1976

    W. F. Bottiglia, Voltaire’s Candide – Analysis of a Classic, second edition, 1966

    H. Mason, Voltaire – A Biography, 1981

    Candide

    Part One

    Chapter 1

    The Castle of Thunder-ten-Tronckh

    Once upon a time, in the province of Westphalia, at the castle of his lordship the Baron von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, there lived a boy of very sweet disposition. His mind could be read in his face. He was fairly intelligent, yet his general outlook was one of utter simplicity. Probably this was why he acquired the name of Candide.

    The older servants of the household suspected that he was the son of his lordship’s sister, the reputed father being a neighbouring landowner. The sister had refused to marry him, although he was an agreeable and worthy man, because his coat-of-arms had only seventy-one quarterings – the others having disappeared in the storms of time.

    The Baron was one of the most powerful noblemen in Westphalia; as was evidenced by the fact that his castle had a great gate and windows, and its hall was hung with tapestry. The dogs that ran about his farms could at a pinch be mustered into a pack for hunting, at which his stablemen served as whippers-in. His grand chaplain was the village parson. Everyone called him ‘My Lord’, and laughed at his anecdotes.

    Her ladyship the Baroness weighed about twenty-five stone. This contributed greatly to her prestige, which was enhanced by the dignity with which she did the honours of the house. The daughter, whose name was Cunégonde, was seventeen years old, fresh complexioned, plump, and attractive. The son of the house had the reputation of being ‘a chip of the old block’.

    The family had a household oracle, a tutor named Pangloss. Young Candide absorbed his teachings with the open-hearted simplicity of his age and nature. These teachings were metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigological. Pangloss could prove to everybody’s satisfaction that there is no effect without a cause: furthermore, that in this best of all possible worlds the Baron’s castle was the finest of castles, and the Baroness the finest of all possible baronesses.

    ‘It is demonstrable,’ Pangloss would say, ‘that things cannot be other than they are. For, since everything is made for a purpose, everything must be for the best possible purpose. Noses, you observe, were made to support spectacles: consequently, we have spectacles. Legs, it is plain, were created to wear breeches, and are supplied with them. Stone was made to be quarried, and built into castles: that is why his lordship has such a fine castle – for the greatest baron in the province must of necessity also be the best housed. Pigs were made to be eaten: so we eat pork all the year round. It follows that those who say that everything is good are talking foolishly: what they should say is that everything is for the best.’ *

    [* footnote: In the French, ‘tout est bien’ and ‘tout est au mieux’. This is the only passage in which Voltaire seems to indicate that there is any contradiction between the two phrases. Elsewhere Pangloss uses both as expressions of his doctrine, apparently almost interchangeably.]

    Candide listened attentively to all this, and believed it. For his part, he thought Mistress Cunégonde extremely beautiful, though he never had the courage to tell her so. He concluded that, next to the happiness of being born a Baron von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, the second degree of happiness was to be Mistress Cunégonde; the third, to see her every day; and the fourth, to be taught by Dr Pangloss, the greatest philosopher in the province, and, therefore, in the whole world.

    One day Cunégonde was walking near the castle, in the little copse which was known as ‘the park’, when through the bushes she saw Dr Pangloss giving a lesson in applied physics to her mother’s maid, a pretty and obliging little brunette. Having an inborn passion for natural science, Cunégonde, without betraying her presence, watched the doctor’s repeated demonstrations. She had no difficulty in understanding his ‘sufficing reason’ – a phrase that he often used – or the sequence of causes and effects. She returned home in a state of pensive agitation, filled with a desire for knowledge and reflecting that she herself might well become young Candide’s ‘sufficing reason’ – and vice versa.

    On her way back to the castle, she met Candide. She blushed, and greeted him in a faltering voice. Candide blushed too, and spoke without knowing what he said.

    Next day, as they were leaving the table after dinner, Cunégonde and Candide found themselves behind a screen. Cunégonde dropped her handkerchief, and Candide picked it up. She artlessly seized his hand, and the youth artlessly kissed hers – with remarkable warmth, intensity and grace. Their lips met, their eyes sparkled, their knees trembled, their hands strayed . . .

    Baron von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, who happened to pass by the screen, observed this interplay of cause and effect. He drove Candide out of the castle, with vigorous kicks from behind. Cunégonde fainted, and on coming to was smacked by the Baroness. There was consternation in the finest and best of all possible castles.

    Chapter 2

    Running the Gauntlet

    Expelled from his earthly paradise, Candide wandered blindly and in tears, casting his eyes towards Heaven, or back towards the finest of castles, where lay the loveliest of barons’ daughters. He lay down to sleep in a furrow; it was snowing heavily.

    Next day, numb with cold, he dragged himself to the nearest village, which was called Valdberghoff-trarbk-dikdorff. Penniless and faint with hunger and fatigue, he loitered gloomily at the door of an inn.

    He was observed by two men dressed in blue. ‘Comrade,’ said one of these, ‘yonder is a well-made young fellow – of the right height, too.’ They came up to Candide, and politely invited him to dine with them. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Candide, ‘I am much honoured, but I have not the money for my share.’

    ‘My dear young gentleman,’ said one of the blue-coats, ‘persons of your build and quality never pay for anything. Let me see, now, I reckon you would be five feet five inches high?’

    ‘Yes, sirs, that is exactly my height,’ Candide bowed.

    ‘Well, then, young gentleman, pray sit down with us. We will not only pay your reckoning, but will never suffer a man like you to want money. Men were born to assist one another.’

    ‘You are perfectly right,’ said Candide. ‘That is what Dr Pangloss always says. I now see clearly that everything is for the best.’

    His companions pressed several crowns upon him. He accepted, offering in exchange an I.O.U., which they declined to take. ‘You are, I’ll be bound, a man of loyalty and devotions?’ said one of them.

    ‘Yes, indeed, Mistress Cunégonde has all my – ’

    ‘No, no, what we mean is, are you not loyally devoted to the King of Bulgaria?’

    ‘Why, not at all, since I have never seen him.’

    ‘But ’tis the most charming of kings! Come, we must drink to his health.’ Candide drank to the toast.

    ‘That’s all that is required,’ he was then informed. ‘You are now a mainstay, defender and hero of the Bulgarian people. Your fortune is made, you are on the high road to glory.’

    Thereupon the two blue-coats put Candide in irons, and led him off to their regiment. He was taught to right turn, left turn, draw his rammer, return his rammer, present, fire, double quick march, and received thirty strokes with a cane. Next day he drilled a little less badly, and received only twenty strokes. On the third day he earned the admiration of his comrades by receiving only ten.

    Candide was bewildered, and could not

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