The Daring Voltaire: Rebel Thinkers, #2

By Marc De Lima and Mary Duffy

Voltaire wrote 50 plays, dozens of treatises on science, politics and philosophy. He was also a historian, penning several books of history on the Russian Empire and the French Parliament. He also had the itch to write poetry. He left a voluminous correspondence of about 20,000 letters to friends and other correspondents.

A veritable literary monster.

Although Candide departs from normal novelistic practice, many critics consider it a timeless work of art; some consider it a masterpiece and a classic. And because it is not a traditional novel, we should not read it as one. We should study it.

Zadig chronicles the adventures of a young Zoroastrian, benevolent and charismatic figure, who reveres the good and the beautiful. Despite incidental amorous detours, Zadig's love for Queen Astarte glows as a paragon of sublime fidelity to woman. Some critics claim the novel is the progenitor of the modern Detective Novel, as it included some deep deductive reasoning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marc De Lima
• Release date: Jun 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201651909

Marc De Lima

Marc De Lima, a graduate of Columbia University, is a decorated and disabled Vietnam veteran, retired business executive, college professor, editor, translator, and author of over 105 books. He lives in NYC with his wife Mary Duffy and Mister Darcy—a Shih-Tzu.

Book preview

THE DARING VOLTAIRE:

Brief Essays onVoltaire’s Biography, and the novels CANDIDE and ZADIG

By

Marc De Lima aned Mary Duffy

THE AIM OF THIS SERIES of books — Rebel Thinkers — is to present the books of authors whose themes and topics are indispensable for readers to function well and to be successful in our contemporary society of the early 21st century. We present the text in a non-scholarly mode, dispensing with footnotes, bibliographies, and indexes. In addition, our method of writing aims to be simple, and free of obscure academic jargon. 

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THE DARING VOLTAIRE:

Brief Essays onVoltaire’s Biography, and the novels CANDIDE and ZADIG

PART 1

Chapter 1 — Introduction

About the nome de plume name Voltaire

Core beliefs

Voltaire as a young man

The Bastille

A more mature Voltaire

Voltaire the bourgeois sage

A friendship with Frederick II, of Prussia

Ferney

Explosive ideas

Courtly life

Death and apotheosis

Chapter 2 — The Novel and Candide

The philosophic point

Optimism or fatalism?

Meanderings and the Greek tragedy deus ex machina

A calculating style

Chapter 3 — Getting to know the major characters

Candide

Cunégonde

Pangloss

Cacambo

Issachar

The old woman

Governor Don Fernando

Vanderdendur

Martin, the poor scholar

Paquette

Chapter 4 — Knowing the minor characters

Giroflee

The abbé from Perigord

The Marquise de Parolignac

Jacques the Anabaptist

Signor Pococurante, a Venetian nobleman

Chapter 5 — Stylistics

Candide’ as a dramatic monologue

Humor, Satire, Irony, and sarcasm

Comedy

Satire

Satire in France

Greek satire

Satire in England

Irony

Verbal irony

Sarcasm

Grotesque burlesque

Chapter 6 — Pangloss’s principles

The best of all possible worlds

All is for the best

Sufficient reason

Chain of necessity

Cause and effect

Chapter 7 — All that glitters

The Eldorado

Chapter 8 — The Magic-lantern show and the puppet show

The puppet show

The magic-lantern

The connection with Candide

Chapter 9 — Voltaire’s Garden

Ferney, Voltaire’s garden

Chapter 10 — Candide’s Garden

Happiness

APPENDIX I — EXTRACT FROM THE DICTIONARY

Brief Introduction by Marc De Lima

Dialogue between Pasha Tuctan, and Karpos the Gardener.

APPENDIX II — BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Work

Philosophy

Revaluation of Leibniz’s work

The Principles

The Monads

Chronology

APPENDIX III — CHAPTER SUMMARIES OF CANDIDE

PART 2

About Zadig or Destiny

Plot Summary

A detective’s deductive reasoning

Voltaire’s Major Works

Marc De Lima

PART 1

Chapter 1 — Introduction

In our time — early 21 st century — one may ask, why Voltaire’s appeal? — a mad egomaniac, snobbish, and shameless self-promoter author?

Why do we keep reading his works, but particularly his Zadig and his Candide?

The answer is simple: for his ideas and for the freshness with which he clothed them. He is fun to read. While he mocked the dogmas and clichés of his time with vitriol and hatred, he did it without being pious and smug.

Today he remains a much beloved figure. Hence, my interest in revisiting Candide.

Because critics and scholars had praised the Henriade (a poem about the siege of Paris by Henry IV at the end of the 16th century), and called Voltaire our French Virgil, he was sure his readers would remember him as an epic poet. Little did he know that a less poetic book would be his magnum opus — his novelette Candide.

This brief work of fiction still appears over the years in countless languages and editions and reprints since it first appeared in 1759. This is a book written for the ages.

Voltaire was born on November 21, 1694. He attended the Jesuit College Louis Le Grand in Paris. He refused to study law, and follow his father’s profession, preferring his own independent study of the humanities and, as he himself describes, a tilling of the Belles-lettres. Literature, he believed, must engage the problems of the time which an author is experiencing; he also believed that such engaged writing would benefit others in his own country and, if possible, the European continent. People who read become citizens who are sensitive to problems. Thus, his entire lifetime literary work was engaged not only with artistic expression but also with morals and civic duty.

What good is writing that is alien to the life of the community in which authors live?

Writing should be brief but edifying so that a community will be less violent, more civic-minded, and, surely, the result will be freedom and democracy—not intolerance and tyranny.

About the nome de plume name Voltaire

VOLTAIRE HAD A STRAINED relationship with hisfather, who wanted him to become a lawyer.

Possibly to spite his father’s wishes, he adopted the nom de plume Voltaire, right after completing his first play in 1718. We can surmise this because Voltaire never explained the meaning of his pen name. Some scholars claimed it was a reference to the name of a family chateau or a nod to the nickname volontaire (volunteer), which Voltaire may refer to the writer’s stubbornness. Others think that the non de plume implies a current of electric energy to jolt readers from conformism.

Core beliefs

VOLTAIRE REJECTED LEIBNIZ’S (German philosopher and math genius) unrestrained optimism after the devastating Lisbon earthquake, questioning that if this were the best possible world, how one could accept such evidence as the best?

In both Candide and Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne [Poem on the Lisbon Disaster], Voltaire mocks this optimist belief, calling the catastrophe one of the most horrible disasters in the best of all possible worlds.

Much like his character Candide, who is a polyglot, Voltaire learned English, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and German. As his fame grew, the important governments and courts in Europe invited him, meeting not only powerful officials, monarchy, and heroes but also the brilliant thinkers and personalities of the time, such as Boswell, Casanova, and Gibbon.

Dr. Samuel Johnson — the greatest literary figures of the eighteenth century, most famous for compiling A Dictionary of the English Language — wrote, not without envy, in the late eighteenth century, No authors ever had so much fame in their own life-time as Pope and Voltaire.

Voltaire as a young man

IT ISN’T HYPERBOLIC to call the young man a firebrand, a provocateur, a rascal imbued with goodness and mischief. Not only was he a contrarian, a disputant, but he was also scandalous.

The Bastille

VOLTAIRE’S ACERBIC writing first got him into trouble with the government in May 1716. He was briefly exiled from Paris for writing poems mocking the French regent’s family. Only a year later he was again arrested and confined to the Bastille for writing a scandalous poem accusing the regent of an incestuous affair with his daughter. Unrepentant, he boasted that jail gave him quiet time to think. So, he thought quietly for 11 months before winning a release. He later enjoyed an additional short stint to think in the Bastille in April 1726; the reason being to plan to duel an aristocrat that had insulted and beaten him. To avoid any more jail time, he exiled himself to England, where he lived three years.

Yet, given his aggressive nature, he landed twice in the Bastille; and his enemies exiled him six times. After a brief imprisonment in the Bastille — having insulted an aristocrat — they let him sojourn to England, a country that was far more tolerant than France in terms of religious toleration and other freedoms.

In the English Letters, he praised the power of the House of Commons, the philosophy of Locke, the new physics of Newton, and the excellency of Shakespeare. His immersion in the British culture proved quite productive for his future literary works. Once again, the French authorities condemned the Letters to be burned, but as history has proved, book burnings cannot burn ideas.

A more mature Voltaire

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