Voltaire Fun Time!

That it felt difficult for me to initially become interested in reading Candide, that I first considered this novel to be stodgy and boring and philosophically irrelevant - because I thought the author was arguing against past institutions, though current for his day, which have already been proven inadequate and no longer existed - that I imagined it would be boring to read this picaresque tale of lust, the senselessness of war, religious hypocrisy, the injustice of the world and brutality of humans, seems amazing to me now. But because I thought that way, it took me forever to even bother picking up the book, and I had to try to read the first page three times before the story stuck. I was supposed to finish the book for Classics Book Club, in November.

This is all ridiculous, of course, because the novel is quite short (100 pages in the small paperback version), and the language is loose and unchallenging, which echoes the swiftly moving plot. I read the first half on Saturday night, and the second half last night, though I could have read the entire thing in a day.

Candide, or Optimism, is a satire on the philosophical argument for Optimism, that, as the character Pangloss states in the story, "all is best in the best of worlds." Voltaire felt that this theory ignored the suffering of humans caused by both natural disaster, and other humans, that it was a theory of complacency in the face of sin and brutal behavior - that it gave humans permission to act without compassion. So he compounded the lives of his optimistic characters with troubles upon troubles, both to mock their optimistic view of the world, and the literary convention of adhering to realism in order to avoid testing a reader's suspension of disbelief. Once the characters have been subjected to the most harrowing series of violent acts imaginable, then killed off several times, only so that they can be brought back to life and improbably reunited in other parts of the world, the reader is no longer required to invest in the plausibility of the storyline. I see an honesty in this - that the author doesn't need me to believe that these people are real, in order to convince me of the value of his viewpoint.

Yet many of the events and people in the novel are real, notably the Lisbon earthquake, the execution of Admiral Byng, and the deposition the five different kings (though it is doubtful that they ever sat down to dinner together at the Venice Carnival). Even if one old woman cannot, in reality, truthfully claim to have been repeatedly raped by marauders and pirates, to have witnessed the slaying of her parents, to be forced into slavery, to have lost a buttock in the service of feeding a starving army, to have served the mistress of the Grand Inquisitor, then to be forced into slavery again, these are all things that did, and do, happen to humans in the world. (Except maybe the buttock thing. I haven't actually heard that one before.) The unreality of it all is itself a satire on the cozy belief that life isn't as bad as the characters in Candide have it.

What resonates for me about Candide, is that Optimism, or complacency, in the face of tragedy, is an elitist view point. Essentially, it ignores the fact that humans can, and ought to, ease the suffering of others in the world. That the world can be changed for the better, even if, for the entirety of their existence, humans have been prone to mindless murder and thievery. Who could believe such a thing, other than those born with socio-economic/racial/gender privileges?

Voltaire argued for action. Which is why at the end of the novel, the most innocent and optimistic character, now hardened and skeptical of the good of humans, turns instead to "the cultivating of one's own garden" as a way, not even to be happy - but "make life bearable!"


The Paris Panthéon, final resting place of François-Marie Arouet Voltaire.
Taken in May 2000.