Nobody else's book club: Voltaire's Candide
"Candide, or Optimism" is the complete title of this short novel or novella, if you prefer. This is black satire, but its full intentions go beyond mere literary or social satire. In it, like most of his other fictional work, Voltaire attempts to ridicule and refute the fashionable philosophy trends of his time. So Candide can be read not only as a funny little text, full of laugh-out-loud nonsense, but also as a more serious philosophical treatise in disguise.
The optimism the title refers to is the philosophical idea that since God is good and loves his creatures, we must live in the best of all possible worlds, even if this is not obvious to us simple-minded human beings. Candide is introduced to this philosophy as a gullible young man by his tutor, Prof. Pangloss. By a series of unfortunate circumstances Candide is forced away from the idyllic life he knew while growing up in his family home and into constant travels that will lead him through several countries in Europe and South America. In this long journey, Candide and the people he meets suffer all sorts of calamities, from natural ones, like disease and the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, to Human made ones, like the Seven Years' war and the Inquisition. All through his travels, and despite all evidence to the contrary, he continues to blindly believe that "all things are for the best in the best of all possible worlds" which in part creates much of the surreal and absurd scenes in the novel.
Candide, or, the be fair, the entirety of Voltaire's oeuvre, was an important step in modern philosophy, because he defended the need to break with the theology-dominated philosophy of the past. What this book intends to prove is that if God is good and in our favour, then we simply cannot use Him to understand the world as it is. Instead we must admit we are left to our own resources. "We must cultivate our garden".
What would Voltaire think if he were to resurrect and visit our world today? Certainly he would not be too surprised by how little has changed. Not Human nature and not Nature itself. We still have stupid wars, greed and tyranny destroying lives that could otherwise have been idyllic. We still have natural disasters, such as storms and earthquakes. We do have evolved greatly in terms of medicine, I am sure he would be duly glad and impressed, but we still all die one way or the other, most often due to disease. But what would he think of nuclear bombs, military drones, modern slavery (after all that we have been through), people drowning in the Mediterranean or dying of thirst and heatstroke in the deserts of North Mexico? What would he think of Isis, Israel, South Sudan, Yemen, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Brexit, DaF and other fascist movements around the world leading us inexorably to the repetition of the exact same mistakes of the late Century? The same mistakes of the entire Human History!
So little has changed and that is why I found it very, very hard to laugh, no matter how hilarious the situations were. I found the story too close to my own reality, since I also have been "forced" to travel through Europe and the Americas. I also have found too much Human stupidity, meanness and greed. I was constantly aware of how relevant this story still is and duly depressed. I am afraid that Voltaire's intention to "bring amusement to a small number of men of wit" has entirely failed in my case. Hopefully not because I lack wit! Although I must confess I have never fully appreciated Monty Python's type of humour and Candide absurd and surreal humour does very much remind me of the former.
Still, Candide presents a form of optimism at the end. Albeit a much more modest one than that of Leibniz. In it Voltaire proposes that, despite all, a sort of modest happiness can be achieved if we live a modest, hard working life, surrounded by good friends and well away from the greedy, mean, petty majority that constitutes Human society.
“Man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
“Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
If you want to know more about Candide and the context in which the book was written, I highly recommend this Wikipedia article, which is really helpful for learning to appreciate the importance of this novel in European history and philosophy.
The optimism the title refers to is the philosophical idea that since God is good and loves his creatures, we must live in the best of all possible worlds, even if this is not obvious to us simple-minded human beings. Candide is introduced to this philosophy as a gullible young man by his tutor, Prof. Pangloss. By a series of unfortunate circumstances Candide is forced away from the idyllic life he knew while growing up in his family home and into constant travels that will lead him through several countries in Europe and South America. In this long journey, Candide and the people he meets suffer all sorts of calamities, from natural ones, like disease and the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, to Human made ones, like the Seven Years' war and the Inquisition. All through his travels, and despite all evidence to the contrary, he continues to blindly believe that "all things are for the best in the best of all possible worlds" which in part creates much of the surreal and absurd scenes in the novel.
Candide, or, the be fair, the entirety of Voltaire's oeuvre, was an important step in modern philosophy, because he defended the need to break with the theology-dominated philosophy of the past. What this book intends to prove is that if God is good and in our favour, then we simply cannot use Him to understand the world as it is. Instead we must admit we are left to our own resources. "We must cultivate our garden".
What would Voltaire think if he were to resurrect and visit our world today? Certainly he would not be too surprised by how little has changed. Not Human nature and not Nature itself. We still have stupid wars, greed and tyranny destroying lives that could otherwise have been idyllic. We still have natural disasters, such as storms and earthquakes. We do have evolved greatly in terms of medicine, I am sure he would be duly glad and impressed, but we still all die one way or the other, most often due to disease. But what would he think of nuclear bombs, military drones, modern slavery (after all that we have been through), people drowning in the Mediterranean or dying of thirst and heatstroke in the deserts of North Mexico? What would he think of Isis, Israel, South Sudan, Yemen, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Brexit, DaF and other fascist movements around the world leading us inexorably to the repetition of the exact same mistakes of the late Century? The same mistakes of the entire Human History!
So little has changed and that is why I found it very, very hard to laugh, no matter how hilarious the situations were. I found the story too close to my own reality, since I also have been "forced" to travel through Europe and the Americas. I also have found too much Human stupidity, meanness and greed. I was constantly aware of how relevant this story still is and duly depressed. I am afraid that Voltaire's intention to "bring amusement to a small number of men of wit" has entirely failed in my case. Hopefully not because I lack wit! Although I must confess I have never fully appreciated Monty Python's type of humour and Candide absurd and surreal humour does very much remind me of the former.
Still, Candide presents a form of optimism at the end. Albeit a much more modest one than that of Leibniz. In it Voltaire proposes that, despite all, a sort of modest happiness can be achieved if we live a modest, hard working life, surrounded by good friends and well away from the greedy, mean, petty majority that constitutes Human society.
“Man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.”
“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
“Do you believe,' said Candide, 'that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?'
Do you believe,' said Martin, 'that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
If you want to know more about Candide and the context in which the book was written, I highly recommend this Wikipedia article, which is really helpful for learning to appreciate the importance of this novel in European history and philosophy.
Next book: I am still reading the Iliad, which I am not sure I want to include in this Club. But I must confess that again, like last year, I have been reading very little. This was the reason I started this book club and I must go back to my intent of reading more and knitting less.
Such great news that Helen Dunmore as won the Costa Book of the Year award for "Inside the wave". I picked the book from my library two weeks ago and I have been reading it slowly as I like to read poetry. I was surprised I was enjoying it so much, not knowing that, quite out of luck, I had picked exceptionally well. It was the title that attracted me. Simple, beautiful and mysterious, like its contents. Highly recommend it.
Such great news that Helen Dunmore as won the Costa Book of the Year award for "Inside the wave". I picked the book from my library two weeks ago and I have been reading it slowly as I like to read poetry. I was surprised I was enjoying it so much, not knowing that, quite out of luck, I had picked exceptionally well. It was the title that attracted me. Simple, beautiful and mysterious, like its contents. Highly recommend it.
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