Choose one scene or incident from Voltaires Candide and discuss how the scene illustrates an aspect of Voltaires understanding

ox f o r d wo r l d ’ s c la s s i c s

C A N D I D E a n d ot h e r s to r i e s

V o lta i r e was the assumed name of François-Marie Arouet (1694– 1778). Born into a well-to-do Parisian family, he was educated at the leading Jesuit college in Paris. Having refused to follow his father and elder brother into the legal profession he soon won widespread acclaim for Œdipe (1718), the first of some twenty-seven tragedies which he continued to write until the end of his life. His national epic La Henriade (1723) confirmed his reputation as the leading French literary figure of his generation. Following a quarrel with the worthless but influential aristocrat, the Chevalier de Rohan, he was forced into exile in England. This period (1726–8) was particularly formative, and his Letters concern- ing the English Nation (1733) constitute the first major expression of Voltaire’s deism and his subsequent lifelong opposition to religious and political oppression. Following the happy years (1734–43) spent at Cirey with his mistress Mme du Châtelet in the shared pursuit of several intellectual enthusiasms, notably the work of Isaac Newton, he enjoyed a brief interval of favour at court during which he was appointed Historiographer to the King. After the death of Mme du Châtelet in 1749 he finally accepted an invitation to the court of Frederick of Prussia, but left in 1753 when life with this particular enlightened despot became intolerable. In 1755, after temporary sojourn in Colmar, he settled at Les Délices on the outskirts of Geneva. He then moved to nearby Ferney in 1759, the year Candide was published. Thereafter a spate of tragedies, stories, philosophical works, and polemical tracts, not to mention a huge number of letters, poured from his pen. The writer of competent tragedies had become the militant embodiment of the Age of Enlighten- ment. After the death of Louis XV in 1774 he eventually returned to Paris in 1778 for the performance of his penultimate tragedy Irène. He was acclaimed and fêted by the entire capital as the greatest living Frenchman and as one of the most effective champions of freedom, tolerance, and common sense the world had ever seen. He died there on 30 May 1778.

R o g e r P e a r s o n is Professor of French in the University of Oxford and Fellow and Praelector in French at The Queen’s College, Oxford. He is the author of Stendhal’s Violin: A Novelist and his Reader (1988), The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire’s ‘Contes philosophiques’ (1993), Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art (1996), Mallarmé and Circumstance: The Translation of Silence (2004), and Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (2005). For Oxford World’s Classics he has translated Zola, La Bête humaine and Maupassant, A Life.

ox f o r d wo r l d ’ s c la s s i c s

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles –– from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels –– the series makes available

lesser-known as well as celebrated writing.

The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene,

and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and

reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive

commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers.

OX F O R D WO R L D ’ S C L A S S I C S

VO LTA I R E

Candide and Other Stories

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

RO G E R P E A R S O N

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox 2 6 d p

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,

and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi

New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

Translation and editorial material © Roger Pearson 1990, 2006

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate

reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,

Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Voltaire, 1694–1778. [Short stories. English. Selections]

Candide and other stories / Voltaire; translated, with an introduction and notes, by Roger Pearson.

p. cm. –– (Oxford world’s classics) Includes bibliographical references.

1. Voltaire, 1694–1778 –– Translations into English. I. Pearson, Roger. II. Title. III. Oxford world’s classics (Oxford University Press)

PQ2075 2006 843′.5 –– dc22 2005034736

Typeset in Ehrhardt by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

ISBN 0–19–280726–9 978–0–19–280726–7

1

C O N T E N T S

Introduction vii

Translator’s Note and Acknowledgements xliv

Select Bibliography xlv

A Chronology of Voltaire xlviii

C A N D I D E 3

M I C RO M E G A S 89

Z A D I G 107

W H AT P L E A S E S T H E L A D I E S 178

T H E I N G E N U 190

T H E W H I T E B U L L 254

Explanatory Notes 287

This page intentionally left blank

I N T RO D U C T I O N

T h i s edition presents a selection of the best of all possible stories by Voltaire: Candide, Micromegas, Zadig, What Pleases the Ladies, The Ingenu, and The White Bull. Each of them is a classic; but if ever a work deserved to be called a World’s Classic, it is Candide. Published simultaneously in Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, London and probably Liège on or around 20 February 1759, it soon became the bestseller of the European book trade in the eighteenth century. Cramer, its Genevan publisher, printed an initial run of 2,000 copies, the norm for a book that was expected to sell well: within a month, after further printings and many pirated editions, at least 20,000 copies had been sold. After a similar period even Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (published on 28 October 1726) had sold only half that number. The first English translation came out within six weeks and sold at least 6,000 copies. Since then the work has been published in countless editions. It has been translated into all the world’s major languages, and repeatedly so in some cases as renewed efforts are made to capture the elegance and vitality of Voltaire’s prose. Candide and Pangloss are as well known as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; and Leonard Bernstein turned them into the protagonists of a suc- cessful comic opera.

The original publication of Candide was a carefully calculated coup. Unbound copies of the work (in pocketbook duodecimo for- mat) were discreetly dispatched from Geneva on 15 and 16 January 1759; 1,000 to Paris, 200 to Amsterdam, and others to London and Liège. They were then bound at their respective destinations and published on a previously agreed date, the idea being to circulate as many copies of the original edition as possible throughout Europe before pirated editions usurped and corrupted it (and, in those days before the laws of international copyright, siphoned off Voltaire’s potential profits). The aim, too, was to create the maximum stir in as many countries as possible before the authorities could suppress this subversive tale. In the event, although the police were quick to seize all the copies they could and to smash any press on which a new edition was being printed, the flood was too great for them to stem. The damage was done –– and long before the Vatican got

round to placing Candide on its Index of forbidden books on 24 May 1762.

Voltaire himself observed great secrecy about the work, as indeed he did about many of his stories. There is no mention of Candide in his extant correspondence before the date of publication, and after- wards he is to be found denying authorship and dismissing the tale as nothing but a schoolboy joke. Sometime in 1758 he sent a manu- script version to the Duchesse de la Vallière in Paris, which is now preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris; but he kept no manuscript or printed version in his own library (which was sub- sequently bought by Catherine the Great and is today still conserved in St Petersburg). Nor did his publishers retain their printer’s copies. By now ensconced in his chateau at Ferney on the French side of the Franco-Genevan border, Voltaire was already to some extent proof against police attention; but his circumspection over the publication of Candide in part accounts for the fact that the authorities in Paris and Geneva took no action against Voltaire personally even if they did try in vain to contain the diffusion of his latest and most explo- sive piece of writing.

For explosive it was –– and is. Wordsworth may have called it the ‘dull product of a scoffer’s wit’, but he is considerably outnumbered by those who have seen Candide as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. Moreover it is the supreme example of the conte philosophique, or philosophical tale. Whether or not Voltaire invented this genre is a moot point: admirers of Rabelais and Swift, and even of Boccaccio and Cervantes, might dispute the claim. Unquestion- ably, however, he devised a unique blend of shorter fiction and phil- osophy (in its broadest sense). It is also clear that, whether or not the conte philosophique already existed, Voltaire would have had to invent it: for it proved the perfect medium of expression for the sceptic and empiricist that Voltaire was. Deeply suspicious of metaphysics and ‘systems’, he was constantly appealing to the facts: fiction, para- doxically, allowed him to show the ways in which the muddle and miseries of life could not be reduced to neat, abstract theories. He was able to avail himself variously of the traditional narrative struc- tures of chivalric romance, of the traveller’s tale, and of the Oriental tale, and to present a human being, usually a young man, beginning to make his own way in life and learning the lessons of experience.

In this he was following the lead of the one work which influenced

Introductionviii

his thinking perhaps more than any other: Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690; translated into French by Coste in 1700). Locke describes his own philosophical method as being ‘his- torical’ and ‘plain’ (I, i. 2); ‘historical’ because ideas are not innate but arrived at by stages (‘the steps by which the human mind attains several truths’: I, ii. 15, 16); and ‘plain’ because, in its uncorrupt state, it is untrammelled by prejudice and preconception. ‘Candide’ and ‘candidement’ (‘candid’ and ‘candidly’, from the Latin meaning ‘white’) recur frequently in Coste’s translation to convey this state of openness to experience and readiness to base one’s judgements on empirical evidence, to reason inductively rather than deductively.

For Voltaire, therefore, there was great narrative potential in the discovery of truth, and no better way to present the process of its discovery than as the voyage of a naive or ‘candid’ observer. Half of the twenty-six prose tales he wrote employ the narrative device of the journey, including all his major ones and four of the five presented in this edition. Indeed this is how his career as a writer of contes philosophiques began, for in 1739 Voltaire sent Frederick of Prussia a manuscript copy of his Voyage du baron de Gangan. This manuscript has been lost, but from the correspondence between Voltaire and Frederick it is possible to infer that this work was essentially a proto- type of Micromegas, which was eventually published thirteen years later.

Micromegas

Micromegas dates originally, therefore, from the period when Voltaire was living, in a ménage à trois, with Mme du Châtelet and her hus- band at their home at Cirey some fifty miles from Nancy in eastern France. Life with his mistress was as energetically intellectual as it was amorous, and together they read, studied, and wrote over a whole range of mathematical, scientific, philosophical, and literary subjects. In fact they were being philosophes, or philosophers, in the special eighteenth-century French sense of the word: namely, they thought freely (i.e. independently of all religious or political author- ity) throughout the entire field of human intellectual enquiry. They were, as the etymology of the word indicates, lovers of knowledge and, in those days before the specialist, rightly believed themselves capable of understanding and contributing to the latest scientific

Introduction ix

debates. A particular enthusiasm of theirs was the science, or natural philosophy as it was then called, of Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Vol- taire had ‘discovered’ Newton during his stay in England (1726–8) and introduced his work to the French in his Lettres philosophiques (1734; originally published in English in 1733 as the Letters concern- ing the English Nation). Indeed it is Voltaire who was responsible for circulating the story about Newton and the apple, which he claimed to have heard from Newton’s niece.

Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687) made a deep impression on Voltaire, not least because it offered him as a deist empirical evidence and philosophical proof to sustain the ‘argument from design’ (i.e. that the order in the universe points to an intelligent Creator: the workings of the clock prove the existence of a clockmaker). Here, too, was a new method of scientific enquiry, comparable with Locke’s philosophical method published three years after it, and based on observation and induction (where, for example, Descartes’s had been based on logic and deduction). Newtonian physics filled the empti- ness of interplanetary space with the order and harmony of gravi- tational law, where Pascal (1623–62) had seen only the void left by a God who had withdrawn from Creation, and Descartes (1596–1650) a system of vortices, or whirlpools, of ethereal fluid (materia subtilis) which supported and conveyed the celestial bodies within a plenum. In 1738 Voltaire presented French readers with a full, accurate, and intelligible account of Newtonian science in his Éléments de la phil- osophie de Newton, which had a considerable impact on contempor- ary French thinking (and was largely responsible for Voltaire’s election in England as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1743).

It was in 1738 also that he began the first version of Micromegas, the only one of his stories to be described by him explicitly as ‘philo- sophical’. Imagine someone setting out to rewrite Jules Verne’s De La Terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon) having met Neil Armstrong; for this, in part at least, is what Voltaire was doing. He took the device of the interplanetary journey which had been used in such works as Godwin’s Man in the Moon (1638) or Cyrano de Bergerac’s États et empires de la lune (States and Empires of the Moon; 1657); combined it with elements of the imaginary journey used in the quasi-scientific, Utopian travel literature of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (such as Bacon’s Nova Atlantis of 1627); and added the technique of the alien visitor which Montesquieu,

Introductionx

among others, had put to such good use in his Lettres persanes (Persian Letters; 1721). The originality of Micromegas lies partly in having a being from another planet come to have a ‘close encounter’ with us (in the hope of finding Utopia . . .). Further Voltairean twists include the fact that this extraterrestrial being travels because he has been exiled for writing about biology and microscopy, and that he sees himself –– inhabitant (rather than man) of the world that he is –– as being on a kind of educational Grand Tour of the universe.

In Micromegas, as Candide will subsequently remark, ‘travel’s the thing’. The Sirian travels, the Saturnian travels, earthly philo- sophers travel: it is the only way to discover anything –– by a change of perspective. For the Sirian, as for Voltaire at Cirey, the universe exhibits a wonderful profusion of difference and variety within a framework of orderly proportion and harmony. The Great Chain of Being extends from the mega to the micro, and man, much further down this chain than he imagines, can see only a small part of it (just as the Saturnian cannot see several stars which are visible to the Sirian). Ridiculous in his mega, anthropocentric pride (especially the person in academic dress), and absurdly wretched in his warring, man may be physically micro but his capacity for precise scientific observation (with a quadrant and microscope) suggests mega poten- tial for discovery. But only if he will learn humility, and to eschew metaphysical absurdities about the soul. He should not jump to con- clusions, like the far-from-‘candid’ Saturnian, but proceed in the judicious manner of the Sirian –– and of the little follower of Locke. Micromegas is a eulogy of Newtonian physics and Lockean epis- temology, of divine power and man’s potential for enlightenment. As its moral lesson it teaches the virtues of the measured response.

It is also a comedy, and it entertains as it instructs. Human intel- lectual hubris is here punished, not by the nemesis of tragedy (though ending up in the Sirian’s pocket is a near-tragedy) but by the nemesis of deflation. Some of the comedy shows the clear influ- ence of Swift, whom Voltaire met when in England and whose Gulliver’s Travels were published while he was there. Voltaire elabor- ates on the Swiftian (and Rabelaisian) comedy of size by creating a further comedy of measurement. He includes as many different units of measurement as he can (fathoms, leagues, and geometrical paces, not to mention the French feet that are longer than English ones), and he makes considerable play with methods of measurements,

Introduction xi

juxtaposing the analogical reasoning of the Saturnian (‘nature is like a flower-bed’, etc.) and of the narrator (the lapdog and the Prussian guards officer) with the exact calculations of algebraists and geom- eters. Conjecture and vague speculation are fruitless: what is needed is accurate observation –– with a microscope, a diamond, a quadrant, or indeed the naked eye. Seeing is all, as long as one is careful not to be deceived by appearances. Newtonian physics may seem fan- tastical, but it proves to be borne out by the facts: metaphysics may seem profound, but it reveals itself as pure fantasy. The real mystery lies not in interstellar space but in the heart of man.

And the story itself exemplifies some of its own lessons by provid- ing a change of perspective, by presenting a different way of seeing. It is a distorted mirror, even a kind of inverted microscope, in or through which man can see himself in all his pettiness. Sub specie siriani, if not aeternitatis, the Russo-Turkish War (1736–9) becomes a squabble between men in hats and men in turbans over a few lumps of earth, and the metaphysics of Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Aquinas so much nonsensical gobbledegook. In the end there are seemingly no answers: the Sirian’s nice book of philosophy is blank. But we have the full pages of the story itself: imagination and fiction have provided their own kind of answer where meta- physical logic fails. Where reason falls short, the fable provides.

Optimism

Micromegas reflects the mood of comparative serenity and optimism which prevailed at Cirey, and which Voltaire enjoyed up until the mid-1740s. Both he and Mme du Châtelet warmed to the philo- sophical Optimism which had been expressed in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1733–4; translated into French prose in 1736 and French verse in 1737):

Submit. –– In this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow’r, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good.

Introductionxii

And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite, One truth is clear, ‘Whatever is, is r i g h t’.

(Epistle i. 285–94)

In 1736 they came into contact with the work of the German phil- osopher Leibniz (1646–1716) as expounded, and distorted, by his follower Christian Wolff (1679–1754). Mme du Châtelet was enthusi- astic, but Voltaire preferred the less metaphysical approach of Pope (1688–1744). Nevertheless, although he found Leibniz’s theory about monads and pre-established harmony difficult to swallow (and parodies it in Micromegas), he was sufficiently preoccupied with Leibnizian Optimism to make it the focal point of both Zadig and Candide.

In his Essais de théodicée, written in French and published in 1710, Leibniz addressed the age-old question: what is the nature of divine Providence and how can we reconcile it with physical and moral evil and with the idea of free will? The traditional Christian answer to the problem of moral evil is, of course, that God, in his goodness, endowed man with free will but that, since Adam’s original sin, man has abused this freedom with evil results. In respect of physical evil the traditional Christian response has been to posit satanic forces inimical to God, but this in turn poses further problems: if God is benevolent, why does he permit these forces to operate? and if God cannot prevent them, then he is not omnipotent. It is but one step from this to the so-called Manichaean heresy (after the third-century Persian thinker Manes who sought to reconcile Christianity with the philosophy of Zoroaster) which argues that the universe is governed by two equally powerful forces of Good and Evil. (This is the position adopted by Martin in Candide.)

In his Dictionnaire historique et critique of 1697 Pierre Bayle had given this heresy a fairly vigorous airing, duly condemning it but also using it as a powerful weapon in his attack on all attempts to con- struct a theodicy. For Bayle the demands of human reason and the content of the Christian revelation were not to be reconciled. Leibniz, on the other hand, sought to do just that, and to refute Bayle in the process.

One of the basic axioms in Leibniz’s system is the so-called Principle of Sufficient Reason, which holds that there must necessar- ily be some logical reason why anything is as it is. According to this axiom even God must have, or have had, a sufficient reason for his

Introduction xiii

actions, and since he is by definition perfect, it must always be, or have been, the right reason. If God is perfect, however, why is he not sufficient unto himself ? In other words, why did he create? The answer lies in the traditional ontological proof of God’s existence. According to this, if one can conceive of a being uniting all possible perfections, this being must necessarily exist, since for it not to exist would be an imperfection. If existence is a perfection in God, then it must be a perfection in created beings. Hence (or so Leibniz argues) the more different kinds of created beings there are, the more God has demonstrated his divine power.

Since God is perfection, and since God was creating something separate from himself, it follows that what he created had necessarily to be imperfect. At the moment of Creation he had to decide between an infinite number of possible (i.e. imperfect) worlds. Fol- lowing the Principle of Sufficient Reason he necessarily chose the best of all possible worlds (i.e. the least imperfect), namely that in which the greatest diversity might obtain and in which there would be the greatest excess of good over evil. By this token a world with- out evil, were it even logically possible, might be less good than a world with evil since some great goods are inevitably bound up with certain evils. Thus, for example, free will is a great good but entails the possibility of sin. By this reasoning, then, the presence of evil in the world may be said to offer no argument against the benevolence or omnipotence of God. On the contrary, all evil is for a greater good (though it does not follow, as Pangloss proposes in Candide, that the more evil there is, the better . . .). Thus, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Finally, as to the question of man’s soul and the nature of the interaction between matter and spirit, Leibniz rejected the Cartesian theory that the soul was located in the pineal gland and posited the existence of what he called monads, spiritual units which were in perfect, divinely ‘pre-established’ harmony with the material uni- verse in the manner of two clocks keeping perfect time with each other. Voltaire thought this completely daft.

Zadig

It may be seen from this account of Leibniz’s system that it informs the Sirian’s view of the universe in Micromegas, which suggests that

Introductionxiv

Voltaire, in 1738–9 at least, was in sympathy with some of Leibniz’s thought even if he did not take to the monads or the clocks. And Leibnizian ideas are further expounded by the angel Jesrad towards the end of Zadig (written between 1746 and 1747 and published in 1748). Zadig, like Micromegas, is essentially an intelligent story about the limits of intelligence. Zadig has all the talents, all the virtues: he is ‘the one human being who most deserved to be enlightened’. He has had a good education, he can think straight, he displays a con- siderable gift for inductive reasoning, especially in the episode of the dog and the horse (in a manner anticipating Sherlock Holmes), and he puts the lessons of experience to good use. But even his superior intelligence and virtue are no guarantee of happiness, and he spends most of the story as the bewildered plaything of destiny (or Provi- dence, which is the subtitle Voltaire wanted for the story but felt was too inflammatory).

Once he is finally reduced to railing (blasphemously) against Providence, the angel Jesrad intervenes, rather in the manner of divine grace, and explains all in familiar Leibnizian terms. After the usual Voltairean reminder of the need for intellectual humility, Jesrad gives the sufficient reason for the existence of evil people and argues the case for the necessary interconnection of good and evil. He further alludes to the theory of possible worlds and to the notion of diversity as a sign of divine power, and concludes by asserting that everything is as it has to be, as it should be.

Voltaire’s originality in Zadig lies in his use of the structure of the Oriental tale as a model for the Providentialist view of history. On the face of it, events in the narrative seem random and haphazard, and the worlds of Babylon, Egypt, and Arabia appear fantastical and absurd. Yet there is order: the conventions of the Oriental tale, and perhaps of all traditional storytelling, mean that everything is lead- ing, by a roundabout route, to the Happy Ending. As readers we have a sense of inevitability: we may feel that the author is playing with us as destiny plays with Zadig, but in the end all will be well.

Or will it? Zadig has two endings, corresponding to the hero’s two reactions to Jesrad’s pronouncements. On the one hand, Zadig sub- mits to Providence, and the story ends with the chapter entitled ‘The riddles’. Zadig wins Astarte, justice and love prevail: ‘The people glorified Zadig, and Zadig glorified heaven.’ On the other hand there is Zadig’s ‘But . . .’: Jesrad’s Leibnizian explanation is perhaps

Introduction xv

inadequate, a trifle glib even? We note the irony that …