Voltaire’s Candide, Part 1

12 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by michelinewalker in Age of Enlightenment, France, Great Books

Tags

Bildungsroman, Leibniz, Lisbon earthquake, Picaresque, Rape, Slavery, Turquerie, War

Tafelrunde in Sanssouci (Voltaire to the left, purple, next to Casanova, red lapels), Adolph von Menzel, 1850 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Voltaire the celebrity, but…

A favourite guest of celebrities
Wit, his chief quality

Voltaire lived in a castle, le château de Ferney and befriended Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, and other royals and dignitaries. For instance, in the above image, he is at Sanssouci [literally “without worry”], a castle owned by Friedrich der Große who was an admirer of François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire. The artist is Adolph von Menzel (8 December 1815 – 9 February 1905). However, do not expect an example of this decorum in Voltaire’s Candide.

His indomitable wit and his pen were Voltaire’s chief weapons. He rarely went unnoticed. The French call this présence. However, he was forever running to escape the Bastille.

Casanova
From lair to lair: “traduit de l’Allemand”

Next to Voltaire, at the round table (Taflerunde) is Casanova, the Chevalier de Seingalt (pronounced Saint-Galle) (2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798), the famous Venitian womanizer, but a person who lived among princes and wrote the history of his life, L’Histoire de ma vie (See Casanova, Wikipedia.)

Voltaire published his Candide under a pseudonym, that of Mr. le Docteur Ralph, and claimed the novella had been translated from German, “traduit de l’Allemand.” The frontispiece (cover) of the first edition of Candide, published in 1759, is the work of Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune. Voltaire was protecting himself.

Voltaire_and_Diderot_at_the_Café_Procope

At Café Procope: at rear, from left to right: Condorcet, La Harpe, Voltaire (with his arm raised) and Diderot. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Background: Lazarillo de Tormes

a picaresque novel
a pícaro
Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)
a Bildungsroman

Voltaire’s Candide is a novella consisting of thirty (30) chapters and published in 1759. It has been described as a picaresque novel. The word picaresque is derived from a Spanish novella entitled La Vida de un pícaro (The Life of a Rogue; short title) or La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades (The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of his Fortunes and Adversities), by Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). In picaresque novels, characters move from place to place.

The novel is also considered a Bildungsroman or a coming of age novel. In this regard, Voltaire’s Candide resembles Henry Fielding‘s Tom Jones (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling), 1749. Henri Fielding’s Tom Jones is characterized by obliqueness because Tom, a “foundling,”[1] has no lineage, which gives him a degree of anonymity and impunity. As a Bildungsroman, Voltaire’s Candide has also been associated with Laurence Sterne‘s Tristram Shandy (a Bildungsroman), 1759 – 1767 (9 volumes).

As an oblique novel, Candide has affinities with Montesquieu’s Persian Letters (Lettres persanes) (1721). Montesquieu’s Usbek and Rica, his two Persians, are foreigners and may therefore say anything with impunity. Tom Jones is an “illegitimate” son and a foreigner of sorts. Moreover, Candide invites comparison with Blaise Pascal‘s Lettres provinciales (1656-1567). (See Lettres provinciales, Wikipedia.) Both works feature naïve characters.

Candide, ou l’Optimisme, 1759

key sentences

Candide is Voltaire’s answer to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz‘ optimism. It has a second title: Candide, ou l’Optimisme. Key sentences and concepts are:

Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes. (All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.)
Il faut cultiver son jardin. (One must cultivate one’s garden.)
There is a cause for each effect.

The Cast

Cunégonde (the woman Candide loves)
The Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh (Cunégonde’s father)
Candide (the illegitimate son of the Baron’s sister)
Dr Pangloss (Candide’s mentor: who believes this is “the best of all possible worlds”)
Cacambo (Candide’s loyal servant, a zanni of the commedia dell’arte)
The Old Lady
Martin (the Old Philosopher)
Paquette (suivante to the Baroness)
Giroflée (a friar)
etc.

The Story

We are in Westphalia. Candide, the illegitimate son of the Baron Thunder-ten-tronchk’s sister, is kicked out of Paradise when he kisses Cunégonde, the Baron’s daughter. (1)

Candide leaves and is made prisoner by Bulgarian soldiers who flog him and are about to execute him when the Bulgar King arrives and saves Candide whom, he says, is not worth hanging. (2)

In Holland, Candide meets an Anabaptist who looks after him, provides him with a shelter and becomes his teacher. (3) Dr Pangloss, Candide’s mentor at the Baron’s, appears unexpectedly. He caught smallpox and is pockmarked. He tells Candide that everyone has been killed, including Cunégonde. (4)

They leave for Lisbon but are shipwrecked during an earthquake and a tsunami (the 1755 Lisbon earthquake). A sailor lets the Anabaptist drown. Candide is wounded but he and Dr Pangloss survive. (5)

In Lisbon, Dr Pangloss is hanged by the Inquisition and Candide, spanked. (6) Cunégonde watches the auto-da-fé (act-of-faith) and recognizes Candide. An old woman is sent to fetch Candide. (7) Cunégonde is owned by a Jew and an Inquisitor, (8) but staves off their advances, she says. Candide kills both men. (9)

They flee to Buenos Aires. (10) The old woman, the daughter of a pope and a princess, tells how she lost one of her buttocks. (11-12). In Buenos Aires, the Governor falls in love with Cunégonde. (13) Candide and Cacambo continue to flee the Inquisition and arrive in Paraguay where they find Cunégonde’s brother, a Colonel, who has not died. (14) The Colonel will not let Cunégonde marry Candide who belongs to an inferior class. Candide kills him. (15)

Candide and Cacambo carry on but are captured by Oreillons and nearly eaten. They are spared because they are enemies of the Jesuits. A river propels them into El Dorado or Paradise. In El Dorado, there is no religion, just Deism, but they leave. Sheep, laden with treasures, guide them above mountains. They think they will be able to take Cunégonde back. (17 – 18) On their way to Suriname, they lose their sheep and much of their riches (jewels, etc.). However, Cacambo is sent to buy Cunégonde back while Candide and Martin, a poor philosopher, sail for Venice (19).

During the trip across the sea, Martin tells his philosophy. It is diametrically opposed to that of Dr Pangloss. (20 -21) They stop in Paris where Candide falls prey to various crooks, cheat on Cunégonde and gets in trouble. He has to flee. (22) As they, Candide and Martin, pass England, they see an admiral who is being executed because he lost a battle. (23)

In Venice, they find no sign of Cunégonde and the old woman, but meet Paquette, the baroness’ suivante, and Giroflée, a friar. (24) They also visit with a man who claims to be happy, the Pococurante.(25) It’s Carnival time in Venice. While they are having dinner with six dethroned and impoverished monarchs, Cacambo surfaces. (26)

Cunégonde is a slave in Constantinople and has grown ugly. Among the galley slaves in the boat taking them to Constantinople, Candide, Martin and Cacambo recognize Pangloss and the son of the Baron. They have not died. They are bought back. (27) Pangloss tells how the Inquisitors failed to kill him. Similarly, the young Baron was unskillfully killed by Candide and is still alive. (28) Candide buys Cunégonde back and is repulsed.

He will marry her nevertheless, despite the young Baron’s objections. (29) They buy a piece of land and start cultivating their garden. Paquette and friar Giroflée also reappear. All will cultivate the garden. (30)

Sources and Resources

Candide (Wikipedia)
Candide (summary) EN
Candide (incomplete text) Internet Archives EN
Candide (incomplete text) Gutenberg [EBook #19942] EN
Candide (complete text) literature.org EN
Candide (complete text) Internet Archives FR
Candide (complete text) Ebooks gratuits FR
Candide Google Books
Candide (résumé) FR
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1 July 1646 – 14 November 1716), Wikipedia

____________________
[1] French cinematographer François Truffaut produced L’Enfant sauvage, about a feral child (The Wild Child).

Leonard Berstein conducts his Candide Overture (1956)

Machiavelli & Reynard the Fox

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by michelinewalker in Beasts, Great Books, Political Science

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

beast literature, Castiglione, Catherine de' Medici, Elisabetta Gonzaga, Great Books, Machiavelli, power, Reynard the fox, the end justifies the means, The Prince

Machiavelli, by Santo di Tito

In 1513,[1] fifteen years before Castiglione published his Cortegiano (1528), Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469-1527), published The Prince (Il Principe), first entitled De Principatibus. Both Castiglione and Machiavelli wrote exceptionally influential works. The Prince is in fact compulsory reading for students of political science. Moreover, both writers were familiar with the works of Græco-Roman antiquity. Machiavelli is also the author of the more substantial Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy.

—ooo—

Il Principe was written for Lorenzo II di Piero de’ Medici (September 12, 1492 – May 4, 1519), the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificient, perhaps the most prominent Medici. Ironically, Lorenzo II was Duke of Urbino from 1516 to 1519, the very court where Elisabetta Gonzaga’s gatherings inspired Baldassare Castiglione to write Il libro del cortegiano.

Francesco Maria I della Rovere (22 March 1490 – 20 October 1538), the adopted heir of Guidobaldo de Montefeltro (January 17, 1472 – April 10, 1508), Elisabetta’s impotent husband, lost control of the dukedom of Urbino to the Medici. However, the Medici also lost control of the dukedom. It was returned to the Montefeltro family. These were embattled families.

As for Lorenzo II, Machiavelli’s student and briefly a Medici Duke of Urbino, he died of the plague in 1519, one year fafter his marriage to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne and a few weeks after the birth of his daughter Caterina who would marry Henry II, the King of France where she became Catherine de Médicis, Queen consort, and incited her son Charles IX to order the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572). Lorenzo II’s wife, Madeleine, also died in 1519.

Although Machiavelli’s Il Principe was dedicated to a Duke of Urbino, it could be viewed as the dark side of Il libro del cortegiano. Il Cortegiano describes a courtier whose manners we associate with medieval courtly love and the gallant behaviour of the men who were habitués, regulars, in the salons of seventeenth-century France. But there is nothing gallant about Machiavelli’s prince. Il Principe is the description of the ruthless ways in which a prince, preferably a new prince, attains and retains power.

—ooo—

In fact, if any book influenced Machiavelli, it may be Reynard the Fox, beast literature’s foremost trickster. In Chapter XVII of The Prince, Machiavelli writes that it is best to be loved than to be despised, but in Chapter XVIII, he speaks of faithlessness and instructs the prince to be ruthless and “employ” the fox.

Of this [faithlessness] endless modern examples could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who has know best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.

Machiavelli builds a degree of ambiguity as to whether his The Prince should own a lion and a fox, because of the attributes literature has bestowed upon these animals, or be like the lion and particular the fox. But all ambiguity is dispelled when Machiavelli refers to the zoomorphic Centaur, half human and half beast, and writes that “it is necessary for a prince to know how to make use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable.”

—ooo—

One may therefore look upon The Prince as the depiction of a profoundly corrupt world. However, it may be more prudent to consider this enormously influential work as both descriptive and prescriptive. Although Machiavelli teaches the now proverbial “the end justifies the means,” the end being ‘righteous’ power, the Centaur is half human. The human half does not however redeem the bestial half, but Machiavelli’s advice to the prince is the fruit of experience. Men are not entirely good, hence the need for the prince to be ‘beastial’ and as crafty as the fox.

If men were entirely good this precept would not hold, but beacause they are bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe it with them.

Machiavelli knew about rulers. In 1498, he was appointed secretary and second chancellor to the Florentine Republic. In the fifteenth century, such an appointment would have been prestigious. Humanists were revered. However, in the sixteenth century, humanism had started to lose its prestige. According to Jacob Burckchardt, like Florentine historians at the beginning of the sixteenth century, humanists “wrote Italian not only because they could not vie with the Ciceronian elegance of the philologists but because, like Machiavelli, they could only record in a living tongue the living results of their own immediate observation.”[2]

Machiavelli had gleaned his information as a diplomat. He had travelled to the court of Louis XII of France and to the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian. He had also accompanied Pope Julius II on this first campaign of conquest. Powerful families ruled city-states and could be ruthless. The most important of these families was the Medici family who ruled Florence and justified any action perpetrated in gaining and retaining power. “His The Prince and his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (both published posthumously) codified the actual practices of Renaissance diplomacy for the next 100 years.”[3]

—ooo—

As for the world in which we live in, it has seen a Nixon, impeached because of corrupt actions. But former President Nixon was not altogether bad and he would not have killed. The world has also seen Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. And we know about Hitler. History rewrites itself as though humans had no memory.

[1] It was not printed until 1532.

[2] The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, an essay (London : Folio Society, 2004), p 189.

[3] “The Prince.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 18 Oct. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/476608/The-Prince>.

The Prince, Henry Kissinger (part of a fine series)