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Candide
Candide
Candide
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Candide

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 1918
Author

Voltaire

Born in Paris in 1694, François-Marie Arouet, who would later go by the nom-de-plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment philosopher, poet, historian, and author. Voltaire’s writing was often controversial, and in 1715 he was sent into his first exile in Tulle after a writing a satirical piece about the Duke of Orleans, the Regent of France. It was during this time that he produced his first major work, the play Oedipus. Although allowed to return to Paris a year later, Voltaire’s writing continued to land him in trouble. He was jailed in the Bastille two more times and was exiled from Paris for a good portion of his life. Throughout these troubles, Voltaire continued to write, producing works of poetry, a number of plays, and some historical and political texts. His most famous work is the satirical novel Candide, and many of his plays, including Oedipus and Socrates, are still performed today. Voltaire died in 1778.

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Rating: 3.8256999525139666 out of 5 stars
4/5

3,580 ratings130 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Absolutely hilarious, and extremely easy to read as well.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I saw this at the Guthrie Theater in the late 80s and it was great; the story still holds up.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very enjoyable, especially for a philosophical stint. Definitely a book I will want to read several times over to digest, but for an initial reading it was fairly light.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Hilarious! Ever since reading The Baroque Cycle (or at least the first two books and the first half of the third one) I've loved this historical period, and it's clear Stephenson wrote it with Candide in mind. It's silly, clever, and risqué, and you can read it in an afternoon.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Classic modern fable exploring the once popular philosophy of 'everything now is exactly as it should be and for the best' with comedic results.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Juvenal once said, "It is difficult not to write satire", meaning that even if he put ink to paper with different intentions, his worldview would press him on in one direction. He and Voltaire would have got along famously, I suspect.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Zeker mooiste verhaal van Voltaire. Episodisch opgebouwd, maar met duidelijke lijn: de Bildung van Candide; ontluistering van het verhaal van Pangloss en tussendoor de traditionele stokpaardjes van Voltaire.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Frank McLynn's work 1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World mentioned a good deal about Voltaire, as did Leo Dramrosch's Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius. This is my first Voltaire and I was surprised by how small the novella is relative to its historical impact. This has led me to purchase Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful and to take up Tristram Shandy again. Candide and Tristram Shandy were, of course, both published in 1759 so the linkages with my earlier reading are apparent, if unintended. If anything I have gained from Candide confirmation of the idea of tending one's own garden, not to mention a burning desire to remove all further naivety from my very being.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This tiny little book took me 8 days to read. Not because it was boring, the writing is just harder to read in this day and age (to me anyway).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is my second read of Candide. I was inspired to do so after reading a biography of Voltaire. I enjoyed the book more, I think, with more of the context of Voltaire's life...or maybe I'm just older and wiser!This isn't my kind of book....too much plot, not enough character development. But, like many reviewers, I think the book raises issues that remain relevant today, and that made it thought-provoking. A true classic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A dark, comic, and biting satire. Whenever I revisit Candide, I always find Voltaire is making points which are relevant to contemporary events,
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Still funny, this sarcastic, cynical tale about the innocent young man learning about the ways of the world the hard way. "Why then was the world created?" " To drive us mad!"
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In a constant barrage of hilarious, yet fairly accurate to history horror show: another war between the french and the english, the Lisbon earthquake and the inquisition's response to it, colonialism; Candide barely survives "this best of all possible worlds" according to his philosophy professor and a popular doctrine of the time period proposed by Leibniz (the argument not being that this world is free of evil, but given our species, it's the best we can achieve - for if we were capable of optimizing our world in any facet, God would have created that one instead). His experiences teach him that humanity is shit overall:"Do you believe that men have always slaughtered each other as they do today, that they've always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates and thieves, weak, fickle, cowardly, envious, greedy, drunken, miserly, ambitious, bloodthirsty, slanderous, lecherous, fanatical, hypocritical and foolish?Do you believe that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they find them?"But in too small doses it does redeem itself individually. He ends with hope."Man cannot obliterate the cruelty of the universe, but by prudence he can shield certain small confines from that cruelty." Cultivate your garden!Pretty keen on Voltaire now.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great book. However, the Bantam Classic edition is only an ok translation. I got my copy for cheap. It tells the story but I'm sure there are other more scholarly translations I would choose if I were to read it again.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Zeker mooiste verhaal van Voltaire. Episodisch opgebouwd, maar met duidelijke lijn: de Bildung van Candide; ontluistering van het verhaal van Pangloss en tussendoor de traditionele stokpaardjes van Voltaire.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting satire - wonderful narration.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was pretty funny. I didn't understand most of the satire being that it was written well before my time, but I got the overall sense that it was humorous and quite enjoyable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Tragedy and comedy presented in sharp contrast satirising the optimism of certain philosophies.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A complete and utter failure! Voltaire presents us with the premise that this is the best of all possible worlds, but only evil befalls his poor characters: scandal, conscription, rape, murder, pillage, mutilation, disease, disaster, inquisition, genocide, adultery, slavery, shipwreck, kicks in the backside, you name it. What the author was thinking of, I can scarcely imagine. I'm going back to my garden now.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    How droll.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I read this in university and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, which I think happens to a lot of people when they read it.

    It's a crazy adventure story, with twists, and turns and even stranger characters. It revolves around Candide, a young man so named because he resembles a blank slate, for all the word and society to write on.

    There's so much to talk about within this book, even though it's so short I feel like Voltaire really crammed in some serious issues in the sparse number of pages he allocated himself. Some of the book has still stayed with me, and every once and a while I'll find myself quoting a line or two, or seeing Candide referred to in popular culture somewhere.

    His witty critiques and snarky comments helped to empower a population of people who needed a revolution.

    It looks intimidating, but I promise it's not as bad as it seems. In my opinion, it's worth it.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    A man with a naive philosophy faces a series of tragedies around the world.1/4 (Bad).It's all bitter, derisive "wit" that reads like a summary of a novel. I don't understand what any modern reader would get out of this.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A very famous novel, it is, first published in 1759. I remember only a small number of incidents but they have stuck after a half century, so...I'll call it a good book about human behaviour. I believe I read this in French...but I could have been doing a reread after doing it in English translation first.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Wish I knew what everyone sees in this one. I've known a few people who have claimed this as one of their favorite works, and to me, anyway, this book appears so slight when compared with other classical works. But then, allegory was never my favorite form of literature. I can completely understand Balzac, or Zola, or Flaubert. They were amazing writers, and you can get something new out of them with each reading, I think, depending upon what stage you are at in your own life. But it seems like there is a trend in French literature - the spare and esoteric work, the one that says, "this may not look like much, but it has Layers." I'm thinking especially of The Little Prince, this work, and possibly all of Camus. It may be very worthy. I'm sure the fault is mine here. But I just don't get it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration.One day when Cunegonde was walking near the castle, in a little wood which was called the Park, she observed Doctor Pangloss in the bushes, giving a lesson in experimental physics to her mother's waiting-maid, a very pretty and docile brunette. Mademoiselle Cunegonde had a great inclination for science and watched breathlessly the reiterated experiments she witnessed; she observed clearly the Doctor's sufficient reason, the effects and the causes, and returned home very much excited, pensive, filled with the desire of learning, reflecting that she might be the sufficient reason of young Candide and he might be hers.Candide that he was a young metaphysician, extremely ignorant of the things of this world...Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.Pangloss made answer in these terms: "Oh, my dear Candide, you remember Paquette, that pretty wench who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the delights of paradise, which produced in me those hell torments with which you see me devoured; she was infected with them, she is perhaps dead of them. This present Paquette received of a learned Grey Friar, who had traced it to its source; he had had it of an old countess, who had received it from a cavalry captain, who owed it to a marchioness, who took it from a page, who had received it from a Jesuit, who when a novice had it in a direct line from one of the companions of Christopher Columbus. For my part I shall give it to nobody, I am dying."Our men defended themselves like the Pope's soldiers; they flung themselves upon their knees, and threw down their arms,"Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him." "But is there not a pleasure," said Candide,[Pg 141] "in criticising everything, in pointing out faults where others see nothing but beauties?" "That is to say," replied Martin, "that there is some pleasure in having no pleasure."Instantly Candide sent for a Jew, to whom he sold for fifty thousand sequins a diamond worth a hundred thousand, though the fellow swore to him by Abraham that he could give him no more."I know also," said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden." "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle." "Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    For good reason, Candide is considered one of the true "must reads." Centuries after its writing, the book remains current not only in its concise, easy reading style, but also in its message about human nature. An all time favorite.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I think that Candide is probably the type of book that enriches the reader the deeper he or she delves into it. It would probably reward repeated readings. It would probably reveal deeper layers of satire and absurdity if it were read in the original French. It would probably take on deeper shades of meaning if it were read in conjunction with any of the commentaries that have been written about it over the past 250-odd years.

    Having said that, I'm not going to do any of those things. I have way too many books on my plate to reread this book any time in the next year; the limits of my French (one year of college French, an ex-wife who was fluent) would make reading it in that language a brutal, dictionary-in-hand chore; and I generally dislike reading books about books, so commentaries are right out.

    So, I didn't dig too deeply into Candide, instead just reading it as the absurd tale it was, not looking for too much meaning beyond the surface. And you know what? I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was like Forrest Gump, only with a little less faith in humanity and a lot more murder, rape, cannibalism, zoophilia, and child prostitution. It was full of pitch-black humor, and the breezy, matter-of-fact way in which some of the horrific situations were described only served to make it funnier.

    Unsurprisingly, this was a super dark book, and an angry one, full of scathing satire. It served up a double middle finger salute to pretty much everyone: nobility, clergy, self-styled intellectuals, real intellectuals, commoners, the French, the Germans, the English - nobody escapes Voltaire's poison pen. Virtually everyone is portrayed as stupid, dishonest, self-serving, small-minded, and hypocritical. Religion and government receive the brunt of Voltaire's onslaught; it isn't hard to see why this book was banned in so many places for so many years - even well into the 20th century in parts of the United States.

    This was a fast, hilarious, exhilaratingly bitter read, and just the thing to top off your misanthropy tank if it's ever running low. Fine family fun!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was not at all what I thought it would be. The read was interesting, and heavy on the satire. The theme is easily understood and carried throughout the work, and it's a relatively quick read. Read this if you have a couple of hours to spare.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Historically interesting satire against the set of France's enlightenment period. Main character is just what it says - candid. Great if you love philosophy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved it!!! Can't believe how something written more than 250 years ago is so relavent to today's society. Voltaire is brilliant and his satirical, cutting humor - spot on!!

Book preview

Candide - Voltaire

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Candide, by Voltaire

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Title: Candide

Author: Voltaire

Commentator: Philip Littell

Release Date: November 27, 2006 [EBook #19942]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANDIDE ***

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Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document.


THE MODERN LIBRARY

OF THE WORLD'S BEST BOOKS

CANDIDE BY VOLTAIRE

The Publishers will be glad to mail complete list of titles in the Modern Library. The list is representative of the Great Moderns and is one of the most important contributions to publishing that has been made for many years. Every reader of books will find titles he needs at a low price in an attractive form.

CANDIDE

By VOLTAIRE

INTRODUCTION BY PHILIP LITTELL

BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1918, by

Boni & Liveright, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America


INTRODUCTION

Ever since 1759, when Voltaire wrote Candide in ridicule of the notion that this is the best of all possible worlds, this world has been a gayer place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or six generations have found that its laughter does not grow old.

Candide has not aged. Yet how different the book would have looked if Voltaire had written it a hundred and fifty years later than 1759. It would have been, among other things, a book of sights and sounds. A modern writer would have tried to catch and fix in words some of those Atlantic changes which broke the Atlantic monotony of that voyage from Cadiz to Buenos Ayres. When Martin and Candide were sailing the length of the Mediterranean we should have had a contrast between naked scarped Balearic cliffs and headlands of Calabria in their mists. We should have had quarter distances, far horizons, the altering silhouettes of an Ionian island. Colored birds would have filled Paraguay with their silver or acid cries.

Dr. Pangloss, to prove the existence of design in the universe, says that noses were made to carry spectacles, and so we have spectacles. A modern satirist would not try to paint with Voltaire's quick brush the doctrine that he wanted to expose. And he would choose a more complicated doctrine than Dr. Pangloss's optimism, would study it more closely, feel his destructive way about it with a more learned and caressing malice. His attack, stealthier, more flexible and more patient than Voltaire's, would call upon us, especially when his learning got a little out of control, to be more than patient. Now and then he would bore us. Candide never bored anybody except William Wordsworth.

Voltaire's men and women point his case against optimism by starting high and falling low. A modern could not go about it after this fashion. He would not plunge his people into an unfamiliar misery. He would just keep them in the misery they were born to.

But such an account of Voltaire's procedure is as misleading as the plaster cast of a dance. Look at his procedure again. Mademoiselle Cunégonde, the illustrious Westphalian, sprung from a family that could prove seventy-one quarterings, descends and descends until we find her earning her keep by washing dishes in the Propontis. The aged faithful attendant, victim of a hundred acts of rape by negro pirates, remembers that she is the daughter of a pope, and that in honor of her approaching marriage with a Prince of Massa-Carrara all Italy wrote sonnets of which not one was passable. We do not need to know French literature before Voltaire in order to feel, although the lurking parody may escape us, that he is poking fun at us and at himself. His laughter at his own methods grows more unmistakable at the last, when he caricatures them by casually assembling six fallen monarchs in an inn at Venice.

A modern assailant of optimism would arm himself with social pity. There is no social pity in Candide. Voltaire, whose light touch on familiar institutions opens them and reveals their absurdity, likes to remind us that the slaughter and pillage and murder which Candide witnessed among the Bulgarians was perfectly regular, having been conducted according to the laws and usages of war. Had Voltaire lived to-day he would have done to poverty what he did to war. Pitying the poor, he would have shown us poverty as a ridiculous anachronism, and both the ridicule and the pity would have expressed his indignation.

Almost any modern, essaying a philosophic tale, would make it long. Candide is only a Hamlet and a half long. It would hardly have been shorter if Voltaire had spent three months on it, instead of those three days. A conciseness to be matched in English by nobody except Pope, who can say a plagiarizing enemy steals much, spends little, and has nothing left, a conciseness which Pope toiled and sweated for, came as easy as wit to Voltaire. He can afford to be witty, parenthetically, by the way, prodigally, without saving, because he knows there is more wit where that came from.

One of Max Beerbohm's cartoons shows us the young Twentieth Century going at top speed, and watched by two of his predecessors. Underneath is this legend: The Grave Misgivings of the Nineteenth Century, and the Wicked Amusement of the Eighteenth, in Watching the Progress (or whatever it is) of the Twentieth. This Eighteenth Century snuff-taking and malicious, is like Voltaire, who nevertheless must know, if he happens to think of it, that not yet in the Twentieth Century, not for all its speed mania, has any one come near to equalling the speed of a prose tale by Voltaire. Candide is a full book. It is filled with mockery, with inventiveness, with things as concrete as things to eat and coins, it has time for the neatest intellectual clickings, it is never hurried, and it moves with the most amazing rapidity. It has the rapidity of high spirits playing a game. The dry high spirits of this destroyer of optimism make most optimists look damp and depressed. Contemplation of the stupidity which deems happiness possible almost made Voltaire happy. His attack on optimism is one of the gayest books in the world. Gaiety has been scattered everywhere up and down its pages by Voltaire's lavish hand, by his thin fingers.

Many propagandist satirical books have been written with Candide in mind, but not too many. To-day, especially, when new faiths are changing the structure of the world, faiths which are still plastic enough to be deformed by every disciple, each disciple for himself, and which have not yet received the final deformation known as universal acceptance, to-day Candide is an inspiration to every narrative satirist who hates one of these new faiths, or hates every interpretation of it but his own. Either hatred will serve as a motive to satire.

That is why the present is one of the right moments to republish Candide. I hope it will inspire younger men and women, the only ones who can be inspired, to have a try at Theodore, or Militarism; Jane, or Pacifism; at So-and-So, the Pragmatist or the Freudian. And I hope, too, that they will without trying hold their pens with an eighteenth century lightness, not inappropriate to a philosophic tale. In Voltaire's fingers, as Anatole France has said, the pen runs and laughs.

Philip Littell.


CONTENTS


CANDIDE

I

HOW CANDIDE WAS BROUGHT UP IN A MAGNIFICENT CASTLE, AND HOW HE WAS EXPELLED THENCE.

In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through the injuries of time.

The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was his grand almoner. They called him My Lord, and laughed at all his stories.

The Baron's lady weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and was therefore a person of great consideration, and she did the honours of the house with a dignity that commanded still greater respect. Her daughter Cunegonde was seventeen years of age, fresh-coloured, comely, plump,

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