by Voltaire
Pas tout-à-fait, dit l’esprit; mais il en approche: il faut que tout soit en sa place. Hé mais, dit Memnon, certains poètes, certains philosophes, ont donc grand tort de dire que tout est bien? —Ils ont grande raison, dit le philosophe de là-haut, en considérant l’arrangement de l’univers entier. —Ah! je ne croirai cela, répliqua le pauvre Memnon, que quand je ne serai plus borgne.
In this and the following years, moreover, Voltaire’s own experiences led him to take an increasingly gloomy view of life, and strengthened his awareness of human suffering. The death of Madame Du Châtelet in 1749, the disappointment of his hopes for a congenial existence in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom at the Prussian court, the humiliations to which he was subjected when the inevitable break with Frederick came in 1753, his subsequent wanderings and ill-health: all this combined to create a pessimistic mood which is clearly reflected in Voltaire’s correspondence, especially in the years 1752–5. All he seeks for himself is a refuge from the world’s ills, a haven where he may enjoy in his now declining years some small measure of tranquillity. It is interesting to see Voltaire, in a poem written in March 1755, describing his hopes on taking possession of his new home at ‘Les Délices,’ near Geneva (the house which to-day is occupied by the ‘Institut et Musée Voltaire’); the garden of Candide is already beginning to take shape:
O maison d’Aristippe! O jardins d’Épicure!
. . . . . . . . .
Empire de Pomone et de Flore sa sœur,
Recevez votre possesseur;
Qu’il soit, ainsi que vous, solitaire et tranquille.
Je ne me vante point d’avoir en cet asile
Rencontré le parfait bonheur;
Il n’est point retiré dans le fond d’un bocage;
Il est encor moins chez les rois;
Il n’est pas même chez le sage:
De cette courte vie il n’est point le partage;
Il faut y renoncer; mais on peut quelquefois
Embrasser au moins son image.
In these circumstances, the Lisbon earthquake in November of that year seemed above all a confirmation of Voltaire’s ideas, a further proof that ‘la destinée se joue des hommes’ and that the theories of the optimists were far too glib. His Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne is not only a cry of horror at human suffering, but also a protest against those who, with their slogan ‘Tout est bien,’ would shrug off such suffering as a necessary ingredient in the divinely appointed order. Voltaire now insists that, in the face of a natural disaster of such magnitude, all the stock solutions of the problem of evil are unconvincing: the existence of such misery in a world created by a just and omnipotent God is simply incomprehensible. But the worst feature of optimism, Voltaire here maintains, is that by insisting on the rational perfection of the world as it is, by saying that ‘tout est bien’ here and now, it is in fact denying man any hope of improvement for the future, and thereby making life intolerable. The point is given an orthodox Christian emphasis, for publication, by being linked to the idea of hope for the life to come rather than for life on earth, but the force of Voltaire’s criticism is not thereby weakened:
Nos chagrins, nos regrets, nos pertes sont sans nombre.
Le passé n’est pour nous qu’un triste souvenir;
Le présent est affreux s’il n’est point d’avenir,
Si la nuit du tombeau détruit l’être qui pense.
Un jour tout sera bien, voilà notre espérance,
Tout est bien aujourd’hui, voilà l’illusion.
Les sages me trompaient, et Dieu seul a raison.
Again, we are at the source of an idea central to Candide. It is hope, the hope of future happiness with Cunégonde, which supports Candide in his wanderings; and it is hope, of a less ambitious if more solid sort, which still inspires the labours of the little community at Constantinople.
The Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, however, as its preface makes clear, is primarily a critique of Pope’s Essay on Man. The Leibnizianism which holds the centre of the stage in Candide plays no part here, and had, indeed, received very little emphasis in any of Voltaire’s earlier discussions of the subject. Events in 1756, however, were to take Voltaire’s thoughts again to Germany and to remind him of the German optimists and their theories.
The outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in the summer of 1756 brought Germany into the forefront of events, and the long series of campaigns there during the ensuing years, with the devastation and poverty they brought in their train, gave that country the melancholy distinction of becoming the outstanding current example of extreme human misery. Voltaire himself was acutely conscious of this suffering, for he knew the country, had friends there who were involved, and of course had been on intimate terms with the German ruler chiefly concerned, Frederick the Great. Even more than those of the Lisbon earthquake, then, the horrors of the Seven Years’ War had a personal immediacy for Voltaire which would by itself perhaps suffice to explain their appearance in Candide. But they are also relevant to the theme of the book in another, and uniquely direct, way: Voltaire was not insensitive to the irony of a situation in which the country which was par excellence the home of optimism had itself become that doctrine’s most striking refutation. Rossbach and Leuthen and their aftermath formed a bitter contrast with the serene optimism of the Wolffians of Göttingen and Halle. Voltaire’s correspondence at this period, and especially his letters to one of his German friends who had Wolffian sympathies, the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, is sprinkled with sardonic allusions to Leibnizianism. In October 1756, after news of a Prussian victory, he writes: ‘Voilà déjà environ vingt mille hommes morts pour cette querelle, dans laquelle aucun d’eux n’avait la moindre part. C’est encore un des agréments du meilleur des mondes possibles’ (Best. 6333). And later, on 4 January 1758, at a time when he may well have been on the point of beginning Candide, he writes her a letter in the form of a comic proclamation to the mercenary troops occupying the Duchess’s territories:
A tous croates, pandours, housards …: il ne doit être rien de commun entre Mme la duchesse de Gotha et vous, vilains pandours … vous cherchez à rendre ce monde-ci le plus abominable des mondes possibles, et elle voudrait qu’il fût le meilleur. Il le serait sans doute, si elle en était la maîtresse. Il est vrai qu’elle est un peu embarrassée avec le système de Leibniz; elle ne sait comment faire, avec tant de mal physique et moral, pour vous prouver l’optimisme; mais c’est vous qui en êtes cause, maudits housards … [Best. 6855].
The setting and themes of Candide are thus of immediate personal relevance to Voltaire’s own thought and experience. The intellectual problem which it discusses is one that had serious significance for him, for it was created by the conflict between the realities of life as he had himself experienced and observed them, and the implications of that belief in a rational God to which he was sincerely committed. His hostility to the optimist solution, though he found the optimists exasperating for other reasons too, springs also from the depths of his personality. He clearly sees that optimism is a doctrine of despair: by denying the possibility of improvement in a world in which, already, ‘tout est bien,’ it reduces man to passive acquiescence in his misfortunes; while Voltaire, even at his gloomiest, remains a man of energy, for whom life is meaningless and worthless if it is not a struggle—if it does not offer the individual some prospect of successful effort to escape from suffering and improve his condition. Finally, the historical events of the 1750s combined with his own misfortunes to give depth and immediacy to his compassion for suffering humanity, and at the same time provided him, in war-torn Germany, with a supremely ironic example of the follies of optimism.
* * *
† From Voltaire: Candide (London: Edward Arnold, 1960), pp. 41–57. Reprinted by permission of the estate of W. H. Barber.
DENNIS FLETCHER
Candide and the Philosophy of the Garden†
In his wide-ranging survey of the Enlightenment Peter Gay heads his stimu
lating discussion of Candide ‘The Epicurean as Stoic.’1 E. Rovillain, on the other hand, in the course of a detailed study of Stoic elements in Zadig, unequivocally classifies the eponymous hero of Voltaire’s later conte as a representative of the philosophy of the Garden rather than an exponent of the philosophy of the Porch: “Il est amusant de constater que dans Candide, satire contre les systèmes, le héros finit en épicurien, vivant dans la solitude et la médiocrité, sans action, sans passions et sans amour, se contentant de cultiver son jardin.”2 René Pomeau refers to the “morale épicurienne de l’action qui est le dernier mot du conte,”3 but is quoted disapprovingly by J. G. Weightman who detects “no trace of Epicurean serenity or moderation” in Candide.4 These few examples of a more widespread divergence of opinion point to the need for an examination of the putative Epicureanism of Voltaire’s tale and the extent to which it may be distinguished from any strain of Stoicism.
Assessing the total import and impact of Candide rather than the message offered in the final chapter, J. G. Weightman distinguished as one of the principal features of the conte “an instinctive zest for life.”5 The passionate attachment to this world, which takes the form of an apparent indestructibility in the case of the survivors who finally make up the little community, has often been remarked upon, though rarely, if ever, associated with Epicureanism. La Vieille, however, who illustrates par excellence the elemental urge to live, the ignoble aspect of bearing “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (“Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j’aimais encore la vie …”),6 may be fairly taken as exemplifying the New Hedonism of Epicurus, which posited that “life was the greatest good; it was a pleasure to be alive even if maimed or in pain.”7 Norman Wentworth De Witt’s persuasive exposition of the ethical doctrine of Epicurus stresses how it gives precedence to the Feelings (or Nature) over reason. Epicurus, presented by De Witt8 as a natural pragmatist intent upon stressing the inestimable boon of having survived calamity and impatient with Plato’s tedious harping upon the meaning of ‘good’ recalls Candide’s highly-developed instinct of self-preservation and his final irritation with the endless arguments of Pangloss.
In so far as it emphasises human resilience rather than superhuman endurance, moral frailty rather than strength of character, Candide hardly deserves to be called Stoic. The unspectacular eking-out of a miserable existence has nothing in common with the Stoic aspiration after la gloire, to be realized by a Cornelian exercise of will and, if needs be, ‘heroic’ self-immolation. Among the Roman Stoics, suicide is condoned, advocated even, whenever a dispassionate consideration of the balance of advantage points to this course as the most sensible one to take. Seneca is frequently exhilarated by the prospect of painless, self-administered quietus. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius both envisage the possibility of a voluntary exit at any time from an intolerable existence. Other Stoics stress considerations of personal advantage less but see suicide as a fitting end if committed for a noble ideal, such as the love of one’s country.9 The archetypal Stoic in this respect is the self-dramatising Cato of Utica, who, after a first attempt to evade capture by eviscerating himself had been foiled, manfully tore out his own entrails at the earliest convenient opportunity. A comparison with Candide is instructive here: Voltaire shows his hero (or anti-hero) as a deserter, shivering with fear and intent on picking his way through a mass of twitching limbs as he flees to save his own skin. The humble Epicurean ideal of safe obscurity is espoused by him and his fellow-refugees at the end of the tale. The rural retreat beside the Bosphorus illustrates Gilbert Murray’s remark: “The best that Epicurus has really to say of the world is that if you are very wise and do not attract its notice,… it will not hurt you.”10
It is, in our view, this shrinking back from the hurly-burly of life which constitutes the ‘message’ of Candide’s “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” and gives it its pre-eminently Epicurean bias. The old Turk’s choice of rural retirement and his distaste for political activity convinces Candide that peace of mind could be gained for himself and his own ‘petite société’ by imitating this model of disengagement. Both the ideal of inner tranquility and that of non-involvement in public affairs are essentially Epicurean. Epicurus’s advice to his followers was: “We must release ourselves from the prison of affairs and politics”11 and the condemnation of the envy, competition and factional spirit engendered by political activity is a dominant note in their writings. In this, Epicureanism is diametrically opposed to Stoicism which favours political commitment and stresses the citizen’s civic obligations. In a more general perspective, the ideal of withdrawal from the world which is presented in the concluding chapter of Candide is at variance with the expansive Stoic urge to extend to the full one’s recognition of others. The doctrine of oikeiôsis, one of the most important contributions of Stoicism to Western philosophy, was graphically presented by Hierocles in the second century A.D. as a number of concentric circles with man at the centre of the first circle, and in the others, his parents, wife, blood relations, more distant relatives, fellow-citizens, compatriots, and finally, in the outer circle, the human race.12 This image is familiar to many from its use by Pope in his Essay on Man;13 the convenient evaporation in a glow of cosmic optimism of the tensions between the relationships involved in this scheme is, of course, one of the targets for Voltaire’s satire in Candide. Self-love does not automatically “serve the virtuous mind to wake” in Epicurean thought. The self-regarding impulses can be seen as still very near the basic animal instinct of self-preservation (Rousseau’s amour de soi, characteristic of the state of nature). One can see much to be said in favour of the thesis, put forward in an invigorating article by Roy Wolper, that Candide finally shows he “has learned little about virtue.” The expansive character of this key concept of Stoicism is succinctly underlined by Wolper: “Implicit in virtue is the consideration of the other, not self; the world, not the little group only.”14 The reverse of this medal is the scope which is offered in a small, tightly-knit community for close inter-personal relationships as opposed to a diffuse benevolence which aspires to the impossible aim of embracing all mankind. Epicureanism in its positive championship of the value of private moral obligations and of friendship lends an ethical content to the activities of Candide and his companions in their smallholding.
For the Epicureans, the way to happiness was through philia: friendship or affection; for the Stoics, such manifestations of human nature were considered as hindrances to the development of a sense of attachment to more important ideals. In its most extreme form this Stoic aversion to the Epicurean emphasis upon personal relations appeared as a distrust of all emotions. This opposition often appears in Voltaire’s works as a tension between the rational and affective sides of his nature. It is associated specifically with the divergence between the Stoic and Epicurean attitudes in his play La Mort de César, which reflects preoccupations which were not confined to the period of its gestation in the early 1730’s. Without analysing the tragedy in detail, one can say that the subordination of private emotions to patriotism is associated with Brutus, and his mentor, that supreme Stoic, Cato of Utica, whilst the values of friendship and love and the ideal of compromise as a means of achieving personal happiness are represented by the Epicurean Caesar, who reveals himself to be Brutus’s father. Cassius appears as a complete fanatic who urges parricide upon Brutus as an inescapable duty. This connection between Stoicism and fanaticism was made elsewhere by Voltaire: the seventh of his Discours en vers sur l’homme (Sur la vraie vertu) includes both the Jansenist and the Stoic in a portrait-gallery of misguided zealots who have confused virtue with imperviousness to humane feelings. Brutus’s disillusionment with the Stoic conception of virtue is referred to, and the leitmotif of La Mort de César—friendship, clemency, pity as opposed to a rigid and unfeeling conception of justice—are again vindicated. The Epicurean ideal of moderate hedonism is explicitly contrasted with the excessively lofty Stoic ambition of changing human nature in the fifth of thes
e discours (Sur la nature du plaisir); the values of industrious retirement from the world and of friendship which are approved reflect both Voltaire’s own life-style at Cirey, Les Délices and Ferney and that of Candide and his companions in their métairie.
Voltaire’s correspondence has been used with much penetration recently by such critics as Geoffrey Murray and Paul Ilie to show the persistence of certain preoccupations of Voltaire and their relation to the genesis of Candide.15 In both cases attention has been concentrated upon the connection between the letters of the period 1755–1759 and the final chapter of the conte. Despite the undeniably valuable results of such restriction of the field of investigation, this approach has its drawbacks. The search for consistency and continuity in Voltaire’s thought is a larger enterprise than that of exposing “the connective threads between Voltaire’s letters and Chapter 30 of Candide”16 and the evidence of all Voltaire’s creative writings is relevant to it. The thread of continuity in Voltaire’s life and works may be snipped up into sections for critical convenience, the letters of a given period may be put under the microscope, but this is obviously not the best way of seeing Voltaire steadily and seeing him whole. This is suggested by Ilie’s handling of what he presents as the “core-problem” of his study: “the existence of a theme: Voltaire as an Epicurean.”17 The note which he appends to this statement of the problem points out that his interpretation “will stress contemplation and the senses, in contrast to Pomeau’s idea that ‘Il formulait la morale épicurienne de l’action qui est le dernier mot du conte.’ ” This interpretation clearly deserves close scrutiny in any discussion of the validity of attaching an ‘Epicurean’ label to Candide.
