Candide (Third Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)

by Voltaire

  But these stand-alone fictions (novels) are only a part of Voltaire’s fictional output. Throughout the 1760s, he continues to produce ‘tous ces petits morceaux d’une philosophie allégorique,’ indeed they are a major tool in his campaign to ‘écraser l’Infâme.’ The one-volume Contes de Guillaume Vadé (1764) is an anthology including both prose and verse contes, as well as other works such as the Discours aux Welches and the Lettre de M. Clocpitre à M. Eratou; the volume enjoyed great success and became Voltaire’s best-selling work of fiction after Candide.47 But this work aside, it is interesting that Voltaire never oversaw a collected volume of his short fictions. True, he seems to have proposed such a volume in 1751 to Michel Lambert (D4369); in 1764, Panckoucke wanted to publish a volume of contes (D11876, D11889); and in 1767, Voltaire speaks to Jacques Lacombe about a ‘petit recueil de contes’ (D14146, D14423): but not one of these projects was realised. Instead, Voltaire conceived miscellanies studded with mosaic fictions. The first edition of Le Philosophe ignorant (1766) contains two short fictions, Petite digression and Aventure indienne, which should of course be read as an integral part of the volume.48 The first authorised edition of Les Lois de Minos appeared together with twenty-eight other short pieces, including La Bégueule and Le Marseillais et le lion.49 And so the boundaries of the conte become increasingly blurred, as Voltaire incorporates mosaic fictions in a range of different works. The Traité sur la tolérance (1763) is made up of short chapters of contrasting genres, including one, a dialogue between a dying man and a priest, which is something of a fictional topos.50 Both the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) and the Questions sur l’Encyclopédie (1770–72) contain ‘articles’ which approximate to short fictions. Writing in 1765, in the wake of the Calas affair, an opponent of the philosophes attacked the deists for writing works which mixed genre and style, works he characterised as written ‘à la mosaïque’:51 the subversive nature of mosaic fictions, a function of their form as much as of their content, was clearly felt.

  Voltaire’s essays in fiction are clearly not restricted to his contes. In the encounter between the French visitor and the Quaker at the start of the Lettres philosophiques or in the observations which open the Traité de métaphysique, Voltaire employs the devices of narrative fiction.52 In this respect his technique echoes that of a prose writer he particularly admired: as Jacques Van den Heuvel observes, ‘la méthode de Locke était riche de certains prolongements dans le domaine de la fiction.’53 In Le Pyrrhonisme de l’histoire (1769), as Voltaire recounts the litany of preposterous beliefs held in earlier ages, he ends up producing what Simon Davies has rightly called an ‘anthology of contes.’54 Roger Pearson puts this another way when, in a happy phrase, he writes that Voltaire ‘thinks narratively.’55 The term conte philosophique was an invention of Voltaire’s publishers in the 1770s, and was given a further lease of life by critics after Lanson who found it a useful label. But to characterise a certain subset of Voltaire’s short fictions as contes philosophiques is in the end to create an arbitrary category, and a misleading category moreover, in that it distracts us from the broader aesthetic questions which these short fictions pose. To understand how fiction forms part of Voltaire’s polemical arsenal, it is necessary to appreciate his wholly original manipulation of the form of the conte as part of a broader strategy to create shifting miscellanies illuminated by fictional fireworks.

  * * *

      †  From Enlightenment and Narrative: Essays in Honour of Richard A. Francis by Colleagues and Friends, ed. Philip Robinson, Nottingham French Studies 48, no. 3 (Autumn 2009): 61–73. Reproduced by permission of Nottingham French Studies (www.nottinghamfrenchstudies.co.uk).

      1. L’Ingénu, ed. Richard A. Francis, Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968–) [hereafter OCV], vol. 63c (2006), p. 104.

      2. Gustave Lanson, L’Art de la prose (Paris: Fayard, 1908), p. 182.

      3. André Lagarde and Laurent Michard, XVIIIe Siècle (Paris: Bordas, 1970), p. 130.

      4. Yves Stalloni, Les Genres littéraires (Paris: Nathan, 2000), p. 74.

      5. Christiane Mervaud, Voltaire en toutes lettres (Paris: Bordas, 1991), p. 72.

      6. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 85–86.

      7. Ronald S. Crane, ‘Literature, philosophy, and the history of ideas,’ Modern Philology, 52 (1954), 73–83.

      8. Jonathan Rée, Philosophical Tales: an essay on philosophy and literature (London: Methuen, 1987).

      9. Jonathan Rée, ‘Philosophical fictions,’ Notebooks (Working Papers in Humanities, Middlesex University), 2 (1995), 39–43 (p. 42).

    10. Angus Martin, ‘Preliminary statistics on the practice and terminology of short fiction in eighteenth-century France,’ French Forum, 3 (1978), 240–50 (p. 247).

    11. Angus Martin (ed.), Anthologie du conte en France 1750–1799: philosophes et cœurs sensibles (Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1981), p. 30.

    12. Voltaire, Romans et contes, ed. F. Deloffre and J. Van den Heuvel, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), p. xv.

    13. An earlier two-volume Recueil des romans de M. de Voltaire (1764) was clearly not authorised by Voltaire; nor was the three-volume collection Romans et contes (Bouillon, 1778). This last edition is however an interesting attempt to rethink the fictional corpus: it includes the contes en vers, and various prose fragments taken from the Fragments sur l’Inde and the Questions sur l’Encyclopédie.

    14. There is no mention of the conte philosophique in, for example, the Dictionnaire des genres et notions littéraires, 2nd ed. (Paris: Encyclopaedia Universalis—Albin Michel, 2001).

    15. F. Deloffre sets out clearly some of the difficulties of identifying the corpus, in Voltaire, Romans et contes, pp. xi–xix.

    16. Voltaire, Contes en vers et en prose, ed. Sylvain Menant, 2 vol. (Paris: Garnier, 1992–1993).

    17. Turin: Einaudi, 2004.

    18. See, for example, Richard A. Francis, ‘Les critiques dans les Contes de Voltaire,’ in M. Cook and M.-E. Plagnol-Diéval (eds.), Critique, Critiques au 18e siècle (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 137–49.

    19. See Nicholas Cronk, ‘Voltaire, Lucian, and the philosophical traveller,’ in J. Renwick (ed.), L’Invitation au voyage: studies in honour of Peter France (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 75–84. See also W. H. Barber, ‘Voltaire’s astronauts,’ French Studies, 30 (1976), 28–42.

    20. See Christiane Mervaud’s edition of these tales, OCV, vol. 1B, pp. 47–129.

    21. See Jacques Van den Heuvel’s introduction to his edition of this work, OCV, vol. 17, pp. 539–42.

    22. Voltaire, Correspondence and related documents, OCV, vols. 85–135 (1968–77), D2033. References to this edition will be included in the text hereafter.

    23. For a summary of recent research on the dating of this work, see Revue Voltaire, 2 (2002), 264–65.

    24. Correspondance de Mme de Graffigny, ed. J. A. Dainard and others (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985–), vol. 1, p. 211.

    25. Yvon Belaval suggests that the conte philosophique has its roots, in part at least, in social spaces like the salon and the café, where the art of conversation was cultivated (‘Le conte philosophique,’ in W. H. Barber and others (eds.), The Age of the Enlightenment: Studies presented to Theodore Besterman (Edinburgh, Oliver and Boyd, 1967), pp. 308–17).

    26. ‘Voltaire en conversation avec un groupe de paysans de Ferney,’ Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes. Reproduced in Garry Apgar, L’Art singulier de Jean Huber: voir Voltaire (Paris: Adam Biro, 1995), pp. 139, 158. On Voltaire’s skill as a story-teller, see also the testimony of the baron of Gleichen, quoted by William F. Bottiglia, Voltaire’s Candide: Analysis of a classic, 2nd ed., SVEC, 7A (Geneva: Institut et Musée
Voltaire, 1964), pp. 57–58.

    27. Voltaire, Dialogues et anecdotes philosophiques, ed. Raymond Naves (Paris: Garnier, 1939), p. iii.

    28. See Jacqueline Hellegouarc’h, ‘Encore la duchesse du Maine: notes sur les rubans jaunes de Zadig,’ SVEC, 176 (1979), 37–40.

    29. T. I. Duvernet, La Vie de Voltaire (n.p., 1787), pp. 106–07.

    30. Sébastien Longchamp, Anecdotes sur la vie privée de Monsieur de Voltaire, ed. F. S. Eigeldinger and R. Trousson (Paris: Champion, 2009), p. 60. This passage was subsequently much rewritten by Decroix, cf. pp. 162–63.

    31. On this device, see Jean Sareil, ‘Les anges de Voltaire,’ Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 20 (1973), 99–112.

    32. René Pomeau, La Religion de Voltaire, new ed. (Paris: Nizet, 1969), p. 248.

    33. Laurence L. Bongie, ‘Crisis and the birth of the Voltairean conte,’ Modern Language Quarterly, 23 (1962), 53–64.

    34. See Haydn Mason, ‘Zadig and the birth of the Voltaire conte,’ Rousseau and the Eighteenth Century: Essays in memory of R. A. Leigh, ed. Marian Hobson, J. T. A. Leigh and Robert Wokler (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1992), pp. 279–90.

    35. Correspondance littéraire, ed. M. Tourneux (Paris: Garnier, 1877–1882), vol. 12, pp. 381–82 (review of Le Grand, Fabliaux ou contes, April, 1780).

    36. Recueil de pièces en vers et en prose, par l’auteur de la tragédie de ‘Sémiramis’ ([Paris: Lambert] 1750 [1749]). In this volume Memnon immediately follows the Discours en vers sur l’homme, to which it is closely related.

    37. See D. W. Smith, ‘The publication of Micromégas,’ SVEC, 219 (1983), 63–91.

    38. See David Williams, ‘Voltaire on the sentimental novel,’ SVEC, 135 (1975), 115–34.

    39. Voltaire even boasted of the profitability of this latter position: see Commentaire historique sur les œuvres de l’auteur de ‘La Henriade,’ Œuvres completes de Voltaire, ed. L. Moland (Paris: Garnier, 1877–85) [hereafter Moland], vol. 1, p. 88.

    40. OCV, vol. 30B, p. 157.

    41. OCV, vol. 30B, p. 249.

    42. Voir OCV, vol. 30B, pp. 249–55.

    43. Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, vol. 4 (1771), pp. 57–66.

    44. Moland, vol. 21, p. 95.

    45. See Nicholas Cronk, ‘Les dialogues de Voltaire: vers une poétique du fragmentaire,’ Revue Voltaire, 5 (2005), pp. 71–82.

    46. Correspondance littéraire, vol. 4, p. 85 (1 March 1759).

    47. See Edouard Guitton, ‘Une singularité bibliographique et littéraire: les Contes de Guillaume Vadé (1764), ou Voltaire et l’impact vadéen,’ in M. Delon et C. Seth (eds.), Voltaire en Europe: Hommage à Christiane Mervaud (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 291–97.

    48. See Nicholas Cronk, ‘Le Philosophe ignorant, volume de mélanges,’ in N. Cronk (ed.), Voltaire and the 1760s: essays for John Renwick (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation), SVEC, 2008:10, pp. 195–205.

    49. See Nicholas Cronk, ‘Auteur et autorité dans les mélanges: l’exemple des Lois de Minos, tragédie avec les notes de M. de Morza et plusieurs pièces détachées (1773),’ Revue Voltaire, 6 (2006), 53–68.

    50. See Michel Delon, ‘Le Mourant et le Barbare,’ in N. Cronk (ed.), Etudes sur le ‘Traité sur la tolérance’ de Voltaire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 224–29.

    51. Le Philosophe dithyrambique (Paris: de Lormel, 1765), p. xlvii.

    52. Joseph Bianco, for example, points to narrative parallels between the Lettres philosophiques and Zadig in his article ‘Zadig et l’origine du conte philosophique: aux antipodes de l’unité,’ Poétique, 68 (1986), 443–61.

    53. Jacques Van den Heuvel, Voltaire dans ses contes (Paris: Colin, 1967), p. 82.

    54. See Simon Davies, ‘Le Pyrrhonisme de l’histoire, Voltaire’s anthology of contes,’ in N. Cronk (ed.), Voltaire and the 1760s: essays for John Renwick (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation), SVEC, 2008:10, pp. 207–15.

    55. Roger Pearson, The Fables of reason: a study of Voltaire’s ‘contes philosophiques’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 5.

  CRITICISM

  J. G. WEIGHTMAN

  The Quality of Candide†

  It may seem late in the day to ask how good a book Candide really is. Has the world not been long agreed that it is a masterpiece? It started triumphantly by being banned in Paris and Geneva, and has gone on selling ever since. It has provided France and the world with two or three proverbial expressions. Schopenhauer praised it in the most emphatic terms;1 Flaubert said that it contained the quintessence of Voltaire’s writings;2 H. N. Brailsford declared that it “ranks in its own way with Don Quixote and Faust.”3 So alive is it, indeed, that it was recently turned into an American musical and has thus shared with Manon Lescaut and Les Liaisons dangereuses the honour of being relaunched in the twentieth century as a work with a universal appeal for mass audiences.

  But, on second thoughts, this may appear a doubtful honour and make us wonder on what level of success Candide has been operating. Manon Lescaut and Les Liaisons dangereuses are perhaps compromising connections, since their moral and aesthetic acceptability has often been questioned by literary critics. And it is true that Voltaire himself is still often referred to as if he were, generally speaking, rather disreputable; irreverent, outmoded, a mere maker of debating points. Faguet’s ‘un chaos d’idées claires’ [a chaos of clear ideas] is a Voltairean jibe that has been used, effectively, against Voltaire. Mr. Martin Turnell, a contemporary English critic with a stern approach to French Literature, refers briefly to ‘the flashy vulgarity of Candide.’4 Even those people who have a genuine interest in Voltaire often imply that we should not look for depths or complexities in him. Carl Becker, after doubting whether Voltaire really understood the brilliance of his own witticisms, suggests that his scepticism did not amount to much, and that Candide is not a central text:

  The cynicism of Voltaire was not bred in the bone … It was all on the surface, signifying nothing but the play of a supple and irrepressible mind, or the sharp impatience of an exasperated idealist. In spite of Candide and all the rest of it, Voltaire was an optimist, though not a naïve one.5

  The late Professor Saurat, introducing a selection of Voltaire’s tales, differs from Becker in crediting Voltaire with deep feeling. However, he then goes on to deny him depth of intelligence:

  The jesting of Candide is the mournful levity of a belief expiring in the face of the facts, but which nonetheless persists. He would have preferred Leibniz to be right; but his intelligence, though so quick, was not deep enough to let him see that Leibniz was right.6

  Professor Saurat does not explain in what way Leibniz is in the right.

  Already in 1913, in his critical edition of Candide, André Morize had emphasized that Voltaire did not appear to have a detailed knowledge of Leibniz’s arguments:

  Candide or Optimism is by no means the product of a metaphysician to whom Leibniz and the Theodicy were familiar.7

  Richard Aldington, in his introduction to the Broadway Translation of 1927, gives a summary of the philosophical controversy from which Candide emerged, because—he says—the book ‘is often represented as a merely amusing squib.’ But his own conclusion seems strangely self-contradictory:

  Its popularity is due to its amusing adventures, its clear rapid style, its concentrated wit, its vitality and alertness, and to its triumphant disposal of facile optimism. Whether it really proves anything may admit of doubt …8

  Dr. W. H. Barber, who gives a beautifully clear and meticulous account of the shifts in Voltaire’s position with regard to optimism, makes a comment on Candide which might appear to reduce the book to personal satire on minor Neo-Leibnizians:

  Voltaire is not concerned to refute a doctrine by careful argument; his object is to ridicule a band of enthusiasts whose ideas he thinks absurd; and the immedia
te and lasting popularity of Candide is some measure of his success.9

  A similar statement is made by Hugo Friedrich in a special number of La Table Ronde devoted to Voltaire:

  At bottom it was not Leibniz whom Voltaire attacked, but the cheap optimism fashionable in Paris salons, as seasoned with obscure German lucubrations. We must not read Candide as a novel with a thesis … we must let ourselves be amused by watching a free spirit playing with very grave questions for lack of power to resolve them.10

  All these judgements must seem rather slighting to anyone who has a high regard for Candide, because they suggest that the book is, in fact, more of a squib than anything else. Consequently, there may be a case for reopening the argument and trying to decide what exactly Candide achieves.

  The first thing to establish, if possible, is that Candide is basically serious. Of course, Voltaire was never at any time fair-minded, and there seems every reason to believe that he did not bother to reread, or even read, Leibniz’s Théodicée before writing his satire. As both Morize and Barber point out, he mixes up the two main forms of the theory of optimism: the belief that evil is an effect of the human angle of vision, and the belief that evil is a necessary part of creation. He makes no attempt to distinguish between the different degrees of sophistication represented by Leibniz, Pope and Wolff. Leibniz neither denied the existence of evil nor held the simple finalistic views which Voltaire attributes to Pangloss. Also, as Barber shows, Leibniz was an activist whose purpose was to encourage men to virtuous initiative within the all-embracing framework of God’s will, and as such he was, in a sense, on Voltaire’s side. If one wished to press the accusation of superficiality still further against Voltaire, one could recall that he himself began by being an optimist who declared in the Traité de métaphysique that moral evil was ‘une chimère’ [“a dream”] and the notion of evil a relative one: