March: Candide

After visiting the crypt at the Panthéon in Paris, I added Voltaire to my substantial mental list of authors whose works I would like to read. I know...a somewhat strange way of being turned on to a particular writer. But there really is something powerful about visiting the crypts of great writers, particularly when you know they were once shunned by their country and are now highly celebrated. It seems such a grand French thing to do...exile a writer and then years later, celebrate and proudly claim him as French.

Candide, also known as Optimism, is a satire featuring the incredibly naïve optimist Candide. The satire follows Candide through a multitude of adventures which he constantly measures against the canon that, "all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds." Voltaire clearly and strongly attacks political and religious systems in this satire (and is imprisoned for doing so), as well as the precepts held by specific philosophers, namely Leibniz.

I really don't know that I've read a satire before this one. Maybe I've read excerpts of satirical works but I've just never been drawn to that particular form of writing. However, I did enjoy the mental exercise required in reading Candide and have a new appreciation for satire. There was constant referencing of the footnotes and lengthy pauses in which I ruminated upon the context. In doing so, a greater sense of what took place in Voltaire's time was revealed through his persepctive and I often gain a greater sense of history through personal accounts (whatever the medium and how varied the perspective might be). Freedom of speech was not a liberty in Voltaire's time and constant awareness of that fact makes his work even more momentous. His not so allusive innuendos where government and religion are concerned must have been potent in their time.

Philosophically, Candide challenged my conception of the world. How do I view the world? I certainly do not possess the optimism of Candide but I see a constant beauty in humanity. Yet, I also see how political and religious forces work in powerfully deceptive ways and the way in which Voltaire satirizes such is not only amusing but very apt.