François-Marie Arouet (original) (raw)
The best source for basic (though not always correct) information is wikipedia. ;D
Born: November 21st, 1694
Died: May 30th, 1778
Major Works:
* Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (1733), revised as Letters on the English (circa 1778)
* Le Mondain (1736)
* Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738)
* Zadig (1747)
* Micromégas (1752)
* Candide (1759)
* Ce qui plaît aux dames (1764)
* Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
* L'Ingénu (1767)
* La Princesse de Babylone (1768)
* Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (1770)
Religion
"Voltaire, though often mistaken for an atheist, did in fact take part in religious activities and even erected a chapel on his estate at Ferney. The chief source for the misconception is a line from one of his poems (called "Epistle to the author of the book, The Three Impostors") that translates to: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." The full body of the work, however, reveals his criticism was more focused towards the actions of organized religion, rather than on the concept of religion itself."
Relationship with Friedrich the Great
Relationship with Marquise du Chatelet (1706-1749) and Mme Denis (1712-1790)
"In Voltaire's own life women played a far greater role than men. Though he never married, Voltaire readily acknowledged his dependence on his two mistresses, Marquise du Chatelet (1706-1749) and Mme Denis (1712-1790), who was also his niece, for intellectual, emotion, and erotic sustenance. They were his confidantes; indeed, the scholarly Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Chatelet--whom he lived with at her chateau at Cirey for much of the period from 1734-1749--inspired his enthusiasm for Newtonian physics, the philosophical study of history, metaphysics, biblical criticism, and deism. After the death of Marie Louise Mignot Denis's husband in 1744, Voltaire took his vivacious, affectionate, and somewhat duplicitous niece, whom he nicknamed "Bonne-Maman," as his mistress, a relationship which continued almost uninterrupted until he died in 1778. Though she supplanted "the divine Emilie" as his sexual intimate, Voltaire remained deeply devoted to Mme du Chatelet as an intellectual partner (and perhaps competitor), a prudent counsellor who often curbed his hot temper and headstrong tactlessness toward his critics. Emilie died tragically at age forty-three, after giving birth to a daughter, fathered by her final lover, the Marquis de Saint Lambert, an officer and poet with whom she had begun an affair after Voltaire's puzzling withdrawal of his affections (which she naively ascribed to impotence). "I have not lost a mistress," Voltaire lamented to his new paramour Mme Denis. "I have lost half of myself, a mind for whom mine was made, a friend of twenty years" (quoted in Aldridge, 169). Discerning in Emilie a hermaphroditic figure, a mixture of animus and anima, he confessed that she was for him more than a father, a brother, and a son, all male imagoes. Overlooking that her death was the result of a uniquely female function, he mourns her enigmatically as "un ami et un grand homme"--a friend and a great man (Mason, 36, 44), thereby implying his belief in sexual equality and interchangeability and his impatience with unmerited gender stratification."
Relationship between Voltaire and Mozart:
" 'The ungodly arch-villain, Voltaire, has died like a dog,' he wrote, Mozart was deeply religious, and Voltaire’s atheism shocked him. 'I have always had God before my eyes,' he once wrote. 'Friends who have no religion cannot long be my friends.'"