Alan's review of Candide and Other Stories (original) (raw)

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Alan's Reviews > Candide and Other Stories

Candide and Other Stories by Voltaire

Candide and Other Stories
by

5650849

Largely a critique of Leibnitz's 18C optimism, ours the "best of all possible worlds," Candide the character brings earnest sincerity to his explorations. They range from his teacher Pangloss's etiology of syphillis: Paquette from an erudite Franciscan, who had it from an elderly countess, who had it from a Capt. of cavalry...all the way back to a Jesuit, who during his novitiate had it from a companion of Columbus. Candide says, This is from the devil! Which Pangloss, a student of Leibnitz, denies, "If Columbus had not caught, on an American island, this sickness--we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal [purple dye]" (end of Ch.4).
Candide to himself, "If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?" (end of Ch.6, and throughout).
Voltaire's irony here depends upon a regenerative circularity: though Candide's love Cunégonde is raped and murdered, she reappears a few chapters later. What also appears is steady anti-semiticism which shocks a modern reader, but should not necessarily consign Voltaire to the trash-heap. (Virtually all my friends since college are Jews, so I defer to their judgement here.)
When Candide kills both Inquisitor and Jew, he laments the loss of his teacher Pangloss, "If he had not been hanged, he would give us good advice in their hour of need..."(Ch.9, start). Instead, they turn to an old woman, whose rescuer informs her, "I am from Naples, where they caponize two or three thousand children every year; some die of it, others acquire a voice more beautiful than any woman's [the opera castrati]"(Ch.12, start).
Cacambo, who rescues them in Paraguay, reflects on cannibalism, "Though we Europeans don't excercise our right to eat our neighbors, the reason is simply that we find it easy to get a good meal elsewhere; but you don't have our resources, and we agree that it's certainly better to eat your enemies than to let the crow and vultures have the fruit of your victory"(Ch.16).
Voltaire concudes this short work with Ch. 30, the reunion of Candide and his mentors Pangloss and Cacombo and the old woman, as well as his mistress Cunégonde (whose father the Baron they send away). Another mentor, the Lutheran Martin, is "firmly persuaded that things are just as bad wherever you go."
Ending in Turkey, they find a man ignorant of the news from Constantinople, who says, "those who meddle in public business sometimes perish miserably, and they deserve their fate." He offers his guests cream sherberts flavored with citron, lime, pistachio, and mocha coffee. Candide assumes he must have enormous, splendid property? No, "twenty acres, which I cultivate with my children, and the work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty."
Candide concludes, "this venerable man seems to have found a fate preferable to the six kings with whom we have dined." Pangloss lists the perils of great place: Absalon was hung up by the hair and pierced with three darts; you know how death came to Croesus, Pyrrhus, Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha...Rich II of England, Henry Vi, Richard III, Mary Stuart, Charles I..."
"I know also, said Candide, that we must cultivate our garden."

[See also my review of Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique in French; I cannot find my French Candide just now.]

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