Candide: oder der Optimismus

“”Since 1759, when Voltaire wrote ‘Candide’ to ridicule the idea that this was the best of all possible worlds, this world has become a happier place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or six generations have found that his laughter does not grow old. Candide is not aged. But how different the book would look if Voltaire had written it a hundred and fifty years later than 1759. It would have been a book of sights and sounds, among other things. A modern writer would have tried to put into words and capture some of these Atlantic changes that broke through the Atlantic monotony of this journey from Cádiz to Buenos Aires. As Martin and Candide sailed down the Mediterranean, we would have had a contrast between the naked, steep Balearic cliffs and the mist shrouded capes of Calabria. We would have seen distances, distant horizons, and the changing silhouettes of an Ionian island. Colored birds would have filled Paraguay with their silver or sharp screams. Dr Pangloss, to prove the existence of design in the universe, says that noses were made to wear glasses, and so we have glasses. A modern satirist wouldn’t try to paint with Voltaire’s quick brush the doctrine he wanted to expose. And he would choose a more complicated doctrine than Pangloss’ optimism, study it more closely, and destructively examine it with a more scholarly and loving malice. His attack, more insidious, flexible and patient than the Voltaires, would put us on a test of patience, especially when his knowledge gets a little out of control. From time to time, he would bore us. ‘Candide’ has bored no one except William Wordsworth. Voltaire’s men and women illustrate his argument against optimism by starting high and falling low. A modern couldn’t approach this way. He would not plunge his figures into an unknown misery. He would simply leave them in the misery in which they were born. But such a representation of Voltaire’s proceedings is as misleading as the plaster cast of a dance. Consider his procedure again. Mademoiselle Cunégonde, the illustrious Westphalia who comes from a family that can prove twenty-one quarters, sinks and sinks until we see her washing dishes in the Propontis to earn her living. The faithful old servant, victim of a hundred rapes by black pirates, remembers that she is the daughter of a pope and that all of Italy wrote sonets on the occasion of her imminent marriage to a prince of Massa-Carrara, not one of which was passable. We don’t need to know French literature before Voltaire to feel, even if the hidden parody may escape us that he makes fun of us and about himself. His laughter at his own methods ends up becoming more unmistakable when he caricatures them by casually gathering six fallen monarchs at an inn in Venice.”” Philip Littell, 1918 —- ISBN: 9798332674785