Candide - Voltaire (world of reading txt) 📗

Candide

By Voltaire.

Translated by the Modern Library.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Introduction Candide I: How Candide Was Brought Up in a Magnificent Castle, and How He Was Expelled Thence II: What Became of Candide Among the Bulgarians III: How Candide Made His Escape from the Bulgarians, and What Afterwards Became of Him IV: How Candide Found His Old Master Pangloss, and What Happened to Them V: Tempest, Shipwreck, Earthquake, and What Became of Doctor Pangloss, Candide, and James the Anabaptist VI: How the Portuguese Made a Beautiful Auto-Da-Fé, to Prevent Any Further Earthquakes; and How Candide Was Publicly Whipped VII: How the Old Woman Took Care of Candide, and How He Found the Object He Loved VIII: The History of Cunégonde IX: What Became of Cunégonde, Candide, the Grand Inquisitor, and the Jew X: In What Distress Candide, Cunégonde, and the Old Woman Arrived at Cadiz; and of Their Embarkation XI: History of the Old Woman XII: The Adventures of the Old Woman Continued XIII: How Candide Was Forced Away from His Fair Cunégonde and the Old Woman XIV: How Candide and Cacambo Were Received by the Jesuits of Paraguay XV: How Candide Killed the Brother of His Dear Cunégonde XVI: Adventures of the Two Travellers, with Two Girls, Two Monkeys, and the Savages Called Oreillons XVII: Arrival of Candide and His Valet at El Dorado, and What They Saw There XVIII: What They Saw in the Country of El Dorado XIX: What Happened to Them at Surinam and How Candide Got Acquainted with Martin XX: What Happened at Sea to Candide and Martin XXI: Candide and Martin, Reasoning, Draw Near the Coast of France XXII: What Happened in France to Candide and Martin XXIII: Candide and Martin Touched Upon the Coast of England, and What They Saw There XXIV: Of Paquette and Friar Giroflée XXV: The Visit to Lord Pococurante, a Noble Venetian XXVI: Of a Supper Which Candide and Martin Took with Six Strangers, and Who They Were XXVII: Candide’s Voyage to Constantinople XXVIII: What Happened to Candide, Cunégonde, Pangloss, Martin, etc. XXIX: How Candide Found Cunégonde and the Old Woman Again XXX: The Conclusion Endnotes Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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Introduction

Ever since 1759, when Voltaire wrote Candide in ridicule of the notion that this is the best of all possible worlds, this world has been a gayer place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in three days, and five or six generations have found that its laughter does not grow old.

Candide has not aged. Yet how different the book would have looked if Voltaire had written it a hundred and fifty years later than 1759. It would have been, among other things, a book of sights and sounds. A modern writer would have tried to catch and fix in words some of those Atlantic changes which broke the Atlantic monotony of that voyage from Cadiz to Buenos Aires. When Martin and Candide were sailing the length of the Mediterranean we should have had a contrast between naked scarped Balearic cliffs and headlands of Calabria in their mists. We should have had quarter distances, far horizons, the altering silhouettes of an Ionian island. Colored birds would have filled Paraguay with their silver or acid cries.

Dr. Pangloss, to prove the existence of design in the universe, says that noses were made to carry spectacles, and so we have spectacles. A modern satirist would not try to paint with Voltaire’s quick brush the doctrine that he wanted to expose. And he would choose a more complicated doctrine than Dr. Pangloss’s optimism, would study it more closely, feel his destructive way about it with a more learned and caressing malice. His attack, stealthier, more flexible and more patient than Voltaire’s, would call upon us, especially when his learning got a little out of control, to be more than patient. Now and then he would bore us. Candide never bored anybody except William Wordsworth.

Voltaire’s men and women point his case against optimism by starting high and falling low. A modern could not go about it after this fashion. He would not plunge his people into an unfamiliar misery. He would just keep them in the misery they were born to.

But such an account of Voltaire’s procedure is as misleading as the plaster cast of a dance. Look at his procedure again. Mademoiselle Cunégonde, the illustrious Westphalian, sprung from a family that could prove seventy-one quarterings, descends and descends until we find her earning her keep by washing dishes in the Propontis. The aged faithful attendant, victim of a hundred acts of rape by negro pirates, remembers that she is the daughter of a pope, and that in honor of her approaching marriage with a Prince of Massa-Carrara all Italy wrote sonnets of which not one was passable. We do not need to know French literature