Candide or Optimism: A Fresh Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions)

Rating:
Summary: Heavy handed work, dutiful edition
Review: Candide is a difficult read not for it's depth and complexity, but for it's clarity and simplicity. Voltaire packs irony and wit into what feels like EVERY sentence - to the point where one stops chuckling after the first couple chapters and begins sighing with boredom. Nevertheless, Candide does have some very witty and scathing criticisms of those aspects of the Enlightenment for which Voltaire has justified (again and again!) disdain. The bombardment of ironic juxtapositions and exquisitely illustrative hypocrisies goes on and on; one should wear plenty of lace and develop a knowing smirk to read it with its full integrity. One almost need not read beyond the first several chapters. Nevertheless, Voltaire's dedication to reasonable reason and humanism should be part of everyone's education.

This edition, like every other Norton Critical Edition I've encountered, is splendid and definitive. But, unlike Norton Critical Editions of longer works, this slim volume does not have Bible-thin paper and close, narrow type; the paper and type are of a pleasing quality. But the footnotes are what really set this edition apart. Written with humor and verve, Robert M. Adams' notes not only define the allusions and references in Voltaire's text, they elaborate how they fit into the text as a whole.

This is THE edition of Candide for both casual and scholarly reading.

Rating:
Summary: Life's too mysterious, don't take it serious
Review: Having enjoyed Leonard Bernstein's Candide for a long time and just read my way through the Candide inspired Sotweed Factor, it was time to get through to the source.

Upon completing the original French version, it is no wonder that this book is such an inspiring perennial classic. I very much object to the notion that this book is an anti-everything nihilist manifesto. Some words of explanation.

During the age enlightment mankind made big strides in some areas of science. The development of differential calculus by Newton and Leibniz suddenly allowed mankind a better understanding of the way "God ran the Universe". Based on these supposedly universal laws, Leibniz took the stance that our world could not be anything else than the one and only perfect solution that a divine power had found to the self-imposed problem of creation. The best of all possible worlds.

Against this backdrop Voltaire wrote his satiric redux of Homer meeting Cervantes to discuss the book of Job. In a style that (in the original French) is light and whimsical Voltaire debunks the notion that life takes place in an ordered universe. He certainly is not against everything, but rightfully speaks out against idiotic notions on the virtue of war and cruel religious blindness.

Voltaire has left us with a very light, funny and user-friendly fairytale, that may not be quite up there with the great Homer and especially Cervantes, but deserves a place on every bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Some Candides Are Better Than Others
Review: No the story doesn't change from edition to edition, but the supplementary material provided does change. Candide isn't just some hectic adventure story. It really fails as literature in this regard, and certainly Voltaire's purpose was not to make you chuckle while you whiled away a few empty hours. He would weep to think that you missed out on what he was really trying to tell you. Rest easy. I am not going to launch into a stuffy monologue on Leibnitz and 18th century French Catholicism, but in essence you should know that this is the essence of the story. The philosopher Leibnitz (who with Isaac Newton independently invented Calculus) explained the existence of evil in the world thusly: God, in his infinite wisdom, thought of all possible worlds that he could create, and he chose this one; therefore this must be the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire was also continually chastising the Catholic Church for it's lack of tolerance of other beliefs, and for its aristocratic pomp.

Enter now the Norton Critical Edition of Candide. This book presents the 75 page story along with 130 additional pages of various articles and essays on the times in which it was written; commentary by Voltaire and by his contemporaries; and critiques of the story by modern writers. Sure there are always a few dull, academic essays making their mandatory appearance in a book like this, but my suggestion is just to skip them. After all there are a lot of them to choose from.

Learn the story behind the story so to speak. After all it is the background of Candide that makes Candide the forceful satire that it is.

Rating:
Summary: VOLTAIRE THE RETROSPECTIVE
Review: The French writer Voltaire's (1694-1778) novel 'Candide' is a biting, satirical, cynical, and inimical story of an inexperienced and innocent young man who is much misled early in life by Pangloss, his philosophy teacher. Tragi-comical in style, the whole work is certainly the spiritual forefather of 'Waiting for Godot', but it is vastly inventive, the satire is funny, and the action rollicks around the world in a rapid succession of colorful and exciting places. Candide alternately fights for his life, flees for his life, ponders the meaning of life, makes his fortune, or simply travels to stave off boredom. If this were a Mel Brooks film it would be a cross between 'Blazing Saddles', 'Men In Tights', and 'Life Stinks'. There is a grisly and surreal cartoon element to the proceedings with characters constantly being killed by sword, fire, hanging, earthquake, drowning, and whatever, who then come back to life when you least expect it, looking much the worse for wear.

Candide may be on a journey of discovery, but he is just not able to understand anything he discovers. In the school of life he is certainly bottom of the class, and seemingly aspires to stay there. Pangloss has taught him that however things appear, life is arranged so that, 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds' - which sounds to me like a parody of a famous scripture from the New Testament letter to the Romans. This absurdist Positive Mental Attitude is then slowly and relentlessly beaten out of the hapless Candide, who learns some of the practical lessons of life while never actually being in danger of learning anything about its meaning and purpose. All in all, anyone who believes in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the empirical philosophy of the good and sensible British school, or any Eastern religion in general, will find their ideas roundly lampooned, insulted, and mocked herein.

Candide starts life in Germany, rattles around Europe, travels to South America and finds El Dorado, gains and looses a vast fortune, returns to Europe, visits Turkey and Persia, and is thrashed by three philosophers in Denmark. The narrative obiter dicta may state that 'In life everything grows wearisome', but the Candide view is: 'Everything is not so good as in El Dorado; but everything is not too bad'. An exhaustingly banal conclusion.

It is difficult to see what positive views are contained in this book. Everyone is denigrated. Nothing is sacred and therefore nothing really matters. Everything finishes downbeat, so this is a dangerous work to read with a too-open mind. In fact, the whole book reeks of what sociologists self-congratulatingly call the 'debunking motif', which explains the tenor of the whole. Voltaire was famed abroad and prolific in his lifetime, but time has proved that trenchantly 'being against things', however right you may be, does not bring a lasting fame worth having. 'Candide' is but a small sliver of Voltaire's life output, and his situation reminds me of the works of the ancient Greek Archilochus, who, a century after Homer and Hesiod was dubbed the first 'poet of blame'. But unlike the classics of Homer and Hesiod, only slivers of Archilochus' works remain to this day, whilst his waspish reputation has survived quite well.