Candide
Have you ever been so maddened by a single sentence that you decided to write a book? Leibniz is famous for his claim that we live in “the best of all possible worlds”, after the Lisbon earthquake which killed somewhere between 12,000 to 50,000 people Voltaire rejected this claim. In large part this book is a parody of this optimism. Candide the main character grows up in a sheltered privileged life where his tutor Pangloss teaches him that he lives in the best of all possible worlds. After a series of events our naïve hero is kicked out into the real world and is almost immediately kidnapped by Bulgarians and pressed into service. Leading to one of my favorite scenes where in Voltaire’s dark comedic tone is captured.
There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies. Trumpets, fifes, hautboys, drums, and cannon made music such as Hell itself had never heard. The cannons first of all laid flat about six thousand men on each side; the muskets swept away from this best of worlds nine or ten thousand ruffians who infested its surface. The bayonet was also a sufficient reason for the death of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide, who trembled like a philosopher, hid himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.
A great story full of things that make you laugh in spite of how terrible they are.
Zadig
Written before Candide and is Voltaire’s second most famous book, Zadig is a “good” man. But his goodness is also his constant tormentor as it is constantly getting him into trouble. Not much to say about this one other than a favorite scene where Zadig had stumbled on a man beating a woman. After a sword fight, Zadig was forced to dispatch the woman beater, he then addresses the woman…
Now, Madam, let me know your farther Will and Pleasure with me. You shall die, you Villain! You have murder’d my Love. Oh! I could tear your Heart out. Indeed, Madam, said Zadig, you had one of the most hot-headed, oddest Lovers I ever saw. He beat you most unmercifully, and would have taken away my Life because you call’d me in to your Assistance. Would to God he was but alive to beat me again, said she, blubbering and roaring; I deserv’d to be beat. I gave him too just occasion to be jealous of me. Would to God that he had beat me, and you had died in his Stead!
It seems like Voltaire wanted the reader to understand that goodness is a thing tied down and in relationship with other things. In a way this could be seen as a rebuke to the idea of reasoning to an “absolute” good because that approach tends to negate context. In Candide the warning seemed to be to not cut yourself off from the world by reason lest you come up with an idea like “we live in the best of all possible worlds”.
Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: “There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts.” “All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”