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A review by millennial_dandy
Candide: Or Optimism by Voltaire
adventurous
dark
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
<b>3.5</b>
<i>"A dramatist must have ideas which are fresh without being fantastic; he must be able to touch the sublime yet remain neutral; and he must know the human heart and make it speak."p.103 </i>
'Candide', having been written by the pen of Voltaire, might seem unapproachable by virtue of its author sounding so intimidating, but it is not. It's quite possible that this translation by John Butt took some liberties with the language to make it less purple; I don't speak French so I have no idea, but regardless of what may or may not have been 'lost' in translation, the humour of it remains intact.
This isn't a novella particularly concerned with characterization, but with ideas, and with one idea in particular: suffering, and how it proves or disproves Providence (spoilers: Voltaire did not seem to care much for Providence).
To this end, 'Candide' reads more like a fable, the characters buffeted quickly from place to place and calamity to calamity. The comedy lies largely in the absurd, over-the-top nature of the cascade of tragedies that befall the titular Candide and his friends and the casualness with which they brush them off. When reunited for the first time with his love interest, Candide exclaims: <i>"So you weren't ravished or disembowelled?"</i> to which she replies: <i>"I was indeed, but people don't always die of those mishaps."</i> (p.39)
The one respite our protagonist recieves from being beaten, threatened with death, cheated, kicked about, and kept away from his beloved is when he and a companion stumble upon Eldorado, where they stay for a time, basking in an unimaginable paradise where the dirt is made of gold and no one ever suffers. But because he yearns more for his beloved than gold and comfort, he leaves (though not without taking with him a vast, vast fortune that he begins to lose or be swindled out of almost immidiately), and nothing good happens to him ever again.
There's hardly a single page without at least one witty remark worth a sensible chuckle, and for a book of its age (first published in 1759) it's aged surprisingly well. Certainly, there are...<i>incidents</i>, but though there are some decidedly cringe lines from sympathetic characters ("Northern races are not sufficiently warm-blooded; their lust for women does not reach the mania that is so common in Africa" comes to mind) Voltaire remains fairly empathetic to the 'others' that populate the story which give rise to some surprisingly progressive moments.
While out and about somewhere, Candide comes across a Black slave lying in the road, and when Candide inquires why he's lying there, the man replies: <i>"Those of us who work in the factories and happen to catch a finger in the grindstone have a hand chopped off; if we try to escape, they cut off a leg. Both accidents happened to me. That's the price of your eating sugar in Europe."</i>(p.85-86)
Similarly, though for much of the story the female characters exist as pretty little trinkets for the men to ogle and pass around (including Candide's love interest), one of them is given a true voice when Candide asks a young woman if she is happy being the mistress of a monk. She says: <i>"My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been moderately pretty [...]This is how I have been forced to continue in this detestable way of life, which to you men seems so pleasing, but to us is nothing but a hell of suffering."</i>(p.115) Because this comes so late in the tale, it necessarily reframes all the scenes leading up to it, and I was pleasantly surprised by that level of nuance in a story this old. Well done, Voltaire: the bar was in hell and you successfully jumped over it.
All in all, this is a fun little story with a central question still so relevant that Lindsay Ellis made a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE">video essay</a> about it that you should really watch if the theme of satirizing suffering is of interest to you. Further viewing, if you will.
I had no idea what to expect from 'Candide', but it taught me two things: one, if you find the right 18th century texts, they can be not only readable but quite enjoyable, and two, we do not have to give things grace as 'products of their time' -- if freaking Voltaire was out here being woke in the 1750s, everyone after him could have been too.
<i>"A dramatist must have ideas which are fresh without being fantastic; he must be able to touch the sublime yet remain neutral; and he must know the human heart and make it speak."p.103 </i>
'Candide', having been written by the pen of Voltaire, might seem unapproachable by virtue of its author sounding so intimidating, but it is not. It's quite possible that this translation by John Butt took some liberties with the language to make it less purple; I don't speak French so I have no idea, but regardless of what may or may not have been 'lost' in translation, the humour of it remains intact.
This isn't a novella particularly concerned with characterization, but with ideas, and with one idea in particular: suffering, and how it proves or disproves Providence (spoilers: Voltaire did not seem to care much for Providence).
To this end, 'Candide' reads more like a fable, the characters buffeted quickly from place to place and calamity to calamity. The comedy lies largely in the absurd, over-the-top nature of the cascade of tragedies that befall the titular Candide and his friends and the casualness with which they brush them off. When reunited for the first time with his love interest, Candide exclaims: <i>"So you weren't ravished or disembowelled?"</i> to which she replies: <i>"I was indeed, but people don't always die of those mishaps."</i> (p.39)
The one respite our protagonist recieves from being beaten, threatened with death, cheated, kicked about, and kept away from his beloved is when he and a companion stumble upon Eldorado, where they stay for a time, basking in an unimaginable paradise where the dirt is made of gold and no one ever suffers. But because he yearns more for his beloved than gold and comfort, he leaves (though not without taking with him a vast, vast fortune that he begins to lose or be swindled out of almost immidiately), and nothing good happens to him ever again.
There's hardly a single page without at least one witty remark worth a sensible chuckle, and for a book of its age (first published in 1759) it's aged surprisingly well. Certainly, there are...<i>incidents</i>, but though there are some decidedly cringe lines from sympathetic characters ("Northern races are not sufficiently warm-blooded; their lust for women does not reach the mania that is so common in Africa" comes to mind) Voltaire remains fairly empathetic to the 'others' that populate the story which give rise to some surprisingly progressive moments.
While out and about somewhere, Candide comes across a Black slave lying in the road, and when Candide inquires why he's lying there, the man replies: <i>"Those of us who work in the factories and happen to catch a finger in the grindstone have a hand chopped off; if we try to escape, they cut off a leg. Both accidents happened to me. That's the price of your eating sugar in Europe."</i>(p.85-86)
Similarly, though for much of the story the female characters exist as pretty little trinkets for the men to ogle and pass around (including Candide's love interest), one of them is given a true voice when Candide asks a young woman if she is happy being the mistress of a monk. She says: <i>"My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been moderately pretty [...]This is how I have been forced to continue in this detestable way of life, which to you men seems so pleasing, but to us is nothing but a hell of suffering."</i>(p.115) Because this comes so late in the tale, it necessarily reframes all the scenes leading up to it, and I was pleasantly surprised by that level of nuance in a story this old. Well done, Voltaire: the bar was in hell and you successfully jumped over it.
All in all, this is a fun little story with a central question still so relevant that Lindsay Ellis made a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE">video essay</a> about it that you should really watch if the theme of satirizing suffering is of interest to you. Further viewing, if you will.
I had no idea what to expect from 'Candide', but it taught me two things: one, if you find the right 18th century texts, they can be not only readable but quite enjoyable, and two, we do not have to give things grace as 'products of their time' -- if freaking Voltaire was out here being woke in the 1750s, everyone after him could have been too.