CANDIDE

This 1759 novel by Voltaire is either a satire (on what? life? war?) or a comedy, I’m not really sure. The one thing I know is that the main characters (Candide, Cunegonde, the old woman, Pangloss and a few others) face one catastrophe after another and bounce right back. They are forever thinking that whatever happened must be for the best. Can anyone face as many tragedies as Candide and his friends face and be that optimistic? Wait, I’m having an “aha” moment...that must be the parody. Can you (Candide) get evicted out of a snug castle for kissing someone you love (Cunegonde), get captured by army recruiters from Bulgaria, try to escape and get sentenced to 36 floggings by 2,000 men or have your brains blown out by 12 musket balls...and still think that what happened was for the best? Wait, another “aha” moment...it’s a comedy. It must be because whatever happens to Candide doesn’t seem to affect his enthusiasm for life. What was 1759 prose like? Well, Voltaire's prose was very stark, leaving nothing to the imagination. After the King of the Bulgars stopped the flogging at 4,000 strokes, “A skillful surgeon cured the flagellated Candide in three weeks...his sores were now skinned over, and he was able to march, when the King of the Bulgarians gave battle to the King of the Abares.”

That prose wasn’t very stark, was it? Well how about when Candide decides to leave the battle. “Candide decided to go and reason somewhere else upon causes and effects. After passing over heaps of dead or dying men, the first place he came to was a neighbouring village in the Abarian territories which had been burnt to the ground by the Bulgarians...here lay a number of old men covered with wounds, who beheld their wives dying with their throats cut...the ground about them was covered with brains, arms and legs of dead men.” I didn’t even tell you what happened to the town’s virgins for fear of having my review rejected by Amazon! Anyway, this kind of descriptive (?) writing continues throughout the entire novel. Anyhow, Candide escapes to Holland, where he runs into his old tutor, Pangloss (from the castle), who is now suffering from syphilis. Pangloss tells Candide that the Baron and Baroness were all killed along with Candide’s love, Cunegonde, when the Bulgarians attacked Candide’s former castle. “And as for the castle they have not left one stone upon another. They have destroyed all the ducks and the sheep, the barns and the trees; we have had our revenge, for the Abares have done the very same thing in a neighbouring barony, which belonged to a Bulgarian lord.” This novel is so cruel, yet funny.

A anabaptist, named James, cures Pangloss (of course) and they (Candide, Pangloss and the anabaptist) sail for Lisbon, Portugal. Can another calamity happen? Yes, that’s what this novel is about. A tempest hits the ship, the anabaptist drowns, Candide, Pangloss and a nasty sailor make it to shore. As soon as their feet hit the ground, a massive earthquake happens! Woe is me. It destroys three/fourths of the Lisbon. Pangloss is hanged! That’s it, I can’t reveal anymore...there are numerous misfortunes ahead for our survivors (who are they?), and you haven’t met the ‘old woman’ yet. Is Cunegonde really dead? Is anybody really dead? Yes, many characters have been quartered or gutted or hanged...or were they? Voltaire was a known satirical polemicist, thus all the hostility in this novel. The Candide version that I read was from the Barnes & Noble classic series and was illustrated with many of the drawings by French artist Jean-Michel Moreau Le Jeune, who had his drawings inserted in later versions of Voltaire’s classic. The drawings were protested by the author to no avail. There are other artist who have illustrated this novel over the years, so I’m not positive these drawings were from Le Jeune. All in all, this was an enjoyable novel, although a little far-fetched. Get a copy of this classic and get ready to cry or laugh...your choice.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Most of the characters in this novel employ the idea that whatever happens is for the best. Although one of the characters, Signor Pococurante, who is a super rich Venetian, can’t find pleasure in anything. Pretty girls become boring; Raphael’s art does not delight him; the opera has contrived scenes; Homer always has Gods interfering with his works; Virgil is disagreeable; Milton (Paradise Lost) writes tedious commentary, and his eighty volumes of the  memoirs of the Academy of Science are filled with empty systems. This book was very funny to me, but I'm not sure the author meant it to be.