[In the essay below, Wade offers a brief critical history of Candide.]

The Journal encyclopédique² was far from favorable in its review of Candide. Indeed, it was so severe that Voltaire felt constrained to take its editors to task for what he deemed their ineptitude. Their article, however, certainly merits attention, since it contains the type of ambiguous evaluation characteristic of all criticism of Candide down to the present day:

How to pass judgment on this novel? Those who have been amused by it will be furious at a serious criticism, those who have read it with a critical eye will consider our lenity a crime. The partisans of Leibnitz, far from considering it a refutation of optimism, will consider it a joke from one end to the other, a joke which may be good for a laugh but proves nothing; the opponents of Leibnitz will maintain that the refutation is complete, because Leibnitz's system, being nothing but a fable, can only be attacked effectively by another fable. Those who seek in fiction only a portrayal of the manners and customs of the age will find its touches too licentious and too monotonous. In short, it is a freak of wit which, in order to please a wide public, needs a bit of decency and some more circumspection. We wish the author had spoken more respectfully concerning religion and the clergy, and that he had not made use of the miserable story of Paraguay, which as it appears here contributes nothing new or amusing. …

Thus the author of the article assumed that if the conte were intended to refute Leibnitz, its success would be doubtful, and even if it were effective as a refutation, it could not be considered a work of art because of its indecencies and exaggerations. In general, the Journal's criticism gives the impression that Candide can neither be taken seriously nor dismissed lightly.

Voltaire found present in his period this same peculiar ambiguity noted by the Journal encyclopédique in its review. At the time he was writing the conte, he commented again and again that Paris “qui chante et qui danse” had abandoned its frivolous air for the serious air of the English. Instead of being “singes” [monkeys] performing “singeries,” [monkey-business] which was perfectly normal and natural, Parisians had become “ours,” [bears] debating and prattling about serious things. One gathers from his comment that he deplored the change, and in fact he does so in his Correspondance, but in Chapter xxii of the novel itself, he condemns Paris “qui chante et qui danse,” Paris of the “singeries.” His attitude toward this situation is not the important thing, however; the author's attitude never is, in a work of art. What is really significant is that the conte has absorbed the ambiguity of its time and of its author. Candide is the product of those “qui dansent et qui chantent,” the “singes” and their “singeries,” but also of the “ours” who take themselves seriously. And it is difficult to know which is the real, authentic Candide.

Grimm's review in the Correspondance littéraire, less favorable still, did precisely what the author of the Journal encyclopédique article deemed impossible. Renouncing any attempt to treat the work seriously, Grimm insisted that the only way to handle it was to take it lightly. After finding the second half superior to the first, after condemning the chapter on Paris, after denying the conte every serious literary and philosophical quality, he found only Voltaire's gaiety to praise:

Gaiety is one of the rarest qualities to be found among wits. It is a long time since we read anything joyous in literature; M. de Voltaire has just delighted [but égayer has also the sense of “mock”] us with a little novel called Candide, or optimism, translated from the German of Dr. Ralph. There is no need to judge this performance by high standards; it would never stand up to serious criticism. There is in Candide neither arrangement nor plan nor wisdom nor any of those happy strokes which one sometimes finds in English novels of the same sort; instead, you will find in it plenty of things in bad taste, low touches, smut and filth deprived of that discreet veil which renders them supportable; but gaiety and facility never abandon M. de Voltaire, who banishes from his most frivolous as from his most carefully worked writings that air of pretension which spoils everything. The fine touches and gay sallies which he gives off at every moment make the reading of Candide a very amusing experience.

Thus Candide became for Grimm what Voltaire often called it: “une plaisanterie” [a jest].

Mme. de Staël, on the other hand, takes a position the very opposite of Grimm's. She admits willingly that the book abounds in laughter, but considers it in no way a “plaisanterie,” for this laughter contains something inhumanly diabolical. She concedes that Candide basically was directed against Leibnitz, but stresses that it was directed against the fundamental propositions which preoccupy mankind, especially those philosophical opinions which enhance the spirit of man. Nothing could be more serious:

Voltaire had so clear a sense of the influence which metaphysical systems exert on the direction of our thinking, that he composed Candide to combat Leibnitz. He took a curious attitude of hostility toward final causes, optimism, free will, and in short against all these philosophic opinions which tend to raise the dignity of man; and he created Candide, that work of diabolic gaiety. For it seems to have been written by a creature of a nature wholly different from our own, indifferent to our lot, rejoicing in our sufferings, and laughing like a demon or an ape at the misery of this human race with which he has nothing in common.

While Grimm stresses the conte's gaiety, and Mme de Staël its seriousness, Linguet in his Examen des ouvrages de M. de Voltaire (Bruxelles, 1788) notes its dual character, that is to say, the glee with which Voltaire destroys the philosophy of optimism by graphically describing the tragic miseries of humanity:

Candide offers us the saddest of themes disguised under the merriest of jokes, the joking being of that philosophical variety which is peculiar to M. de Voltaire, and which, I repeat, seems like the equipment of an excellent comedian. He makes the all's well system, upheld by so many philosophers, look completely ridiculous, and cracks a thousand jests even as he holds before our eyes at every instant the miseries of society and portrays them with a very energetic pencil.

(p. 170)

Without being too dogmatic, we can confidently assert that these four opinions, though based on the same fundamental ambiguous assumptions, are widely divergent and represent the cardinal points of all Candide critics. There are those who, like the author of the Journal encyclopédique, feel that the work can be taken neither seriously nor lightly, those who maintain with Grimm that it must be treated only lightly, those who aver with Mme de Staël that it can be taken only seriously, and finally those who like Linguet, find that it must be taken seriously and lightly at the same time.

This double quality of gaiety and seriousness, so characteristic of Voltaire and of his time, is apparent at every turn throughout the conte, but it is not a simple matter to grasp the deep ambiguity of its personality. When the reader is ready to revolt in horror, a sudden reflection, a quick turn in events, an unexpected quip, or the mere insertion of a remark brings him back to normal. When he is inclined to levity, an incident, an observation, or an injustice brings him back to consider the deadly earnest attack which is being made on all aspects of life.

The difficulty in harmonizing these two attitudes in the reader's understanding has led to divers partial interpretations of Candide, practically all of them valid in their way but each woefully deficient in itself. If the book is to be taken lightly, how lightly? Can it be dismissed as the “crême fouettée de l'Europe,” [whipped cream of Europe] or is it a “bonne plaisanterie,” with a “fonds le plus triste” [an undertone of sadness]? Does Candide, like Figaro, rail at everything to keep himself from weeping? Is it, as Montaigne once said of Rabelais, “simplement plaisant” [naïvely comic] on the surface, but “triste” underneath? There is a similar progression in the opposite attitude. How far does Voltaire go in his satire? Does he, for instance, merely castigate the social conditions of his time, as Boileau or Horace had done before him, or does he satirize the fundamental conditions of life, like a Homer or a Racine, or does he push his revolt to the point of satirizing the Creator of life? These are difficult, almost irreverent, questions. The answers must always be yes, although every yes is contradicted by another yes, or a yes and no by another yes and no. Far from being a structure of “clear and distinct ideas,” Candide is confusion confounded. But it is the confusion of a universe clearly and distinctly controlled. Whatever happens may be terribly and devastatingly irrational, but once it has been sifted through Voltaire's intelligence, it has been ordered by the keenest sort of criticism into a created form which does not differ from the form of life itself. Candide embraces everything that has occurred in the life of Voltaire as well as everything that had occurred in the eighteenth century. It is astounding in its comprehensiveness, and quite as remarkable in other aspects: the rhythmical arrangement of the above-mentioned phenomena, the careful selection and presentation, the exact apportionment, and the very orderly expression.

That is the reason why every judgment of Candide is bound to be partial, one-sided, contradictory, and vague, just like every judgment we make of life or of our individual lives. Since every man is a “Démocrite” and a “Héraclite,” he must be “Jean-qui-pleure” and “Jean-qui-rit.”³ But every man must be these two characters at the same time: he is neither optimist nor pessimist, rebellious nor submissive, free nor enslaved, formed nor unformed, real nor unreal. He must make a reality of these necessary contradictions.

The four opinions expressed above, while representing the four cardinal positions in Candide criticism, in no way exhaust the range of partial interpretations given the work. I pass over Voltaire's own sly remark that it was written to convert Socinians, as well as the superficial, but amusing, epigram current at the time of its appearance:

Candide is a little crook,
Shameless and weak in the head;
You can tell by his sly look,
He's kid brother to The Maid.(4)
His old dad would give a pack
Just to be young again:
His youth will come back,
He's writing like a young man.
Life isn't great, take a look,
He proves it six different ways,
You'll even see in this book
Things really stink, like he says.

Of more importance is the qualification printed in the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques:⁵ “Bad novel, full of filth, perhaps the most impious and pernicious work ever to come from the pen of M. de Voltaire,” or the opinion attributed the Patriarch [i.e., Voltaire himself] by the unknown author of the Confession de Voltaire:⁶ “It follows from the reading of Candide that the earth is a sewer of horror and abominations [with a quotation from Job 10:22 ‘A land of misery and shadows, where is no order but eternal horror dwells’]; more than one chapter of it was composed during attacks of migraine …” or the more drastic qualification of Jules Janin in Le dernier volume des Œuvres de Voltaire.⁷

The book was much read in high society, where it was not understood. People saw nothing but romantic adventures where Voltaire with fiendish logic had intended to ridicule God.

After so many categorical statements, made with appropriately French nuance, it may seem idle to seek a clearer view of Candide's reality. It is quite possible to agree that the work is a “vaurien” [no-good], or obscene, or perhaps the most impious ever written by Voltaire, or that its portrayal of the earth is abomination and horror incarnate. One might even go so far as to agree with Janin that “Voltaire avait voulu railler Dieu” [Voltaire intended to ridicule God]. But to understand that the work is at the same time a revolt and a submission, an attack and a defense, a joy and a suffering, a destruction and a creation requires more than ordinary insight, patience, and serenity. There is, indeed, the temptation to dismiss it as only one thing, as too simple, too superficial.

What is dangerous in Candide is not its simplicity, but its duplicity. Candide is always deceptively two. Its unremitting ambiguity leads inevitably to a puzzling clandestinity, and the reader, beset with difficulties in forming a well-considered opinion, settles for trite commonplaces. The work actually encourages him in this. Let us take as an example the oft-repeated remark that Voltaire attacked Leibnitz. Though true, this statement adds nothing to the comprehension of Candide's reality.

It would be useful, nevertheless, to understand the relationship between Candide and Leibnitz. Undeniably, Voltaire satirized Leibnitzian terminology in his conte but ample testimony has been adduced to show that he never rejected Leibnitzianism: he rejected some things in it—the theory of monads, for example—but he readily accepted other ideas such as the principle of sufficient reason. We have already shown that he needed Leibnitz's principles, just as they were needed by the eighteenth century at large. It is a particularly carefree criticism that envisages the development of ideas as a matter of acceptance or rejection. Voltaire was certainly more realistic in his attitude. What he satirized was the terminology; not the philosophy, but what in that philosophy was now contributing to making life sterile. Moreover, at the moment he was writing Candide, he stated explicitly that people had ceased paying attention to what Leibnitz said. Soon after, when a new edition of Leibnitz's works was published, he complimented the editor. The truth of the matter is that Voltaire, like his time, had to integrate Descartes, Pascal, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Malebranche, Locke and Newton in order to create an Enlightenment philosophy. Leibnitz was as important to that philosophy as any of the others, and fully as useful. It is probable that in 1750 he had played his role and in that sense had ceased to claim people's attention. But even this assessment is subject to caution.

This dilemma has led certain critics to insist that what Voltaire is attacking is not a philosopher, but a philosophy. Ever since the article of March 15, 1759, in the Journal encyclopédique, some critics have insisted that Voltaire definitely aimed his attack not against Leibnitz or Pope, but against a system of philosophy to which Leibnitz, Pope, and many others had contributed and which we now call optimism. Since he himself entitled his work Candide,ou l'optimisme, it would be extremely difficult to deny that he directed his satire at this way of looking at life. To conclude, however, with Linguet, that “il tourne complètement en ridicule le système du tout est bien” [he makes the all's well system look completely ridiculous”], or, with Lanson, that “le but est de démolir l'optimisme” [“his aim is to demolish optimism”], is misplacing the emphasis. It would not take a very skillful lawyer to prove that Voltaire's treatment of optimism is quite as optimistic as the treatment of the optimists themselves, that he says no more for or against it than Leibnitz, Pope, King, and hundreds of others. Voltaire is assailing all feeling of complacency which nullifies and stultifies human effort in a universe requiring a maximum of human effort to realize itself—he is assailing, in a word, all restraints upon the creative spirit of man.

It must be admitted that his attitude toward optimism is difficult to trace because of the ambiguity of his position. He was congenitally opposed to any attitude which complacently asseverated that “tout est bien,” mainly because such a belief limited human effort. But he was quite as opposed to any attitude which despairingly asserted that “tout est mal,” chiefly because such a standpoint also limited human effort. But other considerations were important, too. Voltaire knew that “tout n'est pas bien” because there are numerous concrete cases of evil, and he knew also that “tout n'est pas mal” because there are many concrete cases of good. Throughout the conte, he draws a constant parallel between the wretchedness of others and his own happiness, and he continually wavers between the achievements of his time and its follies. He weighs facts as scrupulously as Montaigne weighed truth: the facts prove two things, two exasperatingly contradictory things. Cacambo's friendship and loyalty make him “un tres bon homme” [a very good man], while Vanderdendur's duplicity makes him “un homme très dur” [a very hard man], but both are realities, just as the “duretés” of the “homme noir” and the kindness of the “bon Jacques” are realities. There is thus in Candide a compensatory quality, common to all Voltaire's works and to the eighteenth century in general, that is, that good is counterbalanced by evil. This is no new attitude: it is evident throughout his works from the Epître à Uranie to Candide. Le Monde comme il va, Micromégas, Zadig hold steadily to this idea.

It is not the view, however, that is important, but the conclusion to be drawn from it. Should one conclude for optimism, or surrender to pessimism? Should one be content with weighing impassively this against that, refusing to take sides, enjoying fully his own happiness? This skeptical conclusion, characteristic of the Renaissance in general and of Montaigne in particular, did not find favor with Voltaire, although he, like most Frenchmen, was strongly attracted to it. The ambiguity of Candide's garden, and of its actual prototype at Les Délices and Ferney, was occasioned in fact by this skeptical conclusion. But Voltaire's skepticism, which is as positive as Montaigne's, is no proof against his cynicism. It was impossible to “jouir largement de son être” [enjoy freely his existence] in 1758 after the fiasco at Berlin, the Lisbon Earthquake, and the Seven Years War. It was possible, perhaps, to criticize, blame, satirize, laugh mockingly, always with indifference, in this completely mad world. Voltaire attempted to adopt this attitude also but found it quite unsatisfactory.

Candide is thus in its inner substance not wholly optimistic, or pessimistic, or skeptical, or cynical: it is all of these things at the same time. Since every created thing resembles its creator and the moment of its creation, it is precisely what Voltaire and his time were: optimistic, pessimistic, skeptical, and cynical, a veritable “moment de la crise” [moment of crisis]. Facts had produced ideas, it is true, but ideas had not yet produced ideals, and no one knew what to do.

There are, of course, several ways of meeting this situation. First, there is resignation: Christian or even philosophical resignation, both unacceptable to Voltaire. Having rejected Christianity, dogma and all, he could find no solace in an attitude leading to consequences that he could not accept, and having long since adopted libertine Epicureanism, he saw no sense in any form of stoicism, Christian or pagan.

Second, there is the way of attack, for if conditions are intolerable, they can be denounced. It is as easy to ridicule distasteful facts, offensive people, disagreeable incidents, and unfair judgments as to satirize an unacceptable view of the universe. Voltaire responded freely and fully to this temptation: the list of things and persons he assails is practically endless: kings, religious intolerance, the Inquisition; Fréron, Vanduren, Trublet; war, inequality, injustice; disease, earthquake, tidal waves; petty thievery, rape, social pride; Jesuits, Jansenists, slavery. In this mass and single attack there is a complete upheaval of the social order; in the political area we find deep criticism of monarchy, the policing of the state, the lack of freedom and equality before the law. In the realm of religion there are powerful accusations against persecution, intolerance, useless dogma, and hierarchical institution. In the moral order, dishonesty, shame, false pride, prostitution, rape, all the petty inhumanities of man against man are viciously assailed. In the natural order, disease, cataclysms, malformations are damned with an irreverence barely short of blasphemy. And yet, though Candide attacks, it does not ultimately destroy. The reason for this is very simple: life is full of miseries, but it also has its pleasures. It is perhaps true that few people would like to relive it, but also true that few voluntarily renounce it. Voltaire was certainly not one to abdicate.

Nevertheless, as the crisis developed, he was torn between cynical renunciation and the urge to create. He was completely aware that the forces restraining this urge were powerful enough to eliminate not only the desire but the person desiring. Experience had taught him the stupidities of man, the horrors of war, the power of kings, and the eccentricities of nature. Any one of these could easily suppress him and his urge to create. He was thus literally reduced to living by his wits, like J. F. Rameau and Figaro, and living by his wits meant very literally indeed the application of wit to all this stupid phenomenon. The world had become a paradox and Voltaire responded with a revolt.

It is imperative to understand the nature of this revolt, since the whole eighteenth century and subsequent centuries have derived from it. Voltaire's response was born of both anger and despair. He was “fâché” [angry] with kings, “fâché” with earthquakes, “fâché” with God. Agamemnon, the great Earthshaker and Zeus had “let him down,” just as they had seemed to abandon Achilles in a far distant moment. The two urns which stand at the feet of Zeus poured forth both good and evil upon the old Patriarch and he, in his frustration, became deeply unhappy, the more so since events transcended all understanding by the human mind:

Poor feeble reason, blind, misled, bemused,
If with God's insights it be not suffused,
Will ne'er conceive what power out of hell
Mingled so much of ill with what is well.

Voltaire's attitude toward Providence must be considered very carefully if we are to grasp the meaning of Candide. It was perhaps well to ask ourselves what role Rousseau's letter played in the composition of the conte. While it is extremely unlikely that the Lettre sur la Providence provoked Candide, as Rousseau would have us believe, it is nevertheless true that Rousseau's defense of Providence touched Voltaire in his sensitive spot. The conclusion of Zadig, it will be recalled, had definitely been a defense of Providence, along more rational, Popian lines than Rousseau's later defense. The problem is therefore posed as to Voltaire's subsequent attitude.

If, to be specific, Voltaire felt that Pope's arguments no longer “justified the ways of God to man,” and Leibnitz's were equally deficient, did he think that he had better ones, or that he could find better ones elsewhere? In other words, was his quarrel with the optimists whose arguments could not justify God's ways or with God whose way could not be rationally justified? And did he assail the philosophers with fiendish glee because he did not know how to attack Providence which was really responsible for evil? Why did he not heed Rousseau's letter as the Duke de Wurtemburg thought he should have done? Why was it rather an incitement to Candide, just as Rousseau thought? These are strange and almost irreverent questions, and totally unanswerable in any critical way, but necessary in divining Voltaire's state of mind. It is undoubtedly true that his act was not a critique but a revolt, a titanic revolt brought about by a breakdown in the power of critique. Having reached the place where understanding was irrational, Voltaire had no other resource than to attack overtly those who thought they understood, and who gave good rational reasons for their comprehension. Simply put, he could only attack the irrationality, the ambiguity of the universe by annihilating rationally all rationality. In that respect his wit is a spiritual, not a rational, instrument for assailing the ambiguity, the clandestinity of a universe which refuses to make itself known.

This state of things explains why one never knows in reading Candide whether to laugh with Voltaire or at him, whether to laugh with the philosophers or at them, whether indeed to laugh with or at Providence; whether, in fact, to laugh at all. In uncertainty and despair there is much ground for hesitation, uneasiness, bitterness, frustration. Taken seriously, the moment of Candide is a tragic affair. But should it be taken seriously? Mme d'Epinay in her characterization of Voltaire states that when he has become most serious he immediately starts making fun of himself and everybody else. This reaction seems to hold true for Candide. Certainly no one takes himself too seriously in Candide. When the moment of revolt becomes too intense, each person resorts to his wit to save the situation. Thus wit is not only a means of revolt, it is at the same time an instrument for the release of intolerable pressures and better still, it serves as a release for the inner forces of man; it is a force, too, a creative effort, an urge to be. Standing face to face with the power of annihilation, impotent to solve either the rationality or the irrationality of things, witness to an impossibly ludicrous cosmic tragedy, Candide proclaims loudly, not that

The play is the tragedy Man
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm

but that the play is puny, insignificant, unregenerate man, and its hero an unconquerable, defiant, eternal wit.

Notes

1. From I. O. Wade, Voltaire and Candide (Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 311-322. Copyright 1959; reprinted by permission of the publisher. Quotations from the French have been translated by the present editor.

2. March 15, 1759, p. 103.

3. Title of a poem by Voltaire which concludes: “We're formed of clay divine, so much I know, / And all, one day, will rise to heavenly glory; / But here on earth we see a different story, / Souls are machines, which fate bids stop or go. / Watch nature change her giddy mood; / Although, like Heraclitus, he was sad, / Let business suddenly be good, / And man will, like Democritus, be glad” [Editor].

4. Voltaire's La Pucelle.

5. September 3, 1760, p. 158.

6. Geneva, 1762, p. 39.

7. Paris, 1861, p. 103.