SOURCE: Bottiglia, William F. “Style” and “Evaluation.” In Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century: Voltaire's Candide: Analysis of a Classic, edited by Theodore Besterman, pp. 243-97. Geneva, Switzerland: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1964.

[In the following essays, Bottiglia analyses the style and themes of Candide and offers a detailed examination of the text.]

STYLE

Style is language which expresses and communicates a literary inspiration; it is diction organized toward beauty. The style of Candide is not naturally separable from its other component elements—which is why some attention has already been paid it in previous chapters. Yet there is something to be gained by isolating it artificially for purposes of close examination. Proof of this is found in studies of Voltaire's tales by Lanson, Van Tieghem, miss McGhee, and miss Flowers, and of Candide by Havens and Naves. Though not all of equally high value in their treatment of the verbal texture of Candide, taken together they provide a solid foundation for further analysis, and the discussion which follows will supply ample evidence of my indebtedness. That discussion will be based on the Morize vulgate, save for the revisions of detail noted by Wagnière, reported by Torrey (‘Date’, p.446), and incorporated by Havens in his edition of the tale¹.

1. CANDIDE AS A DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE

A point of absolutely vital importance is the fact that Candide, to be genuinely and fully appreciated, must be read aloud, or at least be heard with the inner ear. Its sensuous appeal is almost exclusively aural, and it flows with a calculated spontaneity, so that it sounds like an idealized one-way conversation, like a dramatic monologue performed by a master-showman in an informal social setting. The performer is the creator. The implied setting is an eighteenth-century drawing-room. The implied audience is an Enlightened company of aristocrats and intellectuals of both sexes. The rapport between performer and implied auditors is special and complex. He appeals to them as ‘a privileged minority’ (Worcester, p.111); he invites them to help him ‘convict the many of stupidity’ (p.77). In return, he asks that they recognize his ascendancy, and that they enter into the spirit of the game by affecting belief in the figments of his fantasy and by concentrating on the subtleties on his satire (p.31). Hence the effect of intimacy in the prose of Candide. Hence, at the same time, the impression of aloofness; for the interplay of two-dimensional fantasy with wittily turned criticism reflects sublimation of the emotions, rational pose, observational distance, and sophisticated superiority to the fiction. Hence, too, the author's acute theatrical self-awareness, his pervasion and domination of the narrative without encumbering or oppressing it, his generation of energy without weight and of light without heat, his refinement of phrase, his gallantry of tone, his taste in the handling of obscenities.

An ideal presentation of Candide would be a chamber recital by a single, highly gifted, consummately trained actor before a small group of cultured individuals. The recent musical comedy², apart from its defects as such, created a world bearing no more than a tangential resemblance to the parent work. Candide was not meant to be sung to slickly imitative music, in doggerel lyrics composed in a foreign idiom, by a company of flesh-and-blood performers, against a series of original and show-stealing stage-sets, before a mass audience expecting entertainment that is innocent of philosophic challenge. The recent recording of the tale by a narrator and cast³ comes much closer to realizing Voltaire's intention; but the use of several performers—not to mention flaws of pacing and of character-interpretation—has disturbing consequences. There are two reasons why, in an ideal presentation, a single actor would have to carry the entire burden. For one thing, he would be projecting the all-pervasive, all-dominating vitality of the demonstrator's ego. For another, he would be rendering the dialogue passages strictly in terms of impersonation. To impersonate the homunculi he would have to have an unusually flexible voice, ranging from basso profundo to high falsetto, which he could modulate to seize the essence of a type without self-effacement. To project the vitality of the demonstrator's ego he would have to make the fantasy, the wit, and the moral earnestness of the tale irradiate a steady phosphorescence; and he would have to play, not only to the ear, but also to the eye with attitudes and gestures and grimaces. Thus the recording tests the cultivated listener's capacity for supplementary visualization. As for the cultivated reader, he must both visualize and hear a text imagined by its author as a dramatic monologue, not ground out as journalistic copy to be skimmed in silence by the unseeing eye.

Van Tieghem states that in the tales Voltaire ‘transforme le plus possible le récit en entretien’ (i.xxiv). Whatever the merits of this generalization as such or with regard to other tales, it seems somewhat exaggerated for Candide, which contains a great deal of dialogue, to be sure, but also much more than a bare minimum of narrative. If, however, the term ‘entretien’ be reinterpreted to mean the showman's one-way conversation with his readers, then the whole of Candide becomes a recital composed as if to be spoken, as if to be narrated and impersonated by a dramatic monologuist in a style that bears throughout the unmistakable imprint of his—that is, of the author's—individuality.

Voltaire realizes his impersonations by flavouring the speeches of his homunculi with details that distinguish a type as belonging to an epoch, a nationality, a race, a social stratum, a métier, a sex, an age-group, an education level, or a temperamental classification. The details are so skillfully selected that, though few in number, they suffice to produce a calculated passing impression of character-differentiation. What intensifies the impression, provided the reader uses his imagination, is the demonstrator's audio-visual projection of each speaking part: not only vocal timbre, pitch, pace, phrasing, etc., but also facial expression, and, in some cases, even gesture. Thus conceived, such speeches as that of Giroflée inveighing against the monastic life (Cxxiv, pp.180-181) and such dialogues as that between Pangloss and the familiar (Cv, pp.35-38) become artistically more interesting, more effective, more meaningful—not because the reader is using his imagination gratuitously, but because Voltaire, by the special qualities of his style, invites three-dimensional appreciation. At the same time those very qualities reveal the demigod speaking, directly or indirectly, through each of his creatures, insufflating them with the form and substance of his own life-giving Word. The various ways in which he asserts his total control have already been studied (chapter vi). It follows that his creatures do not speak like standard literary types. The impression of character-differentiation is produced without sacrificing the basic Voltairean stylistic manner. This is precisely what impersonation entails. No ignorant slave or prostitute ever used the vocabulary, the turns of phrase, the syntax, and the rhetorically expert presentation found in the negro's indictment of Christian civilization (Cxix, pp.127-129) and in Paquette's story (Cxxiv, pp.178-179). Yet, with the aid of particularizing details and the imagined audio-visual projection, the naïveté of the type is conveyed, the mood is established—not fictionally, but philosophically; for the voice, though disguised, is the author's, and the reader is attracted to the ideas, he is not absorbed into the narrative. I have chosen extreme examples, but the speeches of almost all the personages are illustrative of the same procedure⁴. The old woman, for instance, who has had a very superior upbringing, develops a narrative (Cxi-Cxii) that combines typical and localizing elements with Voltaire's own diction and compositional methods. Naves, incidentally, calls the description of her as a budding beauty (‘je croissais en beauté’, etc.—Cxi, p.59) an evocation worthy of Boucher (Candide, p.27). The comparison is, to my mind, misleading. So far from painting a portrait, Voltaire pieces together some very unevocative rhetorical generalities. He is not cultivating decorative Rococo, he is exposing its inanity: hence the generalities and the satirical twists with which he dismisses them.

2. VOCABULARY

An inspection of the vocabulary used in Candide reveals that it is restricted in range, deceptively simple and clear, subdued in colour and imagery⁵, purged of emotion⁶, and generally marked by philosophic choice and tone. Lanson has shown that throughout the tales Voltaire applies touches of local colour in passing to names of personages, menus, currency, costumes, institutions, fashions, gods, religions, and means of transportation (Prose, pp.171-172). Candide is no exception; but the touches are light and rapid, and they are introduced ‘pour supporter ou traduire un jeu d'idées, un exercice de critique ou de malice’, never, adds Lanson, ‘pour la simple joie ou pour la simple beauté de l'existence’ (pp.168-170). With respect to emotion, the phraseology of both narrative and dialogue passages mocks its fictional excesses. The bitter plaints uttered by such victims as Candide, Cunégonde, the old woman, the negro slave, Paquette, and Giroflée⁷ are imitations of emotion from without by a master-impersonator. And whenever the narrator departs from his ironic manner to make direct comments for or against his personages⁸, he is both parodying fiction and signaling his philosophic sympathy or antipathy. The imagery will be discussed in connection with certain figures of speech.

Another trait of the vocabulary used in Candide is its functionalism. Miss Flowers contends that Voltaire's satirical effects ‘always’ depend on ‘a word, wittily placed and ironically stressed, so as to surprise the reader, or strike him, or trick him into consciousness of the evil being criticized or denounced’ (p.90). It is true that a connective or an adverb or a one-word epithet or coinage often accentuates a satirical effect, but her examples (pp.62ff.) show that the effect very seldom depends ‘entirely and exclusively’ (p.90) on the one word. In the sentence, ‘Candide était tout étonné que jamais les as ne lui vinssent, & Martin ne s'en étonnait pas’ (Cxxii, p.148), the connective, with its special adversative force, skillfully adds to the impact of the thrust (McGhee, Devices, pp.167-168); but, were it not there, the point would still carry home. In the word-group, ‘on lui demanda juridiquement ce qu'il aimait le mieux, d'être fustigé trente-six fois par tout le Régiment, ou de recevoir à la fois douze bales de plomb dans la cervelle’ (Cii, pp.11-12), the adverb intensifies the irony; but without it the idea would still stand. As for one-word epithets and coinages, it would be very difficult indeed to find any whose full satirical charge is independent of what has gone before, or what lies ahead, or what requires historical or linguistic knowledge beyond the scope of the text itself⁹. The style of Candide is functional precisely because the author has kept his eye on his literary objective; has avoided ornamentation and virtuosity extrinsic to his purpose; has refused to lose himself in ‘small art’; has made word instrumental to phrase, phrase to clause, clause to sentence, sentence to paragraph, paragraph to chapter, and chapter to whole. Individual words are never so conspicuously important that they do not contribute to larger verbal patterns, wherein alone they realize their total meaning.

3. ONOMATOPOEIA, ALLITERATION, REPETITION

The aural appeal of Candide finds special expression in onomatopoetic, alliterative, and repetitive effects which enhance the music, add a dimension to the meaning, and help create a world of fantasy governed by a rarefied order superior to life. I have already discussed the onomatopoetic factor in the names Cunégonde, Cacambo, Thunder-ten-tronckh, Vanderdendur, and don Fernando d'Ibaraa, y Figueora, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Souza (chapter vi). The coinage Waldberghoff-trarbk-dikdorff (Morize, p.9, n.1) unmistakably suggests Germanic barbarousness; while the invention ‘Métaphisico-théologo-cosmolo-nigologie’ just as unmistakably suggests the complexity, the opacity, the flatulence, and the foolishness (Havens, Candide, Vocabulary, p.xxxvi) of Germanic philosophy. When Candide asks to what end this world was formed, the answer, ‘Pour nous faire enrager, répondit Martin’ (Cxxi, p.143), weaves a pattern of r's that matches sound to sense; and the skilled performer will carry the uvular rumble of the gloomy Manichaean's saeva indignatio through from the ‘Pour’ to the ‘Martin.’ Immediately after the auto-da-fé a sentence fusing onomatopoeia, alliteration, and vocalic echo informs the reader that ‘Le même jour la terre trembla de nouveau avec un fracas épouvantable’ (Cvi, p.42). Martin's satire on the Parisians includes a sentence which blends the same devices with verbal echo and rhyme to convey his contempt for three kinds of rabble (Flowers, p.116): ‘Je connus la canaille écrivante, la canaille cabalante, & la canaille convulsionnaire’ (Cxxi, p.142). A striking combination of alliteration with rhyme occurs in the dervish episode: ‘—Que faut-il donc faire? dit Pangloss.—Te taire, dit le Derviche’ (Cxxx, pp.219-220). There are many instances of alliteration. The three that follow are among the more conspicuous: ‘Candide tout transi se traina le lendemain vers la Ville voisine …’; ‘Cunégonde est morte! ah meilleur des mondes, où êtes-vous? mais de quelle maladie est-elle morte?’; ‘c'est un folliculaire. …—Qu'appellez-vous folliculaire? dit Candide.—C'est, dit l'Abbé, un faiseur de feuilles, un F. …’¹⁰.

Lanson, speaking of Voltaire's contes and facéties in general, points out that they are thickly sown with repetitive effects. ‘Voltaire’, he says, ‘en fait une joie del' oreille. Il organise musicalement des thèmes verbaux, avec des retours, des développements, des entrelacements expressifs. Ce n'est pas le rythme mathématique de la prose poétique: c'est un arrangement mélodique où les sons et groupes de sons former des dessins capricieux’ (Prose, pp. 158-159). As the previous chapter has shown in much detail, not only do such effects contribute vitally to the structure of Candide, but their arabesque patterns frequently compound stylistic with thematic elements.

Although many of them have been discussed with some attention to the stylistic factor, many others remain from which examples stressing verbal repetitions and variations may be drawn in proof of Voltaire's feeling for certain musical possibilities of language. To create a comically toned impression of the erotic palpitations caused by observation of the lesson in experimental physics, he describes Cunégonde as ‘toute agitée, toute pensive, toute remplie du désir d'être savante …’ (Ci, p.7). Repetition in reverse order, or chiasmus, is used by Jacques in his debate with Pangloss: ‘Dieu ne leur a donné ni canon de vingt-quatre, ni bayonnettes, & ils se sont fait des bayonnettes & des canons pour se détruire’ (Civ, pp.26-27). Two similar instances have already been quoted in chapter vii: ‘une noire mélancolie’, ‘une mélancolie noire’; ‘d'Effendis, de Bachas, de Cadis … d'autres Cadis, d'autres Bachas, d'autres Effendis …’¹¹. The third instance has been analyzed. The first two apparently reflect a striving for variety, in the second case despite an interval of several chapters. Recognition-scenes are regularly automatized with the aid of repetition: e.g., ‘misérable’, ‘misérable’, ‘cher’, ‘cher’ (Civ, p.21); ‘—De ma mère! m'écriai-je.—De vôtre mère! s'écria-t-il en pleurant’ (Cxii, p.66). The passage which follows the auto-da-fé and precedes the recognition-scene between Candide and Cunégonde, and which must therefore bridge two climaxes without derogating from their effectiveness, achieves an effectiveness of its own through suspense, build-up, and repetition, all used in a spirit of fictional parody¹². The droll mellifluence of the seduction episode in Paris is considerably aided by such combinations as: ‘vous aimez donc toujours éperduement’, ‘Il est vrai que j'ai aimé’, ‘je crains de ne la plus aimer’; ‘lui dit-elle’, ‘un Français m'aurait dit’, ‘dit Candide’, ‘dit la Marquise’, ‘dit Candide’, ‘dit la Dame’, ‘dit la Dame’; ‘répondit Candide’, ‘Vous me répondez’, ‘je répondrai’; ‘en ramassant son mouchoir’, ‘que vous ramassiez ma jarretiére’, ‘& il la ramassa’; ‘que vous me la remettiez’, ‘& Candide la lui remit’; ‘un jeune homme de la Vestphalie’, ‘un jeune homme de Vestphalie’; etc. (Cxxii, pp.164-165). Variations of the device can be cited almost at random from both narrative and argumentative passages: e.g., the dissection scene; the debate in Paris on evil; the ‘malheurs … malheureux … malheurs … malheureux’ sequence at Surinam; the ‘fou … fou … folie’ and ‘on venait de tuer … pourquoi tuer … il n'a pas fait tuer … il est bon de tuer’ arabesques in the Portsmouth episode; the repetition of ‘qui’, of ‘car’, of ‘quoique’, of ‘quoique’ and ‘quand’¹³. Especially pointed is the repetition with variation contained in Martin's phrase, ‘sur ce globe, ou plutôt sur ce globule’ (Cxx, p.138). Especially original is the series dealing with the ‘death’ of the baron's son: ‘vous qui futes tué par les Bulgares’, ‘je te retuerais’, ‘Tu peux me tuer encor’¹⁴. In the conversation between Candide and Pangloss on syphilis, the word ‘amour’ is pronounced four times in an inflated passage that might almost be a parody of Francesca da Rimini's great recital in the Commedia (Inferno, v.100-106). The Perigordian abbé's explanation that does not explain, with its periodic structure and rhythm, its rhetorical repetitions, its resort to an archaic geographical reference (‘Atrébatie’) and to several covert historical allusions, and its general high-sounding indirection, reads like a take-off on the trobar clus manner.

4. PACE AND RHYTHM

The verbal patterns of the tale are many and intricate and ever on the move. In movement Candide is a scherzo to be performed vivace. The performance must reflect the author's proportional resolution of a tension between his Dionysiac and his Apollonian faculties (Delattre, pp.33-37), between driving emotional abandon and rational and literary control. On the one hand explosive power, demonic energy, headlong élan; on the other the lightness and grace of winged fantasy, the ease and polish and subtlety of disciplined taste (Naves, Candide, p.13). To resolve that tension Voltaire has objectified and stylized his raw feelings. Control thus triumphs over demonic drive; but the drive, though subdued, is not crushed. It continues its activity underground. The victory of control is definitive without being total. This proportional resolution of the tension, in a scherzo dealing with the problem of human conduct in relation to the mystery of evil, gives its movement a vivacity that is not feverish (Hazard, Pensée, ii.65), but momentous, in a way not unworthy of comparison with the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. It is this impression of momentousness that inspires Alain to remark: ‘le poème de Candide … s'élève à une sorte de grandeur biblique’ (Pomeau, Voltaire, p.187).

The performance must also reflect the changes of pace implicit in the text—significant pauses, both momentary and episodic slowdowns, and momentary accelerations. The eye that reads without visualizing the demonstrator and without the aid of even the mind's ear falsifies the text by forcing upon its flow a fixed, metronomically monotonous rate of speed. The flow does have inevitability, and the over-all tempo is vivace, but there is as much need for diversity within unity in Candide as there is in a Molière comedy. One can easily imagine significant pauses at the ends of chapters, following chapter-titles, to introduce ‘caprices’ of detail, and to permit subsidence of laughter; as well as momentary slowdowns for special stress on a word or phrase or clause, or on a thematically important epigram. One can imagine, too, the momentary accelerations called for by some of the enumerative summaries interspersed through the tale. In addition, there are three episodes which seem to require a slight deceleration. I do not mean the interpolated stories, for they imitate the main story in technique; and they suspend its progress because they are ‘placés à propos’ (Perey and Maugras, p.62), not because they are slower-moving. I mean the Eldorado episode, the sojourn in Paris, and the visit to Pococurante. The latter two must, each in its way, produce an impression of ennui. The other must create the effect of a utopian vision, hence of activity that is serene, not troubled. The pace of all three is still swift, in keeping with that of the whole; but their substance and their style prove that they are to be mildly differentiated from the rest in speed and in tone. Finally, the opening paragraphs of chapter i, since they depict the ironic calm before the storm (McGhee, Devices, p.69), and the concluding paragraphs of chapter xxx, since they present the after-calm of socially productive work, demand a somewhat more than slight deceleration. They should be performed allegro moderato.

The prose of Candide is, of course, irregularly rhythmed. Like a fast-flowing river which rolls along with an inevitable motion, but whose surface keeps breaking into ripples and eddies, it paradoxically permits much discontinuity of detail within continuity of the whole. Lanson's general analysis of ‘le rythme voltairien de la prose’ is roughly applicable to Candide: ‘Ses petites phrases trottent, courent les unes après les autres, détachées. Voltaire rejette toutes ces lourdes façons d'exprimer les dépendances logiques, et de matérialiser, par des mots-crampons, les rapports des idées. Il réduit au minimum qu'il est impossible d'éliminer, les conjonctions, relatifs, et tous autres termes de coordination et de subordination. C'est le mouvement endiablé du style qui lie les phrases, qui les emporte ensemble, comme dans une farandole où les danseuses ne se donneraient pas les mains, et garderaient leurs distances seulement en suivant la mesure. … Voltaire ne cherche que le mouvement: il se moque des cadences poétiques comme des cadences oratoires. Quand il en met dans son style, c'est par malice, en parodie’ (Prose, p.155).

In my study of character I cited many instances of stylistic discontinuity, used by the master of the show to suggest in his personages an unnatural focus, motion, or impetus, a fantastic abruptness or jerkiness, a generally unanatomical behaviour; or to produce effects of staccato, cumulation, transience, rapid review, and flashing vividness, singly or in various combinations (chapter vi). The same procedure is examined by miss McGhee in the tales as a whole (Devices, pp.163ff.). She points out, however, as does miss Flowers (pp.65-66), that Voltaire sometimes deliberately slackens his pace, with the aid of coordinating and subordinating words, in order to achieve greater satirical emphasis. The latter procedure always creates contrast (McGhee, p.165) and parodies periodic eloquence (Lanson, loc. cit.): e.g.,

‘Pour moi je ne vois rien de si divin que Los Padres, qui font ici la guerre au Roi d'Espagne & au Roi de Portugal, & qui en Europe confessent ces Rois; qui tuent ici des Espagnols, & qui à Madrid les envoïent au Ciel; cela me ravit, avançons; vous allez être le plus heureux de tous les hommes’ (Cxiv, pp.82-83).

‘Il y en a où la moitié des habitans est folle, quelques-unes où l'on est trop rusé, d'autres où l'on est communément assez doux, & assez bête; d'autres où l'on fait le bel esprit; & dans toutes la principale occupation est l'amour, la seconde de médire, & la troisiéme de dire des sotises’ (Cxxi, p.142).

‘Candide ne s'arrêta dans Bordeaux qu'autant de tems qu'il en fallait pour vendre quelques cailloux du Dorado, & pour s'accommoder d'une bonne chaise à deux places; car il ne pouvait plus se passer de son Philosophe Martin; il fut seulement très fâché de se séparer de son mouton, qu'il laissa à l'Académie des Sciences de Bordeaux, laquelle proposa pour le sujet du prix de cette année, de trouver pourquoi la laine de ce mouton était rouge; & le prix fut adjugé à un Savant du Nord, qui démontra par A: plus B, moins C, divisé par Z: que le mouton devait être rouge, & mourir de la clavellée’ (Cxxii, p.146).

‘Pendant que Candide, le Baron, Pangloss, Martin & Cacambo contaient leurs avantures, qu'ils raisonnaient sur les événements contingents ou non contingents de cet Univers, qu'ils disputaient sur les effets & les causes, sur le mal moral & sur le mal physique, sur la liberté & la nécessité, sur les consolations que l'on peut éprouver lorsqu'on est aux galéres en Turquie; ils abordèrent sur le rivage de la Propontide à la maison du Prince de Transilvanie’ (Cxxix, p.214)¹⁵.

All such examples taken together prove that periodic sentence-structure occurs more often in Candide than one would be led to expect from previous treatments of its style. It should be stressed, however, that the deceleration involved in these cases is slight, and that it is fully offset by the effect of compression, which keeps the story moving vivace.

Respecting the over-all movement of the tale, Morize argues that there is a very palpable difference between chapters i-xxii and chapters xxiii-xxx. The first of these sections seems more patiently constructed, much more thickly documented, thematically more substantial, and slower moving. In the second ‘le roman court, trotte, se déroule tout seul, et, de chapitre en chapitre, les emprunts se font plus rares, les lectures de jadis sont mieux oubliées, et … la narration gagne en aisance et en légèreté’ (pp.lv-lvi). Morize has, of course, conclusively shown that the ‘sources livresques’ are far more abundant in the first section than in the second, but this does not necessarily mean that the final product reflects the difference in terms of thought-burden or of stylistic pace. I question whether a sensitive reader uninfluenced by the array of notes in the Morize edition has ever felt an encroachment of Voltaire's learning upon his art at any point in the tale. One of the most remarkable facts about Candide is that it crystallizes a rich active and contemplative experience with a compactness and a moral earnestness which are paradoxically mediated by a manner of expression that is light, swift, graceful, and subtle. In movement it remains a scherzo to be performed vivace from start to finish, save for episodes and details already discussed. With regard to the thematic factor, I should say that the chapters of the second section are, paragraph for paragraph, as substantial as those which precede. Morize states that the accent in these later chapters is on fictional parody alone. It is true that Candide's quest has by that time shifted to a sentimental emphasis; but the change occurs after chapter xix, not after chapter xxii (see chapter vii above), and the sentimental emphasis of the quest by no means diminishes the force of Voltaire's intellectual attack. The roles of Martin, of Pococurante, of the six kings, the stories of Paquette, Giroflée, the baron's son, and Pangloss, the Portsmouth incident, and the Conclusion involve a great deal more than fictional parody.

5. COMPRESSION

The effect of compression, of much-in-little, of miniature concentration expresses itself in a number of ways. One, the periodic sentence, has already been discussed. Another is the aphoristic utterance which sums up, whether seriously or ironically, a whole complex of human experience: e.g., ‘les hommes ne sont faits que pour se sécourir les uns les autres’; ‘Les malheurs donnent des droits’; ‘quand on n'a pas son compte dans un monde, on le trouve dans un autre’; ‘En effet, le droit naturel nous enseigne à tuer nôtre prochain, & c'est ainsi qu'on en agit dans toute la Terre’; ‘quand on est passablement quelque part, il faut y rester’; ‘il est beau d'écrire ce qu'on pense; c'est le privilège de l'homme’; ‘Martin surtout conclut, que l'homme était né pour vivre dans les convulsions de l'inquiétude, ou dans la létargie de l'ennui’; ‘le travail éloigne de nous trois grands maux, l'ennui, le vice & le besoin’; ‘il faut cultiver nôtre jardin’¹⁶.

Still another compression device is the sudden telescoping of the narrative: e.g., several pages of discussion between Candide and Pangloss in Holland, then Pangloss's cure and the lapse of two months within a few sentences; many pages devoted to the quick tour of Eldorado by Candide and Cacambo, then the laconic statement: ‘Ils passèrent un mois dans cet hospice’; in their descent back to this world, a hundred days covered in five sentences; following an extended account of the soirée spent at Pococurante's palace, the passing of many weeks indicated in a single sentence¹⁷. The dialogue is also telescoped at times, is reduced to a quintessential résumé: either through a rapid-fire exchange—e.g., Candide and the Dutch minister; Pangloss and the familiar; Candide, the Parisian scholar, and Martin¹⁸; or through a rapid-review series of remarks, one by each personage—the sailor, Pangloss, and Candide at Lisbon (Cv, pp.32-33). All of these devices call for performance at high speed in keeping with the pace of the whole; but the sensitive reader must imagine each instance vocally inflected and rhythmically phrased according to its own contextual needs.

The master-device of compression in the tale is that of enumerative summaries, or cumulative catalogues (Flowers, pp.68-70, 98-104). They appear in almost every chapter, and they total more than seventy. They include sequences of individual words—nouns, adjectives, or verbs; as well as of phrases, clauses, or full sentences. In content they are divisible into several categories. Some are direct narratives: e.g., the lovemaking scene between Candide and Cunégonde, Candide's military training, the sailor's actions at Lisbon, the quarrel with the cleric in Paris¹⁹. Some are flashback narratives: e.g., the attack on the castle as related by Pangloss, the old woman's account of her wanderings, Cacambo's recital, the Paquette-Giroflée story as told by the author²⁰. There are narratives depicting recognition-scenes: e.g., Candide-Cunégonde, Candide-baron's son²¹. There is the abbé's cryptic analytical narrative of the attempt on the king's life (Cxxii, pp.168-169); and Pangloss's genealogical survey of his disease (Civ, pp.23-24). Another category is the flashback meditation: e.g., Candide at Lisbon and at Venice, Cunégonde at Lisbon and en route to the New World²². There is also the meditation on one's present situation: e.g., Candide in Westphalia, en route to Bordeaux, and after meeting Cacambo; Paquette concluding her story in Venice²³. Enumerative descriptions are frequently applied to the personages—their backgrounds, their traits, their physical appearance or condition: e.g., Cunégonde, Pangloss, Candide, the old woman in her youth, don Fernando, Cacambo, Martin, the abbé, the journalistic hack, Giroflée²⁴. They are somewhat less often, but just as impressively, applied to massive physical and social evils: war, a storm at sea, an earthquake, an auto-da-fé²⁵. Fictional parody is achieved in a number of enumerative descriptions wherein exotic local colour is indiscriminately laid on or exaggerated so as to seem unreal: the meals in Eldorado, in Venice, and at the old Turk's; the flight through the Iberian peninsula; the birds in the Jesuit commandant's arbor; the obstacles of the South-American wilderness; the wonders of the Eldoradan capital²⁶. The same device is found in many argumentative passages: e.g., Candide on degrees of happiness in Westphalia, on monks, on mankind in general; Pangloss on the dangers of exalted public office, on the moral purposiveness of causal concatenations; Martin on the evils of the world, and of the French; the Parisian scholar on drama, and on the eternal warfare of society; Pococurante on Homer, Virgil, and Milton²⁷. In addition, there are important catalogues which elude subsumption under the categories listed: e.g., the tableau (Naves, Candide, p.26) that greets the inquisitor's eye as he comes to visit Cunégonde, the dinner conversation in Paris, the bouquet which Pangloss's one lecherous eye examines in exquisite detail²⁸.

Miss McGhee analyzes about a dozen and a half of these enumerations (Devices, pp.124; 142-172, passim), but mostly in connection with other stylistic devices, which will be discussed below. She cites (p.163) the quarrel with the Parisian cleric as an example of rapidity achieved through compression and the spare use of connectives (Cxxii, p.148). As an example of deceleration achieved through periodic structure, with delay of the ironic conclusion for greater emphasis, she quotes (p.165) the sentence in which Candide's attitude is sharply differentiated from Martin's at the start of their voyage to Bordeaux (Cxix, pp.136-137). Otherwise she is not directly concerned with problems of pace in the enumerations of Candide, or, for that matter, with problems of timing and intonation. Nevertheless, her examination suggests in a number of cases²⁹ factors that would be basic to a sensitive rendition: e.g., cumulative repetition of the car by Pangloss, then by Pangloss and the familiar, at Lisbon; of the si in the portrait of don Fernando; of the verbs in the recognition-scene between Candide and the baron's son; climactic order of presentation, as in the description of the supper in Paris; various forms of unexpected conclusion, as in Candide's opening meditation on happiness, the marquise de Parolignac's strictures on Trublet's writings, the account of the auto-da-fé; juxtaposed inconsistencies, as in Candide's comments on monks, or the abbé's on Parisian laughter; and king Théodore's series of antitheses in regular oscillation³⁰. Respecting the tableau that greets the inquisitor's eye (Cix, pp.51-52), I agree with miss McGhee as to its compactness of statement. I find in it, however, neither any moment of absolute quiet nor a clearcut example of rise to climax and descent to anti-climax (p.147). The old woman is talking away. Also, the movement follows the inquisitor's lightning-glance as it takes in the scene, and so implies, not rise and descent, but extreme speed to create the impression of instantaneousness. There is, too, a distinct note of fictional parody in Voltaire's résumé of the situation.

Miss Flowers includes in her study more than three dozen enumerations from Candide (pp.68-117, passim). A third of these are handled as enumerations (pp.68-70, 98-104), the rest under other headings. With regard to their rhythmic structure, she makes several intercontradictory attempts to reduce it to formula³¹. Her difficulties spring from the fact that the sequences are many, and richly varied in length, in nature, hence in rhythm. Fortunately, some of her individual analyses are more accurate than her generalizations. Like miss McGhee, she suggests here and there³² elements that would be necessary to a sensitive rendition: e.g., cumulative repetition of the qui in Pangloss's venereal genealogy, in Pococurante's speech disparaging Milton; of phrases in the old woman's summary of the Moroccan military situation; slowdown of the tempo in the marquise de Parolignac's censure of Trublet's Mélanges; intensification of movement in the recognition-scene between Candide and Cunégonde; rhythm broken by an unexpected conclusion, as in Pococurante's comments on Venetian ladies; the series of parallelisms in the Parisian scholar's remarks on social evil; of antitheses in the old woman's reflections on the will to live³³. Miss Flowers states that the marquise's satirical speech ends with a ‘thundering conclusion’ (p.66); miss McGhee, that the conclusion, ‘mais il ne me dégoutera plus; c'est assez d'avoir lû quelques pages de l'Archidiacre’, is distinctly anti-climactic (p.148). Miss McGhee, it seems to me, is right. As for the recognition-scene, the movement is not only intensified, it is made to imitate a succession of short spasmodic breaths, to produce an effect of panting staccato. According to miss Flowers, the enumerations are static (pp.103-104)—which is indeed often the case, but not always. One of her static examples, the love-making scene of the introductory episode (Ci, p.7), is in fact boldly dynamic. Elsewhere (pp.94-95), with specific reference to Cunégonde's account of the Bulgare attack on the castle and on herself (Cviii, p.46), miss Flowers affirms that Voltaire's verbs either avoid action altogether or, as here, convey, not violence, but ‘a feminine clawing action.’ The description is not completely accurate, for the recital includes two extremely violent verbal phrases: ‘se mit à me violer’ and ‘me donna un coup de couteau.’ And the enumerative account of the same incident by Pangloss (Civ, p.22), quoted directly before that given by Cunégonde, strings together four more of them: ‘elle a été éventrée’, ‘après avoir été violée autant qu'on peut l'être’, ‘ils ont cassé la tête’, ‘Madame la Baronne a été coupée en morceaux.’

The profusion of enumerations strewn through the tale makes inevitable their great variety of form and content. Yet they are all compressive, and they are all cumulative. Taken together they pile up a formidable case against the implications of romance and the claims of optimistic dialectic—against the notion that Providence concatenates events in such a way as to secure the sentimental happiness of the individual and the triumph of the good.

6. SATIRE

The satirical form of utterance adopted by Voltaire in Candide represents a special blend of the critical and the creative faculties. The point of departure—the ‘thesis’—is his sense of what ought to be, his need for a cosmos in which coherence and correspondence are completely concordant, in which natural and logical and moral and aesthetic order are harmonized with, because they are harmonized by, divine order. The ‘antithesis’ is his experience of what is, of physical and social disorder, with consequent disillusionment, bewilderment, perturbation, and indignation. The ‘synthesis’ at which he aims is a deistically managed civilization, wherein men will resign themselves to uncontrollable physical evil and work to reduce social evil and spread social goodness. His satire, be it noted, is criticism, not of divine, but of human, conduct; not of physical evil, but of men's reactions thereto. Its incongruities and distortions have a cathartic function in that they enable him to laugh at what is in the light of what ought to be, and thereby to adjust to what is well enough to retain his sanity. They also have an aggressive agency in that they mock actuality with a view to promoting changes in the direction of a civilization inspired by Eldoradan values. Again, they fulfill a dual artistic purpose in that they express the author's keen delight in aesthetically effective patterns of words and ideas, and rhetorically effective devices of persuasion. These factors combine to produce emotional sublimation. The satirical style of Candide, detached and cool, makes its appeal to reason—not abstract and systematized, but concrete, empirically restrained, practical, common-sensible. Common-sensible, however, does not mean common. Voltaire's appeal to reason is intended for the few, because the many are too ignorant to understand, too weak to care, or too malicious to sympathize. The many are variously warped. The few are worth converting, for on the leadership of such as they rest the hopes, at best of the present generation, at very least of generations not yet born, hence not yet warped. But one does not speak to the few in language which is either dangerously or popularly obvious. Voltaire cannot afford to be dangerously obvious—to expose himself to the countermeasures of censorship. Nor can he afford to be popularly obvious: he must attract the few by making them feel superior, and this he can best achieve by adequately challenging their intelligence. These are two of the reasons why the satire in Candide is couched mostly in indirect terms. There are two more. Voltaire is an acutely sensitive idealist who has been bruised by experience, and so forced to grow a tough protective integument of sophistication. His idealism remains at the core of his being, but to expose it nakedly to view would be to invite just accusations of naïveté. Finally, Voltaire is a great prose artist. In Candide more sustainedly than in any other of his works, he is striving for creativity-in-depth, for plural meaning.

In a tale spangled with ‘innumerable rich and colorful stylistic devices’ (Grubbs, p.540) it is to be expected that the satire will vary in type and in degree of indirectness. Occasionally the satire is directly expressed by the author himself: e.g., the sailor is called ‘ce brutal de matelot’ and ‘le coquin’; Vanderdendur, ‘ce scélerat’³⁴. One cannot, however, escape the impression that these instances are complicated by fictional parody. Farce appears in such scenes as Candide's ‘baptism’ and the dissection of Pangloss³⁵. The character of Martin provides a vent, here and there, for sarcasm (Fowler, p.513, art. ‘Sarcasm’): e.g., ‘Vous êtes bien simple en vérité, de vous figurer qu'un valet métis, qui a cinq ou six millions dans ses poches, ira chercher vôtre maîtresse au bout du Monde & vous l'aménera à Venise …’ (Cxxiv, p.176). There are examples, too, of invective: notably, Candide's question enumerating the evils of mankind and the abbé's portrait of the hack journalist³⁶. Miss Flowers argues that in the latter passage, directed against Fréron, Voltaire departs from his standard attitude of calm moderation, is carried away by his hatred, ‘becomes not only violent, but crude and grotesque’ (p.76). Is this really the case? In varying his satirical tone by means of such a passage, added in 1761, he has correlated it perfectly with the speech assigned to the same character in 1759 (Cxxii, p.150), when there was no reference to Fréron. The personal reference makes the portrait more pointed, but Voltaire has subordinated the topical to the typical, has depicted ‘un folliculaire’, ‘un faiseur de feuilles’, ‘un F. …’—not the individual Fréron. Another kind of satire in Candide is grotesque caricature (Flowers, pp.93-98): e.g., the description of Pangloss ravaged by syphilis and the theme of the old woman's missing buttock³⁷. Of capital importance is satire through parody, or burlesque: of fictional conventions, as well as of metaphysical and other dogmas, from beginning to end; and of epical heroism in such passages as the one that mocks Candide's desperate resolution after ‘killing’ the baron's son in Paraguay³⁸. Burlesque is, of course, inseparable from caricature, which is by no means restricted to grotesquerie. It is also inseparable from irony, which is in fact so intermixed with most of the types just listed that it comes close to being the all-enveloping satirical form of utterance in Candide.

Irony is indirect satire. It says one thing and implies one or more others. Like allegory and symbolism, but in its own way, it pluralizes meaning, makes for subtlety and complexity, and thereby enlists—to use Worcester's phrase—‘[t]he reader's creative participation’ (p.31). In his penetrating study of the art of satire Worcester distinguishes four basic kinds of irony: 1) verbal, 2) of manner, 3) dramatic, 4) cosmic (pp.76ff.). The first two combined pervade and dominate Candide. The third and fourth, which ‘produce satire of a tragic cast’ (p.76), are absent from the tale.

Dramatic irony, or irony of fact, takes for its province ‘life as a whole and the ways of Providence.’ The author employs no ironic style and assumes no ringmaster's pose. He disappears behind his subject-matter, which is, however, ironically charged in such a way that his characters speak a double-edged language and perform double-edged actions whereof the full implications are lost on them, but not on the reader or spectator who makes the necessary effort of interpretation (pp.76, 111, 113-114, 117, 120-121). In Candide the ringmaster, so far from disappearing behind his subject-matter, is omnipresent and runs the entire show, with the aid of a very forceful ironic style. The tale does contain double-edged language and actions throughout, but this is because the demonstrator is very obviously lending voice and movement to his mechanically passive folk in what may be called a mocking imitation of dramatic irony.

Cosmic irony has three characteristic themes: ‘the spectacle of man, the lord of creation, desiring death out of sheer boredom’, ‘the spectacle of the creature turning in wrath against his Creator’, and ‘the vision of earth as a speck of dust’ (pp.128-129, 131, 136-137). At its most extravagant, when it lacks ‘a positive, creative purpose’, it conveys ‘an impression of megalomania and frustration—of weakness, not of strength’ (p.144). Attempts have been made to find cosmic irony in Candide, to prove its author a romantic pessimist. A careful analysis of the text leads to quite other conclusions. Voltaire depicts taedium vitae only to reject it emphatically in favour of socially productive activity. The earth is a ‘globule’ (Cxx, p.138), and men are insignificant ‘souris’ (Cxxx, p.219); yet the earth is also the garden, and men may, by cultivating it, give meaning and dignity to their lives. Martin, the embittered Manichaean, argues that God has abandoned it to some ‘être malfaisant’, and that it contains nothing good (Cxx, pp.138-139); but Voltaire warns the reader that pessimistic fatalism, no matter how tempting it may appear in dark moments, is finally detestable (Cxxx, p.218). The deliberately accentuated presentation of evil in Candide is a satirical attack, not on God's handiwork (Mornet, Origines, p.88), but on finite man's pitiful pretensions to infinite knowledge, and his equally pitiful claims to the special protection of Providence. So far from shaking his fist at Heaven, Voltaire moderately suggests that we resign ourselves without futile protest to physical evils beyond our control, and work hard at ‘ce qui dépend de nous’ (Naves, Candide, p.16): namely, at realizing as best we can the possibilities of the deistic ethic.

Irony of manner involves ‘a deliberate pose’ on the part of the author, ‘a manipulation of the literary personality.’ He performs as ringmaster before spectators who are well aware that he has chosen all the facts and arguments and is presenting them ironically, but who are also aware that the task of discovering and interpreting is largely theirs. This type of irony, Worcester adds, is close to burlesque (pp.76, 119). Voltaire's performance in Candide as master of the show has been studied in great detail, and much has been said about his challenge to his readers, and his use of burlesque or parody (chapters ii-vii, passim)—all in harmony with Worcester's analysis. What needs to be stressed here is that, while verbal irony and irony of manner combined pervade and dominate the tale, the former subserves the latter. The style of Candide is not merely a sum of miniature verbal ironies. As a whole, it is unified by the demonstrator's beautifully sustained ironic manner.

In connection with the over-all tone of the tale, Francisque Vial affirms that, as the author proceeds, ‘l'ironie se détend; le ton se fait plus sérieux; une sorte de pitié enveloppe peu à peu la sécheresse aiguë du récit’ (pp.xxxviii-xxxix). I must confess that I find no relaxation of irony in the later chapters, coloured as they are by Martin's corrosive pessimism, Candide's own pessimistic drift, Giroflée's bitterness, Pococurante's negativism, Parisian corruption, the build-up to the shocking reunion with Cunégonde, etc. The tone does become more serious—or rather, more somber; but this is because of the challenge of pessimism. At no point does the author contaminate his attitude of aloofness, his pose of superiority to the fiction, his rational control of the demonstration with an admixture of pity. In sum, his ironic manner is sustained throughout.

A detailed examination of the various forms of verbal irony in Candide has been made by Havens, miss McGhee, and miss Flowers. In what follows I have attempted a brief synthesis of the major devices which they list, with one example for each device, it being understood that each major device is susceptible of analytical subdivision, that a given device often overlaps with another, and that a given example could often serve to illustrate more than one device, so compact and so complex is Voltaire's style (McGhee, Devices, p.152).

Irony through understatement: (Candide on the Old World) ‘il faut avouër qu'on pourrait gémir un peu de ce qui se passe dans le nôtre en Physique & en Morale’ (Cx, p.56)³⁹.

Irony through overstatement: (Pangloss) ‘Il prouvait admirablement … que dans ce meilleur des Mondes possibles, le Château de Monseigneur le Baron était le plus beau des Châteaux, & Madame la meilleure des Baronnes possibles’ (Ci, pp.3-4)⁴⁰. Miss McGhee makes the important point (pp.22-23) that the device of overstatement, among other things, fuses the attack on intellectual optimism with that on sentimental romance in its ‘précieux’ form: ‘le plus beau des Châteaux qui renfermait la plus belle des Baronnettes …’ (Cii, p.9).

Irony through contrast: (Cunégonde at the auto-da-fé) ‘on servit aux Dames des rafraichissements entre la Messe & l'exécution’ (Cviii, p.48). This device blends into the figure of oxymoron: ‘Don Fernando … sourit amérement …’ (Cxiii, p.75)⁴¹. Miss McGhee (p.131) sees ironic contrast in Candide's and Cacambo's incongruously ‘undignified’ response ‘to the formal directions for greeting a monarch’ in Eldorado: ‘Candide & Cacambo sautèrent au cou de Sa Majesté …’ (Cxviii, p.120). Voltaire, however, is mocking, not their delighted response, but the complicated and degrading formulas of obeisance demanded by earthly rulers. The passage as a whole does illustrate ironic contrast between Eldoradan and terrestrial values.

Irony through exotic example: the entire Eldorado episode⁴². Although in one sense a variation of irony through contrast, this device deserves separate listing because of its normative and inspirational functions. It presents the deistic ethic in thin disguise, and suggests adoption of that ethic by the reader. I think it wise in this case to cite additional instances as proof that exotic example may also be found in the world of reality: the words and actions of Jacques, of the dervish, of the old Turk.

Irony through repetition: the ‘car’ used eight times by Pangloss and the familiar at Lisbon (Cv, pp.35-38)⁴³.

Irony through surprise: (the old woman) ‘Les noces furent préparées. C'était une pompe, une magnificence inouïe; c'étaient des fêtes, des Carouzels, des Opéra Buffa continuels, & toute l'Italie fit pour moi des Sonnets dont il n'y eut pas un seul de passable’ (Cxi, pp.59-60). This device blends into the figure of syllepsis: the king of the Bulgares pardons Candide ‘avec une clémence qui sera louée dans tous les journaux & dans tous les siècles’ (Cii, p.13)⁴⁴.

Irony through absurdity: ‘Maître Pangloss, le plus grand Philosophe de la Province, & par conséquent de toute la Terre’ (Ci, p.6)⁴⁵. I would include under this heading the incident of Candide's visit to the Dutch judge in Surinam (Cxix, p.133). Miss McGhee calls it ‘a good example of irony through inversion’ (p.155), but Candide's first payment is a fine which follows an offense. The irony is based on the absurd disproportion between the triviality of the offense and the extravagant amount of the fine, not on a reversal of normal order.

Of the three scholars who have closely examined the various forms of verbal irony in Candide, Havens presents the most consistently sound, though necessarily the briefest, analysis. Miss McGhee, despite occasional errors, likewise makes a very solid contribution, enriched by categorical subdivision and liberal illustration. Miss Flowers adds appreciably to public knowledge of the subject, but is more erratic in her handling of devices and examples. I do not have space here for a point-by-point consideration of her study, and shall have to content myself with remarking that it may be read with profit, if it is approached with caution⁴⁶.

Still another major device is that of verbal irony through parodical or burlesque imitation. Miss McGhee deals with the fictional subdivision of this device by analyzing Voltaire's stylistic mockery of ‘préciosité’ and of recognition-scenes. She treats verbal suspense and climactic effects independently of fictional parody⁴⁷. I have already called attention to the game of easy familiarity played by the author with his readers to induce an affectation of belief in two utterly fantastic New-World episodes (chapters v and vi); and to his use, in the Eldorado episode, of delayed-action irony and of foreshadowing by means of a key word subtly dropped in passing (chapter v). There are several examples of a key word or phrase which mischievously hints at the theme of a proximate development. Thus Candide, dolorously questioning Pangloss about Cunégonde, asks: ‘mais de quelle maladie est-elle morte?’ (Civ, p.21). This illness motif, by a bizarre transference, becomes Paquette's and Pangloss's venereal disease, which is also associated with death: ‘elle en était infectée, elle en est peut-être morte’; ‘Pour moi je ne la donnerai à personne, car je me meurs’ (Civ, pp.23-24). Cunégonde begins her story with the words, ‘J'étais dans mon lit …’ (Cviii, p.46), which cannot be dismissed as insignificant, in view of what follows. Her brother, at the commencement of his recital in Paraguay, includes among those butchered in the attack on the castle ‘trois petits garçons’ (Cxv, p.87). Shortly thereafter this apparently pointless reference reappears transformed into the pederasty theme. Just before the encounter with the Oreillons, the lovesick Candide plaintively moans: ‘Comment veux-tu … que je mange du jambon … ?’ (Cxvi, p.92). By an imperishably comic twist his words soon modulate into the cannibals' chant: ‘mangeons du Jésuite, mangeons du Jésuite.’ Similarly, the Spanish captain's offer of a ‘marché honnête’ (Cxix, p.130) at Surinam leads into the bargain-scene between Candide and Vanderdendur. These examples, in variety and originality, reveal the master of fictional burlesque at his ironic best. There is, in addition, a converse procedure wherein a key word or phrase mischievously recalls an earlier development. The ‘Cordelier très savant’ of Pangloss's narrative (Civ, p.23) echoes the lesson in experimental physics; and the ‘cérémonies’ with which the old woman helps Candide (Cvii, p.43) remind the reader by contrast of the auto-da-fé.

Mimetic mockery of verbal suspense and climactic effects is perfectly illustrated in the recognition-scene between Candide and Pangloss: “‘qu'est devenuë Mademoiselle Cunégonde, la perle des filles, le chef-d'œuvre de la nature?—Je n'en peux plus”, dit Pangloss. Aussi-tôt Candide le mène dans l'étable de l'Anabatiste, où il lui fit manger un peu de pain; & quand Pangloss fut refait: “Eh bien, lui dit-il, Cunégonde?—Elle est morte”, reprit l'autre. Candide s'évanouït à ce mot …’ (Civ, p.21).

The same scene satirizes the notion of death from heartbreak (Civ, pp.21-22). Melodramatic pathos is cleverly parodied in the passage which immediately follows Candide's expulsion from the ‘Paradis terrestre’ (Cii, p.9). Voltaire also ridicules sentimentality by frequent resort to rhetorical questions, exclamations, and apostrophes⁴⁸. Cunégonde is made to employ a pious terminology which has a typically feminine ring—‘il plut au Ciel’; ‘Je louai Dieu’; ‘il n'y a plus de remission; nous sommes excommuniés’; and which reaches a peak of irony in her exclamation. ‘Sainte Vierge!’⁴⁹. In the course of her recital Voltaire has her invent two delightful puns, both of which are lost on her love-smitten idolater: ‘Ce Juif s'attacha beaucoup à ma personne, mais il ne pouvait en triompher’; ‘l'aimable Candide’ (Cviii, pp.47, 49). In a hit at fictional decorum the author manages to have her fall, as she faints, upon a sofa⁵⁰. Even more ludicrous is the pattern whereby he keeps postponing the erotic issue so that the lovers may tell their stories, and then eat⁵¹. The first and third of the passages referred to are oddly connected by another play on words: ‘Candide … la dévorait des yeux’; ‘Vous devez avoir une faim dévorante, j'ai grand appétit, commençons par souper.’ Finally, mention should be made of the adroit manner in which Voltaire mimics the excitement of fast fictional action by shifting verbs to the historical present: e.g., the duel between Candide and don Issachar (Cix, p.51).

Verbal irony through parodical or burlesque imitation includes other subdivisions as well. There is sustained mimetic mockery of thinkers: above all, of Leibniz and Pope⁵²; in passing, probably of Rousseau⁵³ and Plato⁵⁴. There is occasional parody of the Bible: in two cases whimsically⁵⁵, in four cases with symbolic irony⁵⁶. Another Biblical reference⁵⁷ and two Biblical allusions⁵⁸ are also charged with irony, but they are not imitative. Finally, there is parody of the profane literary classics, too, both ancient and modern. Voltaire's ‘fidéle Cacambo’ unmistakably echoes Virgil's ‘fidus Achates’⁵⁹. The baron's son, ‘haut en couleur, … l'oreille rouge, les lévres vermeilles’, pointedly recalls Tartuffe, as described by Dorine⁶⁰. Candide's ‘suis-je dans cette galère?’ is, of course, a take-off on Géronte's famous refrain in Les Fourberies de Scapin⁶¹. And in the mock-climactic recognition-scene of the next-to-last chapter the burlesque adaptation of Phèdre's confessional words to the reaction, not of Candide, but of Cunégonde's brother (‘Le Baron pâlit à cette vûë’), is another instance of bizarre transference⁶².

There are three more major devices of verbal irony in Candide: euphemism, paronomasia, and figurative comparison. Voltaire treats most of the many obscene passages euphemistically: e.g., Pangloss's erotic adventures, the baron's homosexual activities, and various experiences which befall Candide and the old woman⁶³. Such passages often include, to be sure, an element of fictional parody; but in addition they are always fundamentally related to the grand theme of social productivity (see chapter vii above). Euphemism is also, upon occasion, interestingly blended with literal reduction, as in the description of the ‘crimes’ committed by certain victims of the Inquisition, of Candide's and Pangloss's prison cells in Lisbon, and of the naval battle between the British and French admirals⁶⁴.

As for paronomasia, or word-play, several examples have been cited in other connections. The device recurs with a frequency that is hardly surprising when one considers Voltaire's inventiveness, plus his acute sensitivity to sound-values and to overtones of meaning. Here are a few typical instances: ‘Cet Orateur … lui dit: “… y êtes-vous pour la bonne cause?—Il n'y a point d'effet sans cause”, répondit modestement Candide …’; ‘—Il faut que vous ayez le Diable au corps, dit Candide.—Il se mêle si fort des affaires de ce Monde, dit Martin, qu'il pourrait bien être dans mon corps comme par-tout ailleurs …’; ‘Le Clerc jura qu'on n'enterrerait point Candide. Martin jura qu'il enterrerait le Clerc s'il continuait à les importuner’; ‘Candide fut très content d'une Actrice qui faisait la Reine Elisabeth dans une assez plate tragédie. … Candide … demanda … comment on traitait en France les Reines d'Angleterre. “Il faut distinguer, dit l'Abbé: en province on les méne au cabaret, à Paris on les respecte quand elles sont belles, & on les jette à la voirie quand elles sont mortes.—Des Reines à la voirie!” dit Candide’; ‘Celui-ci outré des procédés de sa femme, lui donna un jour pour la guérir d'un petit rhûme, une médecine si efficace, qu'elle mourut en deux heures de tems dans des convulsions horribles’⁶⁵.

Three other examples of paronomasia call for special comment. 1. It is ironically piquant in the extreme that the ‘Exécuteur des hautes œuvres de la Sainte Inquisition’ should be so clumsy in stringing up a victim (Cxxviii, p.210). 2. The reappearance of Pangloss is prepared by Candide's exclamation: ‘Que d'épouvantables calamités enchaînées les unes aux autres!’ (Cxxvii, p.206). Shortly thereafter Pangloss describes his punishment in these terms: ‘Je fus enchaîné précisément dans la même galére & au même banc que Monsieur le Baron’ (Cxxviii, p.212). And he concludes his story as follows: ‘Nous disputions sans cesse, & nous recevions vingt coups de nerf de bœuf par jour, lorsque l'enchaînement des événements de cet Univers vous a conduit dans nôtre galére, & que vous nous avez rachetés’ (Cxxviii, p.212). 3. I pointed out in chapter vi that the word-group, ‘la fleur de la santé brille sur vôtre visage’ (Cxxiv, p.180), used by Candide in addressing Giroflée, manages to express both the literal and the figurative senses of the name. In the La Vallière manuscript Voltaire first refers to him simply as a Theatine and a monk; then, not long after Candide's descriptive clause, says: ‘Candide donna deux mille piastres à Paquette; et mille piastres à frère Giroflée: c'était le nom du téatin …’ It is possible, then, that the description inspired the name, but just as possible that Giroflée occurred to the author by floral association with Paquette.

Respecting the device of figurative comparison, Lanson states that in the contes Voltaire ‘recourt moins à la métaphore qu'à l'image directe, et c'est plutôt par la précision du détail réel que par l'éclat des analogies sensibles qu'il colore son style’ (Prose, p.167). This generalization holds for Candide insofar as its diction is subdued in colour and in imagery. None the less, figurative comparisons, not picturesque but intellectual in quality, are used with ironic intent often enough to constitute a major device. In a very real sense the entire tale is an extended metaphor. But what I have in mind here, of course, is metaphors, as well as similes, of detail. Not all such metaphors are ironical. The garden figure which concludes the narrative, for instance, has rich symbolical connotations—none of them seasoned with irony. Also, there are, inevitably, dead metaphors of no interest in the present connection (Fowler, pp.348-349, art. ‘Metaphor’). There remain well over a dozen live metaphors and about a dozen similes—a respectable number for so brief and so fast-moving a work: e.g.,

(metaphors) ‘Le fantôme le regarda fixement’; ‘Il semble que vos Européens ayent du lait dans les veines; c'est du vitriol, c'est du feu qui coule dans celles des habitans du Mont Atlas & des pays voisins’; ‘Car y a-t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu'on veut toujours jetter par terre? … enfin de caresser le serpent qui nous dévore, jusqu'à ce qu'il nous ait mangé le cœur?’⁶⁶; ‘—Quel est … ce gros cochon … ? … c'est un de ces serpents de la litterature qui se nourrissent de fange & de venin …’; ‘ce sont des ombres à un beau tableau’; ‘ne pourrai-je sortir au plus vite de ce pays où des singes agacent des tigres⁶⁷? J'ai vû des ours dans mon pays; je n'ai vû des hommes que dans le Dorado’; ‘Platon a dit il y a longtems, que les meilleurs estomacs ne sont pas ceux qui rebutent tous les aliments’; ‘Quand Sa Hautesse envoye un vaisseau en Egypte, s'embarrasse-t-elle si les souris qui sont dans le vaisseau sont à leur aise ou non?’⁶⁸.

(similes) ‘Nous nous embarquâmes sur une galère du pays, dorée comme l'Autel de St. Pierre de Rome’; ‘Elle était bâtie comme un palais d'Europe’; ‘de grandes places pavées d'une espèce de pierreries qui répandaient une odeur semblable à celle du gérofle & de la cannelle’; ‘les puissants les traitent comme des troupeaux dont on vend la laine & la chair’; ‘il hait quiconque réussit, comme les eunuques haïssent les jouïssants …’; ‘la Dame … remarquait avec des yeux de linx tous les parolis’, etc.; ‘remenez moi comme un éclair à Constantinople …’ ‘Le Lévanti Patron … avait déja tourné la proue vers la ville, & il faisait ramer plus vite qu'un oiseau ne fend les airs’⁶⁹.

The device overlaps with others already discussed, makes fairly frequent use of animal comparisons, and is most heavily concentrated in the old woman's story, the Eldorado episode, the sojourn in Paris, and the first two chapters (xxiv-xxv) of the stay in Venice.

So much for major devices of verbal irony. There are several minor ones worth mentioning. The author twice uses aposiopesis to break off debates involving the problem of free will: between Pangloss and the familiar at Lisbon, between Candide and Martin at sea⁷⁰. In one instance he satirizes through Candide what Ruskin was later to call the pathetic fallacy: ‘Tout ira bien … la Mer de ce nouveau Monde vaut déjà mieux que les Mers de nôtre Europe, elle est plus calme, les vents plus constants’ (Cx, p.56; see also Cii, p.9). Occasionally he achieves irony through anaphora: e.g., (the Parisian hack journalist) ‘cette Actrice est fort mauvaise, l'Acteur qui joüe avec elle est plus mauvais Acteur encore, la piéce est encor plus mauvaise que les Acteurs …’; (Candide on arriving in Venice) ‘… Tout est bien, tout va bien, tout va le mieux qu'il soit possible’⁷¹. Here and there his irony becomes two-edged. A personage makes a speech which justly points out the faults of another, yet at the same time betrays the faults of the speaker: e.g., the anonymous guest's scornful criticism of Gauchat, the marquise's mockery of Trublet, Martin's censure of Pococurante⁷². Finally, there are a few examples of irony through anastrophe: (the narrator's parodical description of the storm off Lisbon) ‘Travaillait qui pouvait …’; (Martin) ‘De vous dire précisément s'il y a plus de gens à lier dans un pays que dans un autre, c'est ce que mes faibles lumiéres ne me permettent pas’; (Pococurante) ‘Ira voir qui voudra de mauvaises Tragédies en musique. … Se pâmera de plaisir qui voudra, ou qui pourra, en voyant un châtré fredonner le rôle de César & de Caton’, etc.⁷³.

It is clear from the number and variety and character of the stylistic devices which inform Candide that the tale offers a surprisingly comprehensive display of the author's powers in the art of rhetorical discourse. To say of that art that it is an imitation of rhetorical discourse wrought in satiric mockery of senescent classicism is to speak the truth, but not the whole truth. Through the atmosphere of aggressive mockery, and transfiguring it with a beauty which is its own sufficient reason, shines Voltaire's irrepressible delight in the creation of artistically effective sounds and rhythms and figures (cf. Lanson, Prose, pp.151-152, 169). So intimate is the union of style and meaning in Candide that it is dangerous, in any given instance, to regard meaning as the sole determinant of the verbal pattern—or, for that matter, style. Two phrases drawn from the Eldorado episode, and, incidentally, not in themselves satirically toned, will serve to illustrate the point. 1. The 1759 editions of the tale state that the ‘Palais des Sciences’ contains ‘une galerie … toute pleine d'expériences de Physique.’ In 1761 the statement is revised to read: ‘… toute pleine d'instruments de Mathématique & de Physique’ (Cxviii, pp.121-122). Morize comments as follows on this change: ‘Il ne me semble pas qu'il faille chercher le motif de cette addition ailleurs que dans le souci artistique d'améliorer le rythme de la phrase et sa cadence un peu sèche: je ne vois pas Voltaire, à la fin de 1760, particulièrement occupé de mathématiques’ (p.122, n.1). The stylistic factor in this revision is, I think, both real and important; but I would hesitate to dismiss the thematic factor on the ground suggested by Morize. I am inclined to believe that Voltaire, in re-examining his presentation of the deistic vision, found a way to improve the thought-content of this particular phrase by associating in an ideal partnership the two foundation sciences of the Enlightenment. 2. The old sage, in describing the religion of his country, says: ‘nous adorons Dieu du soir jusqu'au matin’ (Cxviii, pp.115-116). The expression puzzles Pomeau, who acknowledges that it was ‘couramment usitée au xviii^e siècle’⁷⁴. Voltaire himself had already used the same turn of phrase in the ‘Epître dédicatoire’ of Zadig: ‘quoiqu'on vous loue du soir au matin …’ (Van Tieghem, i.3). Both cases involve the rhetorical figure of hysteron proteron, with which the alumnus of Louis-le-Grand and lifelong student of the classics was obviously familiar. The reversal of the natural order not only enhances the rhythmic euphony of the word-group, it also reinforces the round-the-clock or morning-noon-and-night impression. In Candide this impression is echoed shortly afterward by the old sage's remark, ‘nous le remercions sans cesse’ (Cxviii, p.117).

7. SYMBOLISM

Literalist or ‘Fundamentalist’ critics of Voltaire's great scherzo are duly impressed by its clarity of utterance, but they are surely wrong in refusing to look below the surface for hidden meanings. It is not necessary to invoke the theories of the modern depth psychologists in this connection. Voltaire himself declares Zadig to be a work ‘qui dit plus qu'il ne semble dire’ (Van Tieghem, i.3); and, speaking through Amaside in Le Taureau blanc, gives the following prescription for theme in a philosophic tale: ‘Je voudrais surtout que, sous le voile de la fable, il laissât entrevoir aux yeux exercés quelque vérité fine qui échappe au vulgaire’ (ibid., iv.75). Thus when, on another occasion just prior to the composition of his ‘grand chef-d'œuvre’ (Delattre, p.69), he is reliably reported as saying that in a skillful narrative ‘la catastrophe doit être énoncée, aussi laconiquement que possible’ (Perey and Maugras, p.62), it becomes the reader's obligation to look for the calculated symbolism in the concluding pages of Candide. If he does so, not fancifully (Price, pp.38, 209-213, 227), but with careful attention to Voltaire's life and activities and thought-processes and literary methods, he will see more in the final paragraph than ‘un rétrécissement’ (Pomeau, Voltaire, p.52), and more in the old Turk's attitude than ‘the passing words of an man tired of royal courts and the affairs of an ill-run world’ (Havens, Age of ideas, p.205). The tale as whole simply will not stand up on the purely literal level (‘Voltaire's romances’, p.390). If read without symbolic interpretation of any kind, it is indeed dismissible as a bagatelle, a ‘plaisanterie d'écolier’ (Best.7405), a ‘coïonnerie’ (Best.7474), a medley part travesty, part fairy tale, part lampoon, and part fabliau. Now, it is not a defect, but it is a dimensional limitation of any philosophic tale that one cannot enjoy the story for its own sake. This, however, only proves all the more conclusively that one is expected to participate actively in the search for the ideas behind the story, which is, after all, not so much a story as it is a pretext and an invitation. For the reader who is willing to make the effort, such participation provides its own form of enjoyment and offers a very solid reward.

The diction of Candide is a vehicle of sustained symbolism. The critic cannot legitimately contend that it is symbolical here and literal there, in accordance with his personal preferences. The entire work is an extended metaphor, and its verbal texture everywhere connotes ideas which range beyond the face-value meanings of their embodiments, though without loss of logical rapport. To take one example, Pangloss's venereal genealogy highlights the promiscuity of the race, normal and abnormal, laical and clerical; satirizes unnatural vows; illustrates the reality of an evil that outruns human responsibility; mocks the notion that causal concatenations prove the cosmos to be logical and moral in terms comprehensible to man; and suggests an in-reverse parody of Biblical begat sequences (Flowers, p.85). The preponderantly negative emphasis, so necessary to jolt the reader out of his complacency (Havens, Candide, p.lv), at the same time implies by contrast a whole set of affirmations (Brailsford, pp.160-161): e.g., the account of the auto-da-fé becomes by inversion a plea for intellectual honesty, resignation to uncontrollable physical evils, works as the substance of faith, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion. In other words, Voltaire uses irony, not with sterile causticity, but ‘as a means of lending force to [his] creative beliefs’ (Worcester, p.106).

Special attention must be drawn to the symbolic effect which Voltaire produces by maintaining throughout an off-centre viewpoint. This device is the prerogative of the artist who chooses to look at man and the world in satirical perspective. It enables him to deform by simplifying and exaggerating—caricaturally when he is on the attack, seriously when he is urging his own convictions. The reader, in his turn, is expected to savour the literary and moral trenchancy of the device, then by a commonsensible adjustment to centre directly upon the author's sober meaning.

Since the tale is basically an attack, it opens with, and for the most part stresses, caricatural deformation. At the midway point, in depicting a utopia which is genuinely perfect yet unreal, Voltaire masterfully blends the two kinds of simplification and exaggeration. He idealizes the deistic way of life while parodying real and extraordinary voyages. In the concluding paragraphs the caricatural element, though still present in the speeches of Pangloss and in the author's ironic hits at the garden of Eden, sentimental love, and monastic otiosity, is heavily overbalanced by the serious. The statement of his solution confronted Voltaire with a formidable artistic challenge. After so much negation, after so much comical distortion, he had somehow to shift to the affirmative in all earnestness without lapsing into banal didacticism or bathetic sensibility, without marring the over-all tone or manner or style of his scherzo. Furthermore, he had somehow to achieve subtlety without obscurity or preciosity. In my judgment his response to this challenge has resulted in one of his supreme triumphs as a conteur.

I have already explicated the author's sober meaning with regard to the dervish and old Turk passages and the final prospects for the marriage between Candide and Cunégonde, as well as his full meaning with regard to Candide's garden (chapter iv). In the first two of these cases (dervish, old Turk) he continues to maintain his off-centre viewpoint, deforming by simplification and exaggeration, but in a serious, not a caricatural, vein. He thereby preserves the tone, manner, and style of the whole, despite the shift to earnest affirmation. And he achieves a subtlety which is neither opaque nor overrefined, for the symbolical connotations are organic to the verbal texture and the structure of the tale. The third case (marriage) differs from the first two only in that the caricatural vein carries through to the closing paragraph, when Voltaire suddenly turns serious in mid-sentence: ‘Cunégonde était à la vérité bien laide; mais elle devint une excellente patissiére …’ As for the fourth case (garden), from Candide's first announcement of his resolution to his terminal restatement of it, Voltaire plays back and forth between the off-centre viewpoint, which he manipulates caricaturally, and the on-centre viewpoint, which he handles dead-seriously. The former includes Pangloss's Biblical reference with quotation (see chapter iv above), the comments on Cunégonde and Giroflée, and Pangloss's logical concatenation with a moral. Cases one and two avoid caricature because they deal with exemplary personages⁷⁵. Case three requires that a personage ridiculed for twenty-nine chapters be redeemed at the last; so the mockery is prolonged until, in the final moments, Cunégonde may be more acceptably regenerated along with the rest of the little band. More elaborately, case four oscillates between viewpoints and tones because the tale is adjusting from an eccentric, caricatural emphasis to a serious, on-centre conclusion. Once the adjustment has been definitively made, the tale must end, lest its artistic unity be flawed. In another and very real sense, however, as has already been underlined (chapter iv), the ‘mot de la fin’ paradoxically concludes without concluding. It affords the reader a vista of human possibilities arranged in a receding and ascending perspective toward an impossibly lofty horizon far-distant and half-lost in a luminous haze.

EVALUATION

1. CANDIDE A MASTERPIECE

In his book review of Candide Grimm expressed the opinion that the tale has ‘ni ordonnance ni plan’, and that it ‘ne soutiendrait pas une critique sérieuse’ (p.85). Almost two centuries later (1955) Jacques Barzun condemned it with equal severity on similar grounds: ‘we credit him with one great creation, which is Candide—a topical piece of criticism thinly disguised as fiction. Judged strictly as a novel, it lacks verisimilitude and characterization, as well as ascertainable form, since many of the incidents occur without necessity and could be multiplied or removed without much harm to either the thesis or our pleasure … enchanted as we are by Candide, it would not be perverse to maintain that another of the tales—Zadig or the Princess of Babylon—has more concision and hardly less variety. But then only Candide has the famous tag line about cultivating our garden, only Candide has caught the world's ear and become “a creation”’ (quoted in Wade, Search, p.109). According to Pomeau, on the other hand, ‘il est impossible d'imaginer Candide écrit autrement. Le style de ce chef-d'œuvre a un tel caractère de nécessité qu'on ne pourrait sans dommage y changer un mot. … L'originalité de Candide est … dans la continuité de la perfection’ (Voltaire, p.63). In the present study I have tried to prove that Candide will withstand minute critical analysis, that it is a carefully planned and executed work of art, and that it is therefore a masterpiece.

The La Vallière manuscript reveals that, after dictating his tale (from notes? from a rough draft?), Voltaire reread and corrected it. Wade shows that, besides changes ordered during dictation, there are suppressions, substitutions, and additions made by way of later revision in the author's own hand. These fall into several categories, and, corrections of slips by Wagnière apart, they are aimed at perfecting the work in large and in small (Candide, pp.160-179). The dictation procedure strengthens the impression that Voltaire thought of Candide as a one-way conversation or dramatic monologue, hence as an effluence of his ego expressing itself in a manner that would sound spontaneous and achieve inevitability. It also offers evidence of his Mozart-like capacity for intense superconscious creativity. The revisions, both before and after publication, make it plain that he regarded the tale, not as a bagatelle, but as a significant literary creation worth improving and polishing with care.

How close is the final product to perfection? Once the fact is understood that Candide must be judged by standards proper, not to the novel, but to the conte philosophique as an independent genre, minute critical analysis almost completely confirms Pomeau's evaluation. Almost, for there is no explaining away certain flaws of detail: e.g., the confusion of references in the two passages dealing with the play seen by Candide in Paris (Havens, Candide, p.133); or the failure, in the episode of the six kings, to adjust Candide's preliminary remark—‘pourquoi êtes-vous tous Rois? pour moi je vous-avoue que ni moi ni Martin nous ne le sommes’, so that it would not blunt the edge of the concluding exchange, added in a final revision—‘… Etes-vous roi aussi, monsieur?—Non, messieurs, et n'en ai nulle envie.’ Havens points out, too (p.128), that the ‘autres’ in the phrase, ‘Tous ses autres rivaux’ (Cxix, p.135), is difficult to justify. I am inclined to consider it a slip. There may be others⁷⁶. As for larger matters, it seems fair to conclude, on the basis of the evidence presented here, that the structure of Candide is impaired by neither long nor short digressions (see chapter vii); that the Eldorado episode triumphs, both in form and in content, over the adverse criticisms of Le Breton, Toldo, and Faguet (see chapter v); and that the obscenities in the tale, despite the general outcry against them, have a legitimate artistic function, are handled with good taste, and subserve a basically moral aim (see chapter vii).

There remains the problem of chapter xxii and the 1761 revision. Morize argues that, in expanding his account of Candide's sojourn in Paris, Voltaire has stuffed it with personal attacks that are cruel and uncalled-for (pp.lxxxviii,154). One may readily grant their cruelty: ‘Wit’, says Torrey, ‘is ever cruel, often unfair in its emphasis …’ (Spirit, p.186). But the cruelty of wit in a philosophic tale is not per se a true test of its literary validity. Voltaire creates mechanically passive personages in whose humanity no one is expected to believe, and he makes them embody a dynamic moral message. Unlike the novelist, he is not interested in depicting individual character for its own sake with a nuanced complexity. He is interested in urging the adoption of the deistic ethic as a practical means to social progress. So long as his creatures are mere impersonations, so long as his manner is intellectual rather than emotional, so long as his emphasis is typical rather than topical, and so long as his satirical thrusts are worked into an effective artistic pattern and contribute to a worthy ethical cause, he is entitled to a certain latitude of personal reference. Voltaire is contemptuous of ivory-tower contemplation, with its stress on ideas that are academically pure, fair, abstract, paralyzed by the Eleatic illusion, hence not quite of earth and socially unproductive. He insists that ideas, to be humanly meaningful, must be introduced into the arena, must be used as weapons in a polemical struggle against social abuses and for social reforms. The struggle is real because the enemy is real, and the enemy is particularly well entrenched in Paris—the openly identified arena of chapter xxii. The 1761 revision, addressed first and foremost to the Parisian public, concretely attacks Fréron, Gauchat, and Trublet as representative of the enemy. The personal references are cruel, but in a special way. They increase the pointedness, and thereby the topical force, of the satire; but they are neither exclusively nor predominantly personal. They do not attack individuals as individuals. They attack types in terms of the socially unproductive ideas and attitudes for which they stand. Thus they are not uncalled-for, because Voltaire has made the personal and the topical minor elements of a design that remains consistently literary and ethical. Candide does describe the journalistic hack as ‘ce gros cochon’, but, as already indicated, the 1761 passage referring to Fréron is correlated perfectly with the speech assigned to the same character in 1759, when there was no such reference; and, fundamentally, the abbé's ‘portrait’ delineates ‘un folliculaire’, ‘un faiseur de feuilles’, ‘un F. …’—not the historical individual (chapter viii). Its satire, moreover, is two-edged, reflecting on the abbé no less than on hacks like Fréron. The same device has been shown at work in the anonymous guest's scornful criticism of Gauchat and the marquise's mockery of Trublet (loc. cit.). In sum, the 1761 revision does not blemish the author's design through the addition of personal labels. Without them the assault would retain its essential thrusting power, though it would lose some of its piquancy and colour—proof that they enrich the presentation.

The final version of chapter xxii, save for the confusion of references in the passages dealing with the play, demonstrates Voltaire's success, after several efforts (Wade, Candide, pp.177-179), in meeting the challenge of the Paris episode (Petit, ii.100). It transforms Candide from a mere spectator into an active participant, and captures with sufficient realism for philosophic purposes the atmosphere of contemporary life in the capital (Pomeau, Candide, pp.66-68). It skillfully elaborates the themes announced through Martin in the preceding chapter. It includes mischievously clever comparisons with Westphalia and contrasts with Eldorado, as well as implicit contrasts with the socially productive activity of the garden. It contains an impressive series of ‘portraits.’ It heavily stresses the cultural motif, merely mentioned en passant in Eldorado, and later effectively varied in the visit to Pococurante. It continues both the intellectual and the sentimental satire, creating, with the aid of numerous and elegantly turned stylistic devices, not only a rapid-review picture-sequence, but also the mood, of Parisian ‘vice’ and ‘ennui.’ The depiction of urban tedium, again expertly varied in the account of the soirée at Pococurante's, shows that, at least in the hands of a master-conteur, the tale may sometimes rise above the novel. Voltaire fuses swift compression with his other narrative gifts to describe boredom without boring the reader⁷⁷. Who would dare say as much for L'Education sentimentale or Bouvard et Pécuchet?

Internal analysis thus proves that Candide is a masterpiece. Criticism may argue over details, but the over-all excellence of Voltaire's performance is incontestable. On this point, moreover, there has long been general agreement among specialists: e.g., Lanson, Havens, Torrey, Green, Pomeau, and Delattre⁷⁸.

2. CANDIDE A MINIATURE CLASSIC

Does comparative analysis justify the more ambitious claim that Candide is a classic? A classic is a masterpiece that possesses sufficient depth, scope, and elevation—in sum, sufficient dimension to rank as a model expression of some basic civilized response to the challenge of life, and therefore to deserve the enduring admiration and attention of mankind. According to Redman, ‘Candide is, indeed, a masterpiece. … It is … the tale at its highest level. But, even at its highest, this form is not one which is capable of bearing burdens that other literary forms can bear; not one in which the experience of life can find its fullest, most profound, and most affecting expression’ (p.38). This is well said. The physical size of Candide, as well as Voltaire's attitude toward his fiction, precludes the achievement of artistic dimension through plenitude, autonomous ‘3D’ vitality, emotional resonance, or poetic exaltation. Candide, then, cannot, in quantity of quality, measure up to the supreme classics. The question is whether, by means other than those listed, it achieves sufficient dimension to merit evaluation, not as a minor (to me a meaningless designation), but as a miniature, classic. In Torrey's judgment, ‘Candide is a classical masterpiece in every sense of the term’ (Spirit, p.271). Havens affirms that ‘Candide has become a classic’, and, as such, ‘part of the intellectual heritage of the educated world’ (Candide, pp.lxi-lxii). I am unable to accept the historical sense of the term classical as used by Torrey, because the evidence of the present study shows Voltaire departing, not only from certain rigidified formulas of French classical composition, but also from French classical thought with its cult of coherence, society with its exclusive stress on status, and economy with its support of a ‘parasitical’ clergy and nobility. Otherwise I am convinced that he and Havens are right, if they mean that Candide is a miniature classic⁷⁹.

The scope of the tale is truly amazing when one considers its physical brevity. Voltaire has succeeded, by virtue of his multum in parvo technique, in expressing his views on almost all the major aspects of civilization: love, the family, recreation, society, economics, government, morality, the arts, science, philosophy, and religion—drawing his examples from a very wide range of times and climes. In fact, a close reading of Candide proves it to be the Voltairean synthesis, ‘le résumé de toutes ses œuvres’ (Flaubert, quoted in Morize, p.v). Furthermore, despite its lack of poetic exaltation, it finds a way to soar, thanks to its creation, through a magical blend of winged fantasy with phosphorescent wit, of a rarefied order superior to life; thanks also to the indirect affirmations contained in its satire, the direct moral exhortation of the Conclusion, and the presentation of the author's deistic ideal in the Eldorado episode.

The criterion of profundity brings up problems which call for more extended comment. Although Candide possesses neither autonomous ‘3D’ vitality nor emotional resonance, it is quickened and deepened by the energy of Voltaire's personality, the momentous vivacity of its stylistic movement, the philosophic sympathy it arouses for its message, and the levels of meaning it suggests through a unique fusion of irony, symbolism, and, here and there, duplicity. But its attainment of profundity by these essentially artistic and moral means has been denied in the name of Christianity, of Marxism, of metaphysics, of the novel, etc. Such fundamental divergencies of taste and world outlook are, for all practical purposes, insuperable. Suffice it to say that the critical method applied in this study presupposes the validity of the liberal-arts approach, which demands, not only sympathetic cultivation of all genres and media and period-styles the world over and throughout history, but also deliberate suspension of one's own religious, philosophical, political, or economic preferences. In terms of that approach, ‘Voltaire stands and will stand as a landmark and a symbol; toweringly identified with one notable stage of man's development; perfectly representing one of man's possible responses to the challenge of life’ (Redman, pp.46-47); and Candide, his greatest work of art and the synthesis of his ripened wisdom, is thus seen to be a model expression of that response—a response not necessarily the same as the critic's, but none the less basic, civilized, and profound.

Voltaire has avoided the danger of topicality (Furlong, pp.20-21), has achieved universality and ensured the perdurability of his satire, by attacking the bluff and waste in metaphysical and theological speculation, the criminality and waste of faith without works and of status without responsibility, the folly and waste of sentimental quixotism, etc.—in short, the sins of commission and omission that follow from all negations or perversions of social productivity, no matter when or where.

He has avoided the dangers of pessimistic fatalism by concluding that men should resign themselves to uncontrollable physical evils and work toward the diminution of social evils and the realization of the deistic ethic. The pile-up of the case against optimism and romantic love is an artistically exaggerated mockery of human pretensions, not an indictment of the Deity. As Pomeau says, ‘En fin de compte, Candide ne nie pas la Providence, mais le providentialisme’ (Religion, p.307). This is not to say that Voltaire is undisturbed by the presence of evil in God's creation. How disturbed he could be by it is amply revealed in the Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne. But distinctions must be drawn. As I have pointed out elsewhere (review of Wade, Candide, p.174), Zadig and Memnon prove that a decade before Candide ‘Voltaire's intellect could already no longer accept the “tout est bien”’; that in the Poème ‘his acutely augmented sympathy for the sufferings of others⁸⁰ forced his emotions to catch up with his intellect’; and that between 1755 and 1758 ‘[h]is sense of proportion and his sense of humor reasserted themselves’, so that he was able to win through to a momentous affirmation. In Candide Voltaire's intellectual honesty compels him to admit that the problem of evil is beyond final human solution, his self-discipline teaches him resignation to the inevitable, and his self-determination summons him to melioristic action.

The term pessimism has been used rather loosely in connection with Candide and the Ferney period. At the beginning of this study I defined a pessimist as one who believes that all is for the worst, and that men are powerless to change the situation. The man who, whether occasionally or frequently, makes cynical or misanthropic comments in moments of weariness or illness or depression or impatience or frustration is not ipso facto a pessimist. Nor is the man a pessimist who bewails the decadence of literature, but labours long and hard to renew it; who preaches social indifferentism, but propagandizes for reforms; who declares the cause of humanity hopeless, but fights the good fight driven by hope. ‘What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts’⁸¹. The Conclusion of Candide and the Ferney campaign betoken a way of life which is not pessimistic, but melioristic. Voltaire's meliorism is the fuel that makes his motor go; his pessimistic thoughts are the exhaust. In him, as in the eighteenth century generally, ‘the rare combination of the belief in the sovereignty of reason with the insight into the factors which oppose reason's autonomy’ creates ‘a tension which does not paralyze but which propels’ (Dieckmann, p.297).

Both Vyverberg and Crocker fail to distinguish adequately, in their analyses of Voltaire, between thought that produces action and thought that lets off steam⁸². Academicians, and especially intellectual historians, are prone to treat ideas in abstraction from life (Dieckmann, p.303); but for a literary artist who is at the same time a practical moralist, and who therefore lives by the unacademic and unbiblical principle that ‘Im Anfang war die That!’, this can result in serious distortion. When Vyverberg concludes that there is ‘a fundamental inconsistency in Voltaire's philosophy and world outlook’ (p.187), he is right—and he is wrong; for with Voltaire the contradictions of the ivory tower are resolved in the arena. When Crocker insists on Voltaire's ‘torment’, ‘anguish’, ‘agony’, and ‘despair’⁸³, he deforms the Enlightenment drama of Voltaire's intellectual perplexities into the twentieth-century melodrama of the neo-romantic existentialist's neurotic broodings. Torrey once delightfully suggested that the Church canonize Voltaire for the salvation of humanity (Spirit, p.283). This is not likely to happen in the near future. But the likelihood does exist that the ‘Age of anxiety’ will soon enshrine him as ‘Our Patriarch of the bleeding heart’—forgetting that the sage of Ferney was a sage precisely because his inner oscillations did not tear him apart and freeze him into morbid inaction, because he exerted a superb comic control over his thoughts and his emotions, because he ‘dr[a]nk delight of battle’, achieving a wholesome unity at the deepest level of his being through moral blended with literary productivity.

This being so, it follows that the Conclusion of Candide and the Ferney campaign also reveal, not a fatalist, but a determinist for whom ‘Freedom is the joyful and triumphant participation of an individual in the uniform and compulsory processes of nature’; for whom effects, so far from being completely contained in their causes, ‘can have more value and … can have or be new emergent qualities and properties’⁸⁴. Causality triumphs in Voltaire over metaphysical and theological notions of free will; it does not triumph over creativity, it does not paralyze the reason, it does not immobilize the campaigner.

In sum, it may be confidently affirmed, with respect to Candide, which is, as suggested, a sort of definitive statement, that Voltaire's presentation of his views on evil and on human freedom is not only brilliant, it is profound. It opposes intellectual honesty to ingenious conjecture, and sagacious moderation to sensational extremes. It uses satire, not destructively but constructively, ‘as a means of lending force to [his] creative beliefs’ (Worcester, p.106), as ‘a powerful civilizing agent’ (Johnson, p.36). And it shows Voltaire sensitively adjusting his attitude to the new needs of society and the implications of the new science (Pomeau, Religion, p.307).

I have underscored the point that Voltaire must be judged as a literary artist and as a practical moralist, not as a philosopher (chapter i). Like a number of other eminent creative writers, he is an intellectual, but he is definitely not a system-builder. By conviction as well as by temperament he is opposed to all ambitious speculative constructions. If he is to be taxed with superficiality on the ground that he is not an architect of abstract thought, then so are Sophocles and Shakespeare, Homer and Dante, Cervantes and Dostoievski, Pascal and Milton. In all these cases the accusation is simply irrelevant. The artist has a way of attaining profundity that is strikingly different from the way of the philosopher. Yet Auerbach seriously argues against the literary respectability of Candide because ‘Voltaire in no way does justice to Leibnitz's argument and in general to the idea of a metaphysical harmony of the universe’ (p.408). Here again, as so often, it is Pomeau who best says what needs to be said: ‘Si Candide n'opposait à l'optimisme que des arguments, il ne serait pas le chef-d'œuvre voltairien. Candide démolit la construction leibnizienne par l'obsession d'un style. Optimisme ou pessimisme sont éprouvés non pas tant comme des idées que comme des modes contrastés d'existence’ (Religion, p.303).

The didactic element is, of course, as intrinsic to Candide as the literary. The tale fuses art with propaganda. It has therefore been aprioristically condemned by the zealots of ‘l'art pour l'art.’ In their desperate attempt to isolate and glorify ‘pure’ beauty, they have not only overlooked the empirical fact that ‘all art’, being human, ‘is in a sense propaganda’ (Torrey, Spirit, p.186), they have by ex post facto decree ruled unchaste the deliberate fusion of ethical with literary values by many of the world's greatest writers. Unfortunately for these proponents of insignificant form, beauty and goodness appear inseparably, though variously, blended in most works of literature, both sacred and profane. Now, the moral factor is rightly implicit rather than explicit in some genres; but it necessarily becomes more explicit in others, such as the religious epic, oratory, the fable, and the philosophic tale. By necessarily I mean that in the latter the union between literature and morality is a happy marriage, not a shotgun partnership which would better be dissolved. Thus the Divina commedia, the Oraison funèbre d'Henriette de France, ‘Les Animaux malades de la peste’, and Candide succeed; and they succeed because of the blend, not in spite of it. Critics who deny this are suffering from acute cultural angustitis. They seek a purity, not of strength, but of weakness. They would emasculate art by dehumanizing it. The artist qua artist remains a human being; and to be human is to be concerned with the good life.

Candide is a profession of faith in the deistic ethic. Voltaire proposes no rules of conduct for the individual as such (Pomeau, Religion, p.225), nor does he interest himself in the other private aspects of the individual's life. The morality he preaches relates exclusively to man's public actions in a civilized context. His key principle is therefore ‘bienfaisance’, conceived, not as a noumenally sanctioned categorical imperative, but as a norm of behaviour which has its source in ‘the uniformity of inclinations, instincts, and appetites’ (Dieckmann, p.307), and so prescribes ‘what is universally useful to human society’ (Crocker, ‘Voltaire's struggle’, p.157). This principle is fixed, but its applications are innumerable, since they depend on what is practical, on what is concretely possible at a given time in a given situation. The dynamics of life force constant readjustments. A morality based on abstract contemplation and insisting on absolute ends and immaculate means is unviable, escapist, and even immoral; for it conduces to inaction, and so serves the purposes of reaction. It seeks a universal and eternal purity, not of strength, but of weakness. Voltaire's ethic, on the other hand, faces up to the agonizing responsibilities of the Heraclitean flux, which necessitates finite either-or decisions amid the infinite more-or-less diversity of circumstances-on-the-move. It is an ethic that favours correspondence over coherence, existence over essence; partial reforms now or soon, by flexible means which include duplicity but exclude physical violence or martyrdom, over ideal ends to be attained by spotless means in some sweet by-and-by. Voltaire would have agreed heartily with Goethe that there is no humanity, there are only men. To him the immediate needs of the suffering individual (Torrey, Candide, pp.ix; 63, n.2) outweigh all the ponderous demonstrations ever elaborated in support of ‘a metaphysical harmony of the universe.’

Candide is cast in a form that is beautifully suited to the tactics of Voltaire's deism. His off-centre viewpoint manages to spotlight with devastating effectiveness the social evils which are obstructing the cultivation of the garden. It is in the nature of satire to distort. It is in the nature of great satire to distort with a corrective, affirmative, civilizing aim⁸⁵. This is the aim realized by Voltaire through his ‘searchlight device’ (Auerbach, p.404). If he had sought to reproduce in Candide ‘the whole truth’ (ibid., loc. cit.) about optimism and love, he would have lost himself in Eleatic niceties ‘sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.’ He would, moreover, have failed to reproduce that aspect of the whole truth which bears directly on social morality-in-action. But this is the very aspect that constitutes his speciality. The duty of the satirical surgeon is to excise the cancerous growth, not to prescribe against an operation because the rest of the body seems reasonably healthy. Thus the accusation that the author of Candide simplifies, exaggerates, falsifies, hence is superficial (ibid., pp.408-411) betrays a surprising insensitivity to the art of satire. Voltaire's simplicity is one of strength, not of weakness. As already stated (chapter i), it is a simplicity of controlled choice and compression, which masterfully sifts the raw data for epitomes of experience, and organizes and vitalizes the resultant quintessences in accordance with principles of dynamic stylization. That Voltaire had investigated the pros and cons of his subject-matter, and that his deformations reveal the creative satirist intentionally selecting and accentuating with an eye on the realities of power and the needs of action, is beyond dispute⁸⁶.

This incorporation of ideas into the stream of time is admittedly a dangerous game. If the intellectual too pure to act is a socially irresponsible escapist, the cynical opportunist who prostitutes ideas in the public domain solely for self-aggrandizement is an unforgivable demagogue. Voltaire repudiates both extremes. He is realistically, not cynically, opportunistic. His ends, which he knows must be approached gradually if at all, justify many, not any, means. He opposes unjust force, not with counterforce, but with every conceivable device of persuasion, because at bottom he believes that the power of persuasion may sometimes in some measure triumph over the persuasiveness of power. Those who would preserve their purity and engage it, too, have found no solution to the problem of social morality-in-action that is practically superior to Voltaire's (e.g., Maritain, pp.48-68). His Fabian tactics, adapted as they are to the palpable imperfections of man and the world, prove that he has profoundly understood the limitations, along with the progressive possibilities, of the human condition.

Finally, the development of scientific and contractual humanism during the two centuries which have elapsed since the publication of Candide decisively confirms the judgment that the tale has sufficient dimension to rank as a model expression of one basic civilized response to the challenge of life, and so deserves to be called a miniature classic.

Notes

1. Candide, pp.96-97, 98, 139. See also Pomeau, Candide, pp.206 (note to l.108), 209 (note to l.22).

2. Candide (1956): music by Leonard Bernstein; book by Lillian Hellman; lyrics by Richard Wilbur, Dorothy Parker, and John Latouche.

3. Voltaire's ‘Candide’ (Caedmon Publishers. New York 1958): read by Robert Franc, narrator, and others.

4. the exceptions are rare, and highly significant. In the utopian other world of Eldorado, where distinctions of character in an ordinary human sense have no relevance, Voltaire speaks undisguisedly for himself through the host, the old sage, and the king (see chapter v above). In the Conclusion, when the time has come for imparting the final wisdom to his readers, he speaks just as plainly in his own voice through the dervish and the old Turk, making both of them genuine philosophes and masters of literary utterance (see chapter iv above).

5. the satirist's ‘art is an exercise of the intellect rather than of the imagination’ (Richard Garnett, quoted in Furlong, p.11).

6. the satirist ‘fails when emotion clouds his intellect’ (Furlong, p.21).

7. Cvi, p.42; Cx, pp.56-57; Cxii, pp.70-71; Cxix, pp.128-129; Cxxiv, p.179; Cxxiv, pp.180-181.

8. e. g., ‘ce pauvre homme’ (Cxix, p.127); ‘un pauvre Savant’ (Cxix, p.134); ‘ce brutal de matelot’ (Cv, p.31); ‘ce scélerat’ (Cxx, p.140).

9. e. g., ‘le coquin’ (Cv, p.31)—Candide, Thunder-ten-tronckh—Pangloss, Cunégonde, Pococurante.

10. Cii, p.9; Civ, p.21; Cxxii, p.154.

11. Cxix, p.133; Cxxiv, p.176—Cxxx, p.217.

12. Cvi, p.42; Cvii, pp.43-44.

13. Cxxviii, pp.210-211; Cxxii, p.163; Cxix, pp.133-135; Cxxiii, pp.171, 173-174; Cii, p.11; Cv, pp.35-38; Cvii, p.45; Cxx, p.137.

14. Cxiv, p.85; Cxxix, p.215.

15. see also Cvii, p.45—‘Candide lui obéit … de leur séparation’; Cxvi, p.102—‘Mais après tout … je n'étais pas Jésuite’; Cxviii, pp.114-115—‘Les Espagnols … jusqu'au dernier’; Cxix, pp.133-134—‘Enfin un vaisseau … de la Province’; Cxix, p.134—‘Candide en écoutant … de très grands malheurs’; Cxx, pp.136-137—‘Cependant, Candide … le systême de Pangloss’; Cxxiii, p.174—‘Candide fut si étourdi … sans délai à Venise’; Cxxv, pp.190-191—‘J'ai bien assez … pour être ignorant’; Cxxv, p.196—‘Cependant les jours … le remercier’; Cxxvi, p.197—‘Candide partagé … le Carnaval à Venise’; Cxxvii, pp.207-208—‘Chien de Chrétien … cinquante mille sequins’; Cxxviii, p.213—‘Je suis toujours … la matiére subtile’; Cxxx, pp.216-217—‘Il était tout naturel … que Cunégonde’; Cxxx, p.218—‘Pangloss avoüait … & n'en croyait rien.’

16. Cii, p.10; Cxiii, p.76; Cxiv, p.79; Cxvi, p.99; Cxviii, p.123; Cxxv, p.191; Cxxx, p.218; Cxxx, p.221; Cxxx, pp.222-223.

17. Civ, pp.21-25; Civ, p.26—Cxvii, pp.106-111; Cxviii, pp.112-122; Cxviii, p.122—Cxix, p.126—Cxxv, pp.183-196; Cxxv, p.196.

18. Ciii, pp.17-19; Cv, pp.36-38; Cxxii, pp.162-164.

19. Ci, p.7; Cii, pp.10-11; Cv, p.33; Cxxii, p.148.

20. Civ, p.22; Cxii, pp.67, 70; Cxxvii, pp.205-206; Cxxx, pp.218-219.

21. Cvii, pp.44-45; Cxiv, p.85.

22. Cvi, p.42; Cxxiv, p.176; Cviii, pp.49-50; Cx, p.57.

23. Ci, p.6; Cxx, pp.136-137; Cxxvi, p.197; Cxxiv, p.179.

24. Ci, p.3; Ciii, p.20; Cvi, p.42; Cxi, p.59; Cxiii, pp.73-74; Cxiv, p.78; Cxix, p.135; Cxxii, p.149; Cxxii, pp.153-154; Cxxiv, p.177.

25. Ciii, pp.14-15; Ciii, pp.15-16; Cxi, p.62; Cxi, p.63—Cv, p.30—Cv, pp.31-32—Cvi, pp.41-42.

26. Cxvii, pp.108-109; Cxxiv, p.177; Cxxx, p.221; Cx, p.55, plus n.1; Cxiv, p.84; Cxvii, p.104; Cxviii, p.121.

27. Ci, p.6; Cxviii, pp.117-118; Cxxi, pp.144-145; Cxxx, pp.221-222; Cxxx, p.223; Cxx, p.139; Cxxi, p.142; Cxxii, pp.161-162; Cxxii, p.163; Cxxv, pp.187-188; Cxxv, p.189; Cxxv, pp.193-194.

28. Cix, pp.51-52; Cxxii, p.159; Cxxviii, p.211.

29. pp.124-125, 142-144, 148, 150, 159, 172.

30. Cv, pp.35-36, 37-38; Cxiii, p.74; Cxiv, p.85; Cxxii, p.159; Ci, p.6; Cxxii, pp.160-161; Cvi, pp.41-42; Cxviii, pp.117-118; Cxxii, p.153; Cxxvi, p.202.

31. pp.68, 71 (involving three examples of broken rhythm), 102.

32. pp.65-66, 68-71, 83, 85, 87-88.

33. Civ, pp.23-24; Cxxv, pp.193-194; Cxi, p.62; Cxxii, pp.160-161; Cvii, pp.44-45; Cxxv, p.183; Cxxii, p.163; Cxii, pp.70-71.

34. Cv, p.31; Cxx, p.140.

35. Ciii, p.19; Cxxviii, pp.210-211.

36. Cxxi, pp.144-145; Cxxii, pp.153-154.

37. Ciii, p.20—Cix, p.52; Cx, pp.55, 57; Cxii, pp.68-69; etc.

38. ‘Il ne nous reste qu'à vendre cher nôtre vie … il faut mourir les armes à la main’ (Cxv, p.91).

39. Havens, Candide, pp.lvi, lviii; McGhee, pp.152-153; Flowers, pp.77-79. See also Brailsford, p.161.

40. Havens, p.lviii; McGhee, pp.123-124; Flowers, loc. cit.

41. Havens, p.lvii; McGhee, pp.129-134, 158-159, 167-168, 170-171, 173 (n.37); Flowers, pp.86-88.

42. Havens, pp.li-lii; McGhee, pp.116-117.

43. Havens, p.lviii; McGhee, pp.124-125, 165, 172; Flowers, pp.65-66, 70, 101-102.

44. Havens, pp.lvii-lviii; McGhee, pp.142, 144, 148, 150 (n.76), 161, 167 (n.16); Flowers, pp.63-65, 74, 88-90, 123-124.

45. Havens, pp.lvi-lviii; McGhee, pp.112-113, 118-121, 155.

46. Sareil has recently analyzed Voltaire's use of irony through repetition in the contes, including Candide (‘Répétition’, pp.137-146). Despite his claim to originality (p.137), his treatment is essentially derivative—a ‘repetition’ in different terms and various recombinations of what his predecessors had already discovered and presented. For his contention that in Candide repetition serves to ‘pallier les insuffisances du plan’ (pp.139-140) see above, chapter vii.

47. pp.22-23, 172; 142-144, 147-148, 150 (n.76).

48. e. g., Cxvi, p.99; Cxiv, p.85; Cvi, p.42.

49. Cviii, p.46; Cviii, p.50; Cix, p.52; Cix, p.51.

50. Cvii, p.44; see Torrey, Candide, p.20, n.1.

51. Cvii, p.45; Cviii, pp.46, 50.

52. ‘[L]e meilleur des Mondes possibles’, ‘l'harmonie préétablie’, ‘la raison suffisante’, ‘les effets & les causes’—‘tout est bien.’

53. ‘[L]e bon Pangloss m'avait souvent prouvé que les biens de la terre sont communs à tous les hommes, que chacun y a un droit égal’ (Cx, p.54); ‘Ah que dirait Maître Pangloss, s'il voyait comme la pure nature est faite?’ (Cxvi, p.99). See Havens, Candide, pp.xliv-xlv, 124.

54. ‘[U]n être à deux pieds sans plumes, qui avait une ame’ (Ciii, p.19). See Havens, p.118.

55. ‘[I]l n'est pas resté pierre sur pierre’ (Civ, p.22)—see Havens, p.118; ‘Candide eut plus de joie de retrouver ce mouton qu'il n'avait été affligé d'en perdre cent tous chargés de gros diamants d'Eldorado’ (Cxx, p.140)—see Havens, p.130. Havens says that in the latter case the similarity may be purely fortuitous. I am inclined to believe that Voltaire, with his memory and his ear, must have been aware of the resemblance.

56. the Jesuit ‘Royaume’, emphatically of this world, or ‘vigne’ (Cxiv, p.79; Cxv, p.89)—see Morize, p.89, n.2; Havens, p.123; also chapter iv above; and the two references to the garden of Eden (Cii, p.9; Cxxx, p.223)—see Havens, p.144, and chapter iv above.

57. the list of Old Testament perpetrators or victims of public violence (Cxxx, pp.221-222)—see Morize, p.222, n.1; Havens, pp.142-143.

58. Abraham's ‘mensonge officieux’ (Cxiii, pp.74-75)—see Morize, pp.74-75, n.2; Havens, p.122; and the captain's ‘gros livre’ (Cxxi, p.143)—see Morize, pp.143-145, n.1; Havens, p.130; Torrey, Candide, p.72, n.1; Pomeau, Candide, pp.266-267. It seems much more likely that a ship's captain would have a Bible on board than a copy of Buffon's Théorie de la terre, or even of De Brosses's Histoire des navigations.

59. Cxix, p.130; Havens, p.127.

60. Cxiv, p.85; Le Tartuffe, i.iv; ii.iii.

61. Cxxvii. p.207; Fourberies, ii.vii.

62. Phèdre, i.iii; Cxxix, p.214.

63. Ci, pp.6-7; Civ, pp.22-24; Cxxviii, pp.211-212—Cxv, pp.87-88; Cxxviii, pp.209-210—Ci, p.7; Ciii, p.19; Cxxii, pp.164-165—Cxi, pp.61-62, 64; Cxii, pp.65-66.

64. Cvi, pp.40, 42; Cvi, pp.40-41; Cxxiii, pp.173-174.

65. Ciii, p.17; Cxx, p.138; Cxxii, p.148; Cxxii, p.151; Cxxiv, p.178.

66. the first of these figures recalls the ‘who would fardels bear’ of the Hamlet soliloquy (iii.i), an image which is not, however, reproduced in the free translation of that soliloquy made by Voltaire for his eighteenth Lettre philosophique.

67. as Havens point out, the ‘singes’ are priests, while the ‘tigres’ are assassins such as Châtel, Ravaillac, and Damiens (Candide, p.135).

68. Civ, p.21; Cxi, p.63; Cxii, pp.70-71; Cxxii, pp.153-154; Cxxii, p.163; Cxxii, p.170; Cxxv, p.195 (see Besterman, Notebooks, ii.360); Cxxx, p.219.

69. Cxi, p.60; Cxvii, p.108; Cxviii, p.121; Cxx, p.139; Cxxii, p.154; Cxxii, p.157; Cxxvii, p.208.

70. Cv, p.38; Cxxi, p.145.

71. Cxxii, p.150; Cxxiii, p.174.

72. Cxxii, p.159-160; Cxxii, pp.160-161; Cxxv, p.195.

73. Cv, p.30; Cxxiii, p.172; Cxxv, pp.186-187.

74. Religion, p.430; Candide, p.261.

75. interestingly enough, in parallel with his handling of the Eldorado episode, Voltaire has it both ways in his depiction of the dervish and the old Turk. He presents two venerable sages and describes an exotic meal in a continuing parody of fictional stereotypes, but without any caricature whatever of the personages themselves or of their ideas.

76. Pomeau calls attention to three details worth pondering in this connection (Candide, pp.30, 237, 259). 1. In chapter i the scene in the bushes presupposes that the season is spring or summer. The very next day, in chapter ii, it is winter. Pomeau admits that the author of Candide ‘n'a cure de lier les épisodes par une chronologie stricte.’ It should be added that Voltaire is here mocking both fictional verisimilitude and the pathetic fallacy. 2. In chapter iv Pangloss brings Candide to with the aid of a little bad vinegar which just happens to be in the stable. ‘Il est peu vraisemblable’, comments Pomeau, ‘que du vinaigre, même “mauvais”, se trouve “par hasard” dans une étable.’ Granted; but Voltaire satirizes fictional coincidences throughout the tale. To cite one of many other such instances, in chapter ix Candide is suddenly attacked by don Issachar with a dagger, but manages to kill him with a sword which he just happens to have on his person, thanks to the old woman's ‘prudence.’ 3. In chapter xvii, after reaching Eldorado, Candide ‘mit pied à terre avec Cacambo auprès du premier village qu'il rencontra.’ Yet, as Pomeau points out, they appear to be on foot, since their canoe had been shattered. ‘Auraient-ils pris place’, he asks, ‘dans l'une de ces voitures tirées par des moutons rouges?’ The answer must be yes, but Voltaire shrewdly bypasses this link in the narrative chain, and he does so by literary license. Many of the important effects he is preparing in the Eldorado episode would have been spoiled if he had dwelt on such a carriage ride and its attendant conversation.—In fine, these details would be slips in a novel, but they are perfectly legitimate devices in a philosophic tale.

77. cf. Crocker's judgment (Candide, p.17) on both the Paris and the Pococurante episodes: ‘From the aesthetic viewpoint, it is regrettable that chapters xxii and xxv break up the rhythm and movement. The satire in these two chapters, though often amusing in its revelations of the foibles of contemporary Paris, is too long, and in places, too topical to be of lasting interest.’ One of the basic distinctions between talent and genius is that genius, unlike talent, is capable of universalizing the topical. The supreme example of this capacity in world literature is Dante's Commedia, but I should like to suggest, on the basis of the evidence presented here, that in its less ambitious way Candide proves Voltaire's genius along the same lines. As for the rhythm and movement of the episodes in question, which I have analyzed in chapter viii, Crocker seems to have missed the point that the depiction of unproductive ‘ennui’ is an important element in the author's grand design, and that it calls for a technique very different from, say, the narration of an earthquake or of a headlong flight. Voltaire knew, moreover, as Beethoven knew, that the effectiveness of a scherzo is markedly enhanced by the apt inclusion of a contrasting episode.

78. Voltaire, p.150; Prose, p.183—Candide, pp.vii, xxviii, xxix, lvi—Spirit, pp.39, 271—Contes, p.xxviii—Voltaire, p.63—p.69.

79. in his review of Analysis (p.322) Topazio argues, following Torrey, that Candide is a classic in every sense of the term. He also insists that it is not just a miniature classic, but a classic, period, since, according to him, quantitative distinctions are irrelevant in such matters. Every sense would include the historical (see Torrey, Spirit, pp.11-14, 271-272), against which I have amassed a great deal of evidence here. If Topazio has valid counterevidence, he should cite it. With respect to quantitative distinctions, they have no place in internal analysis, which attempts to evaluate the artist's degree of skill in performance, to determine how closely he approaches perfection. On the other hand they are inevitable in external or comparative or dimensional analysis, which concerns itself with degree of greatness in performance, with the size of the artist's achievement. It is clear enough, I think, why Candide deserves to be called a classic; but compared with such monumental works as the Odyssey, the Commedia, King Lear, and The Brothers Karamazov, Candide is surely no more than a miniature classic. It seems to me that this is as far as sober judgment can take us. To go farther is to be carried away by one's enthusiasm.

80. for factors contributing to this acute augmentation of sympathy, see, in chapter iv above, my discussion of the pessimistic trend of the fifties.

81. G. Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman: ‘The Revolutionist's handbook: Religion.’

82. pp.170-188—Age of crisis and Nature and culture, passim.

83. e. g., Age of crisis, pp.36, 63, 64, 65, 140, 222, 388; Nature and culture, pp.238n., 243, 344.—When Crocker writes as a literary critic rather than as a historian of ideas, he comes much closer to the essential Voltaire as presented in this study. See, e. g., his Candide, p.22.

84. Williams, ‘Human freedom’, p.413; ‘Logical and natural compulsion’, p.190.

85. Worcester, loc. cit.; Johnson, loc. cit.

86. Morize, pp.xiii-xxii, xxxiv-lxiii, and notes, passim; Torrey, Spirit, p.279; Naves, Voltaire, pp.155-156.

List of Works Mentioned in the Text

[References in the text and in footnotes have been methodically limited to key words. The list which follows is cross-indexed to facilitate the finding of the complete references. In the text Candide is cited as C, chapters are indicated by Roman numerals, and page numbers refer to the Morize edition.]

Aldington, Richard, Voltaire. London 1925.

Analysis. see Bottiglia, Voltaire's ‘Candide’: analysis of a classic.

An Anthology of eighteenth-century French literature, ed. Ira O. Wade [and others]. Princeton 1930.

Ascoli, Georges, ‘Voltaire’, Revue des cours et conférences (Paris juillet 1924; avril, juillet 1925), xxv.ii.616-630; xxvi.ii.153-167, 619-639.

———Zadig. see Voltaire, Zadig.

Auerbach, Erich, Mimesis: the representation of reality in western literature, trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton 1953.

Beaumont, Cyril W., Puppets and the puppet stage. New York 1938.

Beer, sir Gavin de, ‘Voltaire's British visitors’, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (Geneva 1957), iv.7-136.

Bellessort, André, Essai sur Voltaire. Paris 1925.

Bénac. see Voltaire, Romans et contes.

Bergson, Henri, Le Rire: essai sur la signification du comique. Paris 1901.

Berl. see Voltaire, Traité sur la tolérance.

Besterman, Theodore. see Voltaire, Voltaire's correspondence [cited as Best.].

———Notebooks. see Voltaire, Notebooks.

———‘Voltaire et le désastre de Lisbonne: ou, La Mort de l'optimisme’, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (Geneva 1956), ii.7-24.

Boehn, Max von, Dolls and puppets, trans. Josephine Nicoll. London 1932.

Bottiglia, William F., review of Wade, Candide, Modern language notes (Baltimore February 1961), lxxvi.171-174.

———Voltaire's ‘Candide’: analysis of a classic, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (Geneva 1959), vol.vii, 1st ed.

Brailsford, Henry N., Voltaire. London 1935.

Brunetière, Ferdinand, Histoire de la littérature française classique (1515-1830), vol.iii. Paris 1912.

———Histoire et littérature, vol.iii. Paris 1886.

Castets, Ferdinand, ‘Candide, Simplicius et Candido’, Revue des langues romanes (Montpellier et Paris novembre-décembre 1905), xlviii [5e sér. viii]. 481-491.

Champion, Edme, Voltaire: études critiques. Paris 1893.

Cherpack, Clifton, ‘Voltaire's Histoire de Jenni: a synthetic creed’, Modern philology (Chicago Aug. 1956), liv.26-32.

Clarétie, Léo, Histoire des théâtres de société. Paris 18..

Colles, H. C., ‘Symphonic poem’, Grove's dictionary of music and musicians, 5th ed. (London 1954), viii.206-207.

Crocker, Lester G., An Age of crisis: man and world in eighteenth-century French thought. Baltimore 1959.

———Candide. see Voltaire, Candide ou l'Optimisme.

———Nature and culture: ethical thought in the French Enlightenment. Baltimore 1963.

———review of Bottiglia, Analysis, The French review (Baltimore February 1960), xxxiii.425-427.

———‘Voltaire's struggle for humanism’, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (Geneva 1957), iv.137-169.

Crowley. see Voltaire, Poème sur la loi naturelle.

Dargan, E. Preston, review of Torrey, Spirit, Modern philology (Chicago Nov. 1939), xxxvii.217-218.

Delattre, André, Voltaire l'impétueux. Paris 1957.

Desnoiresterres, Gustave, La Comédie satirique au XVIII^e siècle. Paris 1885.

———Voltaire et la société française au XVIII^e siècle. Paris 1867-1876, 8 vols.

Dieckmann, Herbert, ‘An Interpretation of the eighteenth century’, Modern language quarterly (Seattle Dec. 1954), xv.295-311.

Disney. see Origin and development of the microscope.

Du Bled, Victor, La Société française du XVI^e siècle au XX^e siècle. Paris 1900-1913, 9 vols.

Eder, Joseph M., Ausführliches handbuch der photographie (erster band, erster teil: Geschichte der photographie [erste hälfte]). Halle (Saale) 1932.

Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean L. d'Alembert. Paris 1751-1780, 35 vols.

Encyclopédie méthodique, ou par ordre de matières: Dictionnaire des amusemens des sciences mathématiques et physiques. Paris 1793.

English satire: an anthology, ed. Norman Furlong. London 1946.

Euler, Leonhard, Lettres à une princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie. London 1775, 3 vols.

Faguet, Emile, Dix-huitième siècle: études littéraires, 19th ed. Paris 1901.

———Voltaire. Paris 1895.

Falke, Rita, ‘Eldorado: le meilleur des mondes possibles’, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century (Geneva 1956), ii.25-41.

Fellows, Otis, review of Bottiglia, Analysis, Modern language notes (Baltimore December 1959), lxxiv.754-755.

Ferrigni, Pietro C., La Storia dei burattini. Florence 1884.

Flandrin. see Voltaire, Œuvres choisies.

Flowers, Ruth C., Voltaire's stylistic transformation of Rabelaisian satirical devices. Washington 1951.

Fowler, Henry W., A Dictionary of modern English usage. New York 1950.

Freer, Alan J., review of Bottiglia, Analysis, Studi francesi (Torino sett.-dic. 1959), iii.494.

Friedell, Egon, A Cultural history of the modern age, trans. Charles F. Atkinson, vol.ii. New York 1931.

Furlong. see English satire: an anthology.

Gage, Simon H. and Henry P. Gage, Optic projection. Ithaca 1914.

Garcilaso de la Vega, Histoire des Yncas, rois du Pérou: Histoire de la conquête de la Floride, trans. Jean Beaudoin. Amsterdam 1737, 2 vols.

Goncourt, Edmond de and Jules de Goncourt, La Femme au dix-huitième siècle. Paris 1905.

Graffigny, Françoise d'I. d'H. de, Vie privée de Voltaire et de Mme du Châtelet pendant un séjour de six mois à Cirey. Paris 1820.

Green, Frederick C., Contes. see Voltaire, Choix de contes.

———Eighteenth-century France. New York 1931.

———French novelists, manners, & ideas from the Renaissance to the Revolution. London 1928.

Grimm, Friedrich M., Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique [par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc.], ed. Maurice Tourneux, vol.iv. Paris 1878.

Grubbs, Henry A., ‘Voltaire and rime’, Studies in philology (Chapel Hill, etc. July 1942), xxxix.524-544.

Guérard, Albert, The Life and death of an ideal: France in the classical age. New York 1928.

Hatzfeld, Helmut A., Literature through art: a new approach to French literature. New York 1952.

Hauser, Arnold, The Social history of art, trans. Stanley Godman. London 1951, 2 vols.

Havens, George R., The Age of ideas. New York 1955.

———Candide. see Voltaire, Candide, ou l'Optimisme.

———‘The Composition of Voltaire's Candide’, Modern language notes (Baltimore April 1932), xlvii.225-234.

———‘The Conclusion of Voltaire's Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne’, Modern language notes (Baltimore June 1941), lvi.422-426.

———‘The Nature doctrine of Voltaire’, Publications of the Modern language association of America (Menasha, Wis. Dec. 1925), xl.852-862.

———review of Torrey, Spirit, The Philosophical review (Boston, etc. May 1940), xlix.375-376.

———‘Voltaire's pessimistic revision of the conclusion of his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne’, Modern language notes (Baltimore Dec. 1929), xliv.489-492.

Hazard, Paul, La Pensée européenne au xviii^e siècle, de Montesquieu à Lessing. Paris 1946, 3 vols.

———‘Le Problème du mal dans la conscience européenne du dix-huitième siècle’, The Romanic review (New York [Lancaster, Pa.] April 1941), xxxii.147-170.

Johnson. see A Treasury of satire.

Jones. see Voltaire, L'Ingénu.

Joseph, Helen H., A Book of marionettes. New York 1936.

Jullien, Adolphe, Les Grandes nuits de Sceaux. Paris 1876.

Kahn, Ludwig W., ‘Voltaire's Candide and the problem of secularization’, Publications of the Modern language association of America (Menasha, Wis. Sept. 1952), lxvii.886-888.

La Harpe, Jean F. de, Lycée, ou Cours de littérature ancienne et moderne, vol.xiii. Paris 1816.

Lanson, Gustave, L'Art de la prose, 13th ed. Paris n.d. [pref. 1908].

———Contes. see Voltaire, Contes choisis.

———Histoire de la littérature française, 12th ed. Paris n.d.

———Voltaire, 2nd ed. Paris 1910.

Larousse du xx^e siècle, ed. P. Augé. Paris 1928-1933, 6 vols.

Le Breton, André, Le Roman au dix-huitième siècle. Paris 1898.

Levy, Bernard, The Unpublished plays of Carolet. New York 1931.

Littré, Emile, Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris 1885-1889, 4 vols. plus ‘Supplément.’

Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great chain of being. Cambridge, Mass. 1953.

———‘Optimism and romanticism’, Publications of the Modern language association of America (Menasha, Wis. Dec. 1927), xlii.921-945.

McGhee, Dorothy M., Fortunes of a tale. Menasha, Wis. 1954.

———Voltairian narrative devices as considered in the author's contes philosophiques. Menasha, Wis. 1933.

Magnin, Charles, Histoire des marionnettes en Europe depuis l'antiquité jusqu'à nos jours. 2nd ed. Paris 1862.

Maritain, Jacques, L'Homme et l'état, trans. Robert et France Davril. Paris 1953.

Martin, Kingsley, The Rise of French liberal thought, ed. J. P. Mayer. New York 1954.

Modern France, ed. Arthur Tilley. Cambridge, Engl. 1922.

Moland. see Voltaire, Œuvres complètes [cited as M.].

Morehouse, Andrew R., Voltaire and Jean Meslier. New Haven 1936.

Morillot, Paul, Le Roman en France depuis 1610 jusqu'à nos jours. Paris 1892.

Morize. see Voltaire, Candide ou l'Optimisme.

Mornet, Daniel, Histoire de la clarté française. Paris 1929.

———Histoire de la littérature et de la pensée française. Paris 1924.

———Histoire des grandes œuvres de la littérature française. Paris 1925.

———Les Origines intellectuelles de la révolution française: 1715-1787. Paris 1933.

———La Pensée française au xviii^e siècle. Paris 1926.

———review of Torrey, Spirit, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France (Paris oct.-déc. 1938), xlv.532-533.

Musschenbroek, Petrus van, Essai de physique, trans. Pierre Massuet. Leyden 1739, 2 vols.

Naves, Raymond, De Candide à Saint-Preux. Paris 1940.

———Review of McGhee, Devices, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France (Paris, oct.-déc. 1934), xli.614-615.

———Voltaire: l'homme et l'œuvre. Paris 1942.

Nollet, Jean A., Leçons de physique expérimentale. Paris 1753-1764, 6 vols.

———Programme ou Idée générale d'un cours de physique expérimentale. Paris 1738.

Origin and development of the microscope, ed. Alfred N. Disney [and others]. London 1928.

Patterson, see Voltaire, Traité de métaphysique.

Pellissier, Georges, Voltaire philosophe. Paris 1908.

Perey, Lucien [pseud. of Clara A. Herpin] and Gaston Maugras, La Vie intime de Voltaire aux Délices et à Ferney: 1754-1778, 2nd ed. Paris 1885.

Petit. see Voltaire, Contes.

‘The Philosophy of Voltaire's romances’, Temple Bar (London May 1887), lxxx.91-110.

Pomeau, René, Candide. see Voltaire, Candide ou l'Optimisme.

———Politique. see Voltaire, Politique de Voltaire.

———La Religion de Voltaire. Paris 1956.

———review of Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, vii, viii, ix, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France (Paris janv.-mars 1961), lxi.85-87.

———Voltaire par lui-même. Paris 1955.

Price, William R., The Symbolism of Voltaire's novels with special reference to ‘Zadig’. New York 1911.

Redman. see Voltaire, The Portable Voltaire.

Saintsbury, George, A History of the French novel, vol.i. London 1917.

———A Short history of French literature, 7th ed. Oxford 1928.

Sareil, Jean, Anatole France et Voltaire. Geneva and Paris 1961.

———‘La Répétition dans les “Contes” de Voltaire’, The French review (Baltimore December 1961), xxxv.137-146.

———‘De Zadig à Candide, ou Permanence de la pensée de Voltaire’, The Romanic review (New York December 1961), lii.271-278.

Saulnier. see Voltaire, Zadig.

Sibbald, Reginald S., Marionettes in the north of France. Philadelphia 1936.

Spitzer, Leo, Linguistics and literary history: essays in stylistics. New York 1962.

———A Method of interpreting literature. Northampton, Mass. 1949.

Strachey, G. Lytton, Landmarks in French literature. New York 1923.

Strauss, David F., Voltaire, trans. Louis Narval, 3rd ed. Paris 1876.

Thibaudet, Albert, ‘Réflexions sur la littérature: le roman de l'aventure’, La Nouvelle revue française (Paris sept. 1919), [n.s.] xiii.597-611.

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Topazio, Virgil W., review of Bottiglia, Analysis, Symposium (Syracuse Fall 1959), xiii.320-322.

Torrey, Norman L., Candide. see Voltaire, Candide or Optimism.

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———Candide ou l'Optimisme, ed. Lester G. Crocker. London 1958.

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