15. LITERATURE – Voltaire. Part 1/2.
François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris in 1694.
His father, a well-established lawyer, sent him to the best school in the capital, and by all accounts he was a brilliant student. The young Arouet decided at an early age to make his name as a writer – or rather to remake his name, as the first thing he did was to change his name to Voltaire. The eighteenth century is often referred to as the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment, sometimes as the Age of Voltaire. So changing his name was a good call – “the Age of Arouet” would just not have worked quite as well. Voltaire was precociously talented as a poet.
At the age of only 24, he had his first verse tragedy performed at the Comédie française. By then he had already begun work on an epic poem about the French religious civil wars of the sixteenth century, glorifying Henry IV as the king who brought peace by pragmatically converting from Protestantism to Catholicism. This was a subject dear to Voltaire's heart, for under the guise of writing a national epic, he was able to dwell at length on the bloody consequences of religious intolerance. Right from the start, Voltaire's views on religion are expressed robustly.
He was not an atheist, in part because he thought that some minimal belief in a deity was useful for social cohesion. Voltaire's God had created the world, instilled in us a sense of good and evil, and then basically took a back seat. This was known as "rational religion" – or in the eighteenth century called "natural religion" or "deism" – and it had no truck with metaphysics of any kind. Voltaire was basically a man of reason who loathed fanaticism, idolatry, superstition. That men can kill each other to defend some bit of religious doctrine which they scarcely understand is something he found repellent. And he reserved his greatest hatred for the clerics who exploited the credulity of believers to maintain their own power base. Voltaire wanted religion , but not the Church. For obvious reasons, the Catholic authorities were not keen for Voltaire's poem about Henry IV, "La Henriade", to be published in France.
So Voltaire decided to publish his poem in London instead, and in 1726, (he) went to travel to England. What began as a business trip soon turned, however, into something different, and Voltaire ended up staying in England for some two and a half years. He learned to speak English fluently, got to know writers and politicians, and became a great admirer of English Protestant culture. He decided to write a book about his experience of England, and the "Letters Concerning the English Nation"appeared first in English in 1733. The French authorities were horrified, the book was censored, and Voltaire only narrowly avoided prison. That is because the book presented an informal portrait of English culture in a witty and ironical style, looking in turn at religion, politics, science and literature.
In ways that were critical implicitly of French culture and politics. Here, for example, is how Voltaire presents the Royal Exchange, a handsome building in the heart of the City of London, where merchants from across the world would meet to transact business: “Take a view of the Royal Exchange (in London, Voltaire wrote), where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind.
There the Jew, the Mahometan and the Christian transact together as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker's word. At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptised in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost: that man has his son's foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child. If one religion only were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another's throats; but as there as such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.” Voltaire's message is clear: religious differences are trivial and separate men, while trade is important and brings them together.
His conclusion, that the plurality of religions in England leads to a more peaceful society, is of course a covert criticism of France, where the Catholic Church was so dominant. The “Letters Concerning the English Nation” also discuss Locke and Newton, thinkers then poorly known in France.
The subject-matter might seem challenging, but Voltaire is a past master at popularising difficult material. Ask any schoolchild today what they know about Newton, and they'll tell you about the apple falling on his head – and the survival of this anecdote is due entirely to Voltaire. He heard it apparently from Newton's niece, and immediately understood that this simple homely image was the perfect way of conveying the simplicity of Newton's explanation of the force of gravity. After Voltaire used the story in his "Letters Concerning the English Nation", everyone remembered it, and Voltaire left his mark on English popular culture. Voltaire struggled with the question of good and evil, the problem at the heart of his best known work, Candide, which was published in 1759, and was a best-seller from the moment it was appeared.
Translated into every possible language, it remains the most widely read work of the European Enlightenment. It has even left its mark on our language. Expressions like "pour encourager les autres" [‘to encourage the others'] or "il faut cultiver le jardin" [‘we must cultivate our garden'] have entered common usage. In the best of all possible worlds – yes, that's another one – speakers of French or English quote Candide without even realising it… – and that's the sure mark of a classic. Candide is a timeless work, a satire of the human condition.
It is also a work of the Enlightenment, and its philosophical theme is announced in the title: "Candide or Optimism". The hero of Candide, as his name tells us, is an innocent anti-hero. He is in thrall to his tutor Pangloss who preaches the philosophy of Optimism. This is not ‘optimism' in the modern sense of ‘looking on the bright side'. Optimism, spelled with a capital O, and as expounded by the German philosopher Leibniz, was an attempt to answer the age-old problem of evil. Why, if God is good, does he permit the existence of evil in the world? To which the eighteenth-century Optimist replies, evil is all part of some greater pattern of good: ‘All partial evil, universal good' as the English poet Pope put it. In other words, evil doesn't really exist at all, it is just something which man imagines because of his limited view of the world.
