Book Review- Candide by Voltaire (First published 1759)

(Details of Publication: First Published: 1759. E- reprint: 1998, Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project, http://www.esp.org. 98 pp, available free for scholarly and educational purposes, subject to statement of copyright (reproduced in the screenshot below)).

                Candide is considered to be the magnum opus of Francois- Marie Aruoet, a.k.a. Voltaire (1694-1778), a French writer, historian and philosopher of the Enlightenment Era. This novel is said to be the most taught piece of French literature.

            The introduction of the author itself is an indication of what to expect of his book. Yes, the reader can expect attacks on the established arbitrariness of that age. An add- on is a feel of the society of that time. The means by which this task of injecting modern and progressive ideas into the minds of the people is done classifies this book as one to be chewed and digested, despite the chill it sends down the spine of the reader.

            Those were the days of transition from the dark ages of the medieval era to the enlightenment of the modern era. The novel takes on the ‘darkness’ head on and enlightens the reader about the rot in an ‘accepted’ system and exhorts the need to act in order to change.

            The plot is all about the (mis)adventures of an innocent and gullible Candide, an illegitimate male member in the family of the Baron of Thunder-ten- tronckh in Westphalia, who believes in the words of his preceptor, Pangloss, that ‘…..as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be for the best end’.

            Candide is in love with his master’s daughter, Cunegund, and, is therefore, expelled from the castle; he then goes through a lot of difficulties for no fault of his own- he is arrested, and made to run the gauntlet. He joins the army and witnesses brutal war crimes, a ship wreck and an earthquake. He narrowly escapes the Auto- da- Fe, a barbaric practice by which people are burnt to death slowly, in a public spectacle. He then finds his love, who is presumed to have been dead, but who actually suffered as much of indignity as a woman could have, and who ends up as the mistress of mighty, rich and influential people at different times. In order to save her, Candide kills two men, and on their further voyage, the reader learns that Cunegund’s maid had suffered more indignities than she. Even as Candide and Cunegund plan to get married in distant Buenos Ayres, the Governor of the land eyes her and the story takes a different turn. Candide now has the company of a valet, Cacambo, with whom he visits a number of places in Latin America and makes a lot of money with which he hopes to buy Cunegund’s freedom. He sends Cacambo to secure it, while he himself proceeds to Venice by a different route. On this voyage, he meets Martin, a pessimist, who understands the ways of the world much better than Pangloss ever did.

            Finally, the lost-and- found drama ends and the lovers are united, but the heroine is shorn of her beauty. The novel ends with Candide announcing that they must ‘cultivate’ their ‘garden’ (after learning about it from a Turk), which effectively means that they should actually work for their happiness and betterment and not accept that everything happens for the best.

            The myriad characters either point to the good nature of the commoners (James, Cacambo, Martin and the doctor who revives Pangloss), or the nastiness of those in power( the elder Baron who kicks Candide out, the younger Baron who insists time and again that Candide is unworthy of his sister, the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal, the Governor of Buenos Ayres), or greed, pure and simple(the eunuch, who sells away the girl to whom he was a nanny once upon a time; the skipper of the Dutch vessel in Surinam, who raises the sails with Candide’s riches before he embarks; the sailor of the Lisbon ship wreck, who sinks his saviour James; the wench in Paris who eyes Candide’s diamonds; the fat and fake Cunegund; the number of attendants during Candide’s mild indisposition in Paris, to cite a few).

            The Lisbon Earthquake and the Seven Years War are the real life incidents which are echoed in the novel.

            The globalisation of that age, viz. colonialism, is scorned through the character of Martin (‘….these two nations (England and France) are at war about a few acres of barren land in the neighbourhood of Canada, and…..they have expended much greater sums in the contest than all Canada is worth’). However, the reader gets to know of various places and countries through the journeys of Candide and other characters of the novel- Westphalia, Bulgaria, Holland, Lisbon, Cadiz, Buenos Ayres, El Dorado, Surinam, Malta, Morocco, etc. The characters get separated at some place, only to reunite at a different time in a different land, traversing through different geographies and destinies. The exploitation in the colonies is illustrated by the poignant anecdote of a disabled black slave who states that the blood of the likes of him gives sugar to the Europeans.

            With the integration of the world market, parallel traders show up- the pirates, who loot all the valuables of the ship- that is, if the sovereign countries had not managed to sink the others’ ships (the Dutch vs the Spanish, after which Candide finds his red sheep). Strip search of travellers is an acceptable norm of the nations, so it is highly disconcerting as well.

            The oppressive nature of the war state was stressed in ways more than one. The rotten underbelly of the judiciary is reflected when a judge lets go of Pacquette in a murder case in return for sexual favours and when Candide is fined ten thousand piastries for talking loudly, and an equal amount as court fees (in Surinam).

            The ills of institutionalised religion are exposed in a big way- whether it is the pontiff (supposedly a celibate) having a daughter, or a ‘forced’ monk seeking pleasures from a woman, or proselytisers turning rulers or rebels, or a monk robbing Candide and his party of their possessions or the head of religion forcing a merchant to share his concubine.

            It is the expose on the so called ‘gentlemanlike profession’, that of an army man, which chills the bones of the reader- soldiers of any country assaulting the women of the vanquished, as a show of might, and with no concern for human life. This hurts more because it is an accepted ‘fair norm’. Most of them are carriers of the dreaded syphilis on account of this promiscuous behaviour. There are also instances of soldiers turning cannibals to resist a siege and of the inhuman killing of an admiral because he had not killed sufficient number of enemies, justified in the name of boosting the morale of the juniors! In yet another harrowing instance, the Pope’s soldiers give up his daughter to Moorish pirates in order to save their lives!

            Intolerance- political, ideological and religious- is highlighted well. The arrest of Candide by the Bulgarians is an instance of political intolerance. The intra- Jesuit rivalry (Spanish vs German) appears petty but their rivalry with non-Jesuits transcends a mere ideological difference.  Candide and Cacambo are almost spitted as the Oreillons suspect them to be Jesuit. In addition, there is an allusion to Manicheans being persecuted by Socinians.  The wife of a religious man pouring cold water on Candide for even entertaining the thought that the pontiff was anti- Christ is a minor, yet, significant event of religious one- sidedness.

            One gets to learn of the materialism prevalent in the society (irrespective of the country) - a monk stealing the possessions of Candide and his party, the many fair weather ‘near and dear’ in Paris, the wench and the imposter who relieve him of a substantial chunk of his wealth, the sailor who scavenges through the rubble of an earthquake- stricken Lisbon for money, the skipper of the Dutch ship making his escape with Candide’s wealth, the policeman who releases Candide from prison for money, the monk superior extracting a share of the money earned by a junior, Giroflee being made the scapegoat to enrich his elder brother, etc. The notable exception to all these ills is the kingdom of El Dorado where there was abundance and absence of materialism- they attached no value to diamonds ubiquitously available and, thereby, led contended lives.

            The arbitrariness of State and religion are in full evidence all through the book. Whether it is the arrest of Pangloss and Candide for holding a different perspective on the original sin; or of Cunegund’s brother for bathing with a Turk; or of Candide in France, or the pouring of cold water on Candide for a perceived doubt on the religiousness of the pontiff, or the Auto- da- Fe on the Biscayan for truthfully marrying his love, or on two soldiers for mixing bacon and chicken, or the sharing of Cunegund between a religious man and a Jewish merchant, the fine on Candide, or the sharing of the junior monk’s earning, the common thread is arbitrariness in self-professed civilised lands, a feature which is nothing but bad governance, to put it mildly, and anarchy, to call a spade a spade.

            Women are a wretched lot in this novel. They are shared, looted and beaten by men, assaulted as a sign of military supremacy, strip searched for diamonds, offered to distinguished guests, objectified as possessions, sold as slaves, and, even torn apart dead by different contenders desperate to possess them- whether the perpetrators of these atrocities are from the so- called civilised societies or otherwise. This forceful subjugation of women is in stark contrast to consensual bestiality which is depicted in interior Latin America.

            Retributive justice is medieval, whether it is the Auto- da- Fe, running the gauntlet or having the head blown off by musket balls.

            Paris is described as an arbitrary city where the innocent are imprisoned, and ‘a chaos, a confused multitude, where everyone seeks for pleasure without being able to find it’.

            The appreciation of other cultures is evident from the consideration of consensual bestiality as productive of centaurs, fauns, satyrs and the like. Moreover, the real reformation of Candide is the result of a Turk’s remarks. Hugging as a means of greeting the king of El Dorado is in stark contrast with the rigid hierarchy in Europe, which caused a lot of ills.

            Voltaire uses satire to attack arbitrariness in any form. He does not use lurid language to titillate the reader, but rather projects the ills generally as recollections or third party discussions, which still convey a strong message and arouse the conscience of the reader. Voltaire’s deistic leanings are evident from his opposition to the oppression of organised religion, and his anti- Leibniz views are best reflected in Candide’s statement that optimism was ‘the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst’.

            If the reader places the novel in perspective and understands the French society (First Estate, Second Estate, etc.) in the pre- Revolution period, she can very well figure out that the ideas of this book acted as the intellectual background of the French Revolution of 1789. ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’, which were the mantra of the Revolution, can be retrofitted as solutions to most situations in this novel. Voltaire may not have lived to witness the Revolution, but he ‘cultivated’ the ‘garden’ whose flowers bloomed and fruits, ripened, after his death.

            It is not enough to read this book just once. El Dorado, without formalised religion or institutions to govern seems Utopian, but the arbitrariness and atrocities depicted in the novel have generically repeated themselves with disconcerting regularity over the history of humankind, even to this day. The most important learning point of this work is that noble intention/ ideology should be backed up by concrete action (‘…..let us cultivate our garden’). It also alludes to the fact that one’s action/ inaction determines the kind of government that one gets. This reviewer would not recommend the book to young readers, simply because of the devastating effects the human tragedy depicted can have on their impressionable minds. It is strictly for adults, not by age, but by maturity.

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