François-Marie Arouet, later
known as Voltaire, was born in 1694 to a
middle-class family in Paris. At that time, Louis XIV was king of
France, and the vast majority of people in France lived in crushing
poverty. When François-Marie came of age, the French aristocracy
ruled with an iron fist. At the same time, however, the intellectual
movement known as the Enlightenment was spreading ideas about the
equality and basic rights of man and the importance of reason and
scientific objectivity.
François-Marie received a Jesuit education at the college
of Louis-le-Grand. Even as a child, his witty intelligence struck
and sometimes outraged his teachers, setting the stage for his controversial
writing career. François-Marie briefly worked as a secretary for the
French Ambassador to Holland, but abandoned the position to devote
himself to writing. As a writer, François-Marie soon became legendary
throughout France for his sharp epigrams. His quick wit brought
him fame, and with fame came a good deal of trouble. As a result
of expressing his bitter, satirical wit at the expense of the French
Regent, he was exiled from Paris to Sully, but through flattery
he soon managed to have his exile rescinded. Shortly after returning
to Paris, however, François was imprisoned in the Bastille for satirizing
the government. While in prison, François assumed the pen name “Voltaire.”
Not long after his release in 1718, Voltaire’s
first play, Oedipe, was produced in Paris. At this
point Voltaire was only twenty-four years old.
Voltaire moved in the circles of the rich and powerful.
With his pen he alternately flattered and lambasted those around
him, and this talent for biting satire earned him another stint
in the Bastille in 1726. He was soon released
on the condition that he move to England. Voltaire’s exile in England
was far from unpleasant, however, as a crowd of English literati
received him with open arms. Within a matter of months, Voltaire
became fluent in English, and English philosophy and society continued
to fascinate him throughout his life. After three years he was allowed
to return to France.
Voltaire’s words attacked the church and the state with
equal fervor, and earned him widespread repute. During his lifetime,
trenchant writings attacking church or government were often attributed
to him whether he had written them or not. A lifelong champion of
the poor and downtrodden, he wrote against tyranny and religious
persecution with unmatched audacity. Despite his relentless criticism
of powerful individuals and institutions, Voltaire became good friends
with King Frederick of Prussia. They often quarreled, as Voltaire
inevitably quarreled with anyone in power, but the ties of their
friendship were lasting.
In the 1750s, Voltaire grew increasingly
appalled by the specters of injustice and inexplicable disaster
that he saw around him. Many terrible events influenced his composition
of Candide: a disastrous earthquake in Lisbon in 1755,
about which he wrote a poem; the outbreak of the horrific Seven
Years’ War in the German states in 1756;
and the unjust execution of the English Admiral John Byng in 1757,
against which Voltaire spoke out. In 1759,
Voltaire purchased Ferney, an estate near the border between France
and Switzerland, so that he might easily flee across the border
to escape French authorities. Ferney quickly became a retreat for
important European intellectuals.
Published in 1759, Candide is
considered Voltaire’s signature work, and it is here that he levels
his sharpest criticism against nobility, philosophy, the church,
and cruelty. Though often considered a representative text of the
Enlightenment, the novel actually savagely satires a number of Enlightenment
philosophies and demonstrates that the Enlightenment was a far from
monolithic movement.
In his later life Voltaire was involved in
a wide variety of campaigns for social and political justice. When
he returned to Paris at the age of eighty-three the populace hailed
him with a hero’s welcome. The strain of the trip was more than
his failing health could support, however, and he died in May of 1778.
Voltaire was buried in consecrated ground at Romilly-on-Seine, but
in 1791 the National Assembly ordered his
body entombed alongside René Descartes and other great French thinkers
at the Panthéon in Paris. In 1814, religious
fundamentalists stole the remains of Voltaire, as well as those
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and dumped them in a pit full of quicklime,
a “burial” reserved for individuals condemned and hated by the church.
Voltaire would have appreciated the irony of this act, as he and
Rousseau were bitter rivals during their lifetimes.
Candide and the Enlightenment
“The Enlightenment” is the name for a movement that encompasses a
wide variety of ideas and advances in the fields of philosophy,
science, and medicine that began in the seventeenth century and peaked
in the eighteenth century. Many historians mark the French Revolution
as the crowning event of the Enlightenment era. The primary feature
of Enlightenment philosophy is a profound faith in the power of
reason and rational thought to lead human beings to a better social
structure. The political ideology of Enlightenment philosophers
is characterized by a spirit of social reform. The champions of
the Enlightenment called for rebellion against superstition, fear, and
prejudice. They attacked the aristocracy and the church. Candide reflects
Voltaire’s lifelong aversion to Christian regimes of power and the
arrogance of nobility, but it also criticizes certain aspects of
the philosophical movement of the Enlightenment. It attacks the
school of optimism that contends that rational thought can curtail
the evils perpetrated by human beings.
Voltaire strongly opposed certain Enlightenment ideas
about social class. Some Enlightenment thinkers promoted the idea
of the enlightened monarch as an alternative to a radical reformation
of society. Instead of denying the divine right of kings, the concept
of the enlightened monarch relied on the idea that rulers could
use their power to ensure the protection of their subjects’ rights.
The reach of the monarch’s power could be extended so that he or
she could ensure this protection. Thus, the name of the Enlightenment could
be used to legitimize despotism. Moreover, witch-hunts and organized
campaigns of religious persecution continued well into the eighteenth
century, and Enlightenment philosophy’s propagation of reason as
a social antidote did not bring a halt to the ravages of superstition
and fear. Candide illustrates this fact in the
figure of the Grand Inquisitor who orders an auto-da-fé to ward
off earthquakes, among many other examples. Voltaire’s work may
be difficult for the present-day student to understand because it
alludes to some very specific concerns of his contemporaries. To
better understand his wit as well as his relevant context, readers
may benefit from consulting supplementary readings such as a history
of the Enlightenment, a biography of Voltaire, or the writings of
other Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau and Leibniz.
