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Title: The Portable Voltaire (The Viking Portable Library)
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Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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| The Portable Voltaire (The Viking Portable Library) by Penguin (Non-Classics) The French Genius - Voltaire | | Incorporating the Philosophical Dictionary into this paperback along with the standards Candide,Zadig,and Micromegas makes this a must for any small library. The "Dictionary" portrays Voltaire's intellectual genius and writing flair in no uncertain terms.This is a marvelous reference item. | | The Portable Voltaire (The Viking Portable Library) by Penguin (Non-Classics) Voltaire's ideas are good but this is heavy going for a modern audience | (****) for the presentation but (**) for the contents.
If you love Voltaire then this is an excellent volume gathering together many of the highlights of his writing.
One can see why the major work in this volume "Candide" was a stunner in its time but as an entertainment for today it is woefully inadequate.
Voltaire makes his point about the "Best of all Possible Worlds" early on but then bores us silly with an idiotic plot about Candide's journey in which characters disappear, reappear, die, come back to life, etc. The book is "oh-so-clever but we don't feel that Candide has made any kind of personal journey by the end.
I bought this volume because I am a great admirer of Voltaire's ideas but like many of the "great works" the IDEAS are compelling but wading through the actual source material is heavy-going indeed.
"Candide" was turned into a opera by Leonard Bernstein in the 1950s who identified with Voltaire's humanist philosophy in reaction to the paranoia of the McCarthy era. This opera was a failure - not due to the music which is often magnificent - but due to the silly plot. Trying to turn this into an opera was ill-conceived from the start.
Judging from the other (generally glowing) reviews of "Candide" I know I am going to be vilified but I think people need to be warned that they may be in for disappointment.
| | The Portable Voltaire (The Viking Portable Library) by Penguin (Non-Classics) Fast Service | | The book arrived in great condition in a couple of days even though I had selected ground service. It's nice to get a product that was in better condition than advertised. | | The Portable Voltaire (The Viking Portable Library) by Penguin (Non-Classics) Voltaire, or a tale of pessimism | It is said that Voltaire never lost an argument. It is strange to note, therefore, that this brilliant author and scholar, this celebrated sceptic, philosopher, and wag, reknowned throughout the world for his views and regarded still today as one of the principal leaders of ''the age of reason'', was a prejudiced and spiteful man, a nihilist and atheist whose most barbaric and sinister attacks were often directed against those who least deserved them: specifically, the Jews.
Anti-semitism, or at least some semblance of it, was not uncommon in Voltaire's age, even among the more educated and cultured members of the elite upper class of French, as well as world, society. Voltaire's contemporary, Historian Jules Michelet, wrote ''There is no better, more docile, more intelligent slave'', than the Jew. And ''intellectual'' writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhom asserted ''The Jew is the enemy of mankind''. Yet Voltaire himself was certainly among the most vocal of anti-semites, referring to his enemies as:
An ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition, and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched...still, we ought not to burn them.''
The outrageous irony, hypocrisy, and sheer imbecility of this statement are glaring: even more astonishing to note is the manner in which this splendid thinker, this savant who supposedly never lost an argument, could allow his hatred and xenophobia to stand so firmly in the way of reason, going so far as to accuse the Jews of ''barbarism'' and ''superstition'' while simultaneously overlooking the trials and witch burnings that had taken place in America only a century earlier, and which, needless to say, were perpetuated by gentiles. In describing the Jews as ''ignorant and barbarous'', Voltaire seems only to be describing himself and his fellows, giving voice to his own despicable hatred and fear towards that which he did not understand and of which he was ignorant.
Voltaire's enmity towards the Jews could perhaps be overlooked, however, were it not for the fact that it consituted such a blemish, as well as such a determining factor, in his art.
In ''Candide'', for example, one of Voltaire's sharpest satires and best known writings, the author's anti-semitism and ignorance concerning all things Jewish is given stark expression in the character of one ''Don Issachar'', a repulsive old man who is regarded as one of the principal forces of evil in the world, and who attempts to rape the heroine as part of his ''Sabbath rights''.
''Candide'', on it's simplest level the tale of an optimist who in his pursuit of happiness is confronted with the randomness of life and the ugliness and barbarity of human nature, is a brilliant and scathing, if broadly painted, self-righteous and exaggeratedly pessimistic critique of human hypocrisy, a case against the existence of God and the way in which human happiness is blunted by it's own flaws. On yet another level, ''Candide'' is essentially a catalogue of man's ills. How ironic then, that Voltaire's own íntolerance and racial bigotry make their appearance so frequently (another racially slurred moment occurs in the depiction of an evil black pirate) within his story, yet are, unsurprisingly, excluded from the number of diseases that plague mankind!
One part of ''Candide''s episodic narrative involves the accidental discovery of El-Dorado by the titular character. ''El-Dorado'' is essentially a vaguely defined utopia, a magical and beautiful dream-land in which the citizens are compassionate and gentle (though none, of course, are applied with any specific racial characteristics), the streets are paved with gold, and each day is a cheerful pleasure-fest. Needless to say, Candide benefits from this situation immensely. There is a catch, however: for Voltaire states that, once one deserts it, the magical paradise of El-Dorado can never be regained. What he overlooked, though, was that the land of ''El-Dorado'' is possible to regain, granted one sows one's life with the seeds of love, tolerance, and most importantly, racial acceptance. | | The Portable Voltaire (The Viking Portable Library) by Penguin (Non-Classics) Best Volume of the "Old sinner from the eighteenth century" | The portable Voltaire is the best single volume representing all his works. You don't just get the finest short novel ever written (Candide), you get Zadig, Micromegas, selections from the Philisophical Dictionary, Letters from England, and more.
This is the volume to get if you want to find out why that weird looking character was always smiling... |
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