Candide (1759) by Voltaire


Candide (1759) by Voltaire

This book is essentially a sarcastic comment that, in its smug pride, rambled itself into a novella. The titular character Candide is a German noble who finds himself driven from the castle over a romantic gesture toward the baron’s daughter. Now the human equivalent of street litter, his ensuing travels take him through disaster after disaster, testing his philosophical education based on the principle that everything is for the best.

Voltaire uses this story as a vehicle for criticism against such Leibnizian reasoning. Apparently the author once subscribed to the idea that we live in the best of possible worlds, where any hardship experienced is a necessary path to the greatest outcome. But he came to reject this philosophy after several tragedies in his own life left him disenchanted with such a positive outlook on the world - to the extent that he wrote this vitriolic story in a concerted effort to pan Leibniz and his principles.

Traveling across Europe and abroad to regain Miss Cunegonde his love, Candide faces countless tragedies - from natural disasters, to slavery, to senseless capital punishment. And he himself is robbed, persecuted, and tried by pirates, religious zealots, and military forces alike. The few people on his journey that don’t actively torment him relate the miseries of their own lives, which rival Candide’s. He even meets the supposed happiest man in Europe, who in truth possesses all the means of happiness but fails to enjoy any of them due to his clinically critical disposition.

The only brief respite Candide finds from the suffering world is in the mythical utopia of El Dorado, where Voltaire suggests that the citizens’ happiness is born of isolation from our own cruel earthly societies. Unfortunately, Voltaire presents this utopia - not as an ideal we can possibly strive for - but as a means of bitter contrast to our corrupt world. Salt in the wound we inflict on ourselves. And therein lies the problem with Candide. Venting frustrations as Voltaire does in this work can be healthy and cathartic, but not when taken to the extent of dismissing any sort of goodness or potential in life. That’s a recipe for creating the nihilistic world Voltaire is lamenting in the first place.

It’s worth noting the small ray of hope at the end of the story, in which the miserable cast of characters ultimately finds a semblance of peace through honest, simple labor. (Spoiler - they all become farmers). But even that iota of optimism is tainted by the insinuation that it must be paired with a general ignorance and rejection of the outside world in order to persist.

It’s true that maybe everything isn’t “for the best”, but I definitely believe it isn’t all for the worst as Candide might suggest. And I feel that dedication to simple, fulfilling work - as Candide came to find - really can sustain a positive, happy (if blissfully ignorant to a degree) outlook on the world in spite of its flaws and miseries.

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