Candide

by Voltaire

  Of the ‘Voices in Candide’s garden,’ that of egoistic hedonism tends to make itself heard, in Ilie’s account, more insistently than the others. Epicureanism is associated predominantly with the creature comforts. The analogy which Voltaire offers between his position as owner of “the sumptuous Les Delices” (p. 107) and that of Aristippus, Cyrenaic exponent of extreme self-indulgence, is buttressed by Ilie with quotations from the correspondence to emphasise this love of luxury. The note of self-centred concern for personal survival is not absent from Chapter 30 of Candide. The “Epicurean aftermath of Libson,”18 the “Epicurean garden” which “soothed both aching body and spiritual fatigue after years of Candide-like tribulation”19 are certainly mirrored in the tale’s final chapter. To distinguish in the conte so lush a “background orchestration” for the “thematic vocalisation” of Voltaire’s letters,20 however, is to misrepresent the true orchestral colour of the tale and to drown some of the familiar Voltairean voices in the correspondence. Ilie’s deliberate contrasting of “contemplation and the senses” with Pomeau’s emphasis upon the activist interpretation of Candide’s message obscures the meaning of Voltaire’s conte. Pomeau, as quoted, is referring to the dervish who originally put into Candide’s mind, if not into his mouth, the famous final injunction with his “Cultiver la terre, boire, manger, dormir et te taire.” The “morale de l’action” which is contained in the dervish’s original pronouncement is underlined by the “bon Vieillard” whom Voltaire decided to use as the instrument of the final revelation to Candide and his companions of the gospel of work as an antidote for boredom. By shifting the emphasis from the old Turk’s repeated stress upon what was to be echoed by Candide himself—the notion of useful industry—to that of the easeful leisure which was the reward of hard labour, Ilie misrepresents the authentic Epicurean colouring of Voltaire’s work. The “bon Vieillard’s” enjoyment of home-grown produce, and his admirable hospitality hardly make him a “Turkish epicure” any more than Voltaire’s desire to send a friend some of his home-made jam make him a sybarite, in any except the most playful sense.21 The Epicurean ideal, which is reflected both in Voltaire’s way of life at Les Delices and in that of “la petite métairie” finally modelled on the old Turk’s household, is closer to that of the moderation and sobriety of Epicurus himself than to that of latter-day bons vivants who had given Epicureanism a bad name. When Voltaire greets his friend Formont as “un gros et gras épicurien de Paris” and depicts himself as “un maigre épicurien du lac de Genève” the contrast is more meaningful than the bantering tone might suggest.22

  Ilie chooses to stress the quietist aspect of Epicureanism at the expense of its activist elements in his discussion of Chapter 30 of Candide. The “leisurely interval”23 of the Les Délices period in Voltaire’s life during which Candide was in gestation certainly exhibits certain features of Epicureanism. The sense of calm enjoyment of material ease which pervades Voltaire’s letters at this time is reflected in the first phase of the grateful refugees’ existence in their cherished retreat. At this point the “petite métairie” has affinities with the Epicurean hortus deliciarum of Renaissance poetry; one can detect affinities between the life of Candide’s community and such Epicurean themes as otium and voluptas which represent one particular orientation of Epicurus’s original doctrine, a refinement upon it later favoured notably by Saint-Evremond for whom the Epicurean sovereign good was (in 1647) “cette agréable indolence qui n’est pas un état sans douleur et sans plaisir; c’est le sentiment délicat d’une joie pure.”24 It is Voltaire’s early association with pleasure-seekers of Saint-Evremond’s persuasion who belonged to the Société du Temple which allows us to talk most positively of him as an Epicurean. This experience, related to the (somewhat over-played) jouissance of the proprietor of Les Délices, forms part of the “biographical matrix”25 of Candide even if embedded deeper in Voltaire’s psyche than that which is reflected in the letters of 1755–1759. A facet of Epicureanism, it is also a facet of Voltaire’s life; but it should be distinguished from others. The “hedonistic glow”26 with which Ilie surrounds Candide’s “il faut cultiver notre jardin,” for instance, seems unprofitable when this phrase is related to the quite different facet of Epicureanism which it clearly evokes.

  This other facet is the activist strain which Professor Pomeau, rightly in our view, distinguishes as “le dernier mot du conte.” In the history of ethical thought, Epicureanism reveals a polarity between the careless rapture of a carpe diem–type hedonism and that more circumspect eudemonism, ever-ready to rely on a felicific calculus, which produced the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. The practical-minded Romans saw the dichotomy in terms of voluptas and utilitas, and the more Romanized forms of Epicureanism veered far enough from the agreeable towards the useful, as to become almost indistinguishable from Stoicism. Horace’s Epicureanism, faithfully reflected in his maxim: utile dulci,27 is nearest to that suggested by Candide’s final injunction, which presents purposeful and beneficial activity as a sine qua non of happiness. That this emphasis upon man’s need for action is a restatement by Voltaire of one of the fundamental principles of his philosophy may be appreciated by extending the dimensions of the biographical matrix of Candide beyond the bounds set by the limited period immediately preceding its publication.

  From this point of view, letter 25 (‘Sur les Pensées de M. Pascal’) of the Lettres philosophiques is certainly germane to a consideration of “la morale épicurienne de l’action” of Candide. The experience of Candide and his companions in the world at large before their retirement from it altogether offers as bleak a view of the human condition as that of the “sublime misanthrope” whose reflexions Voltaire had combatted so vigorously twenty-five years before. The Pascalian resonance of parts of Voltaire’s conte is unmistakable; the responsive chord which had been struck but barely acknowledged so long ago vibrated more strongly as Voltaire’s pessimism increased under the stress of private and public misfortunes. Inevitably, the optimism of the conclusion of the tale sounds lame after the intimations of existential absurdity which have gone before, but this should not obscure that fact that, however dour and dogged it appears, it is related to the buoyant confidence in humanity which characterises Voltaire’s ‘anti-Pascal.’ This earlier profession de foi is a more explicit and spirited defence of the same values of moderate activist Epicureanism which are continually threatened by extremists. The latter include the Jansenists, whose estimate of human nature and potential is excessively low, and those who emulate the Stoics, who pitched their standards for mankind so high that “ils décourageaient le reste des hommes.”28

  In letter 25 Voltaire vindicated “le juste milieu” [the remark on Pensée 31]; he decries the contemplative life and is categorical in his championship of purposeful and useful activity: “L’homme est né pour l’action, comme le feu tend en haut et la pierre en bas. N’être point occupé et n’exister pas est le même chose pour l’homme. Toute la différence consiste dans les occupations douces ou tumultueuses, dangereuses ou utiles” [23]. Prefigured here we find the superabundant tumult and danger which surround Candide and his companions, the initial attractions of the inactivity of their retreat from all this sound and fury and, after such douceur de vivre has palled on them, the final satisfaction derived from the “occupations utiles” which they take up. Boredom, the specific cause of dissatisfaction amongst the members of “la petite société,” is already being presented as a blessing in disguise: “… l’auteur de la nature … a attaché l’ennui à l’inaction, afin de nous forcer par là à être utile au prochain et à nous-mêmes.” Idle hedonism is rejected in terms which will be echoed in the correspondence of the years 1755–59 (“Croire que le monde est un lieu de délices où l’on ne doit avoir que du plaisir, c’est la rêverie d’un sybarite” [4]). Gardening (a term which may be taken to embrace the upkeep of a métairie like Candide’s and the estate-management of Voltaire himself) is opposed to the “fausse, jouissance” which lives only for
the moment: the “semer, bâtir, planter” triptych serves as an image for that husbandry which looks hopefully to the future, as it will do later in Voltaire’s letters.29 “Si les hommes étaient assex malheureux pour ne s’occuper que du présent, on ne sèmerait point, on ne bâtirait point, on ne planterait point, on ne pourvoirait à rien: on manquerait de tout au milieu de cette fausse jouissance” [22]. This shift of emphasis from voluptas to utilitas will be characteristic of the predominance of l’utile over l’agréable in Voltaire’s gardening activities at Ferney.30 It would be unwise, however, to solicit Candide’s “il faut cultiver notre jardin” too strenuously so as to make it symbolise the all-out effort towards “the reduction of social evil and the spread or social virtue”31 which one associates with Voltaire’s Ferney period. The restrictive utilitarian aspect of Epicureanism is more evident in Candide’s garden than the expansive altruism of Stoic virtue. Unproductive inertia has been displaced by the ethic of work but personal welfare is still the paramount consideration. Fontelle’s conception of happiness (“Celui qui veut être heureux, se réduit et se resserre autant qu’il est possible”)32 is mirrored there rather than that of Diderot (“Point de bonheur sans vertu”).33 “Epicure s’embourgeoise,” Jean Ehrard comments à propos the moral climate of the first half of the eighteenth century in France.34 The ending of Candide can be taken as an illustration of this development as far as such middle-class attributes as enterprise and industry are concerned. The diffuse “universal benevolence” which was to become a predominant feature of the drame bourgeois, however, is conspicuous by its absence from the conte.

  “Epicure fut toute sa vie un philosophe, sage, tempérant et juste.”35 This image of the Philosopher of the Garden Voltaire could have derived from Gassendi, who had presented him in this way in his De Vita et moribus Epicuri libri octo (1647), or from one or other of his disciples. From Jean François Sarasin, for example, whose Discours de Morale sur Epicure (c. 1645) had appeared as part of the works of Saint-Evremond in 1683. Saint-Evremond rejected both the authorship of Sarasin’s work and the view it propagated: in his Sur la Morale d’Epicure (1685) he is at pains to destroy the image of Epicurus as pre-eminently a paragon of self-denial.36 However much respect the young Voltaire had for Saint-Evremond, it is clearly the essential temperance of the Epicurean life-style which found favour with him increasingly as he grew older. Bayle is a more obvious source for this attitude: “… il est certain qu’il [Epicure] vécut exemplairement, & conformément aux regles de la sagesse & de la frugalité Philosophique”; … “la sobriété, la tempérance, & le combat contre les passions tumultueuses & déréglées, qui ôtent à l’âme son état de béatitude, c’est-à-dire, l’acquiescement doux & tranquille à sa condition. C’étoient là les voluptez où Epicure faisoit consister le bonheur de l’homme.”37 Bearing in mind Saint-Evremond’s suggestion that such a notion of volupté as this might be characteristic of the philosopher’s old-age, but not of the vigour of his prime, it is possible to see Epicurus in the same light as “le bon vieillard” of Chapter 30 of Candide: an exemplary figure whose conception of happiness was reflected in the simplicity and sobriety of his life.

  The old Turk who influences Candide’s decision to imitate a life of useful labour and distinct moderation among the members of his little community bears some resemblance to another spry old man to whom Voltaire elsewhere directs the reader’s attention: the Quaker whom the author describes in the first of his Lettres philosophiques as “un vieillard frais qui n’avait jamais connu les passions ni l’intempérance.” This connection might well be taken further. ‘The Society of Friends,’ this title still borne by his sect today and amply justified by the Quaker in his cordial reception of the narrator, could be aptly applied to “la petite société” of Candide, inspired by the friendly and hospitable atmosphere of the Turk’s household. When Voltaire says of Epicurus: “Seul de tous les philosophes, il eut pour amis tous ses disciples, et sa secte fut la seule où l’on sût aimer …”38 he clearly has in mind the gospel of love and brotherhood which provides a link between Epicureanism and the unadulterated doctrine of Christ which he never ceased to admire. The attraction of the erotic had as little place in their life as they have in Candide’s métairie where the personal experience of almost all the inhabitants would prompt an endorsement of Epicurus’s remark: “physical union of the sexes never did good: it is much if it does not do harm.”39 Though the radical Protestant sect of Quakers does not appear in Candide it is evident that another, the Anabaptists, through the saintly Jacques, with his combination of brotherly love and profitable industry, has left its mark on the mind of the conte’s hero. The philosophy of the Garden and the Protestant ethic of work may quite plausibly be regarded as having affinities with each other and with the philosophy of Candide’s garden.

  Although an abhorrence of war and an attachment to the ideal of useful labour provide links between the little community which is established at the end of Candide and certain Protestant sects, it might be said that the religious dimension is otherwise noticeably absent from Voltaire’s tale. The author’s expression of resignation to Divine Providence is more grudging than it had been in Zadig, where the hero’s dogged attempts to articulate his doubts had been cut short by the angel Jesrad, who had only beat a retreat to the heavenly spheres after having been allowed to parade before Zadig (and the reader) all the arguments of Pope and Leibniz which buttress a position of respectful submission to the mysterious phenomenon of cosmic injustice. The earth-bound dervish in Candide is conspicuously unconcerned with justifying the ways of God to man, and shows none of Jesrad’s angelic patience; indeed, revelling in his unsociability, he is first of all brusque in urging Candide to keep his mouth shut and then positively rude in slamming the door in the face of Pangloss’s Jesrad-like philosophising. Jesrad’s position, reduced to the level of parody for the expositions of Pangloss, is considerably closer to that of the Stoics than it is to the philosophy of the Garden. Stoic cosmology, based on Platonic ideas, presented the celestial bodies as a manifestation of a divine Reason which controlled all earthly happenings by inflexible law. The Stoic derived his inner tranquility from knowledge of the harmonious world-order and from his willing submission to it. The Epicurean universe, however, is devoid of a divine principle. The gods occupy a remote place in the world-picture of the Epicureans; they inhabit the interstices of outer space and are quite indifferent to human activity. Turning his eyes away from the comfortless heavens, man is driven back on to his own resources. This is much the same sort of universe as that of Candide, which is ruled by a deus absconditus. It is true that the vision of humanity presented by Lucretius will not be devoid of grandeur, but this grandeur is not of the Stoic kind which relates microcosm to macrocosm, and holds up man as an image of God.

  The Stoic buoyancy of spirit, the outward-looking belief in man’s ability to annex new areas of knowledge, to achieve mastery of his physical environment, contrasts with the very cautious Epicurean attitude to the concept of human progress, conceived basically, as Candide envisaged the future of his little community, in terms of limited and hard-won advance based upon constant effort.40 The confident faith of the Stoics in the value of scientific enquiry blends with their sense of admiration before the wonders of the natural universe in the influential neo-Stoic strain of physicotheology in the intellectual history of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Epicurean note is quite different: an intellectual humility which prompts a depreciation of the pursuit of knowledge when considered for its own sake and divorced from the goal of all human life: happiness. “To flee from science,” Epicurus wrote to a disciple “hoist sail with all speed.”41 The ‘science’ he had in mind was the sort of airy Panglossian speculation surrounded by clouds of transcendental optimism which distinguished Stoicism from his own more lowly philosophy grounded on practical everyday reality and offering to all men a limited hope based on freedom from fear. The search for security and happiness leads Candide to h
is own ‘philosophy of the garden.’ The literal sense of his famous injunction to cultivate the soil has a great deal of relevance to a certain strain of anti-intellectualism which characterises Voltaire at certain phases of his life, when he compares the appeal of culture unfavourably with the attractions of agriculture. The Epicurean background of Voltaire’s aspiration to be a happy husbandman and its reflection in Candide has been discussed elsewhere.42 It may be noted, however, that the tendency to demote the cultivation of the arts and to glorify (in true Epicurean fashion) the more useful activity of cultivating the land becomes more marked as Voltaire grows older. In the Dialogue de Pégase et du Vieillard (1774), the artist dismisses his winged steed (“Va, vole au mont sacré; je reste en mon jardin.” [l. 80]) with the explanation (ll. 118–129):

  Dans ses champs cultivés, à l’abri des revers,

  Le sage vit tranquille, et ne fait point de vers.

  Monsieur l’abbé Terray, pour le bien du royaume,

  Préfère un laboureur, un prudent économe,

  A tous nos vains écrits, qu’il ne lira jamais.

  Triptolème est le dieu dont je veux les bienfaits.

  Un bon cultivateur est cent fois plus utile

  Que ne fut autrefois Hésiode ou Virgile.

  Le besoin, la raison, l’instinct doit nous porter

  A faire nos moissons plutôt qu’à les chanter;

  J’aime mieux t’atteler toi-même à ma charrue,

  Que d’aller sur ton dos voltiger dans la nue.

  The old man’s final words: “Je me tais. Je ne veux rien savoir, ni rien dire” (1. 161),43 besides reflecting the anti-intellectualist aspect of Epicureanism, inevitably recall, for the reader of Candide, the dervish’s curt advice to the hero of that tale.

  Montesquieu in the Esprit des Lois had remarked upon the Stoic ‘sect’: “Elle seule savait faire les citoyens; elle seule faisait les grands hommes; elle seule faisait les grands empereurs.”44 The disenchanted author of Candide was not in the mood for admiration of such a philosophy. The results of a policy of grandeur and an attachment to ‘heroism,’ apparent in the suffering caused by the Seven Years War, exercised a potent influence upon the tone and substance of Candide. In Voltaire’s correspondence with Frederick the Great the concept of ‘le grand homme’ can be seen taking shape in his mind as he reacts against his friend’s ruthless imposition of his will in the service of the State. Later he will sing the praises of enlightened Roman emperors like the Stoic Marcus Aurelius. In this tale his horizons are narrower; he is concerned with the little man. There is no sense of the desirability of man’s reach exceeding his grasp in Candide; moral improvement is not absent as an ideal but it is not conceived of on the Stoic scale of self-mastery. “Si les Epicuriens rendirent la nature humaine aimable,” observed Voltaire, “les Stoicïens la rendirent presque divine.”45 If, in those words of Pope admired and quoted by Voltaire,46 “to err is human, to forgive divine,” then Candide, to judge by the way he consigns Cunégonde’s brother to the galleys without compunction, has a long way to go before he becomes a god-like Stoic. If, as Voltaire said, the Stoics “décourageaient le reste des hommes,” Candide’s creator, one feels, ranges himself with “le reste des hommes,” most of whom are neither moral giants nor moral pygmies, and are capable of eventually becoming at least a little better. Having plumbed the depths of human fallibility and degradation in his account of Candide’s adventures, Voltaire reaches the optimistic conclusion which, however muted, is virtually the same as that of his earlier more defiant ‘anti-Pascal’: “J’ose prendre le parti de l’humanité.”