There is also an Amphion carried by a dolphin. I know that once a dolphin, which was no doubt a lover of poetry, saved Amphion from the sea where those who envied him tried to drown him.
And so it is in the north that all the arts flourish today! It is there that the finest porcelain dishes are made, provinces are partitioned by a stroke of the pen, confederations and senates dissolved in two days, and that the confederates and their Notre Dame are most amusingly laughed at.
Sire, we Welches have our merit too; comic-operas have caused Molière to be forgotten, marionettes make Racine fail, as well as financiers wiser than Colbert and generals whom Turenne does not approach.
The one thing that distresses me is that I hear you have caused a renewal of the conferences between Mustapha and my Empress; I should much prefer it if you helped her to drive from the Bosphorus those villainous Turks, those enemies of the fine arts, those extinguishers of beautiful Greece. You might find on the way some province to round off your territory, for after all we must amuse ourselves; we cannot always read, philosophize, make verses and music.
8th November, 1776.
If I do not weep in my cottage, seeing I am too dry, at least I have something to weep for; the gentlemen of Nazareth do not jest like those on the shores of the Baltic, they persecute people secretly and cruelly; they unearth a poor man in his lair and punish him for having laughed at their expense. All the misfortunes which can crush a poor man have fallen on me at once, lawsuits, losses of property, ills of the body, ills of what is called the soul. I am absolutely “the man in his cottage”; but by Heaven, Sire, you are not “the man who weeps on his throne”; many years ago you had some experience of adversity, but with what courage and grandeur of soul did you drink the cup! How much these ordeals contributed to your glory! How much at all times you have been in yourself superior to other men! I dare not lift my eyes to you from the depths of my decrepitude and misery. I do not know where I shall go to die. The reigning Duke of Wurtemburg, uncle to the princess you have just married so well, owes me some money which would have procured me an honorable burial; he does not pay me; which will be a great embarrassment to me when I am dead. If I dared, I would ask you to use your influence with him, but I dare not; I should much prefer to have your Majesty as surety.
Seriously, I do not know where I shall go to die. I am a little Job shrivelled up on my Swiss dunghill; and the difference between Job and me is that Job got well and ended up by being happy. The same thing happened to Tobias, lost like me in a Swiss canton in the country of the Medes; and the amusing part of that affair is that the holy scripture says his grandchildren buried him with rejoicing; apparently they found a good inheritance.
Forgive me, Sire, if now that I am nearly as blind as Tobias, and as miserable as Job, my mind is not sufficiently free to dare to write you a useless letter.
I throw myself at your Majesty’s feet. De profundis.
Parts, Ist April, 1778.
SIRE,
The French gentleman who will hand this letter to your Majesty and who is considered to be worthy of appearing before you, will be able to tell you that if I have not had the honor of writing to you for a long time the reason is that I have been occupied in avoiding two things which pursued me in Paris—hisses and death.
It is amusing that at eighty-four I have escaped two fatal illnesses. That is the result of being devoted to you; I made use of your name and I was saved.
At the representation of a new tragedy, I saw with surprise and the greatest satisfaction that the public, which thirty years ago looked upon Constantine and Theodosius as the models of princes and even of saints, applauded with unheard-of transports verses which say that Constantine and Theodosius were only superstitious tyrants. I have seen twenty similar proofs of the progress which philosophy has at last made in all ranks. I do not despair of hearing delivered a panegyric of the Emperor Julian in a month’s time; and certainly if the Parisians remember that he dispensed justice among them like Cato, and fought for them like Caesar, they owe him eternal gratitude.
It is true, then, Sire, that in the end men become enlightened and that those who think themselves paid to blind them are not always able to thrust out their eyes! Thanks be to your Majestyl You have conquered prejudices like your other enemies. You enjoy all our institutions of every sort. You are the conqueror of superstition, as well as the support of German liberty.
Live longer than I to strengthen all the empires you have founded. May Frederick. the Great be Frederick the Immortal! Be graciously pleased to accept the profound respect and inviolable attachment of
VOLTAIRE.
Translations by Richard Aldington
Miscellaneous Letters
TO THE MINISTER FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF PARIS
The Bastille, April, 1726.
M. de Voltaire ventures humbly to point out that an attempt has been made to assassinate him by the brave Chevalier de Rohan (assisted by six cutthroats, behind whom the Chevalier courageously placed himself); and that ever since, M. de Voltaire has tried to repair, not his own honor, but that of the Chevalier—which has proved too difficult.... M. de Voltaire demands permission to dine at the table of the Governor of the Bastille and to see his friends. He demands, still more urgently, permission to set out for England. If any doubt is felt as to the reality of his departure for that country, an escort can be sent with him to Calais.
TO M. BERTIN DE ROCELERET
Paris, April 14, 1732.
I received very late, my dear sir, the letter with which you have honored me. I am fully sensible of your goodness in throwing so much light on the History of Charles XII. I shall not fail, in future editions, to profit by your observations.
Meanwhile, I have the honor to send you by the coach a copy of the new edition, in which you will find some previous mistakes corrected.
You will still see many printer’s errors, but I cannot be responsible for those, and only think of my own. The book has been produced in France with so much haste and secrecy that the proofreader could not go through it. As you yourself, sir, are a writer of history, you will know the difficulty of choosing between absolutely opposite stories. Three officers who were at Poltava have given me three entirely different accounts of that battle. M. de Fierville and M. de Villelongue contradict each other flatly on the subject of the intrigues at the Porte. My greatest difficulty has not been to find Memoirs but to find good ones. There is another drawback inseparable from writing contemporary history: every infantry captain, who has seen ever so little service with the armies of Charles XII, if he happens to have lost his kit on a march, thinks I ought to have mentioned him. If the subalterns grumble at my silence, the generals and ministers complain of my outspokenness. Whoso writes the history of his own time must expect to be attacked for everything he has said, and for e verything he has not said: but those little drawbacks should not discourage a man who loves truth and liberty expects nothing, fears nothing, asks nothing, and limits his ambition to the cultivation of letters.
I am highly flattered, sir, that this métier of mine has given me the pleasure of your delightful and instructive letter. I sincerely thank you for it, and beg the continuance of your kind interest.
I am, etc.
TO A FIRST COMMISSIONER
June 20, 1733.
As you have it in your power, sir, to do some service to letters, I implore you not to clip the wings of our writers so closely, nor to turn into barndoor fowls those who, allowed a start, might become eagles; reasonable liberty permits the mind to soar—slavery makes it creep.
Had there been a literary censorship in Rome, we should have had today neither Horace, Juvenal, nor the philosophical works of Cicero. If Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Locke had not been free, England would have had neither poets nor philosophers; there is something positively Turkish in proscribing printing; and hampering it is proscription. Be content with severely repressing defamatory libels, for they are crimes: but so long as those infamous calottes are
boldly published, and so many other unworthy and despicable productions, at least allow Bayle to circulate in France, and do not put him, who has been so great an honor to his country, among its contraband.
You say that the magistrates who regulate the literary custom-house complain that there are too many books-That is just the same thing as if the provost of merchants complained there were too many provisions in Paris. People buy what they choose. A great library is like the City of Paris, in which there are about eight hundred thousand persons: you do not live with the whole crowd: you choose a certain society, and change it. So with books: you choose a few friends out of the many. There will be seven or eight thousand controversial books, and fifteen or sixteen thousand novels, which you will not read: a heap of pamphlets, which you will throw into the fire after you have read them. The man of taste will only read what is good; but the statesman will permit both bad and good.
Men’s thoughts have become an important article of commerce. The Dutch publishers make a million [francs] a year, because Frenchmen have brains. A feeble novel is, I know, among books what a fool, always striving after wit, is in the world. We laugh at him and tolerate him. Such a novel brings the means of life to the author who wrote it, the publisher who sells it, to the molder, the printer, the papermaker, the binder, the carrier—and finally to the bad wineshop where they all take their money. Further, the book amuses for an hour or two a few women who like novelty in literature as in everything. Thus, despicable though it may be, it will have produced two important things—proBt and pleasure.
The theater also deserves attention. I do not consider it a counterattraction to dissipation: that is a notion only worthy of an ignorant curé. There is quite time enough, before and after the performance, for the few minutes given to those passing pleasures which are so soon followed by satiety. Besides, people do not go to the theater every day, and among our vast population there are not more than four thousand who are in the habit of going constantly.
I look on tragedy and comedy as lessons in virtue, good sense, and good behavior. Corneille—the old Roman of the French—has founded a school of Spartan virtue: Molière, a school of ordinary everyday life. These great national geniuses attract foreigners from all parts of Europe, who come to study among us, and thus contribute to the wealth of Paris. Our poor are fed by the production of such works, which bring under our rule the very nations who hate us. In fact, he who condemns the theater is an enemy to his country. A magistrate who, because he has succeeded in buying some judicial post, thinks that it is beneath his dignity to see Cinna, shows much pomposity and very little taste.
There are still Goths and Vandals even among our cultivated people: the only Frenchmen I consider worthy of the name are those who love and encourage the arts. It is true that the taste for them is languishing: we are sybarites, weary of our mistresses’ favors. We enjoy the fruits of the labors of the great men who have worked for our pleasure and that of the ages to come, just as we receive the fruits of nature as if they were our due ... nothing will rouse us from this indifference to great things which always goes side by side with our avid interest in small.
Every year we take more pains over snuffboxes and knickknacks than the English took to make themselves masters of the seas.... The old Romans raised those marvels of architecture—their amphitheaters—for beasts to fight in: and for a whole century we have not built a single passable place for the representation of the masterpieces of the human mind. A hundredth part of the money spent on cards would be enough to build theaters finer than Pompey’s: but what man in Paris has the public welfare at heart? We play, sup, talk scandal, write bad verses, and sleep, like fools, to recommence on the morrow the same round of careless frivolity.
You, sir, who have at least some small opportunity of giving good advice, try and rouse us from this stupid lethargy, and, if you can, do something for literature, which has done so much for France.
TO M. MARTIN SAHLE
1744.
I am very pleased to hear, sir, that you have written a little book against me. You do me too much honor. On page 17 you reject the proof, from final causes, of the existence of God. If you had argued thus at Rome, the reverend father and governor of the Holy Palace would have condemned you to the Inquisition: if you had written thus against a theologian of Paris, he would have had your proposition censured by the sacred faculty: if against a devout person, he would have abused you: but I have the honor to be neither a Jesuit, nor a theologian, nor a devotee. I shall leave you to your opinion, and shall remain of mine. I shall always be convinced that a watch proves a watchmaker, and that the universe proves a God. I hope that you yourself understand what you say concerning space and eternity, the necessity of matter, and preordained harmony: and I recommend you to look once more at what I said, finally, in the new edition, where I earnestly endeavored to make myself thoroughly understood—and in metaphysics that is no easy task.
You quote, a propos of space and infinity, the Medea of Seneca, the Philippics of Cicero, and the Metamorphoses of Ovid; also the verses of the Duke of Bucking-ham, of Gombaud, Regnier, and Rapin. I must tell you, sir, I know at least as much poetry as you do: that I am quite as fond of it: that if it comes to capping verses we shall see some very pretty sport: only I do not think them suitable to shed light on a metaphysical question, be they Lucretius’s or the Cardinal de Polignac’s.
Furthermore, if ever you understand anything about preordained harmony—if you discover how, under the law of necessity, man is free, you will do me a service if you will pass on the information to me. When you have shown, in verse or otherwise, why so many men cut their throats in the best of all possible worlds, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you.
I await your arguments, your verses, and your abuse: and assure you from the bottom of my heart that neither you nor I know anything about the matter. I have the honor to be, etc.
TO MME. DENIS20
Charlottenburg, August 14, 1750.
This is the fact of the matter, my dear child. The King of Prussia is making me his chamberlain, and giving me one of his orders and a pension of twenty thousand francs, and will settle one of four thousand on you for life if you will come and keep house for me in Berlin, as you do in Paris. You had a very pleasant life at Landau with your husband: I promise you that Berlin is worth many Landaus, and has much better operas. Consider the matter: consult your feelings. You may reply that the King of Prussia must be singularly fond of verses. It is true that he is a purely French writer who happened to be born in Berlin. On consideration, he has come to the conclusion that I shall be of more use to him than d’Arnaud. I have forgiven the gay little rhymes which his Prussian Majesty wrote for my young pupil, in which he spoke of him as the rising sun, extremely brilliant: and of me as the setting sun, exceedingly feeble. He still sometimes scratches with one hand, while he caresses with the other: but, so near him, I am not afraid. If you consent, he will have both rising and setting at his side, and in his high noon will be writing prose and verse to his heart’s content, now he has no more battles on hand. I have but a short time to live. Perhaps it will be pleasanter to die here at Potsdam, in his fashion, than as an ordinary citizen in Paris. You can go back there afterwards with your four thousand francs pension. If these propositions meet your views, you must pack your boxes in the spring: and, at the end of the autumn, I shall make a pilgrimage to Italy to see St. Peter’s at Rome, the Pope, the Venus of Medici, and the buried city. It always lay heavy on my conscience to die without having seen Italy. We will rejoin each other in May. I have four verses by the King of Prussia for His Holiness. It will be very entertaining to take to the Pope four French verses written by a German heretic, and to bring back indulgences to Potsdam. You will see he treats Popes much better than pretty women. He will never write sonnets to you: but you would have excellent company here and a good house. First of all, it is essential that the King, my master, should consent. I believe he will be perfectly indifferent. It matters little
to a King of France where the most useless of his twenty-two or twenty-three million of subjects spends his life: but it would be dreadful to live without you.
TO MME. DE FONTAINE21
Berlin, September 23,1750.
When you set about it, my dear niece, you write charming letters, and prove yourself one of the most amiable women in the world. You add to my regrets, and make me feel the extent of my losses. I never lacked delightful society when I was in yours. However, I hope even misfortunes may be turned to account. I can be much more useful to your brother22 here than in Paris. Perhaps a heretic King will protect a Catholic preacher. All roads lead to Rome, and since Mahomet has put me on such good terms with the Pope, I do not despair of a Huguenot doing something for the benefit of a Carmelite. 23
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