by Voltaire
If we wish therefore to avoid the question-begging term conte philosophique, what other approach might the critic adopt towards Voltaire’s short prose fictions? One possibility is to take a long historical perspective, and to examine Voltaire’s contes as part of a tradition of menippean satire stretching back through Cyrano de Bergerac and Rabelais to Lucian.19 The approach is certainly fruitful up to a point, as a certain number of the short fictions—Le Monde comme il va, Zadig, Micromégas—derive directly from Lucianic satire; in the case of other fictions, the link is looser or non-existent, so again we have a label which is somewhat helpful but which is not sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all the short fictions.
Another starting-point is to look at the place of the short fictions in Voltaire’s œuvre as a whole, and it is striking that he seems to have begun telling stories at an early age, long before he thought of publishing them. Voltaire began to publish contes, as we shall see, in the late 1740s, but before that there are two specific periods when he experimented with this form of composition. In the years 1714–1715 he composed Le Crocheteur borgne and Cosi-Sancta, which formed part of the entertainments staged by the duchesse du Maine at the court de Sceaux. These are works of considerable literary sophistication,20 but Voltaire seems to have viewed them as ephemeral and he never sought to publish them. He embarked on a second phase of fictional creativity in the late 1730s when he worked on at least three tales. He almost certainly began Le Songe de Platon at this time, although it was not published until 1756.21 In addition, in 1739 he sent Frederick what he called ‘une fadaise philosophique’22 about a certain baron de Gangan. He reshaped this piece subsequently and it was published in the early 1750s as Micromégas.23 He also seems to have formed the idea for Le Monde comme il va during this period—in response to his visit to Paris in 1739; this tale was not published until 1748. The fictions of the Cirey period were created primarily as social entertainments, it would seem, rather than as pieces intended for publication, and Françoise de Graffigny, a guest at Cirey in 1738, offers a description of Voltaire in the mode of story-teller: ‘Hier à souper, Voltaire était d’une gaieté charmante; il fit des contes qui ne sont bons que dans sa bouche.’24 Thus Voltaire is a conteur before he is a publisher of contes. This quality of oral performance—which of course is etymologically part of the definition of the conte—is something which we more readily associate with Diderot (in Jacques le fataliste, for example) than with Voltaire, but it is a factor to be borne in mind in studying all his short fiction.25 This means also that Voltaire is a conteur before he is a conteur philosophique, and he seems to have remained a story-teller to the end of his days. In one of Jean Huber’s pictures forming part of the series of images of the everyday life of the patriarch of Ferney, Voltaire is depicted seemingly telling stories to a group of peasants.26
This predilection for narrative performance makes all the more intriguing Voltaire’s decision, finally, in the late 1740s, to begin publishing his tales. In the years 1745–1750, Voltaire composed Zadig, Memnon and the Lettre d’un Turc, and worked on two stories which have their origins in the Cirey period, the Voyage du baron de Gangan (which he recast as Micromégas) and Le Monde comme il va. Never before had he laboured on such a large body of fiction. Remarkably, all five works were published in the five-year period 1747–1752, marking a significant departure from his previous practice. Voltaire no longer told stories solely for the pleasure of his close friends; he now wrote fiction for his reading public.
How are we to account for this burst of fictional creativity in the form of short prose fiction? Clearly Voltaire’s life underwent a great change when he left Cirey in August 1744 for Paris and Versailles. On the point of departure Voltaire wrote to Mme Denis: ‘Je quitte la tranquillité de Cirey pour le chaos de Paris […]. Je me sens un peu honteux à mon âge de quitter ma philosophie et ma solitude pour être baladin des rois’ (D3015). After his long period of retreat, Voltaire’s presence at court brought many new social contacts and demands. To Cideville in January 1745 he confided an impression of his new life: ‘Je cours de Paris à Versailles, je fais des vers en chaise de poste. Il faut louer le roi hautement, madame la dauphine finement, la famille royale tout doucement, contenter la cour, ne pas déplaire à la ville’ (D3073). It is possible, as Raymond Naves suggests, that Voltaire’s encounter with court society encouraged him to explore new literary forms:
C’est la vie de cour des années 1745–1748 qui semble avoir révélé à Voltaire tout le parti qu’il pouvait tirer de l’animation dramatique des idées. Après le long exil de Cirey, le contact intime et continu avec la société mondaine assouplit définitivement son génie et lui montre avec évidence ce qui peut le mieux conquérir ces esprits curieux et pressés: il leur faut des idées, mais il leur faut du plaisir piquant; aussi le conte, la facétie, le dialogue philosophique sont-ils les meilleurs véhicules de la pensée.27
In addition to his experience of court life, Voltaire’s visits to Sceaux in the late 1740s played an important role in the development of the tales. It was here, of course, more than thirty years previously, that Voltaire had composed Le Crocheteur borgne and Cosi-Sancta for the ‘nuits de Sceaux,’ and the place undoubtedly held a special significance for him. His hostess at Sceaux, the duchesse du Maine, leaves her mark on the genesis of Zadig, in the references Voltaire makes in that tale to yellow ribbons.28 And it was at Sceaux that Voltaire found refuge in October 1747 after the ‘jeu de la reine’ incident—an episode to which he alludes in Memnon. There is also evidence that Voltaire may have worked on Le Monde comme il va while staying with the duchesse du Maine at Sceaux. If many of Voltaire’s biographers emphasise his unhappy experiences of the late 1740s, an early chronicler, Duvernet, suggests that Voltaire took pleasure in the tranquillity and the civilised society he found at Sceaux:
L’état de courtisan ne lui convenait pas: [Voltaire] rompit peu à peu les chaînes qui l’attachaient à Versailles, et donna la préférence à Sceaux. C’est là que Mme la duchesse du Maine, née Bourbon Condé, réunissait de jeunes seigneurs, et des savants très estimables. On ne voyait, dans la cour de cette princesse, ni intrigues, ni orages. Cette cour était composée de personnes aimables, spirituelles, s’amusant entre elles; et dans leurs amusements, n’ayant aucun des embarras de l’étiquette. On surnomma ceux qui y étaient admis, les oiseaux de Sceaux, comme autrefois on avait surnommé ceux de la société de Ninon, les oiseaux des Tournelles.29
The importance of Sceaux as a peaceful retreat where Voltaire composed, or at least revised, certain tales, is confirmed in the memoir of his secretary, Longchamp:
M. de Voltaire ne descendait chez Mme la duchesse que lorsque tout le monde était retiré, mangeait un poulet dans sa ruelle, et était servi par un des valets de pieds de Mme la duchesse qui était dans la confidence. M. de Voltaire ne remontait à son appartement qu’un peu avant le jour. Lassé de cette vie oisive M. de Voltaire fit faire une provision de bougies et de lumières et se mit à travailler pendant le jour. Il fit plusieurs petits contes ou romans tels que Zadig, Babouc et autres; et il m’occupait à les mettre au net.30
The three tales, Le Monde comme il va, Zadig and Memnon, substantially the product of the same period, and partly, also, of place, share a good deal of common ‘philosophical’ ground. All three tackle the question of theodicy, along with other familiar topics such as tolerance. In all three Voltaire employs a fictional device in which an unconventional angel descends ex machina to expound the optimist cause to a bemused hero.31 (It is only later, in Candide, that Voltaire will allow the optimist spokesman to assume human form.) In an attempt to identify ‘Voltaire dans ses contes,’ a number of critics examine the nuances of philosophical difference separating the angelic trio of Ituriel, Jesrad and Memnon’s ‘bon génie,’ and many interpret Voltaire’s sudden preoccupation with the problem of evil as evidence of a personal crisis, a crisis which, in this view, explains the emergence of the conte philosophique at this time. René Pomeau, for instance, ass
erts: ‘Dans la crise de 1748, le mal n’est plus un sujet de controverse, il devient une pierre de scandale; et Voltaire l’aborde désormais par le conte. Car le conte voltairien naît définitivement de la crise de 1748.’32 Laurence Bongie endorses this idea, suggesting that as Voltaire grappled with the problem of evil, it was only in the form of the conte that he found the means of freely expressing his complex, somewhat contradictory feelings about the question.33
Perhaps. But it is also possible that because we have decided in advance that these are contes philosophiques, we study first and foremost their philosophical content, even to the exclusion of other considerations. The philosophical arguments of Zadig, for example, are not particularly original, and Haydn Mason has shown that they are largely prefigured in the verse epistles of the Discours en vers sur l’homme, published a decade earlier, in 1738.34 In purely formal terms, it can also be argued that these fictions display a certain continuity with those conceived a decade earlier. We need to be sensitive to the literary context of these tales, and in particular to the role played in these highly self-aware works by pastiche and parody. To take just one example: when modern readers encounter the angel Jesrad, they might well be tempted to focus on his ‘message’; when Grimm encountered the same character, he immediately situated him in the realm of narrative fantasy, gleefully claiming that Voltaire had cribbed the entire chapter from a medieval tale.35 If we believe that Voltaire was struggling in these fictions with a demon, or an angel, it was possibly with the demon of form rather than the demon of evil.
Another way of approaching and understanding this sudden flurry of fictional activity is to focus on the precise manner in which Voltaire chose to publish his short fictions. It was only in the late 1740s that he resolved to place his fictional works in the public realm for the first time. He began the venture in 1747 by publishing Memnon, histoire orientale. Of sufficient length to appear as a volume on its own, it was republished in a revised version the following year as Zadig, ou la destinée, histoire orientale. The appearance of this work paved the way for the publication of other shorter fictions. When Zadig was republished in the collected Dresden edition of 1748, it was accompanied in volume 8 by the first edition of Le Monde comme il va. In late 1749 there appeared the Recueil de pièces en vers et en prose,36 which contained the first publication of Memnon, as well as Le Monde comme il va under the new title Babouc, ou le monde comme il va. In 1750 volume 9 of the collected Dresden edition appeared, containing the first publication of the Lettre d’un Turc and a reprinting of Memnon. In 1751 Voltaire prepared to bring out the first edition of Micromégas, but then withdrew it from the collective edition in which it had been placed; in 1752, the work was finally published separately, in a volume by itself.37 That is to say, in the five years from 1747, Voltaire published five fictions, two of them long enough to appear as books in their own right. At no stage did Voltaire attempt to collect these fictions into a single volume, as he might easily have done. This is perhaps because he did not conceive of them as forming a coherent group (as we are inclined to do); or because he was aware of their similarities and wished his readers to come upon each tale serendipitously.
In any case, this series of publications marks a significant turning-point in Voltaire’s carefully crafted public image as a writer, and with the appearance of these fictions, his position within the republic of letters undergoes a major change. After the Discours en vers sur l’homme, published a decade earlier, Voltaire wrote only two further philosophical poems, the Poème sur la loi naturelle and the Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (both published in 1756). To some extent, the conte of the late 1740s may be said to take over from where the philosophical poem leaves off. If Voltaire often speaks dismissively of the novel as a genre, in particular the sentimental novel,38 he is always alert to changes in literary fashion. In this context Zadig may be read as a philosophical reply to the frivolous oriental fictions of recent years, notably Cazotte’s Les Mille et une fadaises (1742), Caylus’s Contes orientaux (1743), and Voisenon’s Le Sultan Misapouf (1746). Voltaire’s decision to have Zadig printed separately in two halves so as to avoid the risk of a pirated edition certainly gives the lie to the idea that he regarded the work with casual indifference: nothing could have been more carefully stage-managed than the publication of his first book-length fiction.
It has sometimes been suggested that the preoccupation with the problem of evil in these works reflects Voltaire’s personal lack of ‘optimism’ at this time (and of course there is a sleight of hand in using ‘optimism’ in its colloquial, nonphilosophical sense). But the (selective …) use of biographical information to explain the philosophical outlook of a literary work is a hazardous business. In fact, the period of the second half of the 1740s was, notwithstanding various personal setbacks, a time of remarkable professional success for Voltaire. Enjoying unprecedented favour at court under the protection of Mme de Pompadour, Voltaire was elected to the Royal Society in 1743, appointed historiographe de France in 1745, and in the following year named to the lucrative position of gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre du Roi.39 In 1746, as well, Voltaire was finally elected to the Académie française. In his fifties, and with his reputation in the canonical genres of tragedy, epic and history long-established, Voltaire felt free to experiment with other genres, publishing fiction for the first time from 1747, and also, from 1751, philosophical dialogues. Publicly and deliberately, Voltaire was embarking on a new direction as a prose writer.
But what can we say more precisely about his use of fictional genre? A defamiliarising device straight from Lucian is used in Zadig when the hero gazes down from above and sees men as ‘des insectes se dévorant les uns les autres sur un petit atome de boue.’40 What happens if we turn this device on the short fictions themselves, and approach them from outside, like critics from Mars, with no preconceptions? If we look at the contes simply in terms of their appearance in print, and for once leave on one side the issues surrounding their ideological engagement, then the short prose fictions fall very clearly into two distinct categories. Firstly there is the category of what I shall call ‘stand-alone fictions,’ that is to say, those works which were long enough to constitute a book in their own right, a separate publication: Zadig, and (though not initially so intended) Micromégas. Secondly there are those works, Memnon, Le Monde comme il va, and Lettre d’un Turc, which I shall call ‘mosaic fictions,’ which were published as part of some larger structure. Modern critical editions of Voltaire’s Romans et contes inevitably obscure these distinctions of publishing history, but they would have been self-evident to Voltaire’s contemporary readership. As an example of a ‘mosaic fiction,’ we may take the example of Memnon, which is first published in late 1749, in the Recueil de pièces en vers et en prose, where it immediately follows the Discours en vers sur l’homme: ‘Ce petit ouvrage ayant quelque rapport aux Discours en vers ci-dessus, on a cru devoir l’imprimer à leur suite.’41 Subsequently the story is included in various collective editions,42 until finally, in 1771, over twenty years after its first publication, Memnon resurfaces in the fourth part of the Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, where, with an added preliminary paragraph, it now appears as the article ‘Confiance en soi-même’;43 and for once, Voltaire openly acknowledges his manipulation of this mosaic fiction: ‘Nous réimprimons ici ce petit conte, qui est ailleurs: car il est bon qu’il soit partout.44 Even Voltaire himself seems sometimes to have lost track of these mobile texts: whether by design or not, Memnon is printed twice in the 1775 encadrée edition, once as part of the Questions in volume 27, where the dictates of the alphabet place ‘Confiance en soi-même’ between the articles ‘Confession’ and ‘Confiscation’; and again among the ‘Romans philosophiques’ in volume 31, where it is sandwiched between Le Monde comme il va and Les Deux consoles. And it is only a matter of time before some of these mosaic fictions break away altogether from the Voltairean corpus, to lead a separate existence. Two of Voltaire’s fictions, for example, appear anony
mously in a volume edited by Mlle Uncy, Contes moraux dans le goût de ceux de M. Marmontel, recueillis de divers auteurs (4 vols, Amsterdam: Vincent, 1763). In this collection, Ainsi va le monde (vol. 3, pp. 254–83) turns out to be Le Monde comme il va, while Le sot projet d’un homme sage (vol. 4, pp. 359–69) is Memnon by another name (the new title is taken from the opening sentence of the tale): Voltaire’s name is nowhere to be found, but in both cases, his text, apart from the change of title, is reproduced faithfully.
In these multiple reincarnations, the text remains (more or less) stable, and yet our reading of the text is never settled. To the extent that we continue to read and reread the ‘same’ text, it may be said that Voltaire is successful in hammering home his ideas, multiplying variations on a theme. But it is also true that as the context of the text changes, so does the text itself, for meaning is generated by the larger structure into which the mosaic fiction is inserted. In these fictional kaleidoscopes, the individual pieces hold our attention by the shifting and dazzling patterns in which they appear, and Voltaire’s ideas grip us in large part because we are unable to pin them down. The increasingly fragmentary nature of Voltaire’s collections of prose works create an openness which implicates the reader.45 This is Voltairean relativism in practice.
We may look more briefly at the short fictions written after 1750. Voltaire continues to write ‘stand-alone fictions,’ and following Zadig and Micromégas he writes many others, including Candide (1759) and L’Ingénu (1767). It continues to be the case that Voltaire’s fictional writing seems to come in bursts: there are periods when he writes none, and periods when he writes several at once. Thus in March 1764, he informs Mme Du Deffand, ‘Mon goût pour les contes est absolument tombé. C’était une fantaisie que les longues soirées d’hiver m’avaient inspirée. Je pense différemment à l’équinoxe’ (D11791). But to Chabanon, in May 1772, he is in a teasing mood: ‘Quand j’ai du chagrin je m’amuse à faire des contes. Mme d’Argental a une bégueule. Elle vous en fera part d’autant plus volontiers …’ (D17736). After L’Ingénu, Voltaire composes three substantial stand-alone fictions in quick succession, La Princesse de Babylone (1768), L’Homme aux quarante écus (1768) and Les Lettres d’Amabed (1769); two more come in the mid-1770s, Le Taureau blanc (1774), and Histoire de Jenni (1775). As separate publications, these works could all be described in a very loose sense as ‘romans’—or even as ‘anti-romans,’ given the significant presence of parody in these works. It is worth recalling that Grimm’s immediate response to Candide had been to call it ‘un petit roman.’46