Candide has been one of my favorite pieces of classic world literature since reading it in high school. It sits on my shelf in my Norton anthology as we speak for easy access. ;-) One of the most brilliant satires ever. I wonder what message you think I'm missing?
As one of my favorite modern authors, Adam Gopnik, puts it in a New Yorker article on Voltaire and Candide:
"Voltaire did not believe that there was any justice or balance in the world, but he believed that bad ideas made people bad. The villains in the book are not, as in Samuel Johnson’s exactly contemporary and parallel “Rasselas,” the fatality of the world and the mortality of man. The villains are the villains: Jesuits and Inquisitors and English judges and Muslim clerics and fanatics of all kinds. If they went away, life would be much better. He knew that the flood would get your garden no matter what you did; but you could at least try to keep the priests and the policemen off the grass. It wasn’t enough, but it was something."
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Date: 2006-01-09 07:13 am (UTC)From:As one of my favorite modern authors, Adam Gopnik, puts it in a New Yorker article on Voltaire and Candide:
"Voltaire did not believe that there was any justice or balance in the world, but he believed that bad ideas made people bad. The villains in the book are not, as in Samuel Johnson’s exactly contemporary and parallel “Rasselas,” the fatality of the world and the mortality of man. The villains are the villains: Jesuits and Inquisitors and English judges and Muslim clerics and fanatics of all kinds. If they went away, life would be much better. He knew that the flood would get your garden no matter what you did; but you could at least try to keep the priests and the policemen off the grass. It wasn’t enough, but it was something."