Candide and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

oxford world’ s classics CANDIDE and other stories Voltaire was the assumed name of François-Marie Arouet (1694– 1778). Born into a well-to-do Parisian family, he was educated at the leading Jesuit college in Paris. Having refused to follow his father and elder brother into the legal profession he soon won widespread acclaim for Œdipe (1718), the first of some twenty-seven tragedies which he continued to write until the end of his life. His national epic La Henriade (1723) confirmed his reputation as the leading French literary figure of his generation. Following a quarrel with the worthless but influential aristocrat, the Chevalier de Rohan, he was forced into exile in England. This period (1726–8) was particularly formative, and his Letters concerning the English Nation (1733) constitute the first major expression of Voltaire’s deism and his subsequent lifelong opposition to religious and political oppression. Following the happy years (1734–43) spent at Cirey with his mistress Mme du Châtelet in the shared pursuit of several intellectual enthusiasms, notably the work of Isaac Newton, he enjoyed a brief interval of favour at court during which he was appointed Historiographer to the King. After the death of Mme du Châtelet in 1749 he finally accepted an invitation to the court of Frederick of Prussia, but left in 1753 when life with this particular enlightened despot became intolerable. In 1755, after temporary sojourn in Colmar, he settled at Les Délices on the outskirts of Geneva. He then moved to nearby Ferney in 1759, the year Candide was published. Thereafter a spate of tragedies, stories, philosophical works, and polemical tracts, not to mention a huge number of letters, poured from his pen. The writer of competent tragedies had become the militant embodiment of the Age of Enlighten- ment. After the death of Louis XV in 1774 he eventually returned to Paris in 1778 for the performance of his penultimate tragedy Irène. He was acclaimed and fêted by the entire capital as the greatest living Frenchman and as one of the most effective champions of freedom, tolerance, and common sense the world had ever seen. He died there on 30 May 1778. Roger Pearson is Professor of French in the University of Oxford and Fellow and Praelector in French at The Queen’s College, Oxford. He is the author of Stendhal’s Violin: A Novelist and his Reader (1988), The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire’s ‘Contes philosophiques’ (1993), Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art (1996), Mallarmé and Circumstance: The Translation of Silence (2004), and Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (2005). For Oxford World’s Classics he has translated Zola, La Bête humaine and Maupassant, A Life. oxford world’ s classics For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles––from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels––the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS VOLTAIRE Candide and Other Stories Translated with an Introduction and Notes by ROGER PEARSON 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Translation and editorial material © Roger Pearson 1990, 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Voltaire, 1694–1778. [Short stories. English. Selections] Candide and other stories / Voltaire; translated, with an introduction and notes, by Roger Pearson. p. cm.––(Oxford world’s classics) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Voltaire, 1694–1778––Translations into English. I. Pearson, Roger. II. Title. III. Oxford world’s classics (Oxford University Press) PQ2075 2006 843′.5––dc22 2005034736 Typeset in Ehrhardt by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc ISBN 0–19–280726–9 978–0–19–280726–7 1 CONTENTS Introduction vii Translator’s Note and Acknowledgements xliv Select Bibliography xlv A Chronology of Voltaire xlviii CANDIDE 3 MICROMEGAS 89 ZADIG 107 WHAT PLEASES THE LADIES 178 THE INGENU 190 THE WHITE BULL 254 Explanatory Notes 287 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION This edition presents a selection of the best of all possible stories by Voltaire: Candide, Micromegas, Zadig, What Pleases the Ladies, The Ingenu, and The White Bull. Each of them is a classic; but if ever a work deserved to be called a World’s Classic, it is Candide. Published simultaneously in Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, London and probably Liège on or around 20 February 1759, it soon became the bestseller of the European book trade in the eighteenth century. Cramer, its Genevan publisher, printed an initial run of 2,000 copies, the norm for a book that was expected to sell well: within a month, after further printings and many pirated editions, at least 20,000 copies had been sold. After a similar period even Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (published on 28 October 1726) had sold only half that number. The first English translation came out within six weeks and sold at least 6,000 copies. Since then the work has been published in countless editions. It has been translated into all the world’s major languages, and repeatedly so in some cases as renewed efforts are made to capture the elegance and vitality of Voltaire’s prose. Candide and Pangloss are as well known as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; and Leonard Bernstein turned them into the protagonists of a suc- cessful comic opera. The original publication of Candide was a carefully calculated coup. Unbound copies of the work (in pocketbook duodecimo for- mat) were discreetly dispatched from Geneva on 15 and 16 January 1759; 1,000 to Paris, 200 to Amsterdam, and others to London and Liège. They were then bound at their respective destinations and published on a previously agreed date, the idea being to circulate as many copies of the original edition as possible throughout Europe before pirated editions usurped and corrupted it (and, in those days before the laws of international copyright, siphoned off Voltaire’s potential profits). The aim, too, was to create the maximum stir in as many countries as possible before the authorities could suppress this subversive tale. In the event, although the police were quick to seize all the copies they could and to smash any press on which a new edition was being printed, the flood was too great for them to stem. The damage was done––and long before the Vatican got viii Introduction round to placing Candide on its Index of forbidden books on 24 May 1762. Voltaire himself observed great secrecy about the work, as indeed he did about many of his stories. There is no mention of Candide in his extant correspondence before the date of publication, and after- wards he is to be found denying authorship and dismissing the tale as nothing but a schoolboy joke. Sometime in 1758 he sent a manuscript version to the Duchesse de la Vallière in Paris, which is now preserved in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris; but he kept no manuscript or printed version in his own library (which was sub- sequently bought by Catherine the Great and is today still conserved in St Petersburg). Nor did his publishers retain their printer’s copies. By now ensconced in his chateau at Ferney on the French side of the Franco-Genevan border, Voltaire was already to some extent proof against police attention; but his circumspection over the publication of Candide in part accounts for the fact that the authorities in Paris and Geneva took no action against Voltaire personally even if they did try in vain to contain the diffusion of his latest and most explosive piece of writing. For explosive it was––and is. Wordsworth may have called it the ‘dull product of a scoffer’s wit’, but he is considerably outnumbered by those who have seen Candide as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment.

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