Candide - Voltaire
Publication date: 1759
Edition: Oxford World's Classics - Translator Roger Pearson
Publisher: Oxford Univeristy Press
86 pages, as part of the volume "Candide and other stories".
Source: Waterstones bookshop.
Summary/Back of the book:
Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious tide of misfortune, experiencing the full horror and injustice of this "best of all possible worlds"- the Old and the New - before finally accepting that his philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss has got it all wrong. There are no grounds for his daft theory of Optimism. Yet life goes on. We must cultivate our garden, for there is certainly room for improvement.
Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's "philosophical tales", in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment.
My review:
I think "hilarious" is overstating it a bit. While I did smile a wry smile a few times, I wasn't rolling on the floor guffawing, maybe the wit is too delicate for me.
I think I'd have appreciated it more had I been reading it in 1759 when the issues he's satirising where common knowledge. Having to leaf through to the explanatory notes to discover that a passage is hilarious because it's a lampoon of one of his detractors kind of takes the edge off the hilarity.
That said, it's reasonably short, and easy enough to read, being fast-paced, and having plenty going on. Also, the main theme, and the main thing being satirised, the idea that the world is the best it can be and that there's a greater good we can't understand in our individual suffering, is still relevant today, and can be appreciated.
I think one of the reasons I didn't enjoy it too much was that the characters were terribly one-dimensional, and were there primarily for things to happen to, rather than as active participants in the story. Also, the fast pacing was due to the fact that nothing was described in such a way as you could picture it, if you didn't already have references for the places. By the end, it was like flogging a dead horse, too. Oh look, they have encountered someone they thought was dead, and some new dreadful thing has occurred to make them all doubt the idea that God is beneficent. If some more time had been devoted to the characters and their motivations, rather than just that they had all had really dreadful things happening to them, it might have been more philosophically interesting.
If you like "Don Quixote", this will be right up your street, and is over far more rapidly, too. (I will admit, I struggled through Don Quixote, and at least there was some cause to care about the characters in that. It just goes on forever).
My rating: 2/5