Just Finished Reading Voltaire's Candide

French philosopher Voltaire wrote in 1759, during the Enlightenment and before the French Revolution, the satirical short novel Candide...which is also the name of its protagonist, a young man who plays the common literary/cinematic role of the "noble innocent"  (like Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot, or, in our own era, Forrest Gump).  Candide is a German from Westphalia, placed in a castle and then thrown out of it by the distantly related Baron when he becomes infatuated with his daughter, the beautiful Cunegonde, and is caught kissing her.  The eviction leads Candide to join the Bulgar army, after which he discovers that the same army has ravaged the land around his former home and butchered the very people he lived with...including Cunegonde herself and his teacher, an unreasonably optimistic fellow named Pangloss, who sees everything that occurs, no matter how negative on the surface, as "all being for the best".  Subsequently, Candide finds himself travelling from one land to another...to Portugal, then Argentina, then Paraguay, then Suriname, back to Europe in the Netherlands and off the coast of England, then in Venice...finally culminating in the Turkish Ottoman Empire.  Early during these journeys he discovers that Cunegonde has survived the earlier attack.  While in South America, he and his servant Cacambo accidentally discover the hidden realm of El Dorado, whose inhabitants amaze him with their wisdom, grace, and untold riches...reminding me a bit of the horse-like Houyhnhnms in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.  Along the journeys, Pangloss has resurfaced alive, only to be hung as a heretic by the Inquisition in Portugal following a severe earthquake...and then resurfacing alive later.  While in South America, Candide encounters the pessimistic counterpart to Pangloss in Martin, a man of Manichaean belief whose cynical views continually contradict the unwarranted optimism that Candide has learned to exhibit from Pangloss.

Much of Candide's travels are motivated by his search for his love Cunegonde, with whom he had been reunited for a little while but had been again separated from when a powerful Buenos Aires nobleman decided to take her as his mistress.  Will they ever see each other again?  Well, you can read Candide for yourself to find out, if you're interested.  To be perfectly honest, though, I began to lose interest in what happened to the novel's various characters when I realized what Voltaire was trying to do here, which I believe is twofold...

First, Candide is a concentrated piece of satire, heavily dripping with sarcasm directed at the society of his time.  Voltaire rips apart the notion of war being fought by "international rules" while innocent people are being tortured and killed and their land and possessions either destroyed or stolen.  The idea that nobility is an absolute quality that someone can possess is also ridiculed (Cunegonde's noble line counts back to 72 generations, just a little too many for Candide to "qualify" as a husband).  And the various nations of the time, not to mention religious institutions, receive their share of abuse at the author's pen.

Aside from satire, though, Voltaire has an important, serious philosophical point to make with Candide.  The various characters go through the story looking for the key to happiness and freedom from suffering...and only at the end, through a happenstance encounter with a modest Turkish farmer, does Candide realize the "magic formula": work at cultivating your own garden and be devoted to it.  As the farmer put it, by focusing on purposeful, hard work you will be engaged and not in danger of falling to the three great evils of boredom, vice, and poverty.  Cultivate your own garden...this is an "internal" approach for one to take instead of  "externally" seeking out the answers from wealth, adventure, pleasure, politics, religion, or any other "solution" the world has to offer.  I think that's pretty profound, if I might say so...