The Tales Of Voltaire

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 30, 25 July 1923, Page 10

The Tales Of Voltaire

f la an out-of-way corner of the 'ijewspapers one might read the other 'ijpay that a respectiable citizen, who to he a Quaker, had got fonto trouble for destroying a copy of taidMe." It was the property of public library in the suburb W& f cli he inhabited, and he feared 'that it might corrupt the morals of fathers who shared with him this 'felicity. Most of Voltaire's books 'Wo burned, while he Hved, by the 'public hangman. All of them were placed upon -th,e Index. Somehow they have survived the adverse opinion of the Bourbon Court and the Bapal Censor, and here, in spite of contemporary moralists, is a new sedition of the Tales in English. Flames cannot scorch them, nor misunderstanding dull theftn. As for £andide, iit will live as long as the Book of Job. More fortunate than fihe first romance which attempted to aefcsvte the issues betwl?fen optimists $nd pessimists, it is safe from the Hious writers of sequels who made nonsense of the old Hetbrew tale.

It is easy to understand the action of the couriers and the Jesuits wdro burned and banned the work of Voltafre. H e laid the charge of dynamite that smashed their world, and laid it truly and well. A Quaker 'should have known better. Voltaire, as i t , happened, was one of the first minds of his century who perceived ithat the Quakers had something to Wy to niankn.d. and in his Phil-so-phical -U lters he showed a dim appreciation of some parts of their docM-me. He was. t <} be sure, a Deist who-dismissed all forms of rcvelat.'on. ■Hhi temperament was intolerant: of Wary sort of. mysticism. The conventions of morality amused him, and bis notions of decency were those e£ bis century-less . gross than SW'ft''-- ie*« sly t ' nnn Stsrne's. To Soo'ttilwts be stands no nearer, for &c refined his aris-tocna-t'-c outlook to thq end. Yet if those who hate 'cruelty. Intolerance, and oppression, and struggle against the scourge of war were to seek in t_e eighteenth Wtov the name above all others to whom-" wo should do reverence, J. would certainly be Voltaire's.

• The chief sensai'on of the happy who come? o n tbetee tales tier the first time will » c one of *e«* He will not recognise this which Voltaire satirises. Tbe Hk will load him on. The rhythm fJS. the sentences (if he is fortunate, «»ougb to read them in tbe original) will take hold of him like the paces •If a grateful minuet. H 9 will find in ISSadig a romance wb ? ch surpasses in 'fantastic invention the strangest of the Arabian. Nights. Micromegus is & gem of satire, as shrewd as anytfuing of Swif:'!f. but less savage by ■Jfcr, and neater" i n its dainty form. jLTngenu (The Simple Soul), which fegins as a gay and amusing, satire «n civilisation as a Red Indian saw M in a sleepy corner of Brittany, transfer- its scene midway f 0 the Bawtile. and ends with a- tragedy s<> Kfaeerely and movingly told that it •jwasW the . light framework of fantasy a:ui surprises us into anger mud. pity.

Candide, by far ihe greatest' and Slue funniest of these tales, we may describe as a philosophical farce. Wlik-t Voltaire's poem on the earth*is*ke at Lisbon, it in a refutation of ffee mechanical optimism -which he Ikimself in his earlier years had. like Pope, accepted from Leibnitz. With to whimsical ingenuity* he drags the simple Candide find his preceptor IR&ngloss up and down the earth, and iubjects them and their friends to every conceivable moral and physical, which the- world of that day teonld provide. The absurd coinc'd)toce«, the ostivtviagance of the.ad--Matures, arid tha humour which taever fails even in the 1 description of ote fantastic alrocitbes, make the tale » rolicking comedy, yet. the .satire $lifce ©? theological optimism and of Uraman folly thrusts with a deadly Accuracy at lis targets. If this Mgbteenfh century world; distorted in mirror of Voltaire's humour, feeews to us unneHl in some of its Wfesurdilies, we owe the amendment j&frich has changed it more to Voltaire himself than to any man who Steed. The irrepressible Pan-gloss, if &, wero-*live to-day and still ntatnjteined th|a-t this Is the best of all worlds, might indeed chance jsa witnese an earthquake at' Lisbon, tiat We peculiar jGeraian; :•: heresy not cause him to b e hanged by i_d Inquisitiop. I! a motterh Cftttjitld© should land at Portsmouth, he ™_ °o chance of seeing

} A multitude of people covering ! !ilhe shore, attentively wiaiehing , a ' wither big man kiieieling, with his ' *yes bandaged., en the deck ©y «ne

By H..N. BRAILSFOR©

of the vessels of the fle <> t: four soldiers posted face to face' with this man each fired four balls into hie skull in the most tranquil manner possible, and all the .assembly went, home ekiremely satisfied.

it was Voltaire and no other who flayed alive with his wit . and his anger the judicial murderers of the Proliant martyr Cabas, broken on the wheel for a n imaginary crime. It was Voltaire who held up Hanoverian England t 0 the scorn of a Continent for the execution of Admiral Byng. AYe no longer ''kill admirals from time to time, to -encourage the. others." The very phrase has become a proverb.

A Rl-EK. OF KINGS

Fantastic a« this world of ihe Tales seems to us, the fact is that, e\f:n in his wildest fantasies, A/oliaire is living his ownvlife over again. Zadig just "escaped execution for a set of verses torn in half which conveyed the opposite of his melaning: Voltaire himself had lain in the Bastille for a lampoon which another wrote. The flight of Zadig from the Court of Babylon recalls the audror's own escape from Fpbsdam. Ha fights over again his battles with court cliques and clerical censors. If it has become impossible that heretics should be broken on the wheel, that authors wbb tilt at -convention should be sen t to prison, or that monasteries should exercise the crudest forms of feudal oppression upon thoir peasant tenants. Wp. ou* U.. to ;he nvaii who won in the latter years of his life an int-elleelu-al ascendancy over Euiope so absolute, that Kings and sought his approbation, while mini.st.ers and prelates trembled \mt be. should immortalise their stupid cruellies.

Voltaire is the most flagrant .in.ftanqu of a philosopher whose own life was greater than the moral which be drew' from his experience. For a century rand a half we have all been quoting fb&. conclusion of; Candide. Wearied at last of discussing whether, in. spite of 'their own experiences of wars and.duels, the inqu<siion and'the galieys, this is the best of. all .-possible-worlds; Candide and his much-travelled friends, aged and mutilated as they Mere, .settled down to "cultivate their garden." "Lei us work without reasoning," -?,>d Martin: "it is the sole means of rendering life endurable."' They watched the boats go. by, carrying rashas and _ui.fis to be strangled, \vhib.» other boats crossed them, carrying new pashas t 0 replace them in favoui*. "I. never inquire what is : going on at Constantinople," said ihe sage Avho was th.e'r pattern, "I arii content to send to it "the fruits which I grow in my garden."

•So moralised Volbaire in a moment Of fatigue. It was not. s rt that he lived. 'Exiled from Paris, with two sojourns in the Bastille behind him, be did indeed seltle-down, in tiis garden at Perney with b,is books of Newtonian • physjcs. his...pioneering histories of civilisation, and his dramas, in verse. But; never was exile less of a withdrawal from the world. He thundered at intolerance from his retreat. He becamie the chosen champicn of every victim of clerical persecution. Years- of bis life were spent in minute controversy and inquiry over the details of these ghastly cases. The latter chapters of Condorcet's life of him come near to being d<eid-ious reading, ta«s this man who had been nattered by kings, and applanded by the commen multitude of capitals, tbe first wet and stylist of lyl« century, gave his years to vindicating now an obscure Protest* ant tradesman and again a freethinking boy. The garden that he cultivated was the wbo!, e wide earth.

We can look at it to-uay and say that of some weeds it is cleaner for bis hoifiing. The inquisitions and the censorships, the sealed le-t.i\ey,s and the Bastilles, are gone. Gone, too, is the naive belief which unditfrlay half the folliies and- the superstitions, that J.man is the lord of creation and the centre of a universe mad* for his purposes. One must throw one's mind hack beyond Darwin to savour all the fun of the scene which concludes Micromegjas,, The gigantic visitors from the Dog Star and Saturn, who are watching through a microscope 4he vrababUanta ot the ear»t_ whosie shijy, one of them has placed on his are questWn'ng: th«*a on, their,- philosophy. A little aiaamalciile wjth aY: {priest's square' folat is e?.ponndvtng frosa Mt, Tboims Aqniima:

,;' He looked the two celestial inhabitants up and down and rnaint&iorfid to their face*) thsil th-e-r- peirxms; thejir wor3~tte. a&eir sans, theJr stare*.

were all created solely for men. At this-' speech our two travellers, let theinsjelvee' go, one after the other, in that inextinguishable' laughter wh%h, according to Homer, Isi peculiar to ttoe'.Gods: their shoulders and their stomachs rose and fell', and; amid- these convulsions the ship which the S'rian held on his nail fell into the Saturnian's breeches pocket. The Siria.il picked up the little mites: he spoke to them, still with much kindness, though" in. the depths of his hoart h e was a little bit annoyed to perceive that the infinitely little have a pride infinitely great. . ... ,

Of the cruelties-,' from vivisection to war, which Voltaire castigated, enough remain to make him still an inspiration to- us all in the unending battle for civilisation. Some cf Cand.ide's adventures belong to a vanished world. But war remains. If a modern satirist wer c minded to rewrite the sufferings of Cunegonde and' Panglo&s,. he would find a scene no less thrilling, and happenings as monstrous in their unreason, In the sequels of the great war. The inhabitants of Sirius, after bearing how "a hundred thousand madmen of our species", were engaged in slaughtering another hundred thousand, for Tsars and Sultans whom they bad never seen, was minded with ;bre-o stampings of his foot to crush this "ant-heap of ridiculous assassins": "Spare yourself the trouble" was the answer. "Thjeiy work hard enough at their own undoing. Know that at the end of ten years, there is never left a tenth part of th-:.se Avretches. . . . Besides, it 5s not they who iJfcould be punished. but rather the sedentary barbarians who from the depths of their offices,- command. whil 6 they are digesting their dinner, the' massacre of a million men and -thereafter. give solemn thanks, for it to God."

These pages of the Tales ar» not yet out of date. The best thing in he ant-heap is still the wit and the courage that can combat its- madness. —"The New Leader."