The Philosophical Story of Candid. Voltaire's Candide

In the work and in the life of Voltaire, the characteristic features of the Enlightenment, its problems and the very human type of the enlightener: a philosopher, a writer, a public figure, were most vividly embodied. That is why his name became, as it were, a symbol of the era, gave a name to a whole intellectual movement of a European scale ("Voltaireanism"), although many of his contemporaries were significantly ahead of him in the field of philosophical, political and social ideas.

Francois-Marie Arouet (1694 - 1778), who went down in history under the name Voltaire, was born into the family of a wealthy Parisian notary. His father's fortune, further multiplied by his own business skills, provided him with material independence, which allowed him to change his place of residence in dangerous moments of his life, to leave Paris and France for a long time, without risking falling into poverty. Voltaire studied at the best Jesuit college for those times, where, in addition to the traditional classical education (at which he later laughed cruelly), he acquired strong friendships with the offspring of noble families, who later occupied important government posts. Voltaire's youth was spent in aristocratic literary circles opposed to the official regime. There he went through the first school of free-thinking and managed to attract attention with the wit, grace and audacity of his poems. Literary success cost him a short imprisonment in the Bastille - he was considered the author of a pamphlet on the regent Philip of Orleans. After his release, in the fall of 1718, his tragedy "Oedipus" was presented at the French Comedy Theater, on the poster of which the literary pseudonym "Voltaire" first appeared (later he resorted to many other pseudonyms when he wanted to hide his authorship).

Voltaire's literary work in 1726 was interrupted by another arrest - this time as a result of a quarrel with the arrogant aristocrat, Chevalier de Rogan, who ordered his lackeys to beat Voltaire with sticks. This demonstrative gesture of the aristocrat towards the bourgeois and the position of non-interference taken by Voltaire's noble friends made him clearly feel his incompetence in the face of class privileges. Voltaire's opponent, taking advantage of family ties, hid him in the Bastille. After leaving prison, Voltaire, on the advice of friends, left for England, where he stayed for about two years. There he completed the national heroic poem "Henriada" (1728), begun back in 1722.

Acquaintance with the political, social and spiritual life of England was of great importance for the worldview and work of Voltaire. He reflected his impressions in a compact, journalistically pointed form in the Philosophical (or English) Letters. Published in France in 1734, this book was immediately banned and burned by the executioner's hand as blasphemous and seditious. In it, Voltaire, while maintaining a critical attitude towards English reality, emphasized its advantages over French. This concerned, first of all, religious tolerance towards sects and religions that did not belong to the official Anglican Church, constitutional rights protecting the integrity of the person, respect for people of spiritual culture - scientists, writers, and artists. Several chapters of the book are devoted to the characterization of English science, philosophy (especially Locke), literature and theater. Voltaire was greatly impressed by Shakespeare, who he first saw on stage and until then was completely unknown in France.

Voltaire's acutely critical position in relation to the church and the court brought on him persecution, which could turn into a new arrest. He thought it wise to hide away from Paris in the estate of his friend the Marquise du Châtelet, one of the most intelligent and educated women of the time. The fifteen years he spent in her castle of Sire in Champagne were filled with active and varied activities. Voltaire wrote in all literary and scientific journalistic genres. Over the years, he wrote dozens of theatrical plays, many poems, the poem "The Virgin of Orleans", historical works, a popular presentation of Newton's theory, philosophical writings ("Treatise on Metaphysics"), polemical articles. Throughout his life, Voltaire conducted an extensive correspondence that amounted to dozens of volumes. These letters reveal to us the appearance of a tireless fighter for freedom of thought, a defender of the victims of fanaticism, who instantly responded to manifestations of social injustice and lawlessness.

Voltaire's relationship with the French court was tense. His attempts to pursue a diplomatic career have failed. The royal mistress of the Marquis de Pompadour hindered both his court and literary career, her intrigues and the intrigues of the Jesuits hindered his election to the French Academy (it took place only in 1746 after three unsuccessful attempts). Voltaire had to fight to stage his tragedies, which were subject to the prohibitions of censorship.

After the death of the Marquise du Châtelet (1749), Voltaire, at the invitation of Frederick II, came to Prussia. Three years spent in the Prussian residence in Potsdam (1750 - 1753) in the royal service, opened his eyes to the true meaning of the "enlightened" reign of this "philosopher on the throne." Frederick willingly demonstrated his religious tolerance in front of world public opinion (in spite of the rulers of Catholic countries, with which he was in constant military conflicts). He formed his Academy of French scholars and writers persecuted at home for free-thinking. But even with these people he remained the same rude and insidious despot that he was with his subjects. Voltaire saw in Prussia the poverty of the peasantry, the horrors of recruitment and army drills. After a conflict with the king, he resigned and wished to leave the Prussian court. Permission was given, but on the way to France Voltaire was detained by the Prussian gendarmes and subjected to a rough and insulting search.

Returning to his homeland did not promise him anything comforting, and he preferred to settle in the territory of the Geneva Republic, close to the French border ("Front paws in France, hind legs in Switzerland; depending on where the danger is from, I squeeze one or the other", - he wrote to friends). He acquired several estates, of which Ferney became his main residence and the center of world cultural pilgrimage. Here Voltaire spent the last 24 years of his life. Here he was visited by writers, actors - performers of his plays, public figures, travelers from different European countries (including Russia). Here they sought refuge and protection for the victims of fanaticism and arbitrariness. It was during these years that Voltaire's social activities acquired a special scope and his world authority reached its apogee.

In the early 1760s, in Toulouse, on the initiative of the church authorities, a court case was brought against the Protestant Jean Calas, accused of murdering his son, allegedly for the fact that he was going to convert to Catholicism. The process was conducted in violation of all legal norms, false witnesses were involved, the accused was severely tortured, but never pleaded guilty. Nevertheless, by the verdict of the court, he was quartered, and his body was burned. For a long time Voltaire was collecting materials for the review of the case, attracted reputable lawyers, and most importantly, world public opinion. The revision of the Kalas case, which ended with posthumous rehabilitation and the return of rights to his family, turned into an exposure of religious fanaticism and judicial arbitrariness. Almost simultaneously, in the same Toulouse, a similar case was initiated against another Protestant - Sirven, who managed to escape from the city in time and escape from reprisals. Voltaire achieved an excuse in this case too. The third trial fell upon a young man, Chevalier de La Barra, accused of desecrating holy places and of atheism. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, found in his possession, appeared as one of the clues. La Barra was executed, after having pulled out his tongue. During these years, Voltaire's slogan, with which he began all his letters, was: "Crush the reptile!" (i.e. the Catholic Church). He is known for his speeches against judicial arbitrariness and lawlessness in a number of other processes.

In the last years of his life, the name of the "Ferney Patriarch" was surrounded by an aura of worldwide recognition, but he did not dare to return to Paris, fearing possible reprisals. Only after the death of Louis XV, when many of his contemporaries had hopes for a more liberal rule by his successor (illusions that turned out to be short-lived), he allowed himself to be persuaded and in the spring of 1778 arrived in the capital. Voltaire was expecting a real triumph - crowds of people greeted his carriage with flowers, at the French Comedy Theater he attended the performance of his last tragedy "Irena", the actors crowned his bust with a laurel wreath. Voltaire died a few days later. His nephew took the body secretly from the capital, anticipating possible complications with the funeral - the church would not have missed an opportunity to settle scores with him. Indeed, the day after the funeral (in the Abbey of Celler in Champagne) came the prohibition of the local bishop to bury Voltaire. In 1791 his remains were transferred to the Pantheon in Paris. Voltaire's extensive library, containing many of his margins, was purchased by Catherine II from his heirs and is currently kept in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg.

In his philosophical views, Voltaire was a deist. He denied the immortality and immateriality of the soul, resolutely rejected Descartes' doctrine of "innate ideas", opposing it with the empirical philosophy of Locke. In the question of God and the act of creation, Voltaire took the position of a reserved agnostic. In his "Treatise on Metaphysics" (1734), he gave a number of arguments "for" and "against" the existence of God, came to the conclusion that both were untenable, but avoided the final solution of this issue. He had a sharply negative attitude to any official creeds, ridiculed religious dogmas and rituals as incompatible with reason and common sense (especially in the "Explained Bible", 1776, and "Philosophical Dictionary", 1764), however, he believed that criticism of religion could only afford the enlightened elite, while the common people need religious teaching as a restraining moral principle (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”). Of course, he imagined such a religion to be free from compulsion, intolerance and fanaticism. This twofold approach to religion was reflected in Voltaire's inherent "aristocratic" thinking, which manifested itself in his social views: opposing poverty, he nevertheless considered it necessary to divide society into rich and poor, in which he saw a stimulus for progress ("Otherwise, who became to pave roads? ").

In a number of philosophical questions, Voltaire's views have evolved markedly. So, until 1750, he, albeit with reservations, shared the optimistic outlook characteristic of the early European Enlightenment (Leibniz, Shaftesbury, A. Pope), and the associated determinism - the recognition of the causal relationship that dominates the world and creates the relative balance of good and evil. These views were reflected in his early philosophical stories (Zadig, 1747) and poems (Discourse on Man, 1737). In the mid-1750s, Voltaire departed from this concept and made a vigorous criticism of Leibniz's optimistic philosophy. The impetus was, on the one hand, his Prussian experience, on the other, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which destroyed not only the big city, but also the optimistic faith of many contemporaries in the wisdom of the all-good Higher Providence. Voltaire's philosophical poem about the death of Lisbon is dedicated to this event, in which he directly opposes the theory of world harmony. On a broader basis, this polemic was developed in the philosophical story Candide, or Optimism (1759) and a number of pamphlets (The Ignorant Philosopher, etc.).

Historical works occupy an important place in Voltaire's work. The first of them, "The History of Charles XII" (1731), provides a biography of the Swedish king, who, according to Voltaire, represented an archaic type of monarch-conqueror turned into the past. Its political antagonist is Peter I, a reformer monarch and educator. For many theorists of state power, the figure of Peter was presented in the halo of ideas of "enlightened monarchy", which they searched in vain among Western European rulers. For Voltaire, the very choice of this antithesis (Karl - Peter) confirmed his main philosophical and historical idea: the struggle between two opposite principles, personifying the past and the future and embodied in outstanding personalities. Voltaire's book is written as a fascinating story, in which dynamic action is combined with the merciless accuracy of assessments and the living art of portraying heroes. This type of historical narrative was completely new and in sharp contrast to the official doxologies and boring factography that dominated the historical writings of his time. Also new was the appeal to the recent, noisy, modern events. Thirty years later, Voltaire again turned to the figure of Peter - this time in a special work written on behalf of the Russian court: "The History of Russia in the Reign of Peter" (1759 - 1763). During these years, when he was especially worried about the problem of the church's interference in the affairs of the state, the independent policy of Peter, who limited the powers of the church to purely religious affairs, came to the fore.

The fundamental work "The Age of Louis XIV" (1751), in which Voltaire develops a wide panorama of the life of France during the previous reign, is devoted to the analysis of the recent past of national history. Unlike the traditions of historiography of that time, which wrote the history of kings and military campaigns, Voltaire dwells in detail on economic life, on Colbert's reforms, on foreign policy, religious disputes and, finally, on the French culture of the "golden" classical age, which Voltaire highly valued. Voltaire's book was banned by the censorship not only because of the critical assessment of the late monarch, but also because of the too obvious contrast between the brilliant last century and the insignificant present.

The most significant historical work of Voltaire was his work on world history "An Experience of the Morals and Spirits of Nations" (1756), which, in design and breadth of coverage, presents a well-known analogy with Montesquieu's work "On the Spirit of Laws." Unlike his predecessors, who began the history of the human race with the fall of Adam and Eve and brought it to the era of migration of peoples, Voltaire begins the history of mankind from a primitive state (which he partly judges from the descriptions of the life of savages on the distant islands of the Pacific Ocean) and brings it to the discovery America. Here his philosophy of history stands out especially clearly: world events are presented under the sign of the struggle of ideas - reason and superstition, humanity and fanaticism. Thus, Voltaire's historical research is subordinated to the same publicistic and ideological task - to expose the priests and clergy, as well as the founders of religious teachings and institutions.

The same principles of a philosophical and, at the same time, a journalistic approach to historical material underlie Voltaire's first great poem "Henriad" (1728), praising Henry IV. For Voltaire, he embodies the idea of ​​an "enlightened monarch", a champion of religious tolerance. The poem depicts the era of religious wars in France (late 16th century). One of its most impressive episodes is the description of St. Bartholomew's Night, about which Henry tells the English Queen Elizabeth. The very trip of Henry to England is a free fiction of the poet, but, according to Voltaire, such fiction is legitimate, even when it comes to the relatively recent past, well known to readers - the whole point is that the fiction remains within the "possible", not contradicted him. Voltaire needs an English episode in order to introduce a description of the state structure of England, religious tolerance, that is, those topics that will soon be developed in Philosophical Letters. Another example of the "actualization" of historical material is Henry's "prophetic dream" (the traditional motif of an epic poem), in which St. Louis tells him the history of France and its immediate future under Henry's descendants - Louis XIII and XIV, that is, already directly brought to the present. Voltaire tried to combine this "actualization" with the canonical rules of constructing a classical epic: following the ancient models - Homer and Virgil - he introduces traditional plot motives: a storm at sea, a love episode in the castle of the beautiful Gabrielle d'Estre, in whose arms Heinrich almost forgets about his high mission, and so on. Voltaire tries in a rationalist spirit to rethink the obligatory "upper layer" of characters - instead of the ancient gods interfering in the fate of people, he introduces the allegorical figures of Fanaticism, Discord, Rumor. However, these attempts of modern rethinking of the poetic system, which had developed in different conditions, on different material, turned out to be untenable - the actual content at every step came into collision with the ossified form. Enthusiastically greeted by contemporaries brought up in classical taste, "Henriada" later lost its poetic sound (with the exception of the impressive picture of St. Bartholomew's Night).

Voltaire's experiments in the new genre of "philosophical poem" born of the Enlightenment turned out to be much more integral and artistically effective. In 1722 he wrote the poem "For and against", in which he formulated the main provisions of "natural religion" - deism. In the poem, he rejects the very idea of ​​canonical and dogmatic religion, the idea of ​​God as an inexorable punishing force, advocates for the victims of fanaticism, in particular the pagan tribes of the New World. Subsequently, Voltaire more than once turned to the genre of a "philosophical poem", plotless, combining pathetic eloquence with well-aimed witty denunciations and paradoxes.

Voltaire's most famous poem is The Virgin of Orleans, which was published in the mid-1750s without the author's knowledge in a highly distorted form. Voltaire worked on the poem from the mid-1720s, constantly expanding the text, but he was afraid to publish it. The release of the "pirated" edition forced him to publish it in 1762 in Geneva, but without the name of the author. The poem was immediately included in the "List of Prohibited Books" by the French censorship.

Conceived initially as a parody of a poem by a secondary author of the 17th century. Chaplain's "The Virgin", Voltaire's poem grew into a devastating satire on the church, clergy, and religion. Voltaire debunks in her the sugary and sanctimonious legend of Jeanne d'Arc as the chosen one of heaven. Parodically playing up the motive of the miraculous power arising from the purity and virginity of Jeanne, which became the guarantee and condition of her victory over the British, Voltaire brings this idea to the point of absurdity: the plot is based on the fact that Jeanne's maiden honor is the subject of encroachments and insidious intrigues on the part of the enemies of France. Following the traditions of the literature of the Renaissance, Voltaire repeatedly uses this erotic motive, ridiculing, on the one hand, the sanctimonious version of the supernatural essence of Jeanne's feat, on the other, showing a whole line of depraved, mercenary, deceitful and treacherous clergy of various ranks - from the archbishop to a simple ignorant monk ... In a truly Renaissance spirit, the manners that reign in monasteries and at the court of the pampered and frivolous Charles VII are described. In this monarch of the Hundred Years War and in his mistress Agnes Sorel, contemporaries easily recognized the features of Louis XV and the Marquise de Pompadour.

Voltaire introduces two warring saints - the patrons of England and France - St. George and St. Denis. The traditional battles of the gods in the Homeric epic here turn into hand-to-hand fighting, a tavern brawl, a bitten off ear and a damaged nose. Thus, Voltaire continues the tradition of the burlesque poem of the 17th century, which presented a lofty plot in a reduced vulgar spirit. In the same vein, the image of the main character is sustained - a red-cheeked tavern maid with heavy fists, able to stand up for her honor and make enemies flee on the battlefield. The artistic structure of the poem is thoroughly permeated with parodic elements: in addition to Chaplain's poem, the genre of the heroic epic itself is parodied with its traditional plot situations and stylistic devices.

"The Virgin of Orleans" from the moment of its appearance to this day has caused the most controversial assessments and judgments. Some (for example, young Pushkin) admired her wit, audacity, brilliance; others were indignant at the "mockery of the national shrine." Meanwhile, the feat of Jeanne as a folk heroine was inaccessible to Voltaire's consciousness, for, according to his historical concept, it is not the people who make history, but the clash of ideas - light and dark. In "An Essay on the Morals and Spirit of Nations" (1756), he indignantly speaks of the obscurantists-churchmen, "in their cowardly cruelty, they condemned this courageous girl to the stake." And at the same time he speaks of the naive, unenlightened consciousness of a simple peasant girl, who easily believed in the idea of ​​her divine destiny and chosenness inspired by her. For Voltaire the historian, Jeanne is a passive instrument and at the same time a victim of other people's aspirations, interests, intrigues, and not an active protagonist of history. This allowed him to interpret, without any reverence, the figure of Jeanne in his satirical anti-clerical and anti-religious poem.

A prominent place in Voltaire's artistic work is occupied by dramatic genres, especially tragedies, which he wrote about thirty in sixty years. Voltaire was well aware of the effectiveness of theatrical art in promoting advanced educational ideas. He himself was an excellent reciter, constantly participating in home performances of his plays. Actors from Paris often visited him, he learned roles with them, made a production plan, which he attached great importance to in achieving a spectacular effect. He paid much attention to the theory of dramatic art.

In the tragedies of Voltaire, the transformation of the principles of classicism in the spirit of new educational tasks appears even more clearly than in poetry. In his aesthetic views, Voltaire was a classicist. He adopted as a whole the system of classicist tragedy - high style, compact composition, adherence to unity. But at the same time, he was not satisfied with the state of the modern tragic repertoire - the sluggishness of the action, the static nature of the mise-en-scenes, the absence of any spectacular effects. A sensualist by his philosophical convictions, Voltaire sought to influence not only the mind, the consciousness of the audience, but also their feelings - he spoke about this more than once in prefaces, letters, and theoretical essays. This was what attracted him at first to Shakespeare. Reproaching the English playwright for "ignorance" (that is, ignorance of the rules gleaned from the ancients), for rudeness and obscenity, unacceptable "in a decent society", for combining high and low style, a combination of tragic and comic in one play, Voltaire paid tribute to expressiveness, tension and dynamism of his dramas. In a number of tragedies of the 1730s - 1740s, traces of Shakespeare's external influence are felt (the storyline of Othello in Zaire, Hamlet in Semiramis). He creates a translation-adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, risking to do without female roles in this tragedy (a thing unheard of on the French stage!). But in the last decades of his life, having witnessed the growing popularity of Shakespeare in France, Voltaire was seriously worried about the fate of the French classical theater, which was clearly retreating under the onslaught of the plays of the English "barbarian", "fairground jester", as he now calls Shakespeare.

Voltaire's tragedies are devoted to pressing social problems that worried the writer throughout his entire career: first of all, it is the struggle against religious intolerance and fanaticism, political arbitrariness, despotism and tyranny, which are opposed by republican virtue and civic duty. Already in the first tragedy "Oedipus" (1718), within the framework of the traditional mythological plot, the idea of ​​the ruthlessness of the gods and the cunning of the priests, pushing weak mortals to crimes, sounds. In one of the most famous tragedies, Zaire (1732), the action takes place during the era of the Crusades in the Middle East. The opposition between Christians and Muslims is clearly not in favor of the former. The tolerant and magnanimous Sultan Orosman is opposed by intolerant crusader knights who demand from Zaira, a Christian woman brought up in a harem, to refuse marriage with her beloved Orosman and secretly fled to France with her father and brother. Secret negotiations between Zaira and her brother, misinterpreted by Orosman as a love meeting, lead to a tragic outcome - Orosman lies in wait for Zaira, kills her and, upon learning of his mistake, commits suicide. This outward resemblance between Zaira's plot line and Othello subsequently gave rise to harsh criticism from Lessing. However, Voltaire did not at all seek to compete with Shakespeare in revealing the hero's inner world. Its task was to show the tragic consequences of religious intolerance that hinders free human feeling.

In a much more acute form, the problem of religion is posed in the tragedy "Mahomet" (1742). The founder of Islam appears in her as a deliberate deceiver, artificially inciting the fanaticism of the masses in order to please his ambitious plans. According to Voltaire himself, his Mohammed is "Tartuffe with a weapon in his hands." Mohammed scornfully speaks of the blindness of the "unenlightened rabble," which he will force to serve his own interests. With sophisticated cruelty, he pushes the young man Seid, brought up by him and blindly devoted to him, to paricide, and then calmly deals with him. In this tragedy, the principle of the playwright's use of historical material is especially clear: Voltaire is not interested in a historical event in its concreteness, but as a universal, generalized example of a certain idea, as a model of behavior - in this case, the founder of any new religion. This was immediately understood by the French ecclesiastical authorities, who banned the production of "Mohammed"; they saw in it a denunciation not only of the Muslim religion, but also of Christianity. In the tragedy "Alzira" (1736) Voltaire shows the cruelty and fanaticism of the Spanish conquerors of Peru. In the later tragedies of the 1760s, the problems of the forcibly imposed monastic vow (Olympia, 1764), the limitation of the power of the church by the state (Gebra, 1767) were raised. The republican theme develops in the tragedies "Brutus" (1730), "Death of Caesar" (1735), "Agathocles" (1778). This whole range of problems required a wider range of subjects than that which was established in the classicist tragedy of the 17th century. Voltaire turned to the European Middle Ages (Tancred), to the history of the East (Chinese Orphan, 1755, with the main character Genghis Khan), to the conquest of the New World (Alzira), without abandoning, however, traditional ancient subjects ( Orestes "," Meropa "). Thus, while preserving the principles of classicist poetics, Voltaire expanded its framework from the inside, sought to adapt the old, time-honored form to new educational tasks.

In Voltaire's drama, there was a place for other genres: he wrote opera texts, funny comedies, comedy-pamphlets, and paid tribute to the serious moralizing comedy “The Prodigal Son” (1736). It was in the preface to this play that he uttered his winged dictum: "All genres are good, except the boring one." However, these plays to a much lesser extent showed the strengths of his dramatic skills, while the tragedies of Voltaire throughout the 18th century. occupied a firm place in the European theatrical repertoire.

The brightest and most vivid in the artistic heritage of Voltaire are his philosophical stories to this day. This genre was formed during the Enlightenment and absorbed its main problems and artistic discoveries. At the heart of each such story is a certain philosophical thesis, which is proved or refuted by the entire course of the narrative. Often it is already outlined in the title itself: "Zadig, or Fate" (1747), "Memnon, or Human Prudence" (1749), "Candide, or Optimism" (1759).

In the early stories of the 1740s, Voltaire makes extensive use of the usual French literature of the 18th century. oriental stylization. So, "Zadig" is dedicated to the "Sultana Sheraa" (in which they were inclined to see the Marquis de Pompadour) and is presented as a translation from an Arabic manuscript. The action unfolds in the conditional East (in Babylon) in an equally conditionally designated era. The chapters of the story are completely independent novellas and anecdotes based on genuine oriental material and only conditionally connected by the story of the hero's misadventures. They confirm the thesis expressed in one of the last chapters: "There is no such evil that would not generate good." Trials and successes, sent down by the fate of Zadig, each time turn into an unforeseen and directly opposite to the expected meaning. What people think of as coincidence is in fact due to universal causation. In this story, Voltaire still firmly adheres to the positions of optimism and determinism, although this does not in the least prevent him from satirically depicting the depraved customs of the court, the arbitrariness of his favorites, the ignorance of scientists and doctors, the greed and deceit of the priests. The transparent oriental decoration makes it easy to see Paris and Versailles.

The grotesque satirical manner of narration, already characteristic of this story, is sharply intensified in Micromegas (1752). Here Voltaire acts as a student of Swift, to whom he directly refers in the text of the story. Using Swift's technique of "altered optics", he confronts the giant inhabitant of the planet Sirius - Micromegas - with a much smaller inhabitant of Saturn, then shows the insignificant, barely distinguishable insects that inhabit the Earth seen by their eyes: these tiny creatures, seriously imagining themselves as people, swarm, spite, destroy each other because of "several heaps of dirt", which they have never seen and which will not go to them, but to their sovereigns; they engage in profound philosophical disputes that do not in the least move them on the path of knowing the truth. At parting, Mikromegas presents them with his philosophical work, written for them in the smallest handwriting. But the secretary of the Academy of Sciences in Paris discovers nothing in it but white paper.

In Voltaire's deepest and most significant story, Candide, there is a clear philosophical change that took place in the mind of the writer after his return from Prussia and the Lisbon earthquake. Leibniz's optimistic idea of ​​a "pre-established harmony of good and evil", of the causal relationship that reigns in this "best of possible worlds", is consistently refuted by the events of the life of the protagonist, a modest and virtuous young man, Candide: after the unjust expulsion from the baronial castle, where he brought up out of mercy, followed by violent recruitment, torture with gauntlets (an echo of Voltaire's Prussian impressions), pictures of bloody massacres and looting of soldiers, the Lisbon earthquake, etc. after another at a breakneck pace; they are killed (but not completely!), hanged (but not quite!), then they are resurrected; loving, separated, seemingly forever, meet again and are united in a happy marriage, when not a trace of their youth and beauty is left. The action is transferred from Germany to Portugal, to the New World, to the utopian country of El Dorado, where gold and precious stones lie on the ground like simple pebbles; then the heroes return to Europe and, finally, find a peaceful refuge in Turkey, where they grow an orchard. The very contrast between the mundane ending of everyday life and the intensely dramatic events preceding it is characteristic of the grotesque manner of storytelling. The action with its unexpected, paradoxical turns, the rapid change of episodes, scenery and characters turns out to be strung on an incessant philosophical dispute between the Leibnizian Pangloss, the pessimist Martin and Candide, who gradually, wise by life experience, begins to critically relate to the optimistic doctrine of his pre-Pangloss and on the law the connection of events replies: "You said that well, but we need to cultivate our garden." Such an ending to the story may mean Voltaire's frequent departure from any definite decision, from a choice between two opposite concepts of the world. But another interpretation is also possible - a call to turn from useless verbiage to real, practical, even small, deeds.

The story "The Innocent" (1767) takes place entirely in France, although the main character is an Indian from the Huron tribe who, by force of circumstances, found himself in Europe. Referring to the "natural man" so popular in the Enlightenment,

Voltaire uses here the method of "defamiliarization" (the concept of "defamiliarization" was introduced by VB Shklovsky in 1914), used by Montesquieu in the Persian Letters and Swift in Gulliver's Travels. France, its social institutions, despotism and arbitrariness of the royal power, the omnipotence of ministers and favorites, ridiculous church prohibitions and regulations, prejudices are shown with a fresh look of a person who grew up in a different world, different conditions of life. The hero's innocent bewilderment about everything he sees and what gets in the way of his connection with his beloved girl turns into a chain of misadventures and persecution for him. The conditionally happy ending of "Candida" and "Zadig" is opposed here by a sad outcome - the death of a virtuous girl who sacrifices her honor in order to free her lover from prison. The final conclusion of the author this time is much more unambiguous: the Leibnizian formula, reduced to the level of everyday wisdom "There is a silver lining," he opposes the judgment of "honest people": "Out of thin air there is no good!" The parody grotesque, the style of dissonance and deliberate exaggeration that dominates in Candida, is replaced in The Innocent by a restrained and simple composition. The coverage of the phenomena of reality is more limited and clearly closer to the conditions of French life. The satirical effect is achieved here throughout the narrative by means of a “different vision” through the eyes of the Huron and culminates in a bleak ending: sacrifices and trials were in vain; each received his share of pitiful handouts and paltry goods, from lemon candy to diamond earrings and a small church parish; anger, indignation and indignation are drowned in the quagmire of momentary prosperity.

In the philosophical stories of Voltaire, we would in vain look for psychologism, immersion in the spiritual world of characters, a reliable depiction of human characters or a believable plot. The main thing in them is an extremely sharpened satirical depiction of social evil, cruelty and meaninglessness of existing social institutions and relations. It is this harsh reality that verifies the true value of philosophical interpretations of the world.

The appeal to real life, to its acute social and spiritual conflicts permeates all of Voltaire's work - his philosophy, journalism, poetry, prose, drama. For all its topicality, it deeply penetrates into the essence of universal human problems that go far beyond the era when the writer lived and worked.

Voltaire's best philosophical story is Candide (1759). The criticism of feudal society reaches its greatest acuteness here. Moving intrigue (the characters are constantly wandering) allows Voltaire to give a wide coverage of reality. True, he does not adhere to the principle of historically accurate depiction of certain phenomena. "Candide" is devoid of national and historical flavor. Without limiting himself to social and everyday details, Voltaire freely moves his heroes from one country to another.

As if in a fairy tale, as if by magic, they quickly pass huge distances. In the chaos, the hustle and bustle of life, they disperse, then meet to disperse again. The author leads them from one trial to the next. His thought sometimes seems too subjective. But for all the seeming arbitrariness, she has absorbed the great truth of life and therefore serves as a reliable guide to life. Voltaire as a whole deeply and truthfully reveals the essential aspects of reality.

The story is structured according to the principle usual for Voltaire. A morally unspoiled person, with trust in people, faces a terrible world full of evil and deceit. Candide enters life without knowing anything about its inhuman laws. According to the author's description, he was gifted “by nature with the most meek disposition. His physiognomy corresponded to the simplicity of his soul. " All of Candida's misfortunes are not predetermined by his character. He is a victim of circumstances and false upbringing. Master Pangloss taught him to be optimistic about any blows of fate. Candide is by no means the darling of life. Unlike Zadig, he is only an illegitimate offspring of a noble family. He has no wealth. At the slightest violation of the class hierarchy, caused by the awakened feeling for Kunigunda, he was expelled from the castle without any means of subsistence. Candide wanders around the world with no other defense against injustice other than excellent health and a philosophy of optimism.

Voltaire's hero “cannot get used to the idea that a person has no power to control his own destiny.

Forcibly recruited into the Bulgarian (Prussian) army, Candide once allowed himself the luxury of strolling outside the barracks. As punishment for such willfulness, he had to, Voltaire remarks venomously, “make a choice in the name of God's gift called Freedom” or walk thirty-six times under sticks or get twelve bullets in the forehead at once.

"Candide", like other works of Voltaire, is imbued with a feeling of ardent protest against violence against the individual. The story ridiculed the "enlightened" monarchical regime of the Prussian king Frederick II, where a person can freely either die or be tortured. He has no other way. Depicting the ordeal of Candide among the Bulgarians, Voltaire did not invent facts. Much was written off by him simply from nature, in particular, the execution of Candide. In his memoirs, Voltaire tells about the unfortunate fate of a German nobleman, who, like Candide, because of his tall stature, was forcibly captured by royal recruiters and assigned to the army. “The poor fellow in community with several comrades escaped shortly afterwards; he was caught and brought before the late king, to whom he declared frankly that he only regretted one thing: that he had not killed a tyrant like him. In response to this, they cut off his nose and ears, drove him through the ranks thirty-six times with sticks, and then sent him to drive a wheelbarrow to Spandau. "

Voltaire strongly condemns wars waged in the interests of the ruling circles and are absolutely alien and incomprehensible to the people. Candide unwittingly turns out to be a witness and participant in the bloody massacre. Voltaire is especially outraged by the atrocities against the civilian population. Here is how he describes the Avar village, burned down “by virtue of international law”: “Here lay mutilated old men, and before their eyes their slaughtered wives were dying, with flattened babies at bloody breasts; girls with their bellies ripped open ... lying with their last breath; others, half-burnt, screamed, asking to finish them off. Brains, severed arms and legs were scattered on the ground. " By painting a terrible picture of the world, Voltaire destroys the philosophy of optimism. Her guide, Pangloss, believes that "the more misfortunes, the higher the general prosperity." The consequence of any evil, in his opinion, is good and therefore one must look to the future with hope. Pangloss's own life eloquently refutes his optimistic beliefs. When he met him in Holland, Candide sees in front of him a vagrant covered with abscesses, with a corroded nose, crooked and nasal, spitting out when he coughs after every effort on the tooth.

Voltaire wittily ridicules the church, which seeks the reasons for the non-perfection of the world in the sinfulness of people. Even the occurrence of the Lisbon earthquake, witnessed by Pangloss and Candide, she attributed to the wide spread of heresy.

Kunigunda's life is a terrible accusation against the ruling social order. Throughout the story, the theme of the absolute insecurity of a person, his lack of rights under the conditions of feudal statehood, runs like a red thread. What tests does Kunigun-da fail! She is raped, forced to become the mistress of the captain, who sells her to the Jew Issachar. Then she is the object of the inquisitor's sexual desires, etc. Kunigunda is truly a toy in the hands of fate, which, however, has a very real content - this is feudal-serf relations, where the sword and whip triumph, where everything human based on the laws of reason is trampled and nature. The life story of an old woman, in the past a beauty, daughter of the Pope and Princess of Palestine, is also tragic. She confirms Voltaire's idea that the life of Kunigunda is not an exception, but a completely typical phenomenon. In all corners of the globe, people are suffering, they are not protected from lawlessness.

The writer seeks to reveal the full depth of the madness of contemporary life, in which the most incredible, fantastic cases are possible. It is here that the conventions are rooted, which occupies a large place in "Candida" and in other philosophical stories. The conventional forms of artistic depiction in Voltaire's work arose on the basis of real life. They do not have that unhealthy, religious fiction that was widespread in the literature of the 17th-18th centuries. Voltaire's conditional is a form of sharpening unusual, but quite possible life situations. The adventures of Kunigunda and the old woman seem incredible, but they are typical in a feudal society, when arbitrariness is everything, and Man, his free will is nothing. Voltaire, unlike Rabelais and Swift, does not resort to deforming reality. He essentially has no giants, no midgets or talking, intelligent horses. In his stories, ordinary people act. Voltaire's convention is primarily associated with the exaggeration of the unreasonable aspects of social relations. In order to emphasize the folly of life as sharply and in relief as possible, he makes his heroes go through fabulous adventures. Moreover, the blows of fate in Voltaire's stories are equally experienced by representatives of all social strata - both the crowned heads and the raznochinny need, such as Pangloss or the poor scientist Martin.

Voltaire views life not so much from the position of an enslaved, disadvantaged people, but from a universal human point of view. In the 26th chapter of Candida, Voltaire gathered six former or "failed" European monarchs under the roof of a hotel in Venice. The situation, at first perceived as a carnival masquerade, gradually reveals its real outlines. For all its fabulousness, it is quite vital. The kings depicted by Voltaire really existed and for a number of circumstances were forced to leave the throne. The conditionality made by the writer consisted only in the fact that he brought all the unlucky rulers into one place in order to emphasize, in close-up, with the utmost concentration of thought, his thesis about the vulnerability of the individual, even of a high social rank in the modern world.

True, Voltaire, through the mouth of Martin, declares that "millions of people in the world are much more deplorable than King Karl Edward, Emperor Ivan and Sultan Ahmet."

Candide is looking for Kunigunda with extraordinary persistence. His persistence seems to be rewarded. In Turkey, he meets Kunigunda, who has turned from a lush beauty into a wrinkled old woman with red, watery eyes. Candide marries her only out of a desire to annoy her brother Baron, who stubbornly opposes this marriage. Pangloss in the ending of the story is also only a kind of man. He "confessed that he always suffered terribly" and only out of stubbornness did not part with the theory of the best of the worlds.

Criticizing the social order of Europe and America, Voltaire in Candida draws the utopian country of Eldorado. Everything here is fantastically beautiful: an abundance of gold and precious stones, fountains of pink water, the absence of prisons, etc. Even the stones of the pavement here smell of cloves and cinnamon. Voltaire treats Eldorado with a touch of irony. He himself does not believe in the possibility of the existence of such an ideal land. No wonder Candide and - Kakambo ended up in it quite by accident. Nobody knows the ways to it and, therefore, it is absolutely impossible to achieve it. Thus, the general pessimistic view of the world remains. Martin successfully proves that "on earth there is very little virtue and very little happiness, except, perhaps, Eldorado, where no one can get."

Fragile and untold riches, taken by the hero of the story from America. They literally "melt" every day. The trusting Candida is deceived at every step, his illusions are destroyed. Instead of an object of youthful love, he receives as a result of all his wanderings and sufferings a grumpy old woman, instead of the treasures of Eldorado, he has only a small farm. What to do? Logically speaking, from the gloomy picture painted by Voltaire, the conclusion is possible: if the world is so bad, then it is necessary to change it. But the writer does not make such a radical conclusion: Obviously, the reason is the vagueness of his social ideal. Caustically ridiculing the society of his day, Voltaire can oppose nothing to it, except for utopia. He does not offer any real ways to transform reality.

The 18th century is also called the "age of Voltaire". None of the writers could then compare with Voltaire in fame and influence. The literary fame of the head of the French enlighteners rested on his philosophical writings, classic tragedies, epic poems, historical writings, but the secret of his authority was that Voltaire was the first to understand the role and possibilities of public opinion and learned how to manage it. Voltaire was primarily a publicist by his talent, had a talent for keeping up with the times, always one step ahead of the times. In addition to efficiency, he was characterized by polemical ardor, temperament, unsurpassed wit, ability to present himself, awareness of his cultural mission. His goal is to awaken public consciousness, to be the leader of public opinion in France and in Europe, and this goal was achieved by him. This is the first writer who communicated with kings on equal terms; Frederick the Great and Catherine II considered it an honor to be in correspondence with him. He turned the whole mass of his various knowledge into a battle ram, with which he smashed everything that, in his opinion, hindered progress.

François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who entered literature under the name Voltaire, the son of a Paris notary, lived a long, vibrant life. From a young age, he declared himself not only as the heir to Corneille and Racine, but as a political oppositionist. He was imprisoned in the Bastille, later - exiled to England, where he learned the ideas of the Enlightenment from the original source. In the early fifties, he visited with the Prussian king Frederick the Great, and after returning from Berlin, he settled down, since he was forbidden to live in France, in Switzerland, in Ferney Castle, from where he bombarded Europe with his radical, anti-clerical pamphlets and brochures. Just before his death, he was destined to return to Paris, where he received long-deserved honors. In his youth, Voltaire saw himself as a great tragic actor, at thirty - a historian, at forty - an epic poet and did not foresee that the most living part of his creative heritage would be works that he considered trinkets. In 1747, visiting the Duchess de Maine, for her entertainment, Voltaire wrote several works in a new genre. These were the first philosophical stories - "The World As It Is", "Memnon", "Zadig, or Fate". Over the next twenty years, Voltaire continued to replenish the cycle of philosophical stories, creating only a few dozen. The most significant of them - "Micromegas" (1752), "Candide, or Optimism" (1759), "Simple-minded" (1767).

The genre of the philosophical story arose from elements of an essay, a pamphlet and a novel. In a philosophical story, there is no easy rigor of an essay, no novelistic plausibility. The task of the genre is to prove or refute any philosophical doctrine, therefore its characteristic feature is the play of the mind. The artistic world of a philosophical story is shocking, activates the reader's perception, fantastic, implausible features are emphasized in it. It is a space in which ideas are tested; heroes are puppets who embody certain positions in a philosophical dispute; the abundance of events in a philosophical story is deliberate, allowing to disguise the courage of handling ideas, to make the impartial truths of philosophy softer and more acceptable for the reader.

The culmination of the cycle and Voltaire's work as a whole was the story "Candide, or Optimism". The impetus for its creation was the famous Lisbon earthquake on November 1, 1755, when the flourishing city was destroyed and many people died. This event renewed the controversy around the position of the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz: "Everything is good." Voltaire himself used to share Leibniz's optimism, but in Candida an optimistic outlook on life becomes a sign of inexperience and social illiteracy.

Outwardly, the story is built as a biography of the protagonist, the story of all kinds of disasters and misfortunes that overtake Candida in his wanderings around the world. At the beginning of the story, Candide is expelled from the castle of Baron Tunder-ten-Tronka for daring to fall in love with the baron's daughter, the beautiful Kunigunda. He ended up as a mercenary in the Bulgarian army, where he was driven through the ranks thirty-six times and only managed to escape during a battle in which thirty thousand souls were killed; then he experiences a storm, a shipwreck and an earthquake in Lisbon, where he falls into the hands of the Inquisition and almost dies in the auto-da-fé. In Lisbon, the hero meets the beautiful Kunigunda, who also suffered many misfortunes, and they go to South America, where Candide finds himself in the fantastic lands of the Orellons and in El Dorado; through Suriname he returns to Europe, visits France, England and Italy, and ends his wanderings in the vicinity of Constantinople, where he marries Kunigunda and all the characters of the story gather on his small farm. Apart from Panglos, there are no happy heroes in the story: everyone tells a chilling story of their suffering, and this abundance of grief makes the reader perceive violence, cruelty as a natural state of the world. People in it differ only in the degree of misfortune; any society is unfair, and the only happy country in the story is the nonexistent Eldorado. By portraying the world as a kingdom of the absurd, Voltaire anticipates the literature of the twentieth century.

Candide (the name of the hero in French means “sincere”), as they say at the beginning of the story, “a young man whom nature has endowed with the most pleasant disposition. His whole soul was reflected in his face. He judged things quite sensibly and kindly. " Candide is the model of the "natural man" of the enlighteners, in the story he belongs to the role of a simple-minded hero, he is a witness and victim of all the vices of society. Candide trusts people, especially his mentors, and from his first teacher, Pangloss, learns that there is no effect without a cause and everything is for the best in this best of worlds. Panglos is the embodiment of Leibniz's optimism; the inconsistency, stupidity of his position is proved by every plot twist, but Panglos is incorrigible. As befits a character in a philosophical story, he is deprived of a psychological dimension, the idea is only tested on it, and Voltaire's satire deals with Pangloss primarily as the bearer of a false and therefore dangerous idea of ​​optimism.

Pangloss in the story is opposed by Brother Martin, a pessimistic philosopher who does not believe in the existence of good in the world; he is as unwaveringly committed to his convictions as Panglos is, just as incapable of learning from life. The only character to whom this is given is Candide, whose statements throughout the story demonstrate how, little by little, he gets rid of the illusions of optimism, but is also in no hurry to accept the extremes of pessimism. It is clear that in the genre of a philosophical story, we cannot talk about the evolution of the hero, as is usually understood to depict moral changes in a person; the psychological aspect of the characters of philosophical stories is deprived, so that the reader cannot empathize with them, but can only watch from a distance how the heroes sort out different ideas. Since the heroes of "Candida", devoid of inner peace, cannot develop their own ideas in a natural way, in the process of internal evolution, the author has to take care to supply them with these ideas from the outside. Such a final idea for Candid is the example of a Turkish elder, who declares that he does not know and never knew the names of muftis and viziers: “I believe that in general people who interfere in public affairs sometimes die in the most pitiful way and that they deserve it. But I am not in the least interested in what is happening in Constantinople; it's enough for me to send there fruits from the garden that I cultivate for sale. " In the mouth of the same Eastern sage, Voltaire puts the glorification of labor (after Robinson, a very frequent motive in the literature of the Enlightenment, in Candida, expressed in the most capacious, philosophical form): “Work drives away from us three great evils: boredom, vice and need” ...

The example of a happy old man suggests to Candida the final formulation of his own life position: "We must cultivate our garden." In these famous words, Voltaire expresses the result of the development of educational thought: each person should clearly limit his field of activity, his “garden”, and work on it steadily, constantly, cheerfully, without questioning the usefulness and meaning of his studies, just like a gardener he cultivates the garden day after day. Then the work of the gardener pays off in fruits. In "Candida" it is said that a person's life is hard, but bearable, one should not indulge in despair - action must replace contemplation. Goethe would come to exactly the same conclusion later in the finale of Faust.

Literature:

1. Akimova A.A. Voltaire. M., 1970.
2. Anikst A. A. "Faust" by Goethe. M., 1979.
3. Derzhavin KN Voltaire. M., 1946.
4. Elistratova AA English novel of the Age of Enlightenment. M., 1966.
5. Zhirmunsky V. M. Creative history of "Faust" // Zhirmunsky V. M. Essays on the history of German classical literature. L., 1972.
6. History of foreign literature of the 18th century. M., 1999.
7. Problems of the Enlightenment in world literature. M., 1970.
8. Sokolyansky MG Western European novel of the Age of Enlightenment. Typology problems. Kiev; Odessa, 1983.
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10. Fedorov F. P. "Faust" by Goethe. Riga, 1976.

Introduction ______________________________ _____

Chapter 1. Philosophical views of Voltaire. Controversy with Pascal and Leibniz _____________________ __

Chapter 2. Philosophical novel of the Enlightenment

Chapter 3. General features of Voltaire's philosophical stories
______________________________ ____________

Chapter 4. General features of Voltaire's philosophical stories

______________________________ _________________

Conclusion____________________ _________________

Bibliography __________________ ________________

Introduction

The focus of this work is the philosophical story of François Marie Voltaire "Candide", its place among the philosophical works of Voltaire and in the context of the philosophical fiction of the Enlightenment.
The aim of the work is to get a more complete picture of Voltaire's "Candida" as a philosophical novel.
The objectives of our research are as follows:
- a brief acquaintance with the philosophical views of Voltaire,
- defining the genre "philosophical novel", identifying its problematics, distinctive features of poetics, expressive means, etc.,
- a description of the common features of all of Voltaire's philosophical stories,
- analysis of the novel "Candide" in the context of the poetics of the genre.
When writing the work used literary articles, monographs on the work of Voltaire, the Age of Enlightenment and the actual text of "Candida". The bibliographic list is presented at the end of the work.
The structure of our research is conditioned by the tasks set earlier. The first chapter gives a brief overview of Voltaire's educational activities and his philosophical views. The second chapter is devoted to the features of the philosophical novel of the Enlightenment. The third chapter presents
general features of Voltaire's philosophical stories. The fourth chapter contains an analysis of the most significant philosophical story "Candide", its genre peculiarities, plot-compositional structure, reflection of Voltaire's philosophical views in it.

1. Philosophical views of Voltaire. Controversy with Pascal and Leibniz.

Voltaire is the greatest French educator. The entire eighteenth century is often called the age of Voltaire. He is one of the most important key figures in understanding the entire French Enlightenment, a man who had a tremendous impact on the minds of his contemporaries. From his name came the word "Voltaireanism", which began to denote free-thinking not only in France, but also in other European countries.
Voltaire's main socio-political views reflected the ideology of the emerging French bourgeois democracy and debunked the outdated feudal regime. Voltaire was not a thinker who put forward original philosophical ideas, he was an educator who did a lot for the philosophical enlightenment of society. The main thrust of all of Voltaire's works is antifeudal, in the center of which is anticlericalism. All his life he fought against the church, religious intolerance and bigotry.
Voltaire's literary legacy is enormous. He wrote a total of more than a hundred works, which made up a collected works of several dozen volumes. He wrote plays, stories, journalism. Voltaire's philosophical views are expressed in "Philosophical Letters" (1733), "Treatise on Metaphysics" (1734), "Foundations of Newton's Philosophy" (1738), philosophical stories.
Voltaire as a philosopher was interested in fundamental issues of ontology and epistemology. But his main attention was directed to the problem of the existence and action of man in society.
Voltaire considered the main task of philosophy to be the definition of the principles of human existence, the meaning of the life of the individual and his relations with other people, the form of social organization befitting humanity. "The dual problem of man and society (Voltaire, in a polemic with Rousseau, argued that even primitive people lived in communities and that the" social state "is" natural "for
of humanity) is the alpha and omega of Voltaire's philosophy, which chronologically and essentially begins with this problem and necessarily
puts in touch with her, even subordinates to her the interpretation of any other worldview issue, and sometimes to the detriment of the truth, as
this was the case with the "social" argument of Voltaire's deism. "
Kuznetsov p.107
In the creation of a new concept of man, his polemic with Pascal's philosophical and religious anthropology played an important role.

For Voltaire, Christianity, like all religions, is superstition. However, in France, Christianity found itself a genius apologist in the person of Pascal. By attacking Pascal and rejecting some of his ideas, Voltaire undermined the strongest foundations of the French Christian tradition.

But what ideas of Pascal was he going to challenge? According to Voltaire, Pascal offends the entire human race, ascribing to it features characteristic of individuals. Voltaire calls Pascal a misanthrope and, defending humanity, argues that people are not as pitiful and evil as Pascal writes.
According to Voltaire, Pascal's pessimism is misplaced. And if Pascal's idea of ​​man is erroneous, then the way out of the described miserable state is no less erroneous. Pascal sees it in true religion, i.e. Christianity, which provides a basis for the contradictions inherent in human existence, its greatness and squalor. Voltaire argues that other views (myths about Prometheus, Pandora's box, etc.) could also provide an explanation for the contradictions mentioned.
Agreeing that human knowledge of the infinity of the universe can never be exhaustively complete, Voltaire controversial
with Pascal emphasizes that, despite the well-known limited cognitive abilities of a person, he still knows a lot and the boundaries of his knowledge are constantly expanding, and this is not
gives reason to talk about his "insignificance".
The only point of agreement between Voltaire and Pascal is that, according to both thinkers, man needs faith in God. But Voltaire understands the foundations of this belief in a completely different way than Pascal, and
its content, and the conclusions arising from it for human life. According to Pascal, human existence takes on meaning.
only through service to God, as he is presented in Scripture. Hence, Pascal concluded that God should be the only object of human love, and all the creations of God, including people, this love is not
deserve.
The essence of Voltaire's deism is the view of man as the highest value, the principle of respect and love for the human person, worship of God.
The summary of Voltaire's characteristics of man is the antithesis of Pascal's assertion of his insignificance. Voltaire considers a man
the most perfect and happiest being.
Nevertheless, even condemning Pascal's obsessive pessimism, Voltaire cannot be an indifferent witness to the presence of evil in the world. And there is a lot of evil: the horrors generated by human malice and natural disasters are by no means the inventions of poets. These naked and cruel facts decisively rejected the philosophical optimism of Leibniz, "the most profound metaphysician of Germany," for whom the world could only be "the best of all." According to Leibniz, the universe is arranged by God in such a way that in it any observed evil is somehow balanced, compensated, and, ultimately, even necessarily overlaps
the next good.
Voltaire's critical attitude to the "theory of optimism" gradually outgrew its radical rejection in the "Poem of the Lisbon Catastrophe" (1756). The final and most powerful blow to the "theory of optimism" (in its Leibniz version) Voltaire dealt in the philosophical story "Candide" (1759),

2.Philosophical novel of the Enlightenment

The culture of the French Enlightenment is characterized by the phenomenon of the unity of philosophy and literature. This was reflected in the fact that the greatest French philosophers of this era were at the same time outstanding writers. Putting forward immediate practical tasks and seeing education as a powerful means of transforming the world, French philosophers deliberately used literature as a means of education and propaganda.
A whole system of genres was created, which differed in the formulation of philosophical problems in them. In this regard, a corresponding poetics appears. The characteristic features of the new poetics were: conventionality, fantastic images and situations, characters-resonators carrying certain philosophical ideas, paradoxes.
N.V. Zababurova in the article "French philosophical novel of the 18th century" notes that "the implementation of the philosophical content can occur in three ways:
1) as a polemic, i.e. refutation of certain philosophical theories and concepts;
2) as a discussion, i.e. a clash of mutually exclusive points of view or theories aimed at finding the truth;
3) as an apology for a certain philosophical theory or system. "(((XVIII century: literature in the context of culture. - M., 1999. - P. 94). In this regard, he deduces the definitions:" polemic novel "," novel-discussion " , "Apologetic novel"
There is no fundamental difference between large (novel) and small (story) philosophical genres of the 18th century in this respect.
The space of a philosophical novel is not focused on the likeness of life, which differs from other forms of the novel of the 18th century. The philosophical novel of the 18th century is characterized by a parody of well-known established genres. Most often, travel novels are parodied ("Persian Letters" by Montesquieu, "Micromegas" and "Innocent" by Voltaire), love-adventure novels ("Candide" by Voltaire). At the same time, new genre forms are being created, in particular, the dialogue novel (Rameau's Nephew, Diderot's Fatalist Jacques).
N.v. Zababurova, in the above article, notes a marking function that clarifies the author's intentions. This function, according to her, is performed by the headings and subtitles of works, as well as a number of techniques:
“1) specific nominations (names of philosophers and names of certain philosophical systems);
2) direct and hidden citation of philosophical works;
3) the use of appropriate philosophical terminology, referring to certain philosophical systems;
4) the author's notes within the text (this technique was actively used by Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade);
5) allusions (for example, in Voltaire's Zadig and Diderot's Immodest Treasures, many allusions are associated with the works of French philosophers and naturalists, with whom the authors polemicized). At the same time, a philosophical novel, especially Voltaire's, tends in principle to anachronisms that emphasize the conventionality of the artistic world. " ((XVIII century: literature in the context of culture. - M., 1999. - S. 95)
For all their genre differences, the philosophical novels of the 18th century are united by a parable form of narration. In the center of the novel is a story told to illustrate and confirm or, on the contrary, to expose a certain philosophical idea, and the figurative system is subordinated to a didactic attitude.

3. General features of Voltaire's philosophical stories

Philosophical novels and stories are perhaps the most valuable part of Voltaire's legacy. In 1746, Voltaire wrote a prose work entitled "The World As It Is, or Babuk's Vision", with which he opens a series of novels and stories that have entered the history of literature under the title of philosophical. In this genre, he continued to perform until 1775, that is, for almost thirty years.
It is remarkable that Voltaire himself called them "trinkets" and did not attach serious importance to them. He wrote them with extraordinary ease, "joking," mainly for the amusement of his high society friends. It took a lot of work to persuade him to publish these works - at first they were distributed in lists.
Voltaire's artistic quest in the development of philosophical prose led him to create a special genre canon in France. The main thing in a philosophical novel (story) for Voltaire is a polemic with a certain philosophical system or idea. This is indicated by the titles themselves. We can say that they formulate a philosophical idea - "Zadig, or Fate", "Candide, or Optimism", "Memnon, or Human Wisdom", "Babuk, or the World as it is." The novel (story) of Voltaire is built as a story of adventures of the idea itself, and not of characters. This idea is exposed as absurd or inconsistent with reality. The method of "testing" is experimental, where the adventures of the characters consistently confirm the absurdity of the original philosophical premise. The fluidity of experience is opposed to the isolation of a false idea.
Voltaire's philosophical story gravitates towards the form of a parable ("Memnon, or Human Wisdom"; "Zadig").
Often the philosophical meaning of the story is indicated by Voltaire in the original maxim that opens the narrative.
Voltaire speaks openly about the conventions of events and characters, uses anachronisms, plot parabolas, fantasy ("Micromegas").
The parodic interpretation of the philosophical theories, with which the author argues, is organically combined in Voltaire's philosophical prose with parodying the prevailing literary forms and genres. So "Candide" is a brilliant parody of a love-adventure novel.
Voltaire saturates his philosophical stories with recognizable literary reminiscences, which enhances the atmosphere of convention. In "Zadiga" familiar oriental scenery of the French literature of the first half of the century is recognizable.
Voltaire's style is characterized by a tendency towards satirical grotesque, caricature, which distinguished the polemical philosophical novel.
The features of the discussion novel can be noted in some of Voltaire's stories. They are constructed as a discussion of adherents and opponents of a certain idea, sometimes acquiring a dialogical form ("The ears of the Earl of Chesterfield and the chaplain Goodman").
The author's philosophical position in Voltaire's novels and stories sometimes does not have a declarative expression. This undoubtedly determines the openness of the finale. The author, as if, invites the reader to participate in the discussion.
In the philosophical stories of Voltaire, we would in vain look for psychologism, immersion in the spiritual world of characters, a reliable depiction of human characters or a believable plot. The main thing in them is an extremely sharpened satirical depiction of social evil, cruelty and meaninglessness of existing social institutions and relations. It is this harsh reality that verifies the true value of philosophical interpretations of the world.

4 Common features of Voltaire's philosophical stories

André Maurois in his "Literary Portraits" called the story "Candide" the pinnacle of Voltaire's creativity.
This story was written in 1759 and became an important milestone not only in the development of the philosophical genre, which originated from the "Persian Letters" of Montesquieu, but also in the history of all enlightenment thought.
The story tells about the misadventures of a young man Candida, a pupil of a Westphalian baron, in love with the daughter of his tutor Cunegondu, a pupil of the house teacher Dr. Pangloss, who develops Leibniz's idea that "everything is for the best in this best of worlds." The cruel trials that Candide, Cunegonda, Pangloss, the servant and friend of Candida Kakambo are subjected to, whom fate bears all over the world from Bulgaria, Holland, Portugal (where the famous earthquake of 1755 occurs) to Argentina, the legendary and happy country of Eldorado, Suriname, and then Paris, London, Venice, Constantinople. At the end of the story, Candide, who has become extremely ugly Cunegunda and accompanied by a sick Pangloss who has lost his optimism, finds refuge on a small farm and finds in physical labor the answer to all philosophical questions: "You need to cultivate your garden."
Contemporaries perceived the story "Candide" not only as a satire on Leibniz's theodicy, but also as a radical denial of faith in "all-good providence", which undermined the foundations of any religion, including deistic. Voltaire portrayed the human world completely
nym: people act in it without any guidance and direction from above, and nowhere is a supreme judge in sight who would support virtue and punish vice. Voltaire believes that there is no good and evil
no supernatural causes, and their sources are rooted in the earthly world.
Voltaire traditionally divides evil into physical and moral,
Under the first one understands illness, injury, death. Moral evil, by
Voltaire, includes violence, cruelty, injustice,
oppression, which people commit towards each other, are committed by malicious intent or ignorance, by their own will or in accordance with inhuman laws. And there is no deity behind all this either. Voltaire disagrees with Leibniz that our world, as a result of divine dispensation, is the best possible.
However, it does not plunge the reader into hopeless despair, like Pascal. The ending and the general meaning of the philosophical story are not at all pessimistic. Candide breaks free from the circle of misfortunes that have pursued him, he has his own shelter, where he lives with his beloved woman. The central hero, who until now has been chasing the ghost of well-being given from without, meets a hardworking Turkish peasant. The Turk says: "Work drives us away from three great evils: boredom, vice and need" (4,
185). Candide comes to the conclusion that “you need to cultivate your garden” (ibid., 186). Thus, as an alternative to Leibniz's optimism and Pascal's pessimism, Voltaire puts forward the principle of active human activity to improve his life.
“Thus, Voltaire, on the one hand, rejects the traditional Christian view of the earthly lot of man as a vale of suffering and crying predetermined by God: the evil reigning here, making human life unbearably painful, can and must be eliminated. On the other hand, Voltaire reveals the unfounded hopes that this
evil is somehow eliminated by divine providence and a person has the right to expect that without his purposeful efforts everything seems to be
will settle down "for the better." According to Voltaire, only constant and intense worldly activity, illuminated by reasonable goals and knowledge of the means of achieving them, can lead to an improvement in the human condition on earth. " Kuznetsov p.123
Let's turn to the construction of the story. The story is structured as a kind of adventure novel. This genre was very popular among readers - contemporaries of Voltaire. The hero of the story, the young man Candide, goes through a series of adventures, finds himself in different parts of the world, finds himself in the most unthinkable situations. There is also a love motive in the story.
With clear signs of the adventure genre, the story is rather a parody of it. Voltaire leads his heroes through so many adventures, following each other in a dizzying
pace that it is impossible to assume the possibility of experiencing them for a real person. This parody, inherent in the whole story as a whole, from the very beginning does not allow the reader to take the event side of the narrative very seriously. Thus, it draws attention to those thoughts that Voltaire considers necessary to express in the course of the events depicted. Most often, the author puts these thoughts into the mouths of his heroes. The story is about the meaning of the human
life, about freedom and necessity, about the world as it is, about what is more in it - good or evil.
The story "Candide, or Optimism" ironically plays up the traditions of the baroque, or "Greek" novel, where the heroes wander and live in poverty, but do not lose their physical charm and do not age. In Voltaire, on the other hand, Kunigunda is portrayed in the finale as looking ugly and grumpy, which spoils Candida's enjoyment of the long-awaited marriage.
At the same time, the plot motives of the English educational novel are exposed to ironic stylization in the story. The teacher / student situation in this novel parodies the teacher-student relationship in older novels such as The Adventures of Telemachus. Pangloss and Martin in Voltaire's story adhere to opposite philosophical systems, as do the mentors of Tom Jones (Squire, who considers human nature to be virtuous, and Twakom, who considers it vicious). Voltaire's hero is given the opportunity to test the philosophical postulates of Pangloss and Martin, just as Tom tests his teachers and the Mountain Hermit's views on human nature. The parody of the "teacher-student" situation lies in the fact that the student's experience does not confirm, but refutes the teacher's opinion that "everything is for the best in this best of worlds."
In the center of the story, a clash of ideas is presented, the carriers of which Voltaire makes two heroes - the philosophers Pangloss and Martin. In the story, they are Candida's teachers and express two points of view on the world. One of them (Panglossa) is an optimistic assessment of what is happening, the other (Martin) - on the contrary, boils down to pessimism and consists in recognizing the eternal imperfection of a world in which evil rules.
Voltaire tests these philosophies on the fate of Candide, who, based on his own experience, must decide which of his teachers is right. Thus, Voltaire asserts an empirical approach to
the resolution of philosophical questions.
As for the characters in the story, it should be noted that they are not full-blooded characters. They are only carriers of philosophical theses.
The central character of the story - the young man Candide - has a "telling" name. Translated, it means "simpleton". In all life situations, Candide shows naivety and innocence. And this is done on purpose. The human appearance of the hero and his name should emphasize the impartiality, the sincerity of the conclusion to which he eventually arrives.
In the center of Voltaire's attention is the idea and its fate. Therefore, the composition of the story is built according to a logical principle. The development of thought serves as a connecting link. ... At the beginning of the story, Voltaire turns his main attention to the philosophy of Pangloss, which Candide accepts. Its essence is concentrated in the phrase, which is repeated many times by Pangloss and Candide - "Everything is for the best in this best of worlds." Then Martin appears, and Candide meets his views. Then, at the end of the story, he draws his conclusion. Thus, the story is built, as it were, on a change from one system of views to another and a conclusion that draws a line under
reflections of the characters. Since the views of Martin and Pangloss are opposed to each other, this brings to the story an atmosphere of controversy.
Voltaire needs to resolve this dispute. How does he do it?
Emphasizing the complete contradiction between the philosophy of optimism and the truth of life,
Voltaire exaggerates the situations in which Pangloss finds himself, transforming the image of Pangloss into a caricature. So, Pangloss utters his famous phrase "Everything for the best in this best of worlds" at the moment when the ship on which he and Candide are sinking, when the terrible Lisbon earthquake occurs, when he was almost burned at the stake. This lends the narrative a satirical poignancy. Already the name Pangloss, with which Voltaire endows the hero, means "know-it-all" in Greek and speaks of the assessment the author gives him.
The theory of optimism is exposed by Voltaire and selection of facts.

There is little joy in the events described in the book. Voltaire's story first of all demonstrates the abundance of evil in the world. Both the laws of nature and human laws are incredibly cruel. All the heroes of the book endure crushing blows of fate, unexpected and ruthless, but the story is told more with humor than with compassion. The troubles and torments of the characters are usually associated with the grotesque-bodily bottom: they are flogged, raped, their bellies are steamed. These sufferings are deliberately reduced, and they are cured of these terrible wounds incredibly easily and quickly, so the story about them is often presented in the tone of a sad and funny obscene anecdote. These troubles and misfortunes, of course, are too many for one story, and the thickening of evil and cruelty, their inevitability and unpredictability are intended to show not so much their excessiveness as their routine. As something everyday and familiar, Voltaire tells about the horrors of war, about the dungeons of the Inquisition, about the lack of human rights in a society in which religious fanaticism and despotism reign. But nature is also cruel and inhuman: stories about the bloody mud of war or judicial arbitrariness are replaced by pictures of terrifying natural disasters - earthquakes, sea storms, etc. Good and evil are no longer balanced, do not complement each other. Evil clearly prevails, and although it appears to the writer (and, we add, to one of the characters in the book, the Manichean philosopher Martin), in many respects timeless, that is, eternal and irresistible, it has its own concrete carriers. But Voltaire's gaze is not hopelessly pessimistic. The writer believes that by overcoming fanaticism and despotism, a just society can be built. Voltaire's faith in him, however, is weakened by a certain amount of skepticism. In this sense, the utopian state of Eldorado, described in Candida, is indicative. In the story, this country of universal prosperity and justice confronts not only the Paraguayan dungeons of the Jesuits, but also many European states. But the happiness of the citizens of this blessed country is doubtful, because it is built on conscious isolationism: in time immemorial, a law was passed here, according to which "no citizen had the right to leave the borders of his small country." Cut off from the world, knowing nothing about it, and not even interested in it, the inhabitants of Eldorado lead a comfortable, happy, but, in general, primitive existence.
Such a life is alien to the hero of the story. Candide is everywhere an occasional and short-lived guest. He is tirelessly looking for Kunigunda, but not only looking for her.
The meaning of his search is to determine his place in life.
Two extreme positions - the irresponsible and conciliatory optimism of Panglos and the passive pessimism of Martin - the writer opposes the compromise conclusion of Candide, who saw a lot of evil in life, but saw good in it and who found rest in modest creative work.
What did Voltaire want to say with the phrase “We must cultivate our garden” put into the mouth of Candidus?
This phrase is like a summary of the life of the central character. Candide understands that all his life he lived by illusions imposed from outside: about the beauty of Kunigunda, about the nobility of her family, about the wisdom of the incomparable philosopher Pangloss; understands how dangerous it is to serve false gods.
“We must cultivate our garden” - this is the thought about the need for fruitful work, about intervention in life with the aim of transforming it, about the need to solve important practical problems of our time.

Conclusion

Having studied the story of Voltaire, the works of literary critics on the topic "Candide" by Voltaire as a philosophical novel "and following the tasks put forward in the introduction, we came to the conclusions set out below.
Voltaire is one of the most important figures in the understanding of the entire French Enlightenment. Voltaire as a philosopher was interested in fundamental issues of ontology and epistemology.
In his works, Voltaire showed the failure of religion as a system. Voltaire in "Candida" criticizes Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony, believing that people should intervene in life in order to change it and establish more just order. Radically rejects the "theory of optimism" in Lezbniz's version. He enters into polemics with Pascal's philosophical and religious anthropology.
In ethics, Voltaire opposed both the innateness of moral norms and their convention. Voltaire conceived the idea of ​​creating a philosophy of history and wrote a number of works ("Philosophy of History", "Pyrrhonism in History", "Reflection on History"), which presents a program of research into the achievements of culture in all areas of civilization. Voltaire opposed the views of Rousseau, who called for a return to primitive nature. Voltaire understood freedom as free will. Here Voltaire pinned great hopes on enlightened monarchs who had mastered philosophical conclusions about the laws of social development, the tasks of state power, and freed themselves from prejudices.
The culture of the French Enlightenment is characterized by the phenomenon of the unity of philosophy and literature. A whole system of genres was created, which differed in the formulation of philosophical problems in them. In this regard, a corresponding poetics appears. The characteristic features of the new poetics were: conventionality, fantastic images and situations, characters-resonators carrying certain philosophical ideas, paradoxes.
There is no fundamental difference between large (novel) and small (story) philosophical genres of the 18th century in this respect. The space of a philosophical novel is not focused on the likeness of life, which differs from other forms of the novel of the 18th century. At the same time, a philosophical novel, especially Voltaire's, tends in principle to anachronisms that emphasize the conventionality of the artistic world. For all their genre differences, the philosophical novels of the 18th century are united by a parable form of narration. In the center of the novel is a story told to illustrate and confirm or, on the contrary, to expose a certain philosophical idea, and the figurative system is subordinated to a didactic attitude.
Voltaire gave the genre of the philosophical story a classical form. The main feature of the genre is the primacy of the idea. In a philosophical story, it is not people who live, interact, fight, but ideas, characters are just their mouthpieces, they are similar to each other both in actions and in language. Hence the exoticism, and often the fantastic nature of the plots, the almost complete absence of psychologism and historicism, the ease with which the heroes change their way of life, endure the blows of fate, accept the death of loved ones, and perish. Time flies at an incredible speed, the scene changes so quickly and arbitrarily that the conventions of place and time become obvious to the reader. The plots are emphatically reminiscent of well-known literary models, therefore, they are also conditional in nature. The author's speech is given much more attention than dialogues.
In the deepest and most significant of Voltaire's novellas, Candide, a philosophical turn in the mind of the writer stands out clearly.
One of the external impulses to Voltaire's revision of his philosophical views and - indirectly - to the writing of "Candida" was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which claimed several tens of thousands of lives and wiped out the once picturesque city. Leibniz's optimistic idea of ​​a "pre-established harmony of good and evil", of the causal relationship prevailing in this "best possible world", is consistently refuted by the events of the life of the protagonist - a modest and virtuous young man Candida. There are many heroes in the story, and from the pages of "Candida" there is a discord of opinions and assessments, while the author's position looms gradually, emerging gradually from the clash of opposite opinions, sometimes deliberately controversial, sometimes absurd, almost always - with undisguised irony interwoven into the vortex flow of events.
The last words of Voltaire's book were: "But you have to cultivate your garden," for our world is mad and cruel; This is the credo of both modern man, and the wisdom of the builder - wisdom, still imperfect, but already bearing fruit.
The appeal to real life, to its acute social spiritual conflicts permeates all of Voltaire's work and the story "Candide", in particular.
For all its topicality, it deeply penetrates into the essence of universal human problems that go far beyond the era when the writer lived and worked.

Bibliography - edit

1. Voltaire. Selected works. M., 1947.,
2.. G. N. Ermolenko
FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF IRONY IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL STORY OF WOLTER
(XVIII century: The art of living and the life of art. - M., 2004)

3. French philosophical novel of the 18th century: the identity of the genre

Voltaire's "Candide" is a philosophical satirical story that was created in the middle of the eighteenth century, but for some time it was forbidden due to a considerable number of obscene scenes. The work deals with optimism and pessimism, human vices and faith in the best qualities of a person.

Writing history

Voltaire - French writer He created a number of philosophical works of art, not devoid of sharp accusatory satire. Voltaire was extremely unhappy with the power of the church, which he spoke about more than once. He was an ardent fighter against idealism and religion and relied exclusively on scientific achievements in his philosophical treatises.

As for such an abstract concept as "happiness", in order to state his position on this difficult issue, Voltaire wrote an adventure story about the optimist Candida, who, despite all the blows of fate, did not lose faith in goodness, sincerity and honesty. This piece is based on a real event - the earthquake in Lisbon. It is this terrible natural phenomenon that takes center stage in one of the most famous stories that Voltaire wrote.

"Candide, or Optimism" is a work that the author rejected several times, claiming that it allegedly did not belong to his pen. Nevertheless, the story contains a satire characteristic of Voltaire. "Candide" is one of the best works of the French educator. What did Voltaire tell the readers in this story? "Candide", the analysis of which will be presented below, is a story that at first glance may seem nothing more than fun and entertaining. And only upon detailed examination can one discover a deep philosophical thought that Voltaire sought to convey to his contemporaries.

"Candide": summary

The protagonist of this story is a pure and unspoiled young man. He owes his optimistic outlook on life to his teacher, who from childhood convinced him of the inevitability of happiness. Pangloss, and that was the name of this spiritualized philosopher, was sure that he was living in the best of worlds. There is no reason to grieve.

But one day, Candida was expelled from his native castle. The reason for this was the beautiful Kunigunda, the daughter of the baron, to whom he was by no means indifferent. And the hero began to wander around the world, dreaming of only one thing - to reunite with his beloved and to know real happiness. That it still exists, Candide did not doubt for a minute, despite all the misfortunes and hardships.

Voltaire gave the hero's adventures a certain fabulousness. Candide, saving Kunigunda, now and then killed someone. He did it quite naturally. As if killing is the most typical activity for an optimist. But Candida's victims were magically brought to life.

Candide learned a lot. He knew a lot of grief. He managed to reunite with Kunigunda, however, only after the girl lost all her former attractiveness. Candide found a home and friends. But what happiness was, he still did not know. Until one day the truth was revealed to him by an unfamiliar sage. "Happiness is a daily work," said the itinerant philosopher. Candid had no choice but to believe and start cultivating his small garden.

Composition

As already mentioned, Voltaire was inspired to write this story after the famous Lisbon earthquake. "Candide, or Optimism" is a work in which a historical event serves as a starting point. It occupies a central place in the composition. It is when the earthquake is depicted that the events in the story reach their climax.

After being expelled from the castle and before the natural disaster, Candide wanders around the world aimlessly. An earthquake will activate his forces. Voltaire's Candide becomes a noble hero, ready to do anything in order to free the lady of the heart. And Kunigunda, meanwhile, possessing an unearthly feminine beauty, evokes far from the best thoughts in men. A Bulgarian Jew kidnaps her and makes her his concubine. The Grand Inquisitor also does not stand aside. But suddenly Candide appears and destroys both the first and the second. Subsequently, the hero gets rid of his beloved brother. The pompous baron is allegedly not satisfied with the origin of the liberator of the beautiful Kunigunda.

Voltaire's Candide reminds the knight of Cervantes with nobility, purity of thoughts. But the philosophical idea of ​​the work has little to do with the position of the great Spaniard.

El Dorado

The book "Candide" is also not devoid of political undertones. Voltaire sends his wanderer to roam the world. He becomes a witness Candide visits European cities, South America, the countries of the Middle East. He observes the military actions of the Spaniards against the Jesuits, the cruel customs of Voltaire's contemporaries. And he gradually begins to realize that the optimist teacher has not taught him a single worthwhile lesson. All his rantings about the beauty of this world are not worth a penny ...

But still Voltaire does not deprive his hero of his last hope. Now and then, Candide hears stories about a beautiful land in which people do not know grief and sorrow, have everything they need, do not get angry, do not envy, and even more so do not kill.

Voltaire's Candide, by the way, bears a symbolic name. It means simple-minded. Candide finds himself in a mythical state in which all residents are happy. They do not ask the Supreme for material wealth. They just thank him for what they already have. Voltaire contrasts this fabulous land with the real world in his philosophical story. The people Candide meets throughout the story, regardless of their social status, are unaware of what happiness is. Life is not easy for both ordinary people and noble persons.

Once in a mythical country, Candide decides to return to his bleak world. After all, he must once again save Kunigunda.

Pessimism

The optimism of Candida is opposed to the pessimism of his companion. Martin believes only that people are mired in vices, and nothing can change them for the better. What philosophical idea is the work that Voltaire wrote based on? "Candide", the content of which is set out above only briefly, is able to convince that this world is in fact ugly. Belief in goodness can only destroy a person. Candide, being a sincere person, trusts swindlers and crooks, as a result of which his situation becomes more and more sad every day. The merchant deceives him. Noble deeds are not appreciated in society, and Candid faces imprisonment.

Venice

What did Voltaire try to say in the philosophical story? "Candide", a summary of which is presented in this article, is a story that can happen in modern society. Voltaire's hero goes to Venice hoping to find his beloved there. But even in an independent republic, he becomes a witness of human cruelty. Here he meets a servant from the castle where he spent his childhood. The woman was forced by the need to take an extreme step: she earns a living by prostitution.

Cheerful Venetian

Candide helped the woman. But the money he gave her did not bring happiness. The hero still does not give up hope of finding happiness, or at least meeting a person who has known him. And therefore fate brings him to the Venetian aristocrat, who, according to rumors, is always in a cheerful mood and does not know sadness. But here, too, Candida is in for disappointment. The Venetian rejects beauty and finds happiness only in dissatisfaction with others.

Farm life

It is worth saying that Candide gradually becomes disillusioned with the philosophy of absolute optimism, but does not become a pessimist. The story sets out two opposite points of view. One belongs to Master Pangloss. The other is for Martin.

Candidus managed to redeem Kunigunda from slavery, and with the remaining money he acquired a small farm. Here, at the end of their misadventures, they settled, but they did not immediately achieve spiritual harmony. The idle talk and philosophical ranting have become a constant occupation of the inhabitants of the farm. Until one day Candida was visited by a happy old man.

"We must cultivate the garden"

Leibniz gave birth to the philosophical idea of ​​universal harmony. The French writer was impressed by the worldview of the German thinker. However, after the earthquake, Voltaire published a poem in which he completely rejected the doctrine of the balance of good and evil. The enlightener was able to finally debunk Leibniz's theory in the story of the adventures of Candida.

“We must cultivate the garden” - it is this idea, with the help of one of the characters, is expounded in the last chapter by Voltaire. "Candide, or Optimism", a summary of which gives only a general idea of ​​the author's philosophical idea, is a work that should be read, if not in the original, then at least completely, from cover to cover. After all, the emotional torments of Voltaire's hero are known to modern man as well. Happiness is a steady and constant work. Reflection and reasoning about the meaning of life can only lead to despair. Contemplation must be replaced by action.