"In the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronchkh in Westphalia, there once lived a youth endowed by nature with the gentlest of characters. His soul was revealed in his face. He combined rather sound judgment with great simplicity of mind; it was for this reason, I believe, that he was given the name of Candide."

I have to admit straightaway that in my youth, I was most like the naïve and often foolish Candide, believing in the teachings of the optimistic Dr. Pangloss that "all is for the best". Though not expelled from my castle and "earthly paradise" for falling in love with the wrong young man and forcing the wrath of his parent to fall upon my shoulders, I did leave my humble abode to find independence, seek fortune and to live happily ever after. I knew there existed hardships in the world, but they could never really affect me personally, could they? Well, I am thankful to say that such misfortunes did not fall directly upon me as they did for Candide and the other characters of this penetrating and often comical little book. After his expulsion from the castle of Westphalia, Candide experiences, witnesses and hears about one horrific calamity after another as he travels the world – murder, war, rape, the Inquisition, theft, natural disasters and more. The events are often quite shocking and sometimes on the verge of being simply absurd (when you read about the old woman you will see what I mean here). I may not have been the wretched victim of such outrageous atrocities, yet as I began to make my own way in the world I grew to understand that such evil really did exist all around me. Candide, while not completely disillusioned, begins to question the faith of the ever so hopeful Dr. Pangloss. If given the opportunity to discuss what he has endured with this great philosopher, Candide believes Pangloss "would have told us admirable things about the physical and moral evils that cover the earth and the sea, and I would have felt strong enough to venture a few respectful objections."

So, Candide matures and hardens a bit, but continues on with a morsel of optimism. As he continues his voyage, Candide deliberately seeks to find "the most unfortunate" and "most disgusted" man to travel with him. Thus he meets Martin. We have all probably met a Martin. Some days, when I hear about the ugliness in the world, I feel like a Martin myself. Martin maintains that God has abandoned this world. He declares "I’ve almost never seen a town that didn’t desire the ruin of some neighboring town, or a family that didn’t want to exterminate some other family. Everywhere in the world, the weak detest the strong and grovel before them, and the strong treat them like flocks of sheep to be sold for their meat and wool." And so, how does one continue to live in this world? Should one bear extreme optimism like Dr. Pangloss or extreme pessimism like Martin? Is there something in between that allows us not to view the world with rose-colored glasses and ignorance but yet one that does not drown us in negativity and despair? One perhaps must take what we have been given, make the best of it, and find some rewarding work (whether that be a career, raising a family, or utilizing our talents in some way). As Candide discovered – "we must cultivate our garden".

A copy of this little satirical piece has been sitting on my basement shelf for perhaps 20 years. I don’t know where it came from, but I’m happy to say that I have finally picked it up and absorbed its lessons. I’m not certain if I understood the message correctly, but I think I did - at least in my own way. I liked this book. I didn’t necessarily love the way it was told, perhaps a bit silly and over the top for my liking, but I adored the little message it carried. No doubt Voltaire was brilliant and this book has endured for good reason. It’s a quick little read and worth your time. 3.5 stars

Reseña en mi canal: https://youtu.be/Ez0Wb-b4C-8

Had no idea this was so cray. A buttock eaten off?! Wha?! All sorts of murders, pillaging, calamities, earthquakes, generally violent happenings. The best of all worlds, indeed. All of it moving forward at a quick clip, never worrying if a character who's been hanged or disemboweled reappears a little later just fine. Satirical, philosophical, funny like the butchered Black Knight in "The Holy Grail." Loved the bit about scholar of good taste's advice for what makes a successful tragedy -- what seemed like straight-up authorial sincerity slipped into the serious silliness. Ultimately it's lesson is keep quiet, be industrious, cultivate the garden, stop thinking so much and do. Reminds me of the zen koan in which the enlightening punchline is "wash your bowl." A fun read that maybe felt a little overlong at 120 pages. Seeds of Vonnegut definitely and Kosinski maybe. Will read more Voltaire this year.

Zounds! This book is wildly entertaining and I giggled all the way through Candide's awful adventures. Who would have thought that murder, rape, slavery, sexual exploitation, natural disaster, pillaging, theft, and every other oppression imaginable could be so funny?

Here's some pretty good insight from the old woman with one buttock:

"I have been a hundred times upon the point of killing myself, but still I was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is, perhaps, one of the dangerous principles implanted in our nature. For what can be more absurd than to persist in carrying a burden of which we wish to be eased? to detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? In a word, to caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?"

We can try to remain optimistic and rationalize that the horrors we witness are all a part of some plan but the choice to keep on living is a truly irrational one given all of the evidence available for us to consider. We go on living against our better judgment and in spite of all of our misery. It is what we were born to do.

"'You lack faith,' said Candide.

'It is because,' said Martin, 'I have seen the world.'"

"Candide" is an accessible masterpiece which demonstrated to the world Volatire's genius as a satirist. The eponymous Candide is a young man tutored by an optimist who is convinced according to the cause and effect philosophy of Leibniz and perhaps is best summarized in Voltaire's leitmotif that human beings live in the "best of all possible worlds." Alexander Pope rather laughably made the same outrageous claim in his "Essay on Man" in which he writes, "Everything that is is right." How can this be so, you may well ask? Here is the nut of the problem: it seems that a perfect God has created a highly imperfect world. How can a good, omnipotent, loving God create a world in which so much catastrophic evil exists and which is so often allowed even to thrive? It is a question for the ages. Theologians argue that God created mankind with free will and without it they would simply be puppets without the freedom to make choices. Theologians also point out that the majority of the evil resident in our world is perpetuated on vast masses of humanity by other human beings, not God, and that evil is the cause and effect of conflicting self-interests imposed by people with more power upon the less powerful. But this point doesn't explain why a loving, all-powerful God would allow any of it to exist and endure. Why not cast down all the devils and give his human creatures a perfect garden, a paradise on earth, without snakes anywhere? Why did God create the serpent in the Garden of Eden in the first place? Voltaire, like Rousseau, was an avid gardener and Voltaire jests at Rousseau's good faith in the "Confessions" as if the latter were simply a country bumpkin. But gardens have a great deal of meaning in "Candide" as in, for example, Milton's "Paradise Lost" or "Genesis" and are thematically significant for Voltaire who concludes that gardens are, after all, a wise place to reside out of harm's way. Voltaire absolutely skewers the optimistic cause and effect of Pope and Leibniz with a catalog of tragicomic catastrophes which plague not only Candide and Pangloss but all of mankind infinitely. Consider the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 which burst suddenly out of nowhere with all its raging fires and tidal waves to destroy nearly all of the city and the ships in its harbor. Is there no end even to the great catastrophes in which man has no hand but from which we are compelled to suffer except for God's grace? Voltaire's vivid and piercing wit is hilarious as he brazenly brings parody to places high and low, near and far, rich and poor to depict our world as the ultimate dystopia. In his novel Candide can only find a semblance of happiness in El Dorado, a rich, hidden world in South America: in other words, happiness in real life can only be found in a utopia without a basis for reality. So what are we to deduce about Candide? Is he a sometimes violent fool for all his naivete? And is Pangloss not a buffoon who earns his suffering so extensively at every turn of the road for his unjustified, unbridled optimism? Or are they heroic for their optimism despite the epic disasters that nearly devastate them time after time. Or is their fate really just the human condition and are they both just being all too human? You decide. In the course of your reading of this brief novel you may discover, as I did, that the optimists are constantly challenged by the gap between their optimism and reality, and that the pessimists are doomed to be the unhappiest people on the planet because they cannot imagine a world without misery and, thereby, create it for themselves wherever it doesn't really already exist. Take your pick of perspectives as a "free" human being and challenge your own assumptions about the human condition. Clearly, Balzac would seem to agree with his compatriot, Voltaire, that whatever you make of life on this earth, surely it is no less than an epic human comedy. At least in this life, thankfully, if you can stand back far enough, there is, God knows, no end to the laughter of the human condition.

Not for me. Review to follow.

I'm so sorry but....was anyone else bored? Did anyone else stop reading before the end? Please tell me I'm not the only one who didn't get it.

If you can imagine a smooth blend of the Book of Job, Dante's Inferno, Cervantes' Don Quixote and Butler's Erewhon, with the addition of a heavy dollop of extra absurdity, you are getting close to the nature of Candide. That absurdity is what makes the tale funny and without it, it would be an unpaletable concoction.

There is a good deal of social and political satire, something I often find to be a little weak; it's easy to point and laugh, harder to say what might be better. Voltaire, does however, offer some kind of alternative that he thinks is better than what he is lampooning, which is greatly to his credit.

I suppose I should explain how Candide relates to the other works mentioned above:
It's like Don Quixote in that the protagonist is frequently physically abused and this is used as broad humour and also in that the tale starts of as a rapid set of incidents and then slows down into some sort of coherent narrative. (This change being seen between parts one and two of Don Quixote.) It is like the Inferno in that certain historical figures and Voltaire's contemporary enemies keep turning up in order to be lambasted. It is like Erewhon in that there is a visit to Eldorado, a mythical country which is used to highlight supposed social absurdities back in Europe, Erewhon does the same thing, though perhaps not in the same way: contrast is used in Candide, whereas transposition of ideas into other realms is used in Erewhon. As for the Book of Job, well, the frequency and extremity of misfortunes heaped on Candide bears a resemblence to those heaped on Job by Satan.

Candide has a big advantage over all the works listed above: it's short. This edition has on facing pages the original French and an English translation and is still not much more than 150p. The fact that it can cover such a broad territory in such a condensed space is impressive. It's an easy read, too - so I think you should read it. It should make you think as well as laugh.

Candide is a real crush! Simply magical. I knew this novel but had never had the pleasure of reading it. Here it is! Candide is the hero of this philosophical tale; he is a character who lives up to his name, wants to be optimistic, and believes in life. We know that he was born in Westphalia, a German kingdom, and is the son of the sister of Sir Baron de Thunder-ten-trench. The latter will raise him with his daughter, Miss Cunégonde, his wife, and a philosopher, Pangloss, whose moral is "all is well in this world." However, because of a kiss given to Cunégonde, Candide is kicked out and finds himself alone in this big world where many adventures await him, some catastrophic, others heroic. Our hero will have to face the vanity of men to find Cunégonde. The meeting with philosophical characters, like Martin, Cacambo, and especially the Turk, will reveal the secrets of happiness: "You have to cultivate your garden" or "Work without reasoning" ... The story's moral is correct elsewhere since it translates the following thought: "The only way to escape unhappiness or boredom is to go from philosophical reflection (as Candide did) to concrete actions respecting our limits."
I never imagined that this book would please me so much! Voltaire depicts society's setbacks so well, majestically criticizing men and slavery, money, possession, black markets, power, and many other horrors that we immediately transported to Candide's side by taking the journey of life with him.

What a blistering criticism of blind prejudice, ignorance, religious dogma, class distinctions and the stubborn opposition to newer ideas and thoughts! I fully understand now why Voltaire's writings helped fuel the French Revolution.

While I acknowledge the historical interest and satirical power of this book, I can think of several stronger adjectives than "didn't like it" so we'll just leave it at one star.

I have indeed read Voltaire's Candide in both English and French (as the first time I was reading it for a French literature class at university during my undergrad, I managed to find a great dual language version that I totally loved and which also greatly helped with being able to understand the French text without constantly having to consult a dictionary). And yes, Candide is most definitely one of the relatively few novels that I actually managed to enjoy equally in both languages (where both the French original and the accompanying English translation have felt natural and equally wonderful, equally understandable, especially with regard to Voltaire's satire and social criticism). However, since it has actually been a for me almost insane amount of time since I read Candide in any way thoroughly and not just glancingly, fleetingly (for that French course happened in 1987, more than 30 years ago), and thus do not remember all that much with regard to the specific details, except that I in particular enjoyed the social and philosophical satire, namely Voltaire's rather vehemently but also often sadly funny criticism of the so-called best of all possible worlds philosophy (as proclaimed by Leibnitz and Wolff), I will simply state that Candide is still a favourite with me and for me, and that the author's social criticism (and satire) are as relevant today as they were in the 18th century. For if Candide's world (which is teeming with one horrid disaster after another) and also, if our own world (both now and then), if they represent the best of all possible worlds, what is the worst of all possible worlds?

EDITED TO ADD IN 2018: Now this year, in 2018, I decided to intensely reread Candide (I had downloaded the French text on my iPad and thought that a perusal of one of my favourite university reads would be both interesting and also pleasurable). But while yes, rereading Voltaire's classic in 2018 has been most definitely an interesting and enlightening reading experience, it has also not been all that personally pleasurable and enjoyable in many ways. For precisely that which I most appreciated about Candide as a character in 1987 (namely the way he resigns himself to cultivating his own and individual life, his own and individual garden), now gives me cause for consternation and even some angry frustration. Because does not Candide's resigned attitude of only working on himself and for himself, his final desire to cultivate individuality and thus only his own life and garden at least somewhat reflect the growing and unfortunately global me-first isolationist individualism of countries like for example Kim Jong-un's North Korea and Donald Trump's USA? And thus, with my 21st century eyes (and my annoyance at the state of the world and how the world is in many ways always and forever fighting and fragmenting), it is I believe, most important to now and at present read and consider Voltaire's Candide not only with appreciation but also with more than just a bit of criticism, for at least in my humble opinion, it is not ONLY important to be true to oneself, to live an individually fulfilling life, to tend, to succour and make one's own existence, one's own garden flower, it is also and equally essential and yes, of ever increasing significance and necessity to do this not only individually but also globally, universally (collectively, with the negativity often associated with the latter notwithstanding).

The best part of this book was that it ended and with a happily ever after.