Says one character, a princess turned one-buttocked hag by unkind Fate: 'I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. Still, as he demolishes optimism, Voltaire pays tribute to human resilience, and in doing so gives the book a pleasant indomitability common to farce. Pangloss, is steadfast in his philosophical good cheer, in the face of more and more fantastic misfortune Candide's other companions always supply good sense in the nick of time.

Magoo armed with deadly force), as he travels the world struggling to be reunited with his love, Lady Cunegonde, the novel smashes such ill-conceived optimism to splinters. Telling the tale of the good-natured but star-crossed Candide (think Mr. But for the general reader, the novel's driving principle is clear enough: the idea (endemic in Voltaire's day) that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and apparent folly, misery and strife are actually harbingers of a greater good we cannot perceive, is hogwash. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the 1750s. Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. In a general introduction to this volume, historian Johnson Kent Wright places Candide in the contexts of Voltaire’s life and work and the Age of Enlightenment. Leibniz and Alexander Pope, has proved enormously influential over the years. Voltaire’s philosophical tale, in part an ironic attack on the optimistic thinking of such figures as G. Endowed at the start with good fortune and every prospect for happiness and success, the characters nevertheless encounter every conceivable misfortune.

The translation is immediate and unencumbered, and for the first time makes Voltaire the satirist a wicked pleasure for English-speaking readers.Ĭandide recounts the fantastically improbable travels, adventures, and misfortunes of the young Candide, his beloved Cunégonde, and his devoutly optimistic tutor, Pangloss. Raffel casts the novel in an English idiom that-had Voltaire been a twenty-first-century American-he might himself have employed. In this new translation of Voltaire’s Candide, distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novel’s irreverent spirit and offers a vivid, contemporary version of the 250-year-old text. The translation of choice for twenty-first-century readers of Voltaire's satiric masterpiece.

Candide and optimism