Candide, by Voltaire.

Voltaire's tomb in the Panthéon.

Last night I read Candide by Voltaire (so much for Rousseau!), and I'm most glad to have done so: I read it years ago, possibly when still in university, and I hated it, but the funny thing is I don't know why and I could never remember why. I even wonder if I actually haven't read it before and all these years I've been thinking of something else. That's possible, I suppose, but I'm sure I remember telling someone as soon as I read it that I had read this book. But no matter - I very much like it now.

I said at the beginning of the month I wanted to read it, but what really spurred me on was seeing Voltaire's tomb at the Panthéon. I wish I'd taken a close up of his face, can you see him smiling? I loved his statue. 

Voltaire, or François-Marie Arouet, the French writer, historian, and philosopher was born in 1694 and died in 1778. I've always been aware of Candide, however I was very surprised to learn that Voltaire had written over two thousand books and pamphlets, and over twenty thousand letters, making Anthony Trollope look like a mere novice (although he may be slightly short of Barbara Cartland's record...). He is described as a "serial polemicist" and made use of satire to criticise the church, French institutions and the mores of the time. Candide is said to be a classic example, and if you thought Dickens was the master of satire, you need to read this.

The plot is insane, and makes The Nun by Diderot (1796) look like a perfectly reasonable chain of events. Candide, our hero, is a young man who is taught that "all is for the best" by his teacher Dr. Pangloss. In this book, characters die on many occasions, are brought back to life, and suffer the most awful tortures, and the circumstances are unfathomably dire for each and every one of them. This is not a subtle work, and the Enlightenment, the philosophies, Paris, and the church each take quite a bashing. One hundred and four pages of crazy. But good - entertaining, and provoking. Wonderful fun, easy to read, but deceptively simple. And it makes me want to re-read Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, which puts me in a slightly awkward situation as I already have a great many books I want to read in February and March!

For now, I will return to Rousseau's The Social Contract, and then pick up L'Assommoir and The Three Musketeers (as before, let us not speak of The Faerie Queene). I do have a slightly uncomfortable pile now, and as I don't want to put any down and have to restart them at a later date, I really ought to cut this post short and get reading! So much to do today, as well. Paris seems so long ago....

Hope everyone has a great week, and I am determined my next post will be a summary of Book III of The Faerie Queene!