I’m currently listening to this (In Our Time podcast on Voltaire’s Candide). Which lead me to start reading his Letters on England.
Many moons ago, a friend recommended Candide, so I bought the above edition, and read it. Frankly? I hated it! This was a major disappointment, as practically everything I’d heard about Voltaire up till that point predisposed me to loving both him and his writings.
If one is at all literary minded, Voltaire’s going to figure. I’d encountered references to him countless times. But it wasn’t until he featured in an episode of Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation, that I decided to take an interest.
I think I’ll have to revisit Candide, at some point. Maybe it needs a contemporary rewrite? Or a graphic novel treatment? I’m usually quite averse to such ‘re-boots’. But as written – at least in the translation I read – Candide was an unenjoyable unfunny slog.
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At this point I returned to the podcast. About midway through. One of the pundits is saying ‘The narrative structure is an attack on Leibniz.’ By which he means – as the fuller context makes clear – that the narrative of Candide is utter chaos. Leibniz, on the other hand, is saying all is actually ordered to a Divine plan. It may look shitty to us. But from a Gods’ eye view all is exactly as it ought to be.
This is interesting. For numerous reasons. On the level of pure reading, the total lack of narrative structure reduces Candide to a bewildering – and seemingly pointless – maelstrom of apparently random stuff.
For a contemporary analogue, imagine the most self-indulgent of late 1960s film, or – for a more lobotomised equivalent – something like Kentucky Fried Movie.