Susan Engel as the aged and unappealing Cunegonde (a sort of old lady 2) at the close of a Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Candide (2013), favorably reviewed by Paul Taylor (“astringent, nihilistic, dry”)
Christa Ludwig as the old lady (Barbican, 1989, conducted by Bernstein) —
Friends and readers,
As you probably know (since I’ve announced this more than once), I’m teaching a course I called The Enlightenment: At Risk at the OLLI at AU. The first 18th century author and book we read has been Voltaire’s Candide; ou, l’optimisme. And I assigned selections of his treatises, we saw clips from La Nuit de Varennes (which they appeared to enjoy), and this coming Monday I shall show two clips from a 1989 concert performance of Bernstein’s Candide at the Barbican (Bernstein conducting), and one from a 2004 concert performance at Lincoln Center (Marin Alsop conducting, directed by Lonny Price). What is most striking to me is how many of the people, maybe most in the room came up with interpretations and reactions to Voltaire’s Candide that resemble Bernstein’s comic take on Candide, far more hopeful, morally didactic, essentially preferring a positive point of view on life to Voltaire’s mordancy and presentation of the chaos of experience, senselessness of pain.
1778, 1787 illustration emphasizes the grimness in the adventure
To begin with Voltaire’s Candide, a number of people in the class suggested the famous ending of the tale (“Il faut cultiver notre jardin”) is its finally restorative moral. Some saw redemption, hope here and there, some religious apprehension. I took the view of J.J. Weightman (a critic in the Norton edition) that tale is absurd and mordant, and that Voltaire produced Candide when his awareness of evil was at its most violent and his vitality at its strongest. I also felt with Wolper that the famous gnomic statement at the end is ironic.
In “The Gull in the Garden,” Eighteenth Century Studies, Wolper argues that Candide is a blind gull to the end. How could Candide forget he was once thrown out, and afterwards an army came and destroyed, beat and killed just about everyone in his home estate. In “Il fault cultiver son jardin,” Candide has only learned to shrink into himself. Yes, work can be a form of salvation: Voltaire himself only when near death tried to stop trying to help people. Diderot is continually trying to help people — individually, though in Diderot’s case they are not crazed events so he ends up with small people bothering him. Camille shuts out the rest of the world — as if one could. He can’t stand the sight of Cunegonde because she’s no longer young and pretty. Martin’s words at the end of the previous paragraph are as close as we get to Voltaire but Voltaire is far far more mordant. All his experiences should have taught Candide that he is not safe anywhere, and he is utterly selfish and narrow in the meaninglessness of what patterns we can discern: “Travaillons sans raisonner, dit Martin; c’est le seul moyen de rendre le vie supportable.”
Recent illustration — that’s the Cunegonde hanging up the laundry, the old lady with the sails
One man strongly objected to all Wolper said! There are other readings by critics in the Norton (Richard Holmes, Adam Gopnik) and I assigned one of them (Weightman), and did go over the text and tried to show its continual apprehension of stupidity and evil everywhere. I read aloud incidents, the history of herself the “old woman” told, and they so many were powerful individually considered: women living lives of sex slaves, raped continually, worked to exhaustion, thrown out in old age; the barbaric punishments, frantic slaughters, the making individuals into examples ludicrously killing “pour encourager les autres”.
But when I told the usual definition (a conte is a story shaped by a strong central point) and reiterated the tirelessly reiterated lesson it is not all for the best in the best of all possible worlds, a couple of people appeared to find this not very exciting, and the flatness of the characters was stale. When I went about to say why this obsession —
Leibnitz, deism, Pope in his Essay on Man (“whatever is, is right.”) — unless we look about us and accurately say what is, we cannot improve it. We must not rest easy in what is; we must not look to an afterlife; it’s here and now. Panglos, he glosses over everything —
they were (as living in a different age) indifferent to this cliché. People did say they had taken 18h century courses where Johnson’s Rasselas was read alongside Voltaire’s Candide as similar. Yes, yes, said I and so too Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. With Rasselas, it’s the hunger of the imagination after some fantastical happiness (“vanity of human wishes”), the importance of one’s “choice of life. But this led to intelligent explications of why a moderate hope is needed: to believe in useful activity and within limits doing good. That it is a mock on the picaresque romance came up: the opening recalls Tom Jones — so a couple of the people in the room suddenly said how hard it is to remember details, its seeming hundreds of stories (I got in “enough piled into every paragraph for a commonly written realistic long novel were the characters psychologically developed at all”).
This 18th century illustration makes the opening incident resemble Tom Jones or other contemporary sentimental erotic novels
On the whole though I felt people were a bit disappointed by Voltaire’s Candide — they asked me about my title of the course: The Enlightenment: at Risk? what was at risk in this world that was valuable? I had used Outram’s book to try to show the ideas of this movement went much much further than small coteries, spread everywhere in cities, country houses, and were themselves outgrowths of new economic and social circumstances and began in the early modern period. So I went back to that and then tried to explain how satire, hard satire was the mode of this progressive period and the kinds of fundamental attacks on humanity Candide can prompt were not possible before people questioned religious belief as such, monarchy and divine right as such; conversely on powerful men, before people began to feel they had a right themselves to liberty, a good life, secure ownership of their property.
But that hardly can make someone like a book. So I then admitted that this summer rereading or reading for the first time some of Voltaire’s work I was more impressed by Letters on England than Candide, and famous and popularly read or widely distributed as Candide is, think Letters on England more important, his Treatise on Toleration teach us more directly about the Enlightenment thought of the era. I had assigned excerpts from these and then they took notes:
Differing sects of religion keep people from becoming absolutist and makes for toleration. In his chapter on Locke he argue against the immortality of the soul. Locke saw we were born with our minds a tabula rasa; what Voltaire is impressed is Locke accepts that matter thinks. Animals are like us, not simple machines but perceiving and sensitive. In the chapter on Bacon he extols basing oneself on probable experience, and takes over from his chapter on the history of inoculation for small pox, a scientific method. In the chapter on Newton he substitutes the old cosmology of God, eternal heaven, sin and reward with a modern scientific Newtonian universe. No need for all sorts of silly inventions and concepts once you have come up with the concept of gravity and turn it into mathematics and see that these mathematics describe what’s happening accurately, and enable to predict. Things like vortices perihelia. He shows how we now measure. Why the universe sticks together – it’s the brute reality – we would call it a force. How weight works. Newton’s Optics fascinated 18th century people –- to through a prism that light divides into colors. I read some poetry by Pope and Thomson: if you look at Shakespeare and Jacobean poetry you find mostly simple color words – red, pink maybe orange, purple; in these 18th century verses the color words just explode into cascades of shades. Far from attacking Shakespeare he admires him and says it’s impossible to translate him (18) and 23 and 24 he admires and recommends how the English support their men of letters (humanities) and men of science by academies. And so on.
I don’t say they weren’t spot on. First, none of the English translations we had came near Voltaire’s concision, wit, and tones. Then to be honest, I prefer a realistic psychological story and enjoy Voltaire’s letters to Madame Du Deffand, and much more Nancy Mitford’s Voltaire in Love and Ian Davidson’s Voltaire In Exile where we see him fighting barbaric injustices, and occasionally winning (as against the oligarchy of Geneva he opened a manufacturing factory where people came to work and live more freely). I shall tell about these letters and books next week. . Maybe there is “more” to learn from Lettres Philosophiques (and also La Nuit de Varennes last week)
As a test case on whether the general class view of Candide makes it speak home to us, I found I was irritated by the Lincoln Center 2004 production, thought it mostly a travesty of Voltaire. It’s accurately reviewed by Peter G Davis, with whom I disagree only in that I found the usually appealing Patti Lupone as tasteless as everyone else. The witless sexual gags where the women were supposed to enjoy being raped were the worst. I am very troubled by how sexist this (and other) productions are. To me Voltaire’s females do not enjoy being sex slaves at all. I think Anthony Tommasini) has it right when he says this farrago doesn’t know what to do with Voltaire’s work — they were Hollywood bumpkins, clowns:
Paul Groves, Kristin Chenoweth, Patti Lupone as Candide, Cunegonde and the old lady ….
The best song was the penultimate sharp gaiety of the ensemble “What’s the use.” Still, Voltaire did not mean us to shrug and be gay over life’s meaninglessness. But people in the class said they had seen and they appeared to have been entertained by this production. I was lent my copy by one of the people in the class who wanted me to show it to the class and I will show one clip, “What’s the us?.”
The second DVD I have I bought myself, and I sat through far more patiently. It is the Barbican 1989 production. Jerry Hadley as Candide sang the lyrical melancholy of Candide (in Bernstein’s “It must be so”) beautifully. Far more of Voltaire’s story survived in the enclosed whole script (!), and the absurdity of the enjoyment of torture and death at Lisbon (“auto-da-fe … What a day!”) seemed to approach a little Voltaire. Yet I remained uninvolved and felt the actors (Adolphe Green reading away so very hard)
and singers were flailing at perceptions that failed to touch them except as generic archetypes.
Jerry Hadley as Candide and June Anderson as Cunegonde
It was nowhere wild enough, but the reviews of this “labored over” production were more charitable and patient for the sake of the music. I can see it’s respected because my DVD came with the full script and credits to Lilian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, John LaTouche, Bernstein himself — all credited. I learnt that the original script was wholly by Hellman and that it was much closer in spirit to Voltaire, among other things, satirizing the House UnAmerican Activities committee. Indeed the script did reflect Voltaire in the narrative lines — read aloud as best the performers could, complete with explanations (“what is a picaresque tale? well …. “)
Each of the three productions I’ve mentioned here (the third at the opening of this blog, which I found on-line) have different dialogues so there has been a great deal of free improvisation allowed. It is true it is a mix-mash of different genre types as may be seen in the different earlier illustrations. But what went wrong in the 20th century and is still a problem is candor — reminding me in sound of the name, Candide. In the 18th century a “candid” interpretation was one which tried to present things in the “best” and most moral or sympathetic light. You wouldn’t think we’d want to look away if you turned on recent cable TV movies with their wild violence and amoral sex. Still the history of the adaptation says the first production (1957) was a flop (73 performances), and reveals since then the people daring to mount it have for the most part struggled, almost in vain to come near it. Apparently the 2013 began to come close, as has a recent 2016 operatic Candide at the New York City Opera.
I do find it telling that in our era of massacres, senseless laws and widespread injustice, where the president of the US can go around ridiculing a woman who comes forward to tell a story of assault, rape and humiliation as her civic duty (she knew she had lot to lose personally) rather than have a conscienceless raving elite thug on the supreme court for life, we have a hard time presenting the true core of Candide to an audience. The first edition (1759) was presented as a translation from the German by a physician named Ralph.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Rough translation of Martin’s concluding sentence: “Let us work without rationalizing about why we work [thinking about its purpose or its results ]; this is the only way to make life endurable. … I should probably say the class wanted to see films or clips of productions of Candide and one of the two I’ve watched (the 2004) was lent me by a class member so I could view and show it alongside my 1989 Candide on DVD.
Interesting post, Ellen. I admit I always preferred Rasselass but Candide has its moments. I never liked The Vicar of Wakefield either, but both are books I read in college and never revisited so I should go back and reread them. I could never warm up to Bernstein’s Candide, though I do like the auto da fe song, but the 2004 production at Lincoln Center turned me off and it’s unlikely I’ll ever get to see another one. I guess I’ll just have to stick with West Side Story.
Tyler Tichelaar
I’m glad you commented so I can reply — in general too. After all I found I didn’t care for Voltaire’s Candide myself though I understood its strong justified sting, mordancy, and relevance still. I just couldn’t feel Voltaire’s tone of mind as humanly there in the way say of his letters or Lettres Philosophiques. The experience of teaching this text reminded me of teaching Woolf’s Orlando: I saw its greatness, there I responded deeply to individual long passages too, but on the whole I couldn’t enjoy or like it — Woolf was finally elitist and frivolous. I will show but one clip of the 2004 production so you can see what I truly feel about it: I showed four of La Nuit de Varennes, read a bit of the novel, told about the significance of the king’s flight and capture.
Bernstein is too smaltzy for me when he turns classical, too much the didactic teacher. He turned his emotionalism to much better account in West Side Story, which I do love to listen to and have enjoyed all productions I’ve seen. I suspect he felt as a great composer he should set a great older classic — I find the script that comes with the 1989 DVD closer to the original Candide and wish the script by Hellman were extant or published.
Can I say I find Rasselas dull after all these years, much prefer other works by Johnson. I’d like to reread Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield. I used to like Goldsmith’s poetry and other prose narratives (e.g., The Life of Nash, the Chinese philospher’s letters) very much, this short novel less so.
Andrew Brown: “Fascinating, Ellen, thank you. People do not much like nihilism, even Voltaire’s positive variety, and do their best to wriggle out from under it. But there is no way out, failing sudden death at a tender age. Voltaire was no doubt not the first to notice that all is and ever has been accidental, but he was one of the first to try to draw our attention to the fact. Maybe his successors will have more success.
My reply: ‘It is truly interesting teaching such a group of people — many of them held responsible professional positions of all sorts before retiring. They come in with a wealth of experience. But they are at the same time immersed in this century, in the texts and media of the here and now, mostly all Anglo. If I may mention John Radner, he said how he enjoyed teaching at this place so much and he did Johnson more than once. There is a man in the class who took John’s course in Johnson and was quoting John to us over something Johnson said which related to Candide and Rasselas.
Next up will be Diderot’s The Nun. I can’t show any of Rivette’s film for it’s not on a DVD, but we will have the more recent (duller) 2013 adaptation (Guillaume Nicloux). Like much younger people, these seniors respond to films and they help stimulate discussion. Though I didn’t try to include anything in the blog (as it was not pertinent) they (to me unexpectedly in a way) enjoyed La Nuit de Varennes and that helped along the discussion of Outram’s book on the enlightenment (which I began with).
E.M.
Diane Reynolds on Wolper’s article on Candide:
I read your blog on Candide and then remembered you had sent me the Wolper Candide article and found it and read and read it again. I found much that I agreed with—I thought he made many insightful points—and made an interesting and in many ways successful attempt at reframing. But at the same time, in the same piece, he seemed to utterly and willfully misread, conflate, overstate —that is why I blinked and read it twice and realized he went awry at the end. I took notes about where I disagreed and agreed—I agreed far more than I disagreed—I went back to the text in English—looked at some of the French—he provides so much French, but I also wondered why he didn’t provide bracketed translations (did he not want people to understand him or only the cognoscenti)? In any case, I read and thought about the French, but then I know the English tool. And then, at 2:30 in the morning, I wondered why I care so passionately about this—about Candide? And yet from literature we learn to make sense of life.
And I am passionate in thinking about Candide because I am spending this year in solitude and retreat: I am cultivating my garden. But I realize I don’t see this as a life long venture … I don’t feel any more “safe” for doing this. I feel in fact less safe because I am stepping out of the ordinary and accepted — and to some extent isolating myself for a period (after all, what else is a retreat?). However, I have found great value in doing what I am doing. It can be hard, it can be lonelier, but it is also deeply deeply satisfying to be able to —yes Travaillons sans raisonne!!—sink into work I have been putting off, sink into Woolf, be able to think, stand back and find perspective, find the centered quietude, magnify the people (very much including you) who really matter, who are important.
So when Wolper uses the term “shriveled” for cultivating one’s garden, I agree yes, if that is all one does for the rest of one’s life—just a turning inward selfishly—but expansive too if done for a time as a way to contemplate and clear time to work and get one’s bearing and to discern what matters, what one wants to put one’s energy into. We live, as we well know (!), in a society that wants us not to have time to think, that is weighted to having us live in a fog of rush and exhaustion—was that Voltaire’s world? I don’t know.
Wolper gets mixed up too, at first dismissing work as the answer because work doesn’t necessarily have a moral core and also one can work very hard and that do horrible exploitative things to other people—but then he ends by embracing Travaillons sans raisonne without the caveat of needing to work from the ethical center he earlier avers is so important.
I agree with Wolper that Voltaire no doubt embraces the broader vision of actively caring about suffering, the poor, and educating people out of cruelty but would see cultivating one’s garden as a starting point for that. Wolper attacks Voltaire for oversimplifying—but he does that throughout Candide to make a point—that is what he is doing, so if you don’t like that, you don’t like Candide. Which I suppose is one perspective, but I don’t think that is what Wolper means to get at. And Wolper oversimplifies too.
So Wolper is dissatisfied with the moral dimension of cultivating one’s garden, and I agree with that if selfishness is the end, but not if it a springboard to living a more compassionate, saner life. He also conflates (wrongly) Candide and the Turk. I agree that Candide is most definitely not Voltaire. What Wolper leaves unanswered and which is of greatest interest is how do we pursue the ethical life—and he says and doesn’t say (contradicting himself: it will and won’t do) it is through work. Or is he saying, if work isn’t the answer, that Voltaire is saying that life is just one big piece of shit and we all might as well all kill ourselves (which sometimes looking at the political situation can seem like a rational stance—but then I think of Woolf and Stephan Zweig and think no no) , but I think Voltaire is too smart for that—and I don’t think Wolper is arguing that.
I don’t see Wolper as wilfully misreading but accurate — we’ve had a thead on my blog on C18-0l and two Voltairains (?) high in prestige, long time scholars agree with me (Andrew Brown, Ted Braun) As I understand it, Candide is to culivate his garden forever. Never come out of it. Voltaire by the way was very active at Ferney and worked again and again to help people or whole groups.Get yourself Voltaire in Exile and you’ll see. Voltaire did not take Candide’s position but Martin’s because often Voltaire worked without a true reason or good result: the people were barbarically murdered anyway; Voltaire kept trying and would say it was useless – he didn’t believe that society could be reformed for real because too many people are stupid and/or susceptible to and capable of evil on their own. Voltaire was a nihilist — at the same time as not at all suicidal. He enjoyed being alive. I liken him to Camus: both think there is no ethical core to life beyond the one an individual makes for him or herself, everything is a chaotic pattern that people kid themselves has order and manage to put some semblance of order on. He didn’t think life was shit but he did think it meaningless except for people who tried to find and impose some meaning themselves and then they should never trust they are ever safe. That’s the best way I can explain it.. On not translating from the French: in these 18th century journals French has such prestige that it’s like English and sometimes it’s felt as an insult to have to translate. Some of them don’t translate from the French by policy.. Sometimes I forget — I did on face-book — forgot to my cousin the Travaillons would not be transparent so she had to ask me to translate.
Voltaire was a nihilistic of the postive variety, says Andrew Brown.I thnk absolutely an atheist — as I do. All his religious talk is to keep himself safer – barbaric punishments were common in France in the 18th century.
Candide is important: in this very adult interesting discussion we had in my film class over Judgment at Nurembourg I found myself quoting Candide at one point because it’s so a propos: why murder someone brutally horribly and let it out: pour encourager les autres (that goes for the Saudi’s luring and killing and chopping into pieces that journalist – I can’t get that off my mind, especially with the phone call to Trump I’ve no doubt to okay it by him)
E.M
Dear Ellen and other colleagues on this list,
Just to join Andrew in thanking you for yet another of your many richly rewarding website contributions. I was particularly interested in how some of the responders to your site brought out their disposition as readers of the classics in our period. That one blogger seemed a bit behind in his reading the literature of our period. But I was astonished to see his reaction to Candide, which for me was a major turning point in seeing the emptiness of the whole system of European monarchy, absolute religion, and aristocratic cast system.
After all I found I didn’t care for Voltaire’s Candide myself though I understood its strong sting, mordancy, and relevance still. I just couldn’t feel Voltaire’s tone of mind as humanly there in the way say of his letters or Lettres Philosophiques. The experience of teaching this text reminded me of teaching Woolf’s Orlando: I saw its greatness, there I responded deeply to individual long passages too, but on the whole I couldn’t enjoy or like it —
No wonder that Voltaire admired Frances Sheridan’s Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761), that early classic of English nihilism.
JAD
IN response to John Dussinger,
I agree with you on your assessment of Sheridan’s Sidney Biddulph. I cannot remember Johnson’s precise words on Francis Sheridan’s novel but it was about how much she suffered and no reward. I’m sure there is someone on this list who has at his or her fingertips the passage.
I do think what some of the people in the room most missed was in depth characterization. Each incident comes back to the main thesis and we see the different characters in relation to it. Most are so accustomed to the novel post-19th century with its realistic slow development of circumstances over time. Probably they would have had an easier time with Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, also mentioned in that comment.
Ellen
Reflecting today on how Montesquieu says if all three branches of gov’t are run by one party and nothing at all disinterested, you have tyranny. Yes. Trump now opens more detention camps and extends separating children from parents, a crime against humanity. He has the US leave the international court after his Bolton creature shits all over it … Barbarity is fine now: with this open horrific snatching and murder of Jamal Kashoggi, allegedly by the Saudi (“pour encourager les autres — the press) we are back in the world of Candide.
Ellen
I should have mentioned another point of view for the book in another essay: it is Voltaire debating with himself over and over.
Norbert Sclippa: “Voltaire s’en remet généralement à un Dieu “vengeur et rémunérateur”, lequel aurait établi des lois universelles inflexibles et inaltérables, mais les évènements le forcent parfois à « rouspéter », à se plaindre de ce que son Dieu est peut-être un peu dur, comme ce fut le cas à l’occasion du tremblement de terre de Lisbonne (d’où la fameuse diatribe avec Rousseau), mais aussi dans Candide. Ce qui immortalise ce petit chef-d’œuvre de conte est l’autodérision qu’il y pratique, s’y projetant et se moquant à la fois de lui-même, dans les personnages de Leibniz, de Candide, et de Martin. Peu d’écrivains aujourd’hui sont capables de se “mettre en scène”, encore moins de pratiquer l’autodérision.
NS
Stephen Wilson: “Read your blog on the class discussion of Candide–found myself mostly agreeing with the viewpoints of your class members. Although I read Candide long ago in college (and memory fades), I remember it as being trenchant satire but not in a bitter or vindictive way as you seem to suggest. Too bad I can’t attend the class–I suspect I would be arguing against you rather than with you on many points.*:-B nerd
Quite impressed with some of your blog-followers–you’ve got some knowledgeable and perspicacious readers!
In would certainly agree with you that the bigoted, racist, misogynist illiterate who purports to be the U.S. President is the antithesis of enlightenment values, as are many members of Congress & the Supreme Court. Even scarier are the emotional & raving know-nothings who show up in support of Trump; the parallels to 1930s Nazi Germany are frightening.
But………. This is not the first time enlightenment values have been at risk in the U.S. Think back to the McCarthy era (late 1940s-early 50s) and the “witch-hunt” paranoia for “communists & subversives”. Or the 1970s, the era of the arch-conservative “silent majority” who supported the vindictive, conniving, mean-spirited liar known as Richard Nixon. Or the 2000s, prime time for the jingoistic, uninformed “God Bless America” and “God Bless Our Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan” crowd who supported G.W. Bush. Somehow our society muddled through these periods without devolving into complete chaos; perhaps that’s a hopeful sign for the future.
And……as you noted, just how “enlightened” was 18th century Europe anyway? France was of course considered the epicenter of “The Enlightenment”, with influence spreading to the British Isles and even America (e.g., Jefferson, Franklin). But did Enlightenment values (rationality, secularism, tolerance, individual liberty, etc) really spread beyond a relatively few intellectuals and wealthy “salon ladies”? Did the working classes and general populace in France or elsewhere in Europe (literacy rates were <30-40% at the time) really embrace enlightenment ideas? If so, what evidence do we have? You're much more of an Enlightenment scholar than I am, and presumably you'll discuss this in class at some point. And we all know how the era of "Enlightenment" era ended in France: With the bloody, extremely violent, intolerant, and repressive French Revolution, all in the spirit of "liberté, égalité, fraternité." Doesn't portend well for the spread of Enlightenment ideas, does it?"
Surely I never said Voltaire was vindictive or bitter. I never used those words. Satire is not vindictive — or not necessarily He is exposing the horrific injustices of his world which ours are a parallel of. And at the end of the book Candide is a gull to think he’s safe. He is back where he was in he books’ first chapter. Martin’s wisdom is the book’s basic tune.
We would disagree on the enlightenment. Yes the working classes were influenced especially in Western Europe and these ideas were vivid in lower middle class people – I recommend the first book I started with: Dorinda Outram’s The Enlightenment. I couldn’t disagree more about the revolution. Yes they ended in slaughtering one another for a couple of years but why and how are understandable if you think about the Allied armies attacking France, the counter revolutions started in rural countrysides and by the emigres; it’s more than I’m with Twain’s it was a bucket of blood compared ot 300 years of rivers — and three revolutions brought forth a new order: not just the French, but American, Haitian for a long while; Ireland’s revolution was crushed yes. I have read a lot about this. I assigned Madame Roland’s memoir because her first third explains what happened in the assembly and on the streets of Paris in 1791-3 but she’s not the only one to explain. We have talked about the propaganda (successful to some extent) against the revolution since 1815 and the re-putting back of the reactionary monarchies.
Now we do agree that the US is fundamentally — this is how I would put it — a oligarchy with a deeply violent past, and horrifyingly racist and ‘nativist.” But something new is happening — or new for the first time in decades and decades. Trump and his group are really destroying all sorts of institutions, agencies, abrogating laws and outright turning them over to return the US to the pre-1920s and it’s succeeding. Huge numbers of people will be even poorer, less well educated, far more in peonage debt — and that’s what ALEC and groups like that want. They are suppressing the vote vigorously; mass incarceration is helping them. We are closer to a Nazi state with a veneer every day. Overt signs include the detention and (considered a crime against humanity) separation of families from children, which Trump sees he is getting away with. I’m taking a film class and last week watched Judgment at Nuremberg and this A Dry White Season — I recommend them for seeing frightening and somber parallels..
I read Voltaire’s Candide long ago, when I was young and inexperienced and my French was not as fluent as it became later, so I don’t remember how I reacted to it. (I should reread it now–at 77, and after living in France for almost 19 years when I was in my 30s and 40s, I would get much more out of it.) But, I do remember seeing the original production of Bernstein’s Candide in New York. It was mordant, satiric, not blindly optimistic at all. Maybe most Americans thought it ended on a note of hope in the “best of all possible worlds,” but Bernstein, still in the closet, knew it was not. Progressive New Yorkers in the audience, many of whom had (or had friends or relatives who had) survived the Nazi concentration camps and/or been persecuted by Sen. Joe McCarthy or the House Un-American Activities Committee, knew it was not. Lillian Hellman knew that, too. Officially, the musical may have been considered a “flop.” In fact, it was brilliant and painful. Maybe a future version will draw on the dystopian nightmare that is currently threatening whatever “enlightenment” this country enjoys…and come closer to the spirit of Voltaire’s satire.
Thank you very much for this comment. I didn’t see this first production and could only describe from the couple of reviews I could find.
[…] that I taught (Wolf Hall: A Fresh Angle on the Tudor Matter; and The Enlightenment at Risk, see Candide and La Religieuse) have gone splendidly, but they and reading with others on-line, going to a […]
[…] Voltaire’s Candide & Bernstein’s 20th century musical Candide: […]
[…] https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/voltaires-18th-century-candide-versus-bernsteins20thcen… […]