Quote of the Day (Voltaire, on Tending One’s Garden)

“ 'Work then without disputing,’ said Martin; ‘it is the only way to render life supportable.’ "

"The little society, one and all, entered into this laudable design and set themselves to exert their different talents. The little piece of ground yielded them a plentiful crop. Cunegund indeed was very ugly, but she became an excellent hand at pastrywork: Pacquette embroidered; the old woman had the care of the linen. There was none, down to Brother Giroflee, but did some service; he was a very good carpenter, and became an honest man. Pangloss used now and then to say to Candide:

“ ‘There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short, had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund; had you not been put into the Inquisition; had you not traveled over America on foot; had you not run the Baron through the body; and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado, you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.’

" ‘Excellently observed,’ answered Candide; ‘but let us cultivate our garden.’"—Voltaire, Candide (1759)

From one end of the year to the other, we’ve listened to much about an anniversary involving an intellectual who upended old pieties. It’s too bad that this intellectual who is hogging world attention is Charles Darwin--a scientist whose writing ability has been massively overhyped and whose influence on racial eugenics has been downplayed--rather than Voltaire, whose Candide was published 250 years ago this fall.

Earlier this week, on my way to a different exhibit in the city, I stopped across from the main branch of the New York Public Library and saw a banner for “Candide at 250: Scandal and Success” inside. I had time, curiosity about an author I read with considerable pleasure in college, and consuming interest to see how on earth Leonard Bernstein and Hal Prince thought they could adapt this relatively short book to the stage.

My college course delved extensively into the French philosophe’s relationship to prior thinkers in the Western tradition (both he and Montaigne regarded non-whites as different rather than inferior), and touched briefly on the specific inspiration for his great satire: philosophical optimism, Gottfried Leibniz’s attempt to justify the ways of God to man, even in the face of tragedy. The Lisbon earthquake, a shattering event, seemed an irrefutable answer to all of that, Voltaire felt.

It wasn’t until I visited this exhibit, however, that I realized that:

* Candide appeared almost exactly four years after the earthquake;

* Voltaire, a former admirer of Alexander Pope, had now turned violently against the English poet for his advocacy of theodicy;

* By the end of 1759 alone, Candide had gone through 17 editions (the NYPL is one of only two libraries that have copies of all 17);

* Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas appeared the same year as Candide and shares with it many of the same characteristics (though not, of course, the dark humor).

Bewilderingly, the exhibit was showcased on the first floor in a room so small that I almost missed it. I’m not sure why the library gave it so little space, given that the subject matter is close to the heart of library director Paul LeClerc (who, the exhibit tells us, required permission from the Catholic bishop of Worcester, Mass.—two centuries after publication, mind you—to read the book during his college years). (Remember that Candide was on the Vatican's Index of banned books for years.)

Among the items on display here:

* the manuscript of the book;

* the red briefcase in which Voltaire carried the manuscript;

* a Houdon bust of the author;

* illustrated editions over the years (including one by artist Rockwell Kent involving a censored drawing);

* reimaginings of the novel in the 20th and 21st centuries, including by Terry Southern (displayed here--a redacted report by an FBI agent about what Connecticut neighbors were reporting about the author and his wife), and the graphic novel; and

* stills from Leonard Bernstein’s 1956 comic operetta, which flopped after its premiere only to find new life—this time, minus Lillian Hellman’s preachy libretto—on Broadway 18 years later.

Candide is not at all a novel of character complexity, but still lives because it makes the reader laugh out loud. If it remains on the Literary Humanities reading list at Columbia University, where I first encountered it, I hope that students coming to the book this semester or next will be strongly encouraged to visit the exhibit, which runs between now and April 25, 2010.