Could I be more pretentious? Probably not.
However, he is one of my favourite writers, and while my French is woefully inadequate I have a very good translation by the Oxford World Classics people and they know their stuff.
All of Voltaire's stories follow the same basic principle: an innocent character goes out into the world and reveals various truths about it to the reader through their naitvety. The most famous example is Candide, whose motto was that this was "the best of all possible worlds" despite what happened to him. the same pattern is followed by Micromegas, The Ingenue and my favourite, Zadig. They're not high literature, but rather beautifully written parables on philosophical subjects.
Zadig is in part a spoof of the fashion for oriental literature, in part a celebration of empiricism and partly a mourning of the injustice of the world. He's also the prototype for every detective ever since - before there were your Dupins, your Sherlock Holmeses or your Horatio Canes, there was Zadig.
I also felt like I wanted to mention this because it's acceptable, or even fashionable, these adays to declare yourself "the enemy of the enlightenment". Well, you can hand back your antibiotics and your iPhones in that case.
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3 comments:
I love Zadig, it's also my favourite of his books :) I love Voltaire's dark humour and the way he uses it to denounce obscurantism, like the Inquisition.
And the last part of your post is so true! Thumbs up.
It is not pretentious to love Voltaire. It is a sign of sound mind.
i must admit that i enjoyed what was read to me of zadig, i shall make sure to put voltaire on my reading list before i dismiss your choice of books as solely pretention.
tsk, i know i personally would love to live in chauvanistic squalor! i thought everyone felt the same way~
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