Selected Writings

by Voltaire

Disarmingly comic and savagely witty, Voltaire (1694-1778) was commonly regarded as the genius of the French Enlightenment. This selection is taken mainly from his non-fiction prose but includes some letters, portions of which have never before appeared in English translation.

Genres: 18th Century, Philosophy

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Complete works (1880) : https://archive.org/details/oeuvresco...

In 1694, Age of Enlightenment leader Francois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born in Paris. Jesuit-educated, he began writing clever verses by the age of 12. He launched a lifelong, successful playwriting career in 1718, interrupted by imprisonment in the Bastille. Upon a second imprisonment, in which Francois adopted the pen name Voltaire, he was released after agreeing to move to London. There he wrote Lettres philosophiques (1733), which galvanized French reform. The book also satirized the religious teachings of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, including Pascal's famed "wager" on God. Voltaire wrote: "The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire's French publisher was sent to the Bastille and Voltaire had to escape from Paris again, as judges sentenced the book to be "torn and burned in the Palace." Voltaire spent a calm 16 years with his deistic mistress, Madame du Chatelet, in Lorraine. He met the 27 year old married mother when he was 39. In his memoirs, he wrote: "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did, and decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind." He dedicated Traite de metaphysique to her. In it the Deist candidly rejected immortality and questioned belief in God. It was not published until the 1780s. Voltaire continued writing amusing but meaty philosophical plays and histories. After the earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755, in which 15,000 people perished and another 15,000 were wounded, Voltaire wrote Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster): "But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?"

Voltaire purchased a chateau in Geneva, where, among other works, he wrote Candide (1759). To avoid Calvinist persecution, Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney, where the wealthy writer lived for 18 years until his death. Voltaire began to openly challenge Christianity, calling it "the infamous thing." He wrote Frederick the Great: "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." Voltaire ended every letter to friends with "Ecrasez l'infame" (crush the infamy — the Christian religion). His pamphlet, The Sermon on the Fifty (1762) went after transubstantiation, miracles, biblical contradictions, the Jewish religion, and the Christian God. Voltaire wrote that a true god "surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough," or inspired "books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror." He also published excerpts of Testament of the Abbe Meslier, by an atheist priest, in Holland, which advanced the Enlightenment. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was published in 1764 without his name. Although the first edition immediately sold out, Geneva officials, followed by Dutch and Parisian, had the books burned. It was published in 1769 as two large volumes. Voltaire campaigned fiercely against civil atrocities in the name of religion, writing pamphlets and commentaries about the barbaric execution of a Huguenot trader, who was first broken at the wheel, then burned at the stake, in 1762. Voltaire's campaign for justice and restitution ended with a posthumous retrial in 1765, during which 40 Parisian judges declared the defendant innocent. Voltaire urgently tried to save the life of Chevalier de la Barre, a 19 year old sentenced to death for blasphemy for failing to remove his hat during a religious procession. In 1766, Chevalier was beheaded after being tortured, then his body was burned, along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. Voltaire's statue at the Pantheon was melted down during Nazi occupation. D. 1778.

Voltaire (1694-1778), pseudónimo de François-

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

An odd collection of selected writing by Voltaire arranged in chronological order, the centrepiece is a chunk of his memoirs dealing with his relationship with Frederick II of Prussia, from whom he was pleased to accept an invitation and honours and even more pleased to escape, before this are some of Voltaire's English Letters. The collection is closed by some selections from the philosophical dictionary and the Encyclopaedia. There are also a few very short pieces. All of which are relentlessly witty and sharp, with the exception of what he has to say about old Fritz where he is also catty and bitchy. It's all a bit vapid, whipped cream with more than a hint of lemon sourness, but it is not a million miles away from Candide in thought or manner indeed there are echoes of its phrases here and there, just lacking a narrative structure, though you'll be pleased to learn that Voltaire does get to enjoy his garden, although by Geneva rather than Istanbul, in the end.

The English Letters seemed to me to be a model of a certain kind of travel writing: these foreigners are funny, they have some genius but it could be improved upon, they are amusing but would be far better if they were more like us.

The memoirs are the longest piece here. Frederick II gathered a collections of wits and philosophes about him who engaged in back biting, Voltaire having failed, surprisingly, to bite back with sufficient ardour fled and got his own back in these memoirs pointing out with some relish Frederick's homosexuality, lack of artistic talent, and perhaps more to the point that he was a gambler in war, whose bacon was repeatedly saved by his infantry. Here follows a fat extract:
His Majesty arose at five in the summer and at six in the winter. The functions of high almoner, the great chamberlain, lords of the bed chamber, and gentlemen ushers, were all comprised in one lackey, who lighted his fire, shaved him, and finished his dressing, for he required very little assistance in that business. His chamber was in appearance very elegant; a rich balustrade of silver, ornamented with little cupids exceedingly well sculpted, seemed to form the alcove of the state bed, the curtains of which were seen, but behind those curtains, instead of a bed, there was a library, and the royal couch, a common camp bedstead, without sacking, only cross corded under a thin mattress, was concealed behind a screen. Marcus Aurelius and Julian, the two greatest men among the Romans, and the apostles of the Stoics, lay not on a harder couch.

When His Majesty was dressed and booted, the stoic yielded for a few moments to the sect of Epicurus: he sent for two or three of his favourites - either lieutenants from the regiment, or pages, or foot-soldiers, or young cadets. Coffee was bought. The one who received the handkerchief would stay for ten or twelve minutes intimacy. None of this went to an extreme, since the prince (in his father's lifetime) had been so vilely treated in his passing fancies, and had only poorly recovered. He could not take the leading part; he could only be a subordinate (p.107)

This is a very pointed contrast with the French court which was entirely opposite - a lavish ceremonial of the bedchamber and a quasi official role for the Royal mistress, with whom the King would be expected to play the active role. Frederick by contrast lives in some crazy mirror universe achieving some bizarre juxtaposition of stoic and epicurean elements. Ultimately the ministers of the French court are revealed to be gentlemen (and better poets): the Prussian king a weird and petty tyrant.

It is all amusing and witty, but this was Voltaire's world, it took him a long time to achieve the wisdom to live outside the cat sanctuary even though he professes to see it for what it was.