Voltair a member of the league

[kencht]

I have read many of the posted threads on Voltair's Candide,
It is peculiar to notice that none of them closes the lens on the main issue regarding voltair's work,
it even so happened that names like " Shakespeare" and "Dostoevsky " were mentioned in the way,
Of course names like these " do not apply" at all,
it would be more suitable if we put the comparison to the Russian "Gogol" or the Dutch "Spinoza" or the British " Wilde" (as I remember he wrote one good story and named it " The house of judgment").
What Voltair wrote were meant to be a global, "he even tried to be universal at times", and not intended to be a story or a tale or even a doctrine, it is only a metaphor of an idea, by that it belongs to the absolute treasures of the weak and humiliated humanity, the one which really exists and which Voltair saw it as so.
The human being is a local creature who thinks that he is the center of this existence and that he is created according to the divine, and that God watches him from heaven and that every thing is created to serve his glory......etc.
All of these small Haman's thoughts which a few men were able to discern them as mere fallacies and to see that humanity is the reverse to that, that is human is small and is controlled by small funny effects like hatred and the urge to be acknowledged and the desire to be unique...etc.
For Voltair in particular, he thought of it as a man sitting naked over the toilet bowl while peaking up with his head thinking he will reach to the heavens!!
Funny enough idea, but this is simply what controlled Voltair's view,
I would also refer to his novel named "MicroMegas",
As for this last one, some other devoted brains worked on the infinity and the relativity of objects and effects, I mean the idea, among them were "Leibniz" and "Spinoza",
about the triviality of Time, also wrote " Nikos Kazantzakis" on a better literary level,
you may also find some flickers of that in some of Mopassin's short stories,

The stratum to which Voltair belongs cannot include people like Dostoevsky or Shakespeare, it is a stratum of writers who paint not who mumble!
like wise you cannot compare the "Moody Blues" to "Procol Harum", may be to " Tull" or " Jon&Vangelis" or even "Floyd" with reservations,
and since painting uses a higher level medium which is light( as a form of variation in time-space) which is made of the same substance as human thinking,
hence we must realize only writers with the same stature of writing to include them when we mention Voltair's "MicroMegas" or "Candide", these were very few,
Spinoza, Hesse, Leibniz, Gogol, Kazantzakis, Wilde,
Some of the writings of these were even deeper or higher than Voltair's, though very few .

[Charles Darnay]

Allright....

Isn't Voltaire spelled with an 'e'? I'm fairly sure it is, I have never seen it spelled without.

I agree with you in the sense that Voltaire was not attemptin to crate a novel, or a tale, but rather a philosophy - he was after all part of the Enlightenment. I would also agree that he should not be put in the same grouping as Shakespeare (I have never heard anyone compare him to Shakespeare) but I would definatly have to disagree with separating Voltaire from Dostoevsky. I jsut recently completed an essay comparing Candide to The Idiot (through the authors' use of the optimist) and I discovered that both authors strived towards the same goal - portraying the flaws of human nature. I think that they are very much alike.

Although Candide was not meant to be a novel, does not mean that it cannot be read as one. Similar to Wilde (not so much Spinoza), Candide captures Voltaire's anti-religious, anti-French (anti-everything) philosophy, yet in a way that is so satirical that to the educated reader in this day, there can be much humour found in some of the absurdities.

I may be missing the point entirly, but your complaint seems to be that people are devaluing Voltaire's message and focusing too much on the novel aspect.... I agree. But why can't a philosophy be coded in a novel? I blieve that it constitutes a great novel to have a philosophy intertwined with plot. Over the past few months I have read many philosophical works for school... and I enjoyed reading Voltaire's Candide and Plato's Republic much more than John Locke's Treatises on Government or Hegel's Science of Logic..... becasue of the creative aspect.

I hope I didn't miss your point entirely

[kencht]

We can all write, yes that's true, but some of us are endowed with an ability to paint while they are writing, like Gorky or Anatol France,
and some can even play tunes as they write, like Hesse or Kazantzakis,
what Voltaire had was not either of these cases, but nevertheless he was one of few ( as in the final cut) who could cross all the lines that he could see at once, that is what Mr Darnay probably meant by "anti-everything",
In one of the remarks made on Voltaire, some famous writer said that it was 1600 years between two men who had a great degree of honesty and care for the misery of humanity.
I don't agree to this comparison , however voltaire had to go beyond his human nature in many of his writings,
we cannot call it merely sarcasm when we look at his "Micromegas" or "Candide", it is a trial to escape the human scope that is so concerned with details, like Dostoevsky in the Idiot for example he concerned himself with details, women also do that in general.
a big difference is though you might be tempted to call both writers "intellectual" but Dostoevsky would praise the hyper sensitivity (and consequently the follies) of men, while Voltaire would rather look at it as absurdity and vanity and dispose of them as any thing of any value at all!!,
on that accont I 'd say that only one of them is an intellectual while the other is just a human with weeknessses and aspiration to fly,
This is the difference between a man who can live inside time and another one who can merely look at it passing by,
we should agree, I think, that the latter must be of a deeper level of thinking and a broader view of things,
One of the most original "thinkers beyond time", if this would apply to any man at all, would be Gogol,
I'm sorry for the short time I have, and I will try to explain more of what I meant in the future.