Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire
French writer, satirist, the embodiment of the
18th-century Enlightenment, remembered as a crusader against tyranny and
bigotry, a friend of Frederick II of Prussia and Catherina the Great of Russia.
Voltaire represented anti-romanticism, wise skepticism, sober classicism; he did
not believe in the solution of the great metaphysical problems and his
religiosity was anticlerical. But compared to Rousseau's (1712-1778)
rebelliousness, Voltaire was deeply rooted in the middle-class values. Voltaire
disliked his great competing figure of literature and philosophy, but their
ideas influenced deeply the French Revolution. In 1761 he wrote to Rousseau:
"One feels like crawling on all fours after reading your work."
François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire was born in Paris into a middle-class family.
His father was a minor treasury official. Voltaire was educated by the Jesuits
at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704-11). From 1711 to 1713 he studied law and
then worked as a secretary to the French ambassador in Holland before devoting
himself entirely to writing. Voltaire suffered from poor health, his essays did
not gain the approval of authorities, but he energetically attacked the
government and the Catholic church, which caused him numerous imprisonments and
exiles.
In 1716 Voltaire was arrested and exiled from Paris for five months. From 1717
to 1718 he was imprisoned in the Bastille for lampoons of the Regency. During
this time he wrote the tragedy ŒDIPE, and started to use the name Voltaire. The
play brought him fame but also more enemies at court. With lucky speculation in
the Compagnie des Indes he gained wealth in 1726.
At his 1726 stay at the Bastille Voltaire was visited by a flow of admirers.
Between 1726 and 1729 he lived in exile mainly in England. There he avoided
trouble for three years and wrote in English his first essays, ESSAY UPON EPIC
POETRY and ESSAY UPON THE CIVIL WARS IN FRANCE, which were published in 1727.
After his return to France Voltaire wrote plays, poetry, historical and
scientific treatises and became royal historiographer. HISTOIRE DE CHARLES XII
(1731) used novelistic technique and rejected the idea that divine intervention
guides history. In 1734 appeared his Philosophical Letters in which he compared
the French system of government with the system he had seen in England. Voltaire
stated that he had perceived fewer barriers between occupations in England than
in his own country. The book was banned, and Voltaire was forced to flee Paris,
but the English edition became a British bestseller.
Voltaire lived at the Château de Cirey with madame du Châtelet in 1734-36 and
1737-40. Between the years he took a refuge in Holland (1736-37). In 1740 he was
an ambassador-spy in Prussia, then in Brussels (1742-43) and in 1748 he was at
the court of King Stanislas in Lunéville. From 1745 to 1750 he was a
historiographer to Louis XV and in 1746 he was elected to the French Academy. In
1750 Voltaire moved to Berlin, where he was invited by Fredrick the Great.
In 1755 Voltaire settled in Switzerland, where he lived the rest of his life,
apart from trips to France. He had his own château, Les Delices, outside
Geneva, and later at nearby Ferney, in France. Anybody of note, from Boswell to
Casanova, wanted to visit the place; Voltaire's conversations with visitors were
recorded and published and he was flattered by kings and nobility. In his late
years Voltaire produced several anti-religious writing and led campaign to open
up a trial, in which the Huguenot merchant Jean Calas was found guilty of
murdering his eldest son and executed. The parliament at Paris declared
afterwards in 1765 Calas and all his family innocent.
As an essayist Voltaire defended freedom of thoughts and religious tolerance.
His DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSPHIQUE (1764) was condemned in Paris, Geneva and
Amsterdam, and for safety reasons Voltaire denied his authorship. The book was
burned with the young Chevalier de la Barre, who had neglected to take of his
hat while passing a bridge where a sacred statue was exposed.
Later Voltaire introduced his Dictionary as a dialogical book: its short,
polemical articles were 'more useful' when 'the readers produce the other half'.
In Essay on the Manner and Spirit of Nations Voltaire presented the first modern
comparative history of civilizations, including Asia. An innovative aspect of
Voltaire's history is that the chivalric hero is rejected for the 'good
administrator', who protects liberties in order for society to prosper.
Voltaire died in Paris on May 30, 1778, at eighty-four, as the undisputed leader
of the Age of Enlightenment. He left behind him over fourteen thousand known
letters and over two thousand books and pamphlets. Among his best-known works is
the satirical short story CANDIDE (1759), in which the young and innocent hero
goes through a long series of misfortunes and disastrous adventures. He is
kicked out of the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh for making love to the baron's
daughter, Cunégonde, in the army he is beaten nearly to death, in Lisbon he
experiences an earthquake, he is hunted by the Inquisition and Jesuits,
threatened with imprisonment in Paris and marries Cunégonde, who has become
ugly. Finally Candide finds the pleasures of cultivating one's garden.
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