Audiobook · read by volunteers
Candide
Voltaire (1694–1778)
Read by Fox in the Stars, Denny Sayers (d. 2015), Justine Young, EdwardT, featherheadfop, Dimitri Fotopoulos, Joyce Nussbaum · 31 chapters · 3 h 58
About the book
Young Candide grows up in a Westphalian castle, taught by his tutor Pangloss that this is the best of all possible worlds. Then he is thrown out for loving the baron’s daughter, and the world shows him what it is really like: armies, earthquakes, shipwrecks, tricksters and inquisitors.
Travelling from Europe to South America and back, Candide loses everything and finds it again, meets companions as unlucky as himself, and visits a golden land that seems too good to be true. All the while, he tries to square what he sees with the comforting philosophy he was taught.
Voltaire’s tale is quick, merciless and very funny. It makes fun of the learned, the powerful and the pious, and it asks, behind its laughter, what we should do in a world full of suffering. In thirty-one short chapters, four hours in all, this is one of the liveliest satires ever written, a perfect listen for a long afternoon.
Introduction
Voltaire (1694-1778) was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, one of the leading writers of the French Enlightenment. A prolific author of plays, histories, letters and philosophical essays, he was known for his wit and for his campaigns against intolerance. Candide, or Optimism, was published in 1759, and he never openly acknowledged it, since the book was controversial; the first edition claimed to be translated from the German of a Doctor Ralph.
The tale is a satire of the philosophical optimism associated with Leibniz, the idea that everything happens for the best. Voltaire was prompted in part by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which killed tens of thousands of people and shook confidence in such ideas. The story is a series of misfortunes, told at a gallop and with a deadpan humour, in which the hero meets one disaster after another. The book was banned in several places, but was widely read and has remained one of the best-known works of the eighteenth century.
The book’s closing advice, to tend one’s garden, has been interpreted in many ways, and it continues to prompt discussion. It is a rare example of a philosophical work that also reads as an adventure story.
This recording has thirty-one short chapters and runs for about four hours, read by LibriVox volunteers. The speed and economy of the text make it ideal for listening, and each chapter is brief enough for a short break. Listeners will find that Voltaire’s humour is still sharp more than two and a half centuries later.
Public domain
Voltaire died in 1778: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text