Micromegas and Other Short Fictions (Penguin ed.) Page 3

  Structurally, the tale quickly resolves itself into a series of dialogues on topics that deeply interested Voltaire in these final years. The problem of evil has not disappeared from his consciousness, nor will it ever. But here it is simply the stuff of which enlightened men talk around a dinner-table (Ch. V), with the paradoxical result that the very discussion brings them pleasure. Scenes at table are an important element of the narrative, as so often in Voltaire’s contes. Such conversations testify to the capacity of true philosophes for deriving enjoyment from civilized and tolerant discourse that can take in every subject under the sun – unlike the ‘parish curates’, who are provincial enough to assume that the rest of the universe is just like Exchange Alley in London.

  The debate on fatality opens out on to an appreciation of the marvellous way everything in Nature is composed. Chesterfield’s surgeon Sidrac, a man of wisdom, argues that Nature is a misnomer; all things in the world have been skilfully created. But we are all, of necessity, what we are. Indeed, even God is bound by the laws of His nature. This provides a certain reassurance on the cosmic level; but it also means that we have to lead our lives in utter ignorance about our own nature, our constitution, our place in the world. Access to the great metaphysical truths is forever denied us. Wherever Sidrac looks, he finds only ‘obscurity, contradiction, impossibility, ridiculousness, delusions, extravagance, chimera, absurdity, idiocy, charlatanism’ (p. 99). It is not a consoling vision. Human beings are slaves to their intestines: even the most gallant of men, the most coquettish of women (Ch. VII). Henri III became constipated when a north-east wind was blowing, and woe betide anyone, like the duc de Guise, who forgot it. The golden rule is moderation in food and drink; ‘and let the rest go its ways’ (p. 109).

  Tahiti is interwoven as a theme into this context. Both Cook and Bougainville had paid visits there in the 1760s, and they brought back tales of a different moral code, especially in sexual relations, from that followed by European Christians. Poor Dr Goodman wishes he could practise free love on the altar of sacrifice with Miss Fidler, the way the Tahitians do. In the end he wins her, though in a more furtive manner: as an adulterous man of the cloth. But this triumph is no help at all to his vocation, and the story concludes on a derisive resignation to universal fatality. Some people are just plain unlucky, as when Goodman loses his patron just when he needed him; and some are lucky, as when the same Goodman obtains his ecclesiastical living through a brutal exchange of money against married love. So goes the world. The best advice to Goodman, as to all mankind, is: get your bowels in order.

  MÉLANGES

  Account of the Jesuit Berthier

  This is generally considered to be the best of all Voltaire’s facéties (literally, ‘witticisms’: a term he applied to brief texts of a polemical nature). In it he exacts his meed of vengeance for the campaign waged by the Jesuits against the Encyclopédie, which had resulted in the suspension of the great Dictionary in 1759. In ‘Account of the Jesuit Berthier’, written as an immediate riposte to that suspension and published that year, the Jesuit menace is conjured by pure ridicule. Berthier, out delivering his Journal de Trévoux, succumbs to the noxious airs that this Jesuit periodical emits. Only the Encyclopédie might act as an antidote, but it turns out that not even that philosophe work can now overturn the fatal effects. Berthier is unluckily handed over to his deadly enemies the Jansenists and is only just saved in the nick of time from dying unconfessed. Thereby Voltaire delights in pouring scorn on both sects through their feuding with each other.

  Berthier, a master of casuistry as befits a Jesuit, repeatedly takes refuge in hair-splitting ‘distinctions’ of nugatory value. While his ‘love’ of God is unconditional, his ‘love’ of his neighbour is at best a grudging concession. In the end Berthier gains absolution, but only after he has admitted to a fundamental truth: that his Journal is a useless bore. This act of repentance wins him a limited sentence in Purgatory (333,333 years, 3 months and 3 days: Voltaire manifestly delights in exploiting so ridiculously the sacred number three), and, too, because he finally admits to the sin of pride. Father Garassise, to whom he appears in a vision, learns that the Journal is harmful as well as absurd and duly renounces it. Game, set and match: the Jesuits go down to defeat through mockery.

  Voltaire probably got the idea from Swift, who had in the Bickerstaff Papers turned the tables on one John Partridge, an almanach-maker who enjoyed predicting other people’s deaths, by foretelling the latter’s demise ‘upon the 29th of March [1708] next’.15 The philosophe begins with the same sonorous use of the date of Berthier’s death. In the event, the latter was to outlive Voltaire, but the fictional death effectively despatched him as a figure of authority. This device is embellished by telling details. We know that the yawning, occasioned at first by the pure boredom emanating from the Journal de Trévoux, has turned fatal when Berthier’s three writing fingers can no longer clutch a pen. This synecdochic device reduces Berthier to nothing more than a writing hack.

  Berthier’s penance in Purgatory is exquisite torture, mending Jansenist nuns’ smocks and reading aloud from Pascal’s hateful polemic against the Jesuits, the Lettres provinciales, as though it were a sacred text. As for the reverend Jesuit Fathers, Voltaire reduces them in status to mere ‘brothers’. There is in this ‘Account of the Jesuit Berthier’ a verve of satirical invention that contrasts strongly with the brooding nature of some of the contes, though it is also reminiscent of Voltaire’s satire of the Jesuits in ‘Candide’. The fantastical embroidery of reality demolishes the egregious Berthier; the prestigious editor of the Journal de Trévoux is transformed into a ludicrous puppet.

  Dialogue between a Savage and a Graduate

  These two dialogues (published, along with the ‘Dialogue between Ariste and Acrotal’, in 1761) differ in tone. In the first Voltaire explodes the primitivist theories of Rousseau (who is never mentioned or even referred to). The name ‘Savage’ is misleading; he is just as civilized as a European, and much more so than such pseudo-intellectuals as the Graduate, who is forever asking metaphysical questions about mankind to which there can be no answer. But the Graduate does not give up easily; he invites the Savage to dinner.

  This turns out to be an unhappy occasion for the latter. Made unwell by the food he has to eat, he is also made to listen to a lecture on the human soul and the external world. A farrago of self-contradictory nonsense about the pineal gland is followed by an equally absurd claim that this is the best of all possible worlds, despite the millions that have been massacred in wars or died from countless maladies, for these tribulations serve only to bring out the best in mankind. After Rousseau, it is now the turn of Descartes and Leibniz to be pilloried. The dinner is no more than a ‘dialogue of the deaf’ with overtones of Molière and is abruptly terminated by the Savage when he comes to see that further conversation is useless. In brief space Voltaire covers a wide range of philosophical topics: the human condition, society, law. Throughout all this the Savage unfailingly talks good sense, while his interlocutor as consistently spouts nonsense.

  Dialogue between Ariste and Acrotal

  If the Graduate was absurd, Acrotal (etymologically ‘the high-placed’) is downright pernicious. He condemns all reasoning people as a danger to the state, since they encourage others to think and to judge independently of authority. Ariste’s defence of philosophes as peaceable individuals cuts no ice with Acrotal, who sees the spread of philosophy as a straightforward struggle for power. Whereas the doctrinaires of old enjoyed unchallenged supremacy, they are now mocked by the new generation of intellectuals. The key issue here is the appearance of the Encyclopédie and the right it claimed to promote independent enquiry. Voltaire captures the odiousness of an attitude that would unhesitatingly drown a Bayle, or burn a Condillac for disseminating Locke’s opinions. For his part Ariste, as befits a true philosophe, urges an end to disputation and a concentration upon morality through its essential elements of tolerance and pity.

  The Educ
ation of Daughters

  Voltaire does not often dwell on female education. But here he reveals a concern for the independence of young women in their own right. Sophronie has been fortunate in her mother, who did not follow the conventional path of giving her a convent education which teaches girls absolutely nothing about the outside world. Instead she has treated her daughter as a thinking person. This brief piece (probably written in 1761: it appeared in 1765) is a prefiguration of Laclos’s De l’éducation des femmes (1783), as too of his novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) which graphically shows the tragic consequences of a convent upbringing for the ingenuous Cécile, who unlike Sophronie has the misfortune to be the daughter of a totally conformist and stupid mother.

  Wives, Submit Yourselves to Your Husbands

  We have here a further confirmation of Voltaire’s sympathy for women’s rights. It fits in nicely, of course, with his detestation of St Paul, and it gives him a marvellous opportunity to point out an area where Islam is more enlightened than Christianity. But Voltaire’s attitude goes deeper than that. Men are not accorded superiority in any field. It is even likely that their proclaimed authority derives only from usurpation of rights through brute force. Besides, it is women who suffer the pains and miseries of childbirth and menstruation. As for male sexuality, the experienced Maréchale de Grancey dismisses it as ‘of little account’ (p. 138). The sexes are equal and interdependent. The Maréchale is the best sort of eighteenth-century woman. But even she was caught up until an advanced age with frivolous entertainments; such is the situation of even the well-placed female in society. Her education in no way had prepared her to be acquainted with great literature. She has had to discover it for herself.

  First published in 1765, this piece reflects Voltaire’s admiration for Catherine the Great, who had ascended the Russian throne in 1762.

  Dialogue between the Cock and the Hen

  Voltaire here shows, too, a concern for animals’ rights (this work appeared in the same 1765 collection as ‘Wives, Submit Yourselves to Your Husbands’). Here is a touching account of two peaceable farmyard victims, doomed to torture and a cruel death, in order to satisfy human self-indulgence. It allows Voltaire to attack the ‘madman they call Descartes’, whose thesis that animals are mere machines devoid of thought is cruel as well as absurd, because it provides an excuse for such barbaric acts. In contrast to gluttonous Christians, the author evokes the image of a nobler, vegetarian civilization in India, which followed the precepts of two ‘great philosophers of antiquity’, Pythagoras and Porphyry (virtuous pagans, who had no need of Christian doctrines to instruct them in morality).

  But these animals also serve as an allegory of mankind. Human beings too are abused for others’ pleasure: the castration of young boys, or worse yet, the ‘roasting’ of those who hold the wrong opinions (one is reminded of the auto-da-fé in ‘Candide’ organized by the Portuguese Inquisition). Cannibalism also exists. In brief, enlightened philosophers are the exception amongst the murderously brutal human race.

  One further layer can be seen in this short dialogue. The fate of the condemned fowls conjures up a picture of the general human condition, in which a callous God incomprehensibly inflicts suffering and death. This apprehension of an indifferently cruel deity who punishes us for reasons beyond our understanding is a leitmotif running through Voltaire’s work, and suggested here with particular starkness.

  Conversation between Lucian, Erasmus and Rabelais

  Although this is by no means the last of Voltaire’s Mélanges (it was published in 1766), one may suitably conclude with this dialogue, since in it the author displays his recipe for handling dangerous material. The contemporary age is just slightly better than the times of Erasmus and Rabelais, though far inferior to second-century AD Greece when Lucian was alive. Erasmus, and even more Rabelais, showed the way of enlightenment; but unlike Lucian they had to present it covertly. By playing the fool and stooping to vulgarity, Rabelais conveyed a satirical view of the fanaticism around him to those readers intellectually equipped to understand. But alas! It is still not possible to reveal the truth to the public at large. So one must be resigned to putting at least one’s friends on the right path. In the process of making these points, Voltaire enjoys attributing to the dead, who are beyond the reach of persecution, his contempt for monks and priests and the whole Catholic hierarchy. The legitimate claims of the free mind can be maintained through the medium of laughter. Notwithstanding, the millennium of total enlightenment is not yet in sight.

  Haydn Mason

  NOTES

  1. Roger Pearson, The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire’s Contes philosophiques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

  2. To the best of my knowledge, Sylvain Menant was the first to break with this narrow view in his edition: Contes en vers et en prose, 2 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1992–3).

  3. René Pomeau, La Religion de Voltaire, rev. edn. (Paris: Nizet, 1969), p. 471.

  4. Contes en vers et en prose, ed. Menant, vol. ii, p. 385.

  5. Pomeau, Religion de Voltaire, p. 309.

  6. S. S. B. Taylor, ‘Voltaire’s Humour’ (Voltaire and the English), Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 179 (1979), pp. 101 – 16, remains the most complete short account of Voltaire’s comic devices.

  7. For a full justification of this claim, see Contes en vers et en prose, ed. Menant, vol. i, pp. 57ff.

  8. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (London: Faber & Faber, 1956), p. 89.

  9. Lucien Febvre, Le Probléme de l’incroyance au XVI’ siècle, rev. edn. (Paris, 1962), p. 209.

  10. Voltaire met Congreve while in England, and admired his comedies; see Lettres philosophiques, ed. Gustave Lanson, rev. André M. Rousseau, 2 vols. (Paris: Didier, 1964), vol. ii, pp. 108–9.

  11. See Questions sur l’ Encyclopédie, in Œuvres complètes, ed. L. Moland (Paris: Garnier, 1877–85), vol. xviii, p. 256. This remark had appeared in a 1742 essay on ‘Contradictions’.

  12. René Pomeau, D’Arouet à Voltaire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985), p. 233.

  13. A masterly account of the genesis of this story is provided by Frédéric Deloffre and Jacqueline Hellegouarc’h, in Voltaire: Romans et contes, ed. Deloffre and Jacques Van den Heuvel (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), pp. 894–925.

  14. Ahmad Gunny, Voltaire and English Literature, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 177 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1979), pp. 264–9.

  15. Jonathan Swift, Bickerstaff Papers, ed. H. Davis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 145. Voltaire refers to the hoax in two letters: D4815, 5008 (Correspondence, ed. Theodore Besterman, Oxford etc.: Voltaire Foundation, 1968–77).

  CHRONOLOGY OF VOLTAIRE’S

  LIFE AND TIMES

  1694

  Born (probably 20 Feb., at Chatenay, near Paris) François-Marie Arouet, son of a wealthy notary.

  1704–11

  Educated at the prestigious Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand, Paris.

  1714–16

  Active social life in Paris and at various chateaux, including that of the duchesse du Maine at Sceaux. ‘Cuckoldage’, ‘The One-eyed Porter’ and ‘Cosi-Sancta’ all date from this period.

  1715

  Louis XIV dies; country is governed by the Regent, Philippe duc d’Orléans.

  1717–18

  Imprisoned in Bastille for 11 months, for scurrilous writings against the Regent.

  1718

  Adopts name of Voltaire.

  1723

  Louis XV crowned King.

  1726–8

  Stay in England, after being obliged to leave Paris following a quarrel with the high-born chevalier de Rohan. Presented at Court of St James’s. Meets Pope, Congreve, etc. Corresponds with Swift, and reads admiringly latter’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Discovers Newton’s works.

  1733

  Letters concerning the English Nation (English version of the Lettres philosophiques) published in London.

  1734

&nbs
p; Lettres philosophiques published in France; condemned by the Paris Parlement and publicly burned. A warrant is issued for Voltaire’s arrest, but he escapes imprisonment by settling at Cirey in Champagne, home of Mme du Châtelet, who had become his mistress.

  1738

  Sends Frederick of Prussia the ‘Voyage du baron de Gangan’ (now lost, but possibly a first working of ‘Micromégas’). Éléments de Newton (1st edn.) published.

  1740

  Frederick of Prussia becomes Frederick II.

  1745

  Voltaire in favour at Louis XV’s court at Versailles; appointed Royal Historiographer.

  1747

  ‘Zadig’, first of Voltaire’s contes to appear.

  1749

  Probable composition of ‘The World As It Is’. Mme du Châtelet dies.

  1750

  Voltaire goes to Frederick II’s court at Potsdam. ‘Memnon’ and ‘Letter from a Turk’ appear.

  1751

  Publication of vol. I of the Encyclopédie. Voltaire will contribute several articles to the early volumes.

  1752

  ‘Micromégas’ appears.

  1753

  Voltaire leaves Potsdam after falling out with Frederick. His return to Paris is blocked by Louis XV. A period of wandering ensues.

  1755

  Settles at Les Délices, on the outskirts of Geneva. Lisbon earthquake (1 Nov.). Voltaire writes his Poem on the disaster in a matter of days.