Novel · A way to begin
Candide
Voltaire · 1759
Opening lines
Il y avait en Vestphalie, dans le château de M. le baron de Thunder-ten-tronckh, un jeune garçon à qui la nature avait donné les moeurs les plus douces.
There was in Westphalia, in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, a young boy to whom nature had given the gentlest manners.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Candide grows up in Westphalia, at the castle of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, where the tutor Pangloss teaches that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Caught kissing Cunégonde, the baron's daughter, he is driven out of the castle, forcibly enlisted among the Bulgars and thrown into the war; he goes on to Holland, then arrives in Lisbon on the day of the earthquake, before witnessing an auto-da-fé of the Inquisition.
Context
The tale appeared anonymously in January 1759 from the Cramer brothers, in Geneva, presented as a translation from the German of Doctor Ralph, and was published at the same time in several European cities to foil censorship. It was immediately condemned in Geneva and in Paris, which did not prevent numerous editions in the very first year. It responds to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and to the Seven Years' War, which had shaken the optimism inherited from Leibniz.
Who it is for
Thirty very short chapters, at the pace of a farce, which can be read in one sitting and without knowing anything about Leibniz.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success despite the bans, it has become one of the most widely read and most frequently reissued works in the French language.