Modern Man
The best assessment I’ve read of Candide is by Italo Calvino. It acknowledges the intellectual asceticism of the book’s
conclusion; and so confirms by own views about it, which I had begun to doubt
after reviewing some of the critical literature, discussed in previous posts.i Always we judge others by our own
judgements that we believe are categorical and just. To find someone to agree with is like finding a comfortable
sofa to sleep on undisturbed.
Zzzzzzzzzzzz….
He overstates his case, but the general point is sound: however narrow and limited our views at least by asserting them, at least by actuating ourselves by doing some small things, we will be on the right side in the fight for life. We need to unhappy in order to be happy! How true, that is.
And yet his article also suggests the reasons why many
writers find the book so positive: its fast rhythm, which is indeed
intoxicating, and its conclusion that appears to validate our modern scientific
and capitalist age. Although interestingly
Calvino believes that we moderns hold an animus against the novel’s most famous
phrase.
…’cultivate our garden’… is a
very reductive moral; one which ought to be understood in its intellectual
significance of being anti-metaphysical: you shouldn’t give yourself problems
other than those that you can resolve with your own direct practical
application. And in its social
significance: this is the first enunciation of work as the substance of all
worth. Nowadays the affirmation ‘il
faut cultiver notre jardin’ sounds to
our ears heavy with egotistical, bourgeois connotations: as inappropriate as
could be, given our present worries and anxieties. It is no accident that it is enunciated in the final page,
almost after the end of this book in which work appears only as a curse and in
which gardens are regularly devastated.
This too is a utopia, no less than the realm of the Incas: the voice of
reason in Candide is nothing but
utopian. But it is also no accident
that it is this sentence from the book that has become most famous, so much so
that it has become proverbial.
We must not forget the radical epistemological and ethical change which
the phrase signalled… man judged no longer by his relation to a transcendent
Good or Evil but in the little or much that he can actually achieve. And this is the source both of a work
ethic that is strictly ‘productive’ in the capitalist sense of the word, and of
a moral of practical, responsible and concrete commitment without which there
are no general problems which can be resolved. In short, man’s real choices in life
today stem from this book. (Why
Read the Classics?)
What is particularly interesting about this passage is that
something Calvino notes and takes for granted - Candide the petty capitalist -
other commentators do not discuss at all.
I assume it is because of his political position somewhere on the
Italian Left that he can see this obvious truth; although he then misinterprets
it, believing all his readers will share his valuation of the bourgeoisie;
inappropriately reading back into the novel a negative judgement about
money-making and smug complacency.
Not so Italo! You have been
led astray by your politics.
Politics can do strange things to our reasoning. Thus, after first recognising the
primitive bourgeois Calvino then denies him; arguing instead that Candide is
the prototype for the modern workingman
– “work as the substance of all worth” suggests the Marxian origin of this
idea. Calvino, it seems, must
justify why he likes the book, and it isn’t the thing to celebrate the middle
classes; forgetting for once that literature is an outcast on society’s
fringes; loved by neither political parties nor corporate SMTs.
The reductionism of its message is offset by its modernity,
and its glorification of labour, with those Marxist echoes of a working class
millenarianism, with its promise that
the Garden of Hesperides will be run by the workers. Even Calvino, it seems, assumes a happy ending, despite his
recognition of its “reductive moral”.
Candide saved by its
metaphysical connotations and because it is the source book of our modern
times.
Calvino’s analysis is suggestive. Candide’s middle class aspirations could be the reason why
so many critics think the book concludes on an affirmative note – it is a
validation of their own lives and capitalist worldview. While his conversion to British Empiricism
is considered a triumph of common sense (especially if we are English or
American), embodying the practical utility which is the essence of modern
life. Being bourgeois themselves
they naturally accept the conclusion as positive; ignoring the details of
Candide’s enormous loss and sacrifice – he has lost El Dorado and he has
decided to give up abstract thought.
Like the old Universal Church the Baron’s estate, they believe, is both
archaic and ridiculous.
The Baron von
Thunder-ten-tronckh is ‘one of the most powerful lords of Westphalia, for his
castle has a gate and windows (chapter 1). The relative sophistication of the baron’s home – Westphalia
is Voltaire’s model of perfect backwardness – is the result rather than the
cause of his greatness; but Voltaire’s language mischievously pretends the
reverse. (Michael Wood,
Introduction to Penguin edition of Candide)
And yet it was a paradise for those that lived there. It is that paradise that we should not
forget, no matter how absurd or poor it was in actual fact. Keeping this always in view will temper
our appreciation of the ending, so that without necessarily agreeing to Calvino’s
political evaluation we will see that Candide has fallen from his aristocratic
height to the lowly plains of the middling and working classes. It is a fall for him. Although
a benefit for mankind - he will enrich us with his productive labour.
Calvino is right to note that Candide’s new maxim is an
intellectual metaphor; although he is sharper than most in recognising that it
replaces one abstraction (metaphysics) with another – utopia. He then goes much further than I
thought possible... Even his
little garden and circumscribed life is not a guarantee of success – it could
be devastated by plague or war at any time. Nowhere in this book is there an ideal solution;
Candide’s final choice involves a mentally impoverished existence (me) that may
only give the illusion of security (Calvino). Prosperity and happiness are dreams that cannot be expected
to last for long. No practical
guide to life or any philosophical system can guarantee security or
happiness. Candide is in the hands
of an indifferent fate, which he can only do a little to influence – by working
his own land with his own hands; and by keeping a great distance between
himself and the centres of power, where success is even more unstable and
short-lived.
This is pessimism of the first order! Calvino has gone way beyond me! And yet by reading the last two hundred
years back into the book he can somehow redeem that conclusion - because the
kind of mindset that accepts hard work on a Turkish farm has produced our
contemporary society; an obvious example of sustained success; although a
little battered when he wrote the review; thus his comments about bourgeois
anxieties.
“High estate,’ said Pangloss, ‘is always dangerous, as
every philosopher knows, for Eglon, King of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud, and
Absalom was hanged by his hair and stabbed with three spears; King Nadab…
Voltaire is here more nuanced than Calvino, who is again
reading back into the book the subsequent history of capitalism, with its
enormous increase in speed of change and the concomitant rise in
instability. Voltaire is
pessimistic – the intellect can’t help us to earn our living –, but he also has
some faith in the security of practical labour. There is a way for Candide to reduce his travails: he can
grow things rather than waste time in arid talk; and he can remove himself far
away from the powerful; those capricious and dangerous beings who are a
constant threat to a little man’s health and contentment. Active and
inconspicuous you might just survive.
Candide suggests that we should
hide from the world of kings and state ministers. Sound advice, but a trifle dull and uninspiring. And very fatalistic, as the Dervish’s
own philosophy, that late influence on its hero, acknowledges.
The book’s style undercuts this pessimistic message, which
as Calvino notes is reminiscent of film comedy with its rapid editing (this guy
is sharp!). We are exhilarated when read it. Here is the positive message which nowhere appears
explicitly amongst the novel’s sentences.
It is our enjoyment transmuted through Voltaire’s literary brilliance
into that famous ending. Candide alone survives the author’s satire. Michael Wood suggests something similar
when discussing Roland Barthes criticisms of the book.
To cultivate the garden,
then, is not simply to mind one’s own business, a wiser, more sophisticated
version of the selfishness the book attacked at its outset. It is to decide not to seek answers to
questions that can have none; to remember that concrete ‘buts’ that lie in wait
for every grand abstraction.
Still, it is hard not to feel there a certain blandness in this
philosophy that refuses philosophy, a betrayal of Voltaire’s own best, angriest
moments… But the charge of
intellectual complacency retains its force, it seems to me, only as long a we
try to capture Voltaire’s thought, or more precisely, as long as we try to
separate his thought from the movement of his prose. Seeking to understand Voltaire, we forget what is like to
read him. At the level of the
words, what Barthes calls luck turns into what Calvino calls speed, and the
gaiety of the writing, far from diminishing the described horrors or providing
an argument for ignoring them actually enhances them. (Introduction to Penguin edition of Candide)
We mistake style for content. We read our own joy into a conclusion that is qualified with
pessimism, to say the least, and so give the book a positive message it does
not have. Voltaire’s irony lost in
our own good humour. We are so
happy when we finish this work!
The great Italian writer also has other things to say in his
little article.
Calvino suggests yet another definition of optimism; and so
adds to the ones Michael Wood lists in his introduction: the good life requires
that we be a little uncomfortable.
…if there was someone who by chance had nothing to
complain about and had every good thing that life can give, he would end up
like Signor Pococurante, the Venetian Senator, who turns up his nose at
everything, finding fault where he ought only to find reason for satisfaction
and admiration. The really
negative character in the book is the bored Pococurante; deep down Pangloss and
Martin, though they give hopeless, nonsensical replies to questions, fight
back against the torments and risks which are the stuff of life.
He overstates his case, but the general point is sound: however narrow and limited our views at least by asserting them, at least by actuating ourselves by doing some small things, we will be on the right side in the fight for life. We need to unhappy in order to be happy! How true, that is.
Do I detect an element of puzzlement, a hint of doubt, some
scepticism; do I see your head shake in ironic self-regard? Do I hear you say that I have changed
my mind, and followed all these other writers into their earthly paradise… “He’s given up his principles,
surrendered his views in a slight skirmish over the Sauvignon Blanc and the canapés.”
No. I was
removed from the room after a particularly lengthy and heated argument about a
passage of free indirect speech, during which some stray remarks were taken out
of context…
My opinions have not changed. I am still guided by my first impressions. The overt theme of this book is
bleak. The life of the mind cannot
save us from war, natural disasters and our own stupidities. Ideas are superfluous in such a
world. I maintain that we cannot swallow this conclusion in its entirety. First
we must peel it, then remove its core, then eat it carefully, always aware of
those stray pips…
What is strange is that so many academics do not fully
appreciate how bleak this message is, or if they do (Michael Wood) go on to
downplay it. Why? Because they believe such a conclusion
is impossible? Because they cannot
conceive that an intellectual could hold such a devastatingly negative view of
the intellect? It is difficult to
know. What is clear is that they
are trapped both by their talents and their profession into projecting a moral
onto a book which itself condemns. Candide, when you coolly consider him, is
little more than a disillusioned philistine.
How much we overlook when we read a novel from the promontory
of our own premises. It is like
standing on a headland and only looking out to sea; indifferent to the
countryside behind us. We need an
intelligent stranger to tap us on the shoulder; suggest that we turn around,
and look, “yes, look at the white cottage. It is there, right there, tucked up in the right hand corner
of what I admit is a beautiful scene,” with its whitewashed cobbles stained
with black hand prints (there is a coal hole round by the side); its windows
cracked and the curtains like knitted quilts… Curious now we look, stare even, and see an ugly woman
standing at the open doorway, her features squashed up and folded in like
geological strata. We go closer, and hear her
shouting out the most rank abuse… “You come out of your field, and you come in
here with your muddy boots, and your dirty trousers, and you sit down on my
clean chairs; and you demand tea and eat my freshly cooked biscuits, even
though they’re not for you. And
look at those stinking hands. Is
that horseshit I smell? You can laugh. That’s all you do. Working and eating, and not caring a
fig about me, or this house, or the hours I spend keeping it clean. And you keep doing it. Again and again you do it. You care! You never once think of me. Candide! Are
you listening! Wash those fucking
hands, I tell you!”
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