Candide and Fleurs du Mal - Essay Example

Candide and Fleurs du Mal: Human Fallibility Voltaire: Candide “Candide” starts off as a parable of innocence, the essence of childhood development, a description of cultural socialization. The adolescent, Candide, is reared in the provincial town of Westphalia, and grows up imbued by its mores. The castle is as much a state of mind as well as location (Williams, 1997). The castle, romanticized by Candide, is in reality an old ruin “languishing in a provincial German backwater, its feudal glories in the past, reduced to banal impoverishment” (Williams, 1997, p.34). There are, as Williams (1997) points out, some flea-bitten dogs for hunting hounds, stable lads for huntsmen, and the village priest for Grand Chaplain (1: 12-17). Doctor Pangloss (“le plus profound metaphysician d’Allemagne” (27: 85-88) and the Baron (one of the foremost ‘d’lempire’’(ibid.)) bartered for a mere 50,000 gold coins. Even the six crowned heads of Europe (Chapter 26) are dethroned and forced to beg for alms from the disinterested Candide. Life turns sour. Love turns sour. Cunegonde herself - perfect epitome of the moral of story – was originally a beautiful princess. The book’s ending describes her as “fearfully ugly”, extraordinarily so, in fact: “All weather-beaten, her eyes bloodshot, her breasts sunken, her cheeks lined, her arms red and chapped.” (Barber, 1960, p.5-6). Is there a message here in the implication that Cunegonde has become not just simply ugly but an anti-beauty? Candide’s romantic love dissipates when he finds himself face to face with an old toad princess. He is seized with horror and recoils. ‘Candide’ is not just the fall of youth from innocence. The entire story seethes with disharmony. The child, Candide, initially believes in an ordered universe that is run by respectable grownups. He soon realizes that credulity, superstition, and brutality dominate. There is the brutality and senselessness of the mass slaughter of the seven years war with superstition involved: The warring armies solicit and claim God’s blessings for their respective causes (3: 13-14). Individuals are punished for refusing to eat pork, the man from Bilbao is imprisoned for impinging on consanguinity laws, and Candide himself is lashed for have listened “avec un air d’approabtion” (6:10-13). Most tellingly, the Inquisition (represented by “les sages du pays”) prescribe the ceremonial roasting of a few people to prevent further earthquakes (chapter 5). And all of this is excused by man’s self-deception and rationalizations. From Pangloss onwards, humans seemingly refuses to face the reality of their existence. The slave of Suriman (Chapter 19) dismisses the banalities of his situation with a fatalistic acceptance, “c’est que”. Candide’s servant Cacambo question the term, “optimism”; explains Candide, “ it is the mania for insisting that all is well when it is not.” Candide’s famous refrain: “Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles” is trumpeted by the philosophers – allegedly the wisest of humans – represented here by Pangloss, who maintain: "Tout est bien.” (Chapter 5). But, exclaims Candide, Goodness of world is just an illusion! Pangloss – as his name suggests, just a mouth (Williams, 1997) - is philosopher ideal – “le plus profound metaphysician d’Allemagne” (27: 85-88). Yet he is detached from the sufferings of humanity, cold, inhumane, and verbose. To uphold his profession, he defensively rationalizes his own suffering, even when haggard, blind, and ravaged: “Tout est bien.. et tout est necessaire.” Piety and conventional religion seem to be a farce. The sober Dutch citizens threaten him with imprisonment, for requesting food, whilst the preacher who had just delivered a ‘long sermon’ on charity’ tipped sewage on his head for requesting alms. Even the hero of the book, Candide himself, against better intentions, employs a prostitute and later murders ("quand on est amoueux.. on ne se connait plus” (9:34-35), compelled to be irrational – so he claims – by love and jealousy. . And at the end when proffering love to Cunegonde, he does so halfheartedly (“Je suis honnete homme, est mon devoir est de l’aimer toujours.” (27:30-31), still dwelling on her ugliness. The human race, in short, seems to be a morass of hypocrisy and sham. Baudelaire: Les Fleurs du Mal “The Flowers of Evil” differs in its theme from “Candide” in that it is a study of hedonistic addiction, specifically a critique on Modern Man’s exhausting and exhaustless involvement with the world of sensation. A study of degeneracy at the expense of spirituality, Baudelaire’s poems are a parody of the human torn between two opposing forces and in the end mortified and dishonored. Dangling between heaven and hell, Baudelaire believed that there is no hope for humanity; that “even great men are stupid” and that “ignorance is increasing” (Preface, xi-xvii). Regarding the human condition, maintains Baudelaire: “Folly and error, avarice and vice Employ our souls and waste our bodies’ force As mangy beggars incubate their lice, We nourish our innocuous remorse” (To the Reader, p.3) And man’s end? “So he leads me, far from the sight of God Panting and broken by fatigue, To the middle of the plains of Boredom, Profaned and empty.” (Waldorf, 2006, p. 209, “Destitution”) The one who ‘leads’ man, explains Hyslop (1992), is the Demon – the external force, the source of man’s conflict (or the spirit that is attached to man from birth (Hyslop, 1992)). Man is a dopple-ganger, a split-personality, who battles terrible conflicts, and often loses. The ‘natural’ is always in some degree negative (for instance, “Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable” (quoted by Waldorf, 2006, p. xix), an implication of ‘Original Sin’, and representative of man’s fall from the innocence and contentment of youth. Compelled by his instincts, perhaps, man seems to be ceaselessly enamored with foolishness. According to Baudelaire, man engages himself in ennui (the existentialist’s or Thoreau’s “quiet desperation”), which naturally inclines to evil or may be subsumed by philosophy (Waldorf, 2006) or religion. Interestingly enough, whilst Voltaire in "Candide" parodies traditional religion, Baudelaire seems to uphold religion (or perhaps better still genuine spirituality) as a loophole or escape from degeneracy. Perhaps this is what he meant when he insisted (as he sometimes, though not always, did (Waldorf, 2006) that his book was a lesson on morals. Both books however bewail the folly of humankind, “Candide” focusing on man’s self-deception, cruelty, bestiality, and credulity to humanity in general, whilst “Les Fleurs du Mal” evidently addressing particular man and accentuating man’s folly vis-à-vis himself. Both books are also pessimistic in that “Candide” demolishes the alleged goodness of the human condition, whilst Baudelaire maintains that “the most perfect type of virile Beauty is Satan” (quoted by Waldorf, 2006, p. xxv). Surrendering to his desires, man is pulled into the whirlpool of emptiness and despair massacring his potential and innocence of youth for a wasted and ruinous existence. Sources: Barber, William H. Voltaire, Candide, London: Edward Arnold, 1960 Hyslop, Lois, B. Charles Baudelaire Revisited. New York: Twayne Pub., 1992 Merle, Denis. Voltaire: Candide. Paris: Ellipses, 1996. Williams, David. Voltaire, Candide, London: Grant & Cutler, 1997. Waldorf, Keith. Charles Baudelaire: The Flowers of Evil. Conneticult: Middletown, 2006. Read More