Brief Biography
Voltaire (1694 – 1778),
originally known as François-Marie Arouet, was born to an upper middle class
family, in Paris, France. Orphaned at an early age, he was cared for by his
free-thinking godfather.
He attended the Collége
Louis-le-Grand, a Jesuit secondary school in Paris, where he received a
thorough education in the classics.
When his Letters on the English
Nation (1733) appeared, the book angered the French church and government,
forcing Voltaire to flee to Lorraine. He remained there for the next 15 years
with his mistress, Emile de Breteuil, at the Château de Cirey, visiting Paris
occasionally. By 1778, he enjoyed widespread fame as a literary genius, and he
returned to Paris a hero.
Major Works
Voltaire wrote poetry, plays,
historical works, and philosophical works.
The earliest of Voltaire’s
best-known plays is the tragedy Oedipus, which was first performed in
1718. Other dramatic tragedies followed, including Mariamne (1724), Zaïre
(1732), Mahomet (1736), and Nanine(1739).
Voltaire's body of writing also
includes the notable historical works The Age of Louis XIV (1751), and Essay
on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). This latter work traced
the progression of world civilization by focusing on social history and the
arts.
Voltaire's popular philosophic works
took the form of the short stories Micromégas (1752) and Plato’s
Dream (1756), along with his famed satirical novella Candide (1759).
In 1764, he published another of his most important philosophical works, Dictionnaire
philosophique
An ailing Voltaire bid farewell to
his public at a production of his play Irene: “I die adoring God, loving
my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.”
Two months later he died in his
sleep on May 30, 1778, in Paris, France.
About Zadig or Destiny
This story is a philosophical, romantic satire,
attacking religious mania, the foibles of people in general, the burdens of
being virtuous and happiness. Voltaire uses ancient Babylon as his setting,
which provides a great contrast to France of the Enlightenment; Babylonians though
scientifically and technologically advanced, had a closed culture ruled by an
absolute monarch.
In brief the story chronicles the adventures of Zadig,
a benevolent and charismatic figure who reveres the good and the beautiful.
Despite incidental amorous detours, Zadig’s love for Queen Astarte glows a
paragon of sublime fidelity to woman.
To depict the astuteness and depth of intelligence of
the eponymous protagonist, Voltaire contrives passages of logical deduction
never found in earlier literature. In one instance, in accounting for the
Queen’s lost dog, though he had never seen it, Zadig says:
“She’s a very small
spaniel,” added Zadig. “She has recently had a litter, and she limps with her left front paw, and she has very long
ears.”
Condemned for lying, in his defense he states:
“I was out walking near the little wood where I met
the venerable eunuch and the most illustrious Master of the Hunt. Seeing some animal
tracks in the sand, and I could easily tell that they were those of a small
dog. Long, shallow grooves drawn across tiny heaps of sand between the paw-marks told me that it was a bitch whose teats were
hanging down, which meant that she had had had a litter a few days previously. Other traces going in a different direction, and
apparently made by something brushing constantly over the surface of the sand beside
the front paws, told me that she
had very long ears. And as I noticed that the sand was always less indented by one paw than by the
other three, I realized that the
bitch belonging to our most august Queen had, if I may dare say so, a slight
limp.”
Edgar Allan Poe may have been inspired by
Voltaire’s Zadig when he created C.
Auguste Dupin in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which Poe called a tale of ratiocination and which
established the modern detective fiction genre. Arthur Conan Doyle was perhaps
also influenced by Zadig. And not without reason, many critics and scholars
identify Zadig as the first systematic
detective and original source of the genre.
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