Candide or Optimism - (Mr. P's reading Journal)

Mr. Pessimistic

This is not an official selection, but I thought I would start a thread and post my thoughts as I read. I have only read the introduction so far, buy even that has me interested in this book. It seems right up my alley!

Anyone should feel free to join in with me by reading along or just commenting on my comments. I should start the actual text shortly.

Mr. P.

MadArchitect · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:10 pm Post subject:

I have a lot of stuff on my plate at the moment, but I'll try to re-read the book and respond to some of your thoughts. Incidentally, what edition do you have? If it's different from mine, it'll be interesting to see how the translations differ.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:33 pm Post subject:

MadArchitect · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:36 pm Post subject:

Oh yeah. I like that edition. It's a recent release, and I bought my copy before it came out, so seeing it on the bookshelf gave me just a touch of buyer's remorse. But the Norton edition I have also contains a batch of critical essays that are pretty useful. If any of them seem relevant to comments you make, I'll try to paraphrase or draw some quotations from them.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:19 pm Post subject:

An interesting thing about the character Candide...he is the vehicle for Voltair to speak out against the idea of Optimism, as espoused by Leibniz, but throughout all his horrible ordeals, Candide always seem to exit with a bright outlook. So despite his progress towards abandoning the doctrine his tutor Pangloss has instilled in him, he seems to yet retain a touch of optimism. He does this by holding on to his hopes and dreams of being with his lady Cunegonde.

In the intro, we are reminded that the Optimism under scrutiny in the book is not the optimism with which we are familiar with today, but something different. As far as I can tell, the two are related and I do not see why we would have to distinguish. The tale works for me even with my contemporary idea of optimism.

Mr. P.

irishrose · Freshman Joined: 22 Sep 2007 Posts: 215 Gender:

OMG, have you gotten to the end?…I don’t want to spoil anything. This is such a perfect story for you Mr. P.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:24 pm Post subject:

The naivete of many of these characters is mind numbing...but I assume that is the intention of Voltaire in making his targets so easy to despise. It neatly sums up the cloud that many people live under...where so long as everything is obscured from our immediate concerns, and all is well within our own little spheres, we think all is well everywhere.

I see this in America ( and I guess western civ in general) today. The consumerism of our society keeps us happy and within a shell of optimism, whereas just outside the wall of fog is a world we are quickly becoming out of tune with.

Mr. P.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:44 pm Post subject:

irishrose · Freshman Joined: 22 Sep 2007 Posts: 215 Gender:

I had skimmed Candide as a review when it was mentioned on this forum earlier. But if you want to discuss it, Mr. P., I’d be willing to read it again more thoroughly. Let me know when you’re nearing the end and I’ll pick it up again, if you’re interested.

BTW, has anything really shocked you yet? I was rather young when I read Candide and some of it was very shocking to me.

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:04 pm Post subject:


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