Also new to me: Voltaire actually kept in contact with Saint-Lambert over the years after Émilie's death. The two of them teamed up against Rousseau on one occasion involving a Rousseau protegé named Clement (like the big implosion of 1753, this started out as two middleweights, Clement vs Saint-Lambert, and escalated to two heavy weights, Rousseau vs Voltaire by the two heavy weights getting involved rushing to their respective mate's aide.)
While Orieux at some point just throws up his hands and admits the whole Fritz/Voltaire thing going on and on and on despite all the awful things they keep saying about each other is not explainable by anything but love, he is chiding Voltaire for his other royal correspondant, to wit, Catherine. Not so much because Catherine was an absolute monarch and Voltaire should have been over trying to flatter monarchs in his old age, no, because Catherine had killed her husband, and Voltaire was willing to praise her as an enlightened ruler to all of Europe despite this. (There's even a quote to the effect that nothing he's heard about the late Peter made him sound anywhere as interesting and efficient as "my Catherine" and hence he finds it hard to regret his demise.) Orieux then quotes several contemporaries being indignant about this as well - i.e. Catherine the husband killer - and registers his own dissapproval. Which made me go, huh. I must admit I'm somewhat with Voltaire there. I mean, yes, Peter didn't deserve two centuries of relentless bad press ensuing, but - I haven't heard anything that didn't make Catherine sound as both more interesting and a more efficient monarch. And frankly, in an age where royal wives, if they don't die in childbirth, are sometimes locked up for life, ignored at best, mistreated in body and mind at worst, and no one does anything to protest, I find it hard to qualify Catherine having Peter killed as the crime of the century.
"Sister Wilhelmine" was indeed a mode of adress Voltaire in the 1750s used occasionally, just as she uses "Brother Voltaire". #CanonVindication! (I was speculating in my story, based on her using the "Brother" address. I had read some of her letters to Voltaire, but from him to her only some sentences quoted in the Oster biography, not a direct mode of address. But yes indeed. Orieux is also with me in finding the ode just formulaic, not the immortal poetry Fritz demanded. As I said: Orieux makes no bones of his opinions on Voltaire's gigantic literary oeuvre, and has a clear preference of his prose over anything that's rhymed. )
From the preface, Orieux summing up Voltaire and why he devoted six years of his life to writing this biography:
This glittering creature managed his affairs in a continuity without weakness. With fifteen, young Arouet knew what he wanted to become, and he knew it with a deciveness and an ambition which are incredible. He had understood that he needed to become both a very rich man and a very great poet. He achieved both aims. HIs social success is achieved in tandem with his literary success. Even as a schoolboy he had concluded that talent without money meant only misery, and money without talent stupidity. He didn't feel himself meant for either variation.
Some say he wasn't "serious". Indeed. He did all not to appear so, but his importance is far greater. We tend to forget a bit that we all in the core of our being are marked by the encounter with Candide. Voltaire was the embodiment of a mentality which had doubtlessly existed in France before him, but which only by his pen has been given its definite form. When he gave to this mentality and this humanism, which had been already known to Molière and La Fontaine, Marot and Montaigne, the splendid form of "Micromegas" and the "Lettres", we became more French than we'd ever been before him. Even those of ous who turn against this revelation, think, write and speak in a way that shows the Voltairian imprint. Mallarmé has said: The world was made in order to end up in a book. Can't one also say that a Frenchman ever since the farces of the middle ages has only been made to end up in a beautiful narration named "Candide"? While Voltaire made his genius - and the French genius - sparkle in all of Europe, he didn't care about national propaganda. There isn't a trace of patriotic bragging in him. He's above such particularism. (...) For him and those who understood him, there has been a Europe: the Europe of the Enlightenment, the most civilised and most human of mother countries. HIs borders were those of the mind. In this society, which consisted of the elites of the various nations, he saw the triumph of civilisation: we can say it was a triumph of Voltaire.
(...) Voltaire is a man for fighting, the daily struggle for happiness. Not a mythical but an earthly happiness reachable by all. The point is to free man of tyranny and misery. Humans can only be happy if they use all the possibilities of a human being, and that means if they live in freedom and wealth. Fanaticism, stupidity, poverty result in ignorance, slavery and war. (...) The greatness of Voltaire manifests itself in his sense of human solidarity. This man without a God believed in human beings - without too many illusions. To him, man was the masterpiece of creation. Any attack on freedom and justice he found therefore unbearable. When Calas was hanged, drawn and quartered in Toulouse, you could here in Geneva the cry of Voltaire who felt the torture as well. Not Calas alone was concerned, but all humanity has been violated in him: Voltaire, you and I. And thus you and I are the ones Voltaire then defended. (...)
Voltaire is always fascinating: in the good sense... and in the bad sense. He had countless flaws, and some true vices, dancing, whirling, fluttering vices, vices like lightnings and vices like reptiles: an odd assembly. These flaws, we've left a respectful place in the story of his life. As his friend Bolingbroke once said of Marlborough: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his flaws." One can forget Voltaire's flaws, but only after knowing them first. We have uncovered them with the same dedication as his virtues, and will leave the reader the satisfaction to either forget them or, according to their taste, to enjoy them.
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Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - II
Date: 2020-04-04 06:45 pm (UTC)While Orieux at some point just throws up his hands and admits the whole Fritz/Voltaire thing going on and on and on despite all the awful things they keep saying about each other is not explainable by anything but love, he is chiding Voltaire for his other royal correspondant, to wit, Catherine. Not so much because Catherine was an absolute monarch and Voltaire should have been over trying to flatter monarchs in his old age, no, because Catherine had killed her husband, and Voltaire was willing to praise her as an enlightened ruler to all of Europe despite this. (There's even a quote to the effect that nothing he's heard about the late Peter made him sound anywhere as interesting and efficient as "my Catherine" and hence he finds it hard to regret his demise.) Orieux then quotes several contemporaries being indignant about this as well - i.e. Catherine the husband killer - and registers his own dissapproval. Which made me go, huh. I must admit I'm somewhat with Voltaire there. I mean, yes, Peter didn't deserve two centuries of relentless bad press ensuing, but - I haven't heard anything that didn't make Catherine sound as both more interesting and a more efficient monarch. And frankly, in an age where royal wives, if they don't die in childbirth, are sometimes locked up for life, ignored at best, mistreated in body and mind at worst, and no one does anything to protest, I find it hard to qualify Catherine having Peter killed as the crime of the century.
"Sister Wilhelmine" was indeed a mode of adress Voltaire in the 1750s used occasionally, just as she uses "Brother Voltaire". #CanonVindication! (I was speculating in my story, based on her using the "Brother" address. I had read some of her letters to Voltaire, but from him to her only some sentences quoted in the Oster biography, not a direct mode of address. But yes indeed. Orieux is also with me in finding the ode just formulaic, not the immortal poetry Fritz demanded. As I said: Orieux makes no bones of his opinions on Voltaire's gigantic literary oeuvre, and has a clear preference of his prose over anything that's rhymed. )
From the preface, Orieux summing up Voltaire and why he devoted six years of his life to writing this biography:
This glittering creature managed his affairs in a continuity without weakness. With fifteen, young Arouet knew what he wanted to become, and he knew it with a deciveness and an ambition which are incredible. He had understood that he needed to become both a very rich man and a very great poet. He achieved both aims. HIs social success is achieved in tandem with his literary success. Even as a schoolboy he had concluded that talent without money meant only misery, and money without talent stupidity. He didn't feel himself meant for either variation.
Some say he wasn't "serious". Indeed. He did all not to appear so, but his importance is far greater. We tend to forget a bit that we all in the core of our being are marked by the encounter with Candide. Voltaire was the embodiment of a mentality which had doubtlessly existed in France before him, but which only by his pen has been given its definite form. When he gave to this mentality and this humanism, which had been already known to Molière and La Fontaine, Marot and Montaigne, the splendid form of "Micromegas" and the "Lettres", we became more French than we'd ever been before him. Even those of ous who turn against this revelation, think, write and speak in a way that shows the Voltairian imprint. Mallarmé has said: The world was made in order to end up in a book. Can't one also say that a Frenchman ever since the farces of the middle ages has only been made to end up in a beautiful narration named "Candide"?
While Voltaire made his genius - and the French genius - sparkle in all of Europe, he didn't care about national propaganda. There isn't a trace of patriotic bragging in him. He's above such particularism. (...) For him and those who understood him, there has been a Europe: the Europe of the Enlightenment, the most civilised and most human of mother countries. HIs borders were those of the mind. In this society, which consisted of the elites of the various nations, he saw the triumph of civilisation: we can say it was a triumph of Voltaire.
(...) Voltaire is a man for fighting, the daily struggle for happiness. Not a mythical but an earthly happiness reachable by all. The point is to free man of tyranny and misery. Humans can only be happy if they use all the possibilities of a human being, and that means if they live in freedom and wealth. Fanaticism, stupidity, poverty result in ignorance, slavery and war. (...) The greatness of Voltaire manifests itself in his sense of human solidarity. This man without a God believed in human beings - without too many illusions. To him, man was the masterpiece of creation. Any attack on freedom and justice he found therefore unbearable. When Calas was hanged, drawn and quartered in Toulouse, you could here in Geneva the cry of Voltaire who felt the torture as well. Not Calas alone was concerned, but all humanity has been violated in him: Voltaire, you and I. And thus you and I are the ones Voltaire then defended. (...)
Voltaire is always fascinating: in the good sense... and in the bad sense. He had countless flaws, and some true vices, dancing, whirling, fluttering vices, vices like lightnings and vices like reptiles: an odd assembly. These flaws, we've left a respectful place in the story of his life. As his friend Bolingbroke once said of Marlborough: "He was such a great man that I have forgotten his flaws." One can forget Voltaire's flaws, but only after knowing them first. We have uncovered them with the same dedication as his virtues, and will leave the reader the satisfaction to either forget them or, according to their taste, to enjoy them.