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Title: Candide, and Related Writings by Voltaire, David Wootton ISBN: 0-87220-546-0 Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co. Pub. Date: September, 2000 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $5.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Fine edition of Voltaire and invaluable contextual material
Comment: First off, this new edition of "Candide" has numerous virtues, not the least of which is the amazing erudition invested in the explanatory footnotes that run the length of Voltaire's text. Wootton puts his (and others') knowledge of this masterpiece to good use, and his clarifications are invaluable, helping both to situate Voltaire's thought in the context of his own life and culture, and to resurrect some of the more historically specific humor that has, sadly, been bled away by the last two and a half centuries. Why is it funny, for example, that Voltaire sends his naive protagonist first to the Bulgars? Wootton tells you.
Second, the wealth of contextual material is great for enlarging the reader's understanding of the intellectual climate that Voltaire is critiquing. The Leibniz summary chosen is a bit opaque (small bits of the "Theodicee" would have worked better towards explaining the basics of Leibniz, or at least Voltaire's merciless version of Leibniz), but the portions of Pope and the excerpts of Voltaire's correspondence are enlightening.
The translation is, by and large, very good. We lose a little humor (which always happens in translation), as when the baron's wife is said, due to her weight, to be "regarded as a person of substance" (2); Voltaire here says that, due to her weight, she "s'attirait par là une très grande considération [attracted great consideration]," a wee comical nod to Newtonian physics that must be seen as the first scientific pun of many to come.
This is minor, but another moment of the translation gives me great pause, and, judging from Wootton's impassioned introductory defense of his decision, it must have given him greater pause. Most translations of "Candide" have reliably rendered the famous final lines as "we must cultivate our garden," or something to that effect. Very few have dared omit the word "garden." Wootton delivers it as "we must work our land," and he defends his choice with a well-reasoned appeal to Voltaire's cultural context and correspondence, and claims further that the great symbolic appeal of the "Garden of Eden" image was largely behind the traditional rendering of the line as "we must cultivate our garden." The problem with his defense is not just that Voltaire's line bluntly (and literally) reads "il faut cultiver notre jardin [we must cultivate our garden]," but that the Garden of Eden resonance of which Wootton is so wary is not imported by the reader but rather quite present in "Candide," and even in Wootton's translation of "Candide." When, on page 3 of this translation, Candide is "driven out of the Garden of Eden," he begins a motion that will eventually cycle him back, older and wiser, to a different garden, one drained of religious specificity but not resonance. By tampering with Voltaire's last line, Wootton's translation robs the narrative of its aggressive insistence on this return.
This is fairly nit-picky stuff, though, and any reader can keep the translation difficulties squarely in mind, since Wootton makes--to his credit--no attempt to conceal them. So what you have, in the end, then, is a largely faithful and superbly readable rendition of a work that does not fail, to this day, to make us think, laugh, and feel ashamed. Unpalatable social insitutions like slavery fall under Voltaire's sharp attack, as does the particular cruelty of which organized religion has shown itself capable. The guileless protagonist is back in vogue (see the tributes to Candide in Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" and Groom's "Forrest Gump"), as candid as ever. For [the price], that's a lot of bang for your buck.
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Title: The Grand Inquisitor: With Related Chapters from the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Charles B. Guignon, Constance Garnett, Fyodor M. Dostoevsky ISBN: 0872201937 Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: October, 1993 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: The Misanthrope and Other Plays (Penguin Classics) by Moliere, John Wood, David Coward ISBN: 014044730X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 05 September, 2000 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli ISBN: 0553212788 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1984 List Price(USD): $4.50 |
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Title: The Stranger by ALBERT CAMUS ISBN: 0679720200 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Martin Edward Malia ISBN: 0451527100 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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