Goethe's Faust

Notes on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Intro: The European Romanticism of Goethe and His Contemporaries

Neoclassical and Enlightenment thinkers tended to emphasize the orderly collective, the reason-based and structured community, with "the passions" yoked as instruments in the service of reason.  (See Plato's Phaedrus for its depiction of the fiery steeds of good and bad passion, both of which need to be controlled by Reason, which alone guides us towards the Good and the True.)

Romantics emphasize the potential of the individual – some of their favorite notions are imagination, genius, particularity, passion – that is, the individual in all his or her eccentricity and emotional intensity is often set forth as the universal.  William Blake is the strongest advocate for that kind of striving towards the universal not as a neoclassical abstraction but instead as something inextricable from what embodies it.  "One thought fills immensity," he says, and how about his opening to "Auguries of Innocence"? 

To see a world in a grain of sand, 

And a heaven in a wild flower, 

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 

And eternity in an hour. 

Walt Whitman sings a "Song of Myself" that turns out to be a song about everybody else at the same time.  But all this is common to Romantic thought.  It is intuition, emotion, imagination, and in some versions (Wordsworth and Rousseau, for example) love of natural beauty and process, that grounds our hopes for progress, transformation, and a more beneficial and free social order.

Neoclassical and Enlightened art sometimes amounts to a Horatian uplift or affirmation campaign based on "imitation" (mimesis), with the aim being to give you what you have already been led to think, only in a more elegant, memorable form: "whatever is, is right," as Alexander Pope says in his "Essay on Man."  The neoclassical artist chooses to represent and ornament a good, rational order as the ideal, and then tries to make us fall in love with it.  This need not involve lying about the way things really are at present, but in any case it is optimistic.

Romantic art can be isolated, brooding and withdrawn (examples would be Byron's Manfred, or Shelley's poet-nightingale singing to soothe itself), but often it is confrontational, expressive, ambitious.  Both expressive theory and mimetic theory tend to advocate an ethics and an agenda, but the ethics and agenda are very different.  Romantic art wants to change you, shake you up; Romantic lyric and music want to turn your head, refocus your attention, start the social and perceptual revolution with you.  Neoclassical satire, by contrast, may be wonderfully confrontational, but in a piece like Candide, Voltaire wants to tear down your delusions and propose rational, particular "fixes" or offer limited, sage advice; that is because Enlightened thinkers deal with society and man as a kind of machine or edifice, while the Romantics conceptualize society as a living, changing organism, one moving pretty quickly towards liberation and self-expression.  Who knows where the changing times and forms will take us, or even whether such transformation will end?

In a broader context beyond art, this organic/emotional versus mechanical/rational contrast profoundly affects European politics from the C18 onward.  The American Founders, men of the Enlightenment, drew up contracts of sorts, documents enumerating grievances and setting forth rational, discrete fixes and constraints.  That's where we get the notion that there ought to be limits on what government can do to us or make us do to others.  The French Revolution might have begun that way, but it turned into something much more organic, expressive, dynamic, violent, and transformational.  France was never the same after the Revolution of 1789: it led to a near-total alteration of society and politics.  I think our Romantic moment or baptism of fire came with the Civil War – Lincoln's Gettysburg Address reads like it was written by an expressive poet; he speaks of the birth and death of nations, and of souls struggling to break free.  But it's fair to say that America didn't come into its own until the First World War, when our power became manifest as we helped to settle a great European struggle.

Romantic art is not only ambitious, it is at the same time intensively self-reflective, self-questioning and philosophical – it turns on its own central concepts and submits them to the fires of introspection and critique.  It's true that the Enlightenment fostered the spirit of critique, most notably in the formulation of Kant's injunction sapere aude, dare to know.  But Romanticism does this with unparalleled feeling and intensity.  So ideas such as intuition, imagination, revolution, social and poetic/linguistic organicism, etc. are by no means left unquestioned.  Emotion or passion is construed as the ground of human universality, yet who has more closely looked into the risks of such deep passion, the possibility that it may take a tailspin towards mere fantasy, irrationalism, self-delusion, and despair?  Who noticed and reflected most darkly on the potential that imagination has not only to renew the world but also to trap us with its own productions and isolate us from humane engagement with things and people as they are?  Who more strongly emphasized that glorifying "the individual" at the expense of the community might well lead nowhere but to narcissism, solipsism, and incomprehensibility?  Or that it might in fact worsen the primal eldest curse, alienation, which, after all, Romantic poets and other artists tend to take as the absolute precondition of authentic humanity?  Count Manfred on the Alps is grand, but not a happy man.  Besides, the Romantics themselves weren't generally so superior and removed: Lord Byron died of a fever in 1824 helping the Greeks organize the fight for their independence from the Ottoman Empire (1821-30).  Not exactly an alienated recluse, was Byron – he was more like a rock star with a scandalous personal life and a principled politics.

With this mention of "passionate self-critique," we should move to Goethe, who was both an early proponent of emotionalist art or "Sturm [stormy passion] und Drang [impulse or stress]" (Werther) and a critic of that impulse when, along with Friedrich von Schiller and others, he moved towards what came to be known as "Weimar Classicism" (Weimarer Klassik) from the 1770's through the first decades of the C19.  To be sought were balance and perspective in and through art and artistic education.  The aim was to promote human integrity, wholeness, clarity well-roundedness – to synthesize the best of the Romantic and the Enlightened outlooks.  Read Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man -- I recommend this book as a meditation on the difficult but ultimately promising relationship between aesthetics, society and political change.  Anyhow, in Goethe we see not only the propensity for self-criticism but also a strong dose of wit and humor in doing so – he's quite the intellectual's poet.  In truth, Goethe's own erudition probably rivaled that of Doctor Faust, since there's just about no branch of learning in which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe didn't dabble in a long life that stretched from 1749-1832.  He was a true polymath – artist, scientist, philosopher, you name it.

What's the Point?

A good question to ask is, "what is Goethe apparently trying to accomplish with this respinning of the old story in which a learned doctor is condemned for seeking forbidden knowledge at the expense of his humanity?"

Well, Goethe turns the usual moral fable neatly on its head: our incompleteness is our greatness; that's the new Romantic paradigm.  But the lesson and path are more complicated than that.  Goethe is mature enough to act as historian and philosopher to the movement with which he is associated, European Romanticism.  Faust's pursuit of extreme experience is by no means purely admirable: in fact, it begins with a species of utter boredom and a self-pitying kind of irony: "Was it for this empty, high knowledge that I've spent so much of my life?"  In the end, Faust isn't condemned in Part 2 as we expected he would be.  His movement away from narcissism and towards compassionate intersubjectivity is enough to earn God's favor.  But the narcissism is there, and it's acknowledged rather than papered over.

Text Notes

The Argument (103-05)

103-05.  The Wager or Argument between Mephistopheles and God concerns the prospects and potential of mankind.  Mephistopheles is sardonic about both, professing to feel pity for human beings.  God's trust in Faust is rather like his trust in Job -- except that he sees Faust not so much as "an upright and a perfect man" but instead in terms of the romantic striver: "While still man strives, still he must err" (104; "Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt").  Men tend to slacken their efforts, ponders God, so the Devil is actually useful as a spur.

Part I, Night (105-15)

105-15.  Fearless Faust is sick of traditional learning and its branches from the beginning of our tale -- the learned doctor has read it all, and counts it for nothing: "nobody knows, / Or ever shall know, the tiniest crumb!"  Away with science, law, philosophy, even theology.  Bring on the magic, and the goal of that is to "penetrate the power / That holds the universe together, / Behold the source whence all proceeds" (106).  So in a sense, what Faust wants now is the fruit, not the laborious sowing: he wants what we might call "the unity of all knowledge," some kind of godlike singularity.  What he gets is the Spirit of the Earth, with whom he argues and considers himself the equal, which seems to annoy the Spirit since she promptly vanishes on Faust (109).

At this point, Wagner enters with some comic relief, and the talk turns to matters such as history, which Faust very modernistically says is about anything but simple truth" "What you call an age's spirit / Is nothing more than your own spirit / With the age reflected as you see it" (110-111).  And here Faust paints a lamentable picture of those who have sought to "know the real truth" (111) -- they end up badly, to say the least.  He admits that though he was able to summon the Earth Spirit, he couldn't hold on to here, and the attempt has made him feel "at once both small and great" (111).

So what keeps us all down?  We are, Faust explains, burdened with pedestrian cares and obligations, bound by filial love, subject to fears that we may cease to be.  Is truth and grandness to be discovered in Mother Nature?  Well, no -- she is "Mysterious even in broad daylight" and keeps ever her veil (112). 

Faust seems almost ready to swallow a dram of poison and be done with his long quest, to die with some dignity intact (113).  Just then, however, the Chorus of Angels who recount Christ's sacrifice and resurrection turn Faust away from his date with death.  The sorrowful man responds to this Easter appeal to a new life, and is reconciled to his mortal status for now: "O sound away, sound away, sweet songs of Heaven, / Earth claims me again, my tears well up, fall" (115).

Outside the City Gate (116-24)

We hear the sounds of the ordinary people, peasants, students, burghers, soldiers and the like, a microcosm of human society who converse and sing, seeming to take pleasure in their everyday lives, both the struggles and the high points.  As for the renewed Faust, he takes joy in the springtime renewal of the natural world as well as in the "music of humanity" (a Wordsworth line) he has heard: "Here I am human, here I can be free" (118 top).  Everything seems to be calling him to new life.

It doesn't last, however, as an old peasant's praise for Faust's doctor father leads the son to melancholy, self-critical reflection: the upshot is his own realization "How little worthy father and son were really" of such praise (121).  Wagner praises book learning again, claiming they're better and more permanent sources of joy than nature (122), and even as Faust's soul seems still to be yearning for nature, he speaks of "Two souls" within him: "One, lusting for the world with all its might, / Grapples it close, greedy of all its pleasures, / The other rises up, up from the dirt, / Up to the blest fields …" (122).  In other words, the part of us that's reconciled to our mortality, and the part of us that strives to transcend our earthly limitations.  It seems that man, true to romantic notions, is riven by an ineradicable doubleness, a kind of self-alienation, an inability ever really to delight in who we are at present.

This admission leads Faust to invoke "beings of air" who might "translate me to a new, a vivid life!"  Just after that, a strange black dog shows up, and that, we sense, can be nothing but trouble (123).

Faust's Study I (124-32)

Faust's restlessness is on full display here.  At first, he's filled with "the love of my fellows" and of God (124), and begins to peruse the Greek New Testament, but a moment later, the Gospel According to John 1.1, which begins, en arche en ho logos, "In the beginning was the Word …" leads him to confess his fatigue with words:  What was in the beginning, anyway?  Mind? Power?  No, says Faust, "In the beginning was the deed!"  (125).  He forgets to add that with God alone, word and deed are one -- not for human beings, not even for Adam and Eve before the Fall in Eden.  At any rate, he must act, not just talk.

At this point, that black dog begins to transform, and spells to get rid of him only lead to the sudden appearance of none other than Mephistopheles (126-28), who promptly begins mocking mankind's pretensions and giving us basically the same philosophy as Milton's Satan: the goal is to frustrate God's light-saturated plans for goodness, until all returns to the Darkness from which it issued forth.  This plan to frustrate God's designs, however, doesn't save Mephistopheles from considerable frustration of his own; he describes himself as "making … little progress" (128), thanks to the "something" (128 bottom) of this world that resists his every attempt to bring it back to nothing.  Mephistopheles is trapped for the moment, but his way to freedom from the Doctor's study is to get some spirits to make confuse Faust and "Drown him in a deep sea of delusion" (131) -- time enough to get that rat's tooth he needs to make his exit at will (131).  Faust awakens to realize that once again he has been tricked by spirits.

Faust's Study II (132-44)

Mephistopheles soon revisits Faust's study and calls him to "Be free and easy, man, throw off your yoke / And find out what real life is like" (132).  Faust quickly denounces the world and its ever-present bleating about the need for "renunciation": "You can't have what you want, you can't!"  It's always, pleasure's bad for you, what you want to know is forbidden, out of reach, etc.  Faust claims to crave death and he curses his own past, with all its "false and flattering persuasion" (133), anything that gave him hope that his sojourn on earth could be a satisfying one.  And above all, to hell with patience (134 top).

Then comes the Devil's Bargain we knew had to be in the offing: Faust apparently wants, as the spirits urge him, to go "Into the wide world" (134) that lies before him, thereby partly repeating the pattern that Milton delineates for all participants in human history at the very end of Paradise Lost:

The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.

Mephistopheles is more than willing to help Faust achieve his goal, with the proviso that "If we meet each other -- there, / Why, you must do the same for me" (135).  Faust is, of course, offering his soul to perdition by means of this bargain.  A further bet is that Faust will never be satiated by all that he sees on earth or above it: "If ever you see my loll at ease, / Then it's all yours, you can have it, my life!" (135 bottom)

Faust soon admits to his new companion that he is sick to death of mere erudition -- what he wants is to enter into "the dance / Of sensual extravagance!" (136)  What's needed now, he says, is to be always active, to be open to all the experiences of common humanity, both the highs and the lows, everything from which his rigorous life of study for so long shut him out (137 top-middle). 

Of course, we still see the old pining in Faust -- what else to make of his lament to Mephistopheles, "What am I, then, if it can never be: / The realization of all human possibility, / That crown my soul so avidly reaches for?" (138)  Mephistopheles dismisses this as mere pensive thoughtfulness, when what Faust has already said is that he wants to get out into the world and see what it's really like.  After Faust exits, we are treated to a startlingly honest moment from the bad angel: "Despise learning, heap contempt on reason, / The human race's best possession" (139), and the devil's got you.  He will lead Faust into all sorts of vain, trivial adventures, the better to distract him and keep him from reclaiming his dedication to reason, science, and his soul.

But soon Mephistopheles is back to playing the deceiver, this time with a prospective student of Faust.  Dressed as a learned doctor, he tells the young fellow to study logic, metaphysics, law, to take excellent notes and show up to lectures, and, above all, to "put your trust in words" (142).  His final bit of practical advice?  Become a doctor, and specifically, a women's doctor.  Then comes the sticking point: he inscribes in the young man's book the Satanic verse, "Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum" from the Vulgate edition of Genesis.  In the Bible, this possibility was presented as God's reason for setting up the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil in the first place: the concern that Adam and Eve might "be as Gods, knowing good and evil" as God and the angels alone should know.  Specifically, the words are part of the Temptation:

4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.  (Genesis 3.4-5 KJV)

The scene ends with Mephistopheles asking Faust, "where to?"  Faust isn't quite sure.  What is this "new life" upon which he has staked his very soul?

Auerbach's Cellar in Leipzig (144-51)

The first leg of Faust's much wished-for tour takes place in a wine cellar where some comical characters are drinking and telling foolish jokes.  Mephistopheles jests to Faust that these silly men can't even recognize the devil when he's among them, and then sings a little song about a king who was troubled with a flea and gave him the royal treatment.  But he also treats the men to magically appearing free drinks, only to turn the stuff into fire as it spills onto the floor.  The ridiculous spectacle ends with the drinkers nearly stabbing one another in a conjured vineyard setting.  But well before that happens and Mephistopheles and his mortal companion make their exit, Faust has already become tired of such company: "I'd like to go now -- nincompoops!" (150)

Witch's Kitchen (151-57)

Now the pair make their way to a witch's kitchen, where a couple of apes are tending an unholy broth and singing jingles.  While in this place, Faust becomes fascinated with the image of a beautiful woman that he sees in a mirror: "Woman unrivaled, beauty absolute!" (153)  We recall that among the conjurations of Marlowe's Mephistopheles was none other than Helen of Sparta and Troy.  Here in Goethe's play, the woman seems to retreat into mist when Faust tries to get a more precise look at her, but he is entranced all the same.

There follows a comic recognition scene that has the witch finally realizing who her august visitor is.  Mephistopheles makes a joke about his changed appearance: "the world's grown so cultured today, / Even the Devil's been swept up in it" (155).  No more horns or tail, and what can't be got rid of -- his cloven hoofs -- can at least be padded by way of concealment.  The preferred title these days isn't Satan, it's "Baron."

Finally, Mephistopheles has the witch dole out some of her potion, which Faust duly drinks.  Mephisto's private comment on this act is, "With that stuff in him, old Jack will / Soon see a Helen in every Jill" (157).  Well, that will save him the trouble of whipping up such a vision.  The point is, as ever, to make Faust follow his passions into confusion and distraction.

"A Street" (158-59)

Faust sees Margarete passing by him, and he boldly offers her his arm.  She is somewhat alarmed by this gesture, and quickly extricates herself from this unwanted attention.  But Faust is smitten, impatient to have her: "If I don't hold that darling creature / Tight in my arms this very night, / We're through, we two" (158) he tells Mephistopheles.

"Evening" (159-62)

We find Margarete musing in her quarters about who her obviously aristocratic gentleman admirer might be, and when she exits, Faust and Mephistopheles enter.  The latter gives Faust a box of jewels he has stolen, and tells him to put it in Margarete's closet for her to discover and marvel at.  The young lady comes home, sings a tune about a dying carouser, finds the jewels and puts them on.  She's excited, but at the same time melancholy that the precious goods really aren't hers: "What good's your pretty face, your youth? / Nice to have but little worth" (162).  It's money that makes a person desirable; that's just the way the world works, she suggests, so the poor haven't a chance.

"Out Walking" (163-64)

Unfortunately, since Margarete's mother is very pious, a priest ends up with the jewels.  Mephistopheles has more work to do now -- he must do Faust's bidding and come up with some new stones.

"The Neighbor's House" (164-68)

Marthe Schwerdtlein plays something like the role of Emilia the older confidante of Desdemona (and wife of the villain Iago) in Othello.  Marthe is worldly-wise, with a sailor rascal of a husband who has supposedly -- so Mephistopheles says -- died in Padua.  Marthe asks for some proof of this lamentable fact, so Mephistopheles plans to offer up Faust as his witness. (167)

"A Street" (168-69)

Mephistopheles' plan of course calls for Faust to peddle a lie to his sweetheart's best friend, and he quibbles but finally gives in to the need: "I must do what I must, can't help myself" (169).  Well, Milton reminds us that tyrants always plead necessity as a justification for their bad deeds, and we can add lovestruck fools to the list, too.

"A Garden" (169-73)

While Marthe and Mephistopheles pay court to each other, with the latter of course having to be a bit coy about why he's a bachelor, Faust woos Margarete, finding out more about her family situation and learning her true thoughts about his initial attempt to win her heart on the sidewalk: she says, "It seemed to me at once you thought / There's a girl who can be bought / On the spot" (171).  Margarete seems charmed, but bashful -- she squeezes Faust's hand but then runs off.

                      

"A Summerhouse" (172-73)

Margarete plays hide-and-seek with Faust, and once alone in the summerhouse, she wonders what a man like Faust could possibly see in "an ignorant child" like her (173).

"A Cavern in the Forest" (173-76)

It seems that Faust now thanks the Earth-Spirit as his benefactor; his love for Margarete spurs him on to communion with the natural world.  At the same time, this communion with nature amounts to hiding from Margarete.  His companion remains Mephistopheles, whose effect Faust registers with some ambivalence: "The longing that I feel for that enchanting / Figure of a girl, he busily blows up / Into a leaping flame.  And so desire / Whips me, stumbling on …" (174).  In other words, this devil of his has chained him to the ups and downs of his own fierce desires. 

Mephistopheles and Faust wrangle about the latter's course: "Aren't you fed up with it by now, / This mooning about?" (174) he asks.  The bad angel shows considerable acumen in diagnosing the progress of his prey: all that elation in the presence of nature as if he had been translated into a divinity, and the upshot of it all is sexual desire: "And your conclusion from such exalted insight?" We may presume from the bracketed stage direction here that Mephistopheles makes an obscene gesture indicating copulation. (175)  He points out that Margarete is all by herself, "heart-sick" (175) for the man she must be starting to think has forgotten her by now.  Faust comes round to make his request of Mephistopheles: "Help me, Devil, please, to shorten / The anxious time I must go through!" (176)

"Gretchen's Room" (176-78)

Margarete ("Gretchen" is the diminutive form of the name) is now heart-sick, driven to distraction by the attentions Faust so lately gave her.  But where is he now?

"Marthe's Garden" (178-81)

Margarete questions Faust regarding his religion, and is treated to a brief, poetical lecture that sounds a bit like pantheism: "The All-embracing, / All-sustaining / Sustains and embraces / Himself and you and me" (178).  This seems disingenuous coming from a man who pals around with the Devil himself.  Margarete's judgment is, "you are not a Chistian" (179).  Later, Faust and Mephistopheles argue about the true nature of innocent Margarete, with the latter insisting that her morals are perfectly ordinary and mainly a matter of who will have supremacy in the budding relationship.  Faust, of course, sees the young woman as impossibly pure and concerned only for his soul.  Some of Margarete's own admission suggest that she is more of a normal human being than the saintly figure Faust wants her to be -- she says to him, "if I only slept alone / I'd draw the bolt for you tonight, yes, gladly" (180) and agrees to drug her mother with a potion so that the wished-for union can take place.

"At the Well" (181-82)

Margarete has by now slept with Faust and she is pregnant.  Her friend Lieschen's gossip about another girl made pregnant by a lover who then abandoned her inspires not moralistic malice but instead empathy.

"The City Wall" (182-83)

Margarete offers flowers and prays to Mother Mary at the city wall: "Save me from shame and death!" (183)

"Night" (183-87)

Valentine the soldier, who is Margarete's brother, is ashamed of her actions, talk of which is apparently all around town.  Faust himself is in a gloomy mood, while Mephistopheles can hardly wait for the hijinks of Walpurgisnacht. (184) That would be on April 30^th, the eve of the feast day for eighth-century English Abbess Walpurga, upon which night witches are said to have gathered on the Brocken mountain, which is part of the Harz mountain range.

                                                                                                                                  

Mephistopheles taunts Valentine with a bawdy song that, as the notes point out, seems adapted from Ophelia in Hamlet 4.5: "What brings you out before / Your sweet William's door . . . / The maid that enters there, / Out she shall come ne'er / A maiden still" (184-85).  That leads to a lethal brawl between Faust, Mephistopheles and Valentine, who dies denouncing his sister Margarete's shameful conduct: "What's done can't ever be undone" (186).

"The Cathedral" (187-88)

Margarete is haunted by an Evil Spirit who reminds her that she used to attend mass as an innocent, but that can no longer be: her mother died from the sleeping potion that Faust offered her to ensure their undisturbed union: "Do you pray for the soul of your mother, / Who by your contriving slept on …?" (187)  The Requiem Mass being held seems to be for Margarete's mother.  There appears no way out of sin and shame, and the hymn accords with Gretchen's mood: Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?  "What shall I say in my wretchedness?" (188)  The Spirit's purpose is no doubt to keep her in damnable despair.

"Walpurgis Night" (188-98)

A wandering, zig-zagging will-o'-the-wisp is invoked by Mephistopheles as a guide towards the festivities on Brocken Mountain, which should clue us in to the function of this entire episode: it shows Faust indulging in a diversion while his Margarete suffers the consequences of events he set in motion.  Structurally, the Walpurgisnacht scene heightens the tension as we await the resolution of Margarete's dilemma.  

Mephistopheles himself seems somewhat disoriented by all the magic and the noise.  He exclaims, "I must show this mob who's master," but promptly takes shelter by jumping into some shrubbery (193).  Faust is incredulous at this quick change, whereupon Mephistopheles dignifies his attitude by saying, "Let the great world rush on crazily, / We'll pass the time her cozily … / Inside that great world contrive us a little one …" (193).  In other words, he's counseling escapism, stasis in the midst of unholy hubbub.  This doesn't keep him from playing the all-embracing modern with a junk-dealer witch: "What's past is done! Done and gone! / The new, the latest, that's what you should deal in …" (195).  Faust sees Lilith, Adam's supposed first spouse, a temptress, and retails a Garden-of-Eden dream to a beautiful young witch as the two dance: "I saw a green-leaved apple tree, / Two apples swayed upon a stem, / So tempting!  I climbed up for them" (195).

Everyone espies the presence of Mephistopheles, and while the old witch welcomes him, the young one and a proctophantasmist aren't so hospitable; the latter says, "Vanish, our is the Enlightened Age" (196).

Faust beholds Medusa, and as so many have done before him, he mistakes her for his love, Margarete.  Just then, a play is announced, and Mephistopheles wants to attend this amateur production.

"Walpurgis Night's Dream; or Oberon and Titania's Golden Wedding" (198-202)

The play seems initially patterned after the reconcilement of Oberon and Titania from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but it soon descends into the silly advice that if couples want true unity, the thing to do is see little of each other. (198)  From there, a chaos of sounds and observations reigns, with characters such as "full orchestra," "a budding imagination," "a young couple," and so forth.  The "realist's" observation seems worth noting: "This is the first time I have stood / On ground on nothing founded" (201). 

Perhaps Goethe's riff on Shakespeare is intended to suggest that unlike A Midsummer Night's Dream, we may be left with something other than a state of events in which all the bad things that happen are no more than "the fierce vexation of a dream."  The ending of Faust, Part I is more ambivalent than that, partaking as it does in the tragic frame of reference as well as the Christian triumphalism wherein the soul of the seemingly doomed Margarete is declared saved.

"An Overcast Day: a Field" and "Night, Open Country" (202-03)

Faust bitterly reproaches Mephistopheles for failing to inform him of Margarete's sufferings and condemnation by the law.  The bad angel all but snickers at Faust's predicament, and sees his ranting as pure hypocrisy: "Why did you ever throw in with us if you can't see the thing through?" (203)  Still, he offers to "muddle the turnkey's senses" so that Faust can help Margarete escape from prison.

"A Prison" (203-08)

When Faust approaches Margarete in her prison lodgings, she is as mad as Ophelia goes in Hamlet.  He tries to get her to go with him and escape, but it's no use, even after she partly comes to her senses and realizes that it is indeed Faust who stands before her.  Margarete is too guilt-stricken, too frightened, to leave the prison, condemned as she is for the death by sleeping potion of her mother and the drowning of her infant child.  Mephistopheles declares her "condemned," but a voice from above corrects him: she is "saved" instead (208).  Just as the executioners close in, Mephistopheles and Faust escape into the pre-dawn, and that ends the play.  So what is the significance of Faust's attempt to save his "Gretchen" from the terrible fate for which he is mainly responsible?  Does it redeem his past transgressions either as a seeker of knowledge or as a lover?  The ending of the play seems too ambivalent for us to give an unqualified "yes" by way of answer.  There is, after all, an entire second part of Faust to reckon with, and that is beyond the scope of this course.  But in short, in the classics-heavy second part, Faust undergoes many adventures, even at one point marrying the famous Helen of Sparta, with whom he has an ill-fated son named Euphorion.  In the end, Faust, by now a powerful old man and confidant to an Emperor, dies and is whisked away to heaven, frustrating Mephistopheles, who really thought he had won his bet with the doctor.

Voltaire's Candide

NOTES ON VOLTAIRE'S CANDIDE

(Norton World Lit, 3^rd ed.)

What are the basic premises of the European Enlightenment and of philosophes such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, d'Alembert, Diderot, and Montesquieu?

1.  Universe is intelligible and orderly, governed by natural forces we can comprehend by the use of reason and applied science.  Deism is a religious corollary, and so is an insistence on observing tolerance and following moral standards that we have drawn mainly from within ourselves.

2.  Individuals and indeed human history can be understood on rational terms.  Knowledge implies responsibility for exercising control over ourselves individually and our affairs collectively.

3.  Humanity and human institutions are improvable, maybe even perfectible. Locke's tabula rasa notion of childhood stresses education since environment is critical.  We can make progress in science, government, and society.

4.  Notions of perfectibility, knowability, and control lead to a democratic impulse in Enlightenment thought, even if many intellectuals favored "enlightened autocrats" like Frederick the Great of Prussia.  If we made our own institutions over time, we can change them when they no longer suit us.

The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sums up the European Enlightenment well.  Kant said that the essence of the Enlightenment could be captured in the phrase sapere aude, “Dare to Know.” Humans possess the power of reason, and they are responsible for knowing the sources, operational principles, and limits of that power. That is what the three famous Critiques are for: Critique of Pure Reason (how we can perceive and know); Critique of Practical Reason (Ethics); Critique of Judgment (Aesthetics). We are free rational and moral agents living in a world that we ourselves largely render intelligible by means of our powerful mental faculties.  We are not determined by nature or bound to natural necessity; we give laws to Nature, and our standards derive not from an external source (God) but rather from our own capacity to act morally.

Voltaire and the French philosophes were publicizers, popularizers, and practical reformers, not ivory-tower thinkers.

Voltaire was exiled for a while to England for insulting a French nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan.  He favored a dash of English government and British empiricism -- healthy alternatives for French Cartesian rationalists and political absolutists.  He opposed Europe's addiction to war, issuing the remarkable comment, "murder is strictly punished unless you do it in great numbers and to the sound of trumpets."  He also favored civil liberty and opposed the Catholic Church in his famous cry, "écrasez l'infâme," by which he meant superstition and bigotry, in particular the Catholic Church's long history of persecution against free-thinkers and intellectuals.  This sentiment is optimistic because Voltaire assumes that removing obstacles systematically will open the way to improvement of the human condition.

In Candide Voltaire is considering the problems of personal autonomy, determinism, and the possibility of social and political justice.  It's all well and good to cook up theories and "oughts," but how have people always treated one another?  There's plenty of evidence for a strong search into that question, so let's have a look.  Well, let's have an outrageously satirical, over-the-top look, anyway.  Yet, how far beyond realism are the events of Candide?  Is human history devoid of brutal sadism and torture, mass rape, horrible pestilence, total war, and so forth?  No!  It's an awful thought, but what you get in Candide -- silly stuff about El Dorado and all the ridiculous recognition scenes aside -- is concentrated realism.  A modern equivalent might be something like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, though that film is considerably more pessimistic in its outcome than Voltaire's text.

In a sense, Candide is atypical of Voltaire as a philosophe thinker, or at least it isn't to be taken on its own, in isolation from his larger body of work.  Rather we should probably read it as an antidote to the mistaken assumption that Voltaire might run to extremes in his bold advocacy of humanity's prospects in the face of a long, terrible history amounting to much evidence to the contrary.  Candide deflates the scientific pretentions, the cocksure absurdity of the -ism associated with the late C17 rationalist philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in particular: optimism.  Voltaire doesn't reject optimism in a general, non-philosophical sense. Rather he tries to prevent it from rigidifying into a system of the sort that Dr. Pangloss advocates.  Whenever that happens to a philosophy, it loses much of its insight and value.  He's a philosophe, not a dogmatist.  To be hopeful and positive-spirited is not to be an oblivious fool.  Vigilance is the watchword, and the upshot of Candide, the moral lesson, is simply that we must cultivate our own gardens.  In other words, let's keep it real and do something tangible that benefits us and those around us.  It's not unlike the notion you sometimes hear today, "think globally, act locally."  Do not fail to see what's really going on, and don't build intellectual and desire-based sand castles in the air.  But don't give up, either -- that just runs against human nature and it makes life impossible, stagnant, intolerable.

Main Points about Candide

The text confronts you with raw experience, shocking stuff.  This representation dumps a vat of acid on C18 optimist and rationalist pretentions, corroding the frameworks commonly used to control and understand people and things.  The point is to reveal the underlying reality of events and circumstances.  Voltaire is, therefore, a good Baconian empiricist and an honest historian, and optimistic views don't correspond to real life.  We might be able to see that fact if we just stopped blurting out formulae and precepts and instead opened our eyes.  As they say, "denial isn't just a river in Egypt," and a huge amount of human energy seems to go towards the denial of everything from our own mortality to the atrocities we are capable of committing.  And truth, as Nietzsche will later inform us to our discomfiture, very often looks suspiciously like a species of error that makes us feel good about ourselves.  In the best sense, this philosophe Voltaire is anti-systemic in his insistence on vigilance, his opposition to religious and philosophical dogma.  Let's run through the text's highlights.

NOTES ON CANDIDE

Chapter 1 (355-56)

Voltaire's method is evident from the outset -- set up something as perfect and powerful and immediately knock it down to nothing.  That is what happens to the Baron who may be Candide's uncle.  His estate is ruined by Bulgars, but even before that, Cunégonde's witnessing of Dr. Pangloss with a servant he has taken as a lover leads to the undoing of Candide when he is caught by the Baron messing around with Cunégonde.  Everything is purposive, according to the Doctor, but the so-called lesson he teaches is nothing but rationalist pretension covering the primal sex drive.  The narrator treats the episode deadpan and allows the absurdity to play itself out.

Chapter 2 (357-58)

Once he is turned away, Candide is almost immediately drafted into the wars, which indirectly satirize the Seven Years War that stretched from 1756-63.  During that global conflict between Great Britain and France and Spain as well as Prussia's Hohenzollern rulers against the Austrian Habsburg dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, something like one million lives were lost in the barbaric fighting and pillaging.

Voltaire's narrator Dr. Ralph describes the Army's traditions as crazy: they live in their own world, and the order they support produces nothing but chaos.  Of course, Voltaire would have been aware that such armies were the tools of so-called enlightened despots such as Frederick the great of Prussia.  In any case, Candide is treated very badly, though in the end the King of the Bulgars grants a pardon and the young man is cured of his injuries due to flogging.

Chapter 3 (358-59)

The war between the Bulgars and the Abares is remarkable for its barbarity, with the death toll being said to rise to 30,000 men.  The deadpan descriptions of the suffering are noteworthy, and Candide takes the opportunity to escape from his captive stay with the Bulgar Army.  The upshot of the battle amounts to nothing more than the law of revenge (358-59).  Jacques the Anabaptist rescues Candide and treats him charitably.  As if by some miracle, during this episode Candide meets his old master Dr. Pangloss, now in a terrible physical condition (359).

Chapter 4 (360-61)

Pangloss provides a harrowing description of what he believes to be the death of Cunégonde and her brother, both of whom were savagely assaulted by Bulgar soldiers.  As for the reason underlying his own frightful condition, Pangloss explains that the cause of it seems to have been the maidservant Paquette, who gave him syphilis.  She herself had contracted it from a Franciscan Friar who got it from a Countess, and so forth.  The narrator offers us a genealogy of this dread disease, mocking the pride in aristocratic lineage as a principle of continuity and dignity.  Anyway, Jacques the Anabaptist manages to cure Dr. Pangloss at the cost of one of his eyes and one of his ears.  The Anabaptist does not agree with Dr. Pangloss that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Chapter 5 (361-63)

Jacques the Anabaptist drowns during a shipwreck while on his way with his new friends to Lisbon on business.  His death stems from an attempt to save a self-centered sailor, who makes no attempt to help him when the rescue goes awry.  The narrator has used the improbable as a way to get rid of Jacques the Anabaptist, who has served his purpose and is now superfluous to the narrative.  As the Norton editors point out in their introduction, Voltaire is in part mocking the conventions of romance narrative, making fun of the propensity of fiction writers to provide order and intelligibility to affairs that anybody should know simply are not to be found in everyday life. 

No sooner does this happen than the great earthquake of Lisbon strikes.  This actually happened in 1755, and it killed about 30,000 people.  The magnitude of that earthquake has been estimated at around 8.5-9.0, which is catastrophic.  Such a disaster poses a challenge to the idea of a benevolent deity.  The wicked sailor is the only one who seems to thrive during this great event, making his way directly toward the ruins and living it up without restraint.  I suppose this indestructible sailor represents something like the principle of anarchy; he is humanity reduced to the lowest common denominator.

Dr. Pangloss of course thinks it all makes perfect sense since he is able to identify a cause-and-effect pattern for the earthquake, but the officers of the Catholic Holy Inquisition are not impressed with his logic and promptly arrest him over a quarrel regarding free will (363).  The Inquisition had been a fact of life in Western Europe even before 1233, when Pope Gregory the ninth established the medieval papal Inquisition.  Prior to that time, the Dominican order had already been tasked with ferreting out heretics and prosecuting them.  The ferocity of the Inquisition only deepened with the advent of Martin Luther's Reformation in 1517.

Chapter 6 (363-64)

Religious ritual comes into play as a response to the earthquake: an auto-da-fé or act of faith is scheduled, and in the course of this auto-da-fé, Pangloss is hanged and Candide is flogged.  When he sees Dr. Pangloss hanged, Candide for once questions the remarkable philosopher's optimism.  Just then, an old woman shows up to rescue Candide from this terrible scene.

Chapter 7 (364-65)

The woman who rescues Candide happens to be the servant of Cunégonde, to whom our hero is reintroduced in a ridiculous, sentimental reunion scene.

Chapter 8 (365-67)

Cunégonde explains that while a Bulgar Captain was assaulting her, another captain from that Army showed up and killed the man, only to sell Cunégonde to a Jewish traitor named Don Issachar.  Then the Grand Inquisitor catches sight of her at mass, and works out an arrangement with the Jewish traitor to share Cunégonde's favors.  Cunégonde apparently saw Dr. Pangloss executed, and at present she also believes her own brother is dead.  She questions the optimist philosophy of Dr. Pangloss.  Just as Cunégonde is explaining all this to Candide, Don Issachar shows up.

Chapter 9 (367-68)

Candide kills Don Issachar and the Grand Inquisitor as well when he shows up.  Voltaire has some fun with the illogical quality of the action on 367, making the narrator describe the killings as due to a "clear chain of reasoning."  How is it, asks Cunégonde, that such a gentle individual could have killed a Catholic officer and a Jewish traitor within a few minutes?  And Candide replies, "when a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself" (368).  Now they are off to Cadiz on the advisement of Cunégonde's old servant woman.

Chapter 10 (368-69)

Cunégonde has been robbed of her gold and diamonds by a Franciscan friar.  Candide is chosen a captain in Cadiz by Spaniards and Portuguese set to quell a rebellion by Paraguayan Jesuit priests, and sails to Paraguay with Cunégonde, the old woman, a couple of valets and some horses.  Will the New World offer something better than corrupt old Europe?  They all discuss Dr. Pangloss's philosophy at length, and Candide is optimistic about the virtues of the new world, while Cunégonde isn't.  The Old Woman is not impressed with their stories of hardship, and in the next chapter she will tell her own story.

Chapter 11 (369-71)

The Old Woman is the daughter of fictional Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina.  She grew up in luxury, in what Dr. Pangloss would no doubt call the best of all possible worlds, if he weren't so addicted to the alleged charms of Westphalia.  She was engaged to a prince who was poisoned by one of his mistresses, and when the then-young Woman and her mother tried to get away from the scene for a time, they were swept away by a pirate ship.  They ended up sold into slavery in Morocco, where the Woman was raped.  She declares that all of this hardship amounts to "such common matters that they are not worth describing" (370).  Her mother is butchered along with many other women over whom a bunch of brutes are fighting, and the kingdom of Morocco is in chaos.  She awakens to the sight of a white eunuch.

Chapter 12 (371-73)

The eunuch from the previous chapter sold the Old Woman to an Algerian, and she quickly contracted the plague.  The sickness killed nearly everyone around her, but this then 15-year-old girl survived and was brought to Tunis by a merchant.  She ended up belonging to an Aga defending Azov against the Russians who were at the time besieging the place against the Ottoman Empire.  When starvation threatens the man, one of their moral leaders advises them to cut off one buttock from each of the ladies for meat, and that's how the now-elderly servant came to have only one buttock.

She was cured by French doctors when the Russians wiped out the Janissaries, and a Russian boyar set her to work in his garden.  She eventually escaped and, as she puts it, "grew old in misery and shame" (373).  She makes an interesting comment at this point: "I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more.  This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts…" (373).  She clings to life in spite of everything, in spite of being reduced to utter commonness, to the lowest common denominator of humankind.  She also says everyone has a story to tell, and by saying this she partially undercuts the power of her own narrative since it is, after all, typical rather than unique.

Chapter 13 (373-75)

Cunégonde, Candide and the Old Woman go visit Governor Don Fernando in Buenos Aires.  This man is immediately taken with Cunégonde, and the old woman thinks that's a pretty good deal.  But just then comes the news that Candide is being hunted for killing the Inquisitor, so the old woman advises Candide to skip town, which he does.

Chapter 14 (375-77)

At this point, we are introduced to Candide's servant that he picked up in Cadiz, one Cacambo.  This savvy man advises Candide to make war for the Jesuits in Paraguay rather than against them.  He is very impressed with the Jesuit fathers, who have their own order and a great deal of power to go with it.  In Paraguay, one of the commanders turns out to be none other than the supposedly dead brother of Cunégonde: so another ludicrous recognition scene propels the plot.

Chapter 15 (377-78)

Cunégonde's brother explains how he survived the massacre in Westphalia and was rescued by a perverted Catholic priest and subsequently wound up a Jesuit in the service of the rulers of Paraguay.  This brother, an aristocrat through and through, becomes outraged with Candide when the latter expresses a desire to marry Cunégonde, and of course Candide ends up killing the man, or so it seems.  As usual, the plot drives Candide, overwhelming his innocent character and any sense of Aristotelian rationality in literature.

Chapter 16 (378-80)

While traveling in Paraguay, Candide and his valet come upon a pair of girls, naked, pursued by monkeys.  The girls begin to mourn over the monkeys after Candide shoots the monkeys.  After this episode, he and his valet are captured by savages called Biglugs, who apparently subsist on a diet of boiled Jesuit.  Candide complains about the harshness of his fate in being captured this way and losing Cunégonde.  The valet tries to reason with them, and succeeds only when he points out that they are not in fact Jesuits.  In this chapter, Voltaire is having some fun at the expense of the Jesuits, but he's also hashing out the popular conception of the noble savage in European literature: "it seems that uncorrupted nature is good, since these folk, instead of eating me, showed me a thousand kindnesses as soon as they knew I was not a Jesuit" (380).

Chapter 17 (380-82)

The valet trusts in providence as their guide, and they wind up in El Dorado.  In this place, we are told, "everywhere the useful was joined to the agreeable" (381).  The precious stones are free, and children play with them; the inhabitants seem to be Peruvian natives.  Why do we build utopias?  Consider Sir Francis Bacon, author of The New Atlantis: the point is to examine human nature and institutions such as law, marriage, statecraft and so forth.  Utopian fiction is an exercise in comparative culture.

Chapter 18 (382-85)

What was the origin of this utopian place?  An elderly man tells Candide and his valet that a few hundred years ago the Inca were destroyed by the Spaniards and that the lesson learned by the old man's ancestors was never to leave the valley within which they dwelt.  They know perfectly well that the European adventurers who come to the New World would kill them all for the "pebbles and mud" (548), namely the precious jewels and gold, that litter the territory.  As for religion, says the old man, "we worship God from morning to evening" (549).  There were no priests, a point much to the amazement of their European guest Candide.  Neither are there any prisons or any lawsuits.  Candide's idea is that if they stay in this place, they will be just like every other citizen, but if they take back some of the wealth they find, they will be "richer than all the kings put together" (384): they will have no further problems with inquisitors and will find Cunégonde once again.  The King of El Dorado advises against this plan, but Candide and his servant will not listen, and they plan to go first to Cayenne and then to the governor of Buenos Aires to ransom Cunégonde.

 

Chapter 19 (385-88)

Once they arrive in Cayenne, French Guiana, we find that they have only a couple of sheep left -- the sheep that were carrying provisions and great wealth.  Candide philosophizes to his valet as follows: "you see how the riches of this world are fleeting; the only solid things are virtue and the joy of seeing Ms. Cunégonde again" (385).  They come upon a black man who is waiting for the famous merchant Mr. Vanderdendur.  The old man's story is one of colonial oppression since he tells them about the harsh treatment meted out at the sugar mill where he has worked.  When he hears these things, Candide professes to give up Pangloss's optimism altogether, and describes it as "a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell" (386).  He tells his valet to go ransom Cunégonde in Buenos Aires, while he himself will be waiting in the free Republic of Venice.  But Candide is quickly cheated by the Dutch merchant Vanderdendur, and the law proves no help in his attempt to get the money back.  Candide advertises for a companion who "must be the most disgusted with his own condition and the most unhappy man in the province" (388).  This is how he meets Martin the scholar, who used to work for certain booksellers in Amsterdam.

Chapter 20 (388-90)

Candide and Martin set sail for Bordeaux, France.  So it's back to the old world after a visit to the New World.  Candide inclines again towards the philosophy of Dr. Pangloss, but Martin declares himself a Manichee who seems to believe the worst about everyone.  And what is Martin's vision based on?  It seems to be based upon experience, what we call the school of hard knocks.  Martin says, "I have seen so much and suffered so much, that I am a Manichee" (389).  At this point, there is a sea fight and after it Candide has the good fortune to see one of his sheep struggling in the water, and is able to get the load of diamonds it still bears.  The losing vessel was that of the Dutch merchant who had robbed Candide.  There is something of a parody of the biblical parable about the prodigal son here.

Chapter 21 (390-91)

Martin insists that humanity's three main occupations are sex, slander, and stupid babble (390).  He says this while they're on their way to France.  Martin further points out that as far as he is concerned, the purpose of the world's formation is simply "To drive us mad" (390 bottom) and that by now, the extraordinary seems ordinary to him.  The sum of his philosophy is that human beings have never changed and never will.  That kind of talk goes very much against Enlightenment principle since, of course, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment believed humanity to be perfectible, or at least greatly improvable by rational means.

Chapter 22 (391-97)

Once he enters Paris, Candide becomes somewhat ill and the doctors only make it worse.  Here he meets the priest Perigord, who turns out to be a con man.  Candide becomes enamored of an actress he sees at a play thanks to this fellow, who introduces her to him subsequently.  She titles herself the Marquise of Parolignac, which as the Norton editors point out implies that her title is based upon card sharp ancestors.  Candide thinks Perigord is practically another Pangloss, but Martin is not particularly impressed.  His own view is simply that "nobody knows his place in society or his duty…" (395).  Well, the Marquise succeeds in getting Candide to hand over a couple of diamond rings, and he has been tricked by the priest apparently into believing on the basis of a bogus letter that Cunégonde is in Paris, ill.  When he goes to the hotel to visit her, he is arrested as a suspicious foreigner and only gets out of the trap with a bribe.  Intending now to go to Venice, Candide and Martin nonetheless end up on a ship headed to Portsmouth, England.

Chapter 23 (398-98)

On the ship he had just boarded in the previous chapter, Candide and his companion witness the execution of Admiral Byng.  The explanation for this actual historical event is that the Admiral simply failed to kill enough people and that "it is useful from time to time to kill one Admiral in order to encourage the others" (398).  At last they make their way to Venice.

Chapter 24 (399-401)

Martin has no faith in Candide's plan to make his valet recover Cunégonde; he assumes the man will simply abscond with the "five or six millions in his pockets" (399) rather than carry out his task.  Candide seizes upon a young monk walking along with his girlfriend in St. Mark's Square, Venice.  He is quite certain, he tells Martin, that those two people must be deliriously happy.  But the young woman turns out to be none other than Paquette, the ruined maid.  She tells her sad story about being seduced by a Franciscan confessor and turned out of the Baron's estate in Westphalia.  She then became a mistress to a certain Doctor with a jealous wife and was imprisoned when the man poisoned his wife.  She was rescued by a lecherous judge who then abandoned her, whereupon she came to Venice to work as a prostitute (400).  The name of her priest boyfriend at present is Brother Giroflee.  This man, it turns out can't stand the order to which he belongs, the Theatines.  The point is that neither person is at all happy.

Hope now turns to an Italian dignitary named Pococurante, who is said to be "a man who has never known a moment's grief" (401).

Chapter 25 (401-04)

Pococurante demonstrates his utter boredom with everything -- women, art, literary works, all things in general.  He has collected just about everything of value, but cares nothing for it, and even the comfort of the ordinary bourgeois is denied him -- you know, the people Oscar Wilde said knew the price of everything and the value of nothing.  I suppose the senator is Voltaire's figure for the tired-out Italian Renaissance that had once given the world so much intellectual and emotional stimulation.  Pococurante sees some merit in the English as opposed to the Italians, inheritors of a great civilization who dare not let a thought entered their heads without the approval of the Dominican order (403 bottom).  But when talk turns to the work of John Milton, Pococurante declares him a barbarian who did nothing more than write difficult verse on the first chapter of Genesis.  Candide tries to spin this encounter with the king of boredom into a portrait of a man who must be happy because "he is superior to everything he possesses" (404 middle).  Martin simply points out the absurdity of that formulation -- it is no better than taking pleasure in not taking any pleasure in anything.

Chapter 26 (404-06)

Cacambo meets Candide and tells him that Cunégonde is in fact at Constantinople.  Cacambo is currently serving as a slave here in Venice, and has to keep quiet.  Candide, Martin and six strangers here for the Carnival season in Venice sit down to eat dinner.  On pages 405-06, we find out who these sick strangers are -- princes and kings all, exiles now.  Candide cares little for this illustration of the principle governing the medieval Wheel of Fortune image, for his heart is set upon recovering Cunégonde in Constantinople.

Chapter 27 (406-08)

In comparison with the exiled kings and princes he has just met, Candide considers himself fortunate man since he has only lost one hundred sheep laden with wealth and provisions.  Pangloss is right after all, he declares (407 top).  Filled with renewed optimism that seems almost to be a fundamental human drive in this text (Martin aside), Candide sets sail for Constantinople and for Cunégonde, who, says Cacambo, lives as a slave of the former king of Transylvania.  Unfortunately, she is no longer the beautiful young woman she was when at Westphalia.

Candide starts by purchasing the freedom of Cacambo for quite a lot of money and then goes to find Cunégonde.  On the way, who do they run into but the wretched Pangloss and Cunégonde's long-lost brother, who is not in fact dead as everyone thought he was?  These two men are in chains working with a convict gang charged with rowing the galley.  So Candide has to rescue them with a few more diamonds and off they go to rescue Cunégonde.

Chapter 28 (409-10)

Cunégonde's brother explains that he was taken prisoner for the galleys when he was caught in a Muslim country in a tryst with a young man.  Pangloss volunteers that his own hanging went off badly because the rope was wet.  Rescued by a Portuguese Barber-surgeon, he became the servant of a Knight of Malta on the way to Venice, and then latched on to a Venetian merchant, which person he followed to Constantinople.  Entering a mosque, Pangloss noticed a beautiful young woman.  He showed her too much attention and the imam had him arrested, whereupon he ended up in the galleys.  Even so, Pangloss remains an optimist: he cannot recant his philosophy since "Leibniz could not possibly be wrong" (410).

Chapter 29 (410-11)

Candide ransoms Cunégonde and the old woman, but even here class snobbery injects itself into the general felicity: Cunégonde's brother still objects to the match with Candide.

Chapter 30 (411-13)

Candide no longer has much enthusiasm for marrying the now-ugly Cunégonde, but her brother's snobbery drives him into it, and he deals with this man as a bigot -- they secretly send him right back to the galleys to serve his time.  All together on the farm that Candide has bought, the various characters abide in wretchedness.  It seems that Martin is best prepared for this fate since he never really expected anything better.  Add to this company Paquette and Brother Giroflée, both of whom are even more wretched than when we last met them.  So they go to ask the advice of a famous dervish: "tell us why such a strange animal as man was created" (412 middle) is the question Dr. Pangloss puts to this dervish.  The dervish is not interested in Pangloss's fancy questions about evil, the soul, or the best of all possible worlds.  Essentially, this wise man tells them to mind their own business and not preoccupy themselves with grand affairs or metaphysical questions.  Hearing that several leaders amongst the Ottomans have been strangled or impaled at Constantinople, Dr. Pangloss, Candide and Martin meet a virtuous old man on their way back to the farm.  The old man knows nothing about the horrid events in the capital, and says he doesn't much meddle in other people's affairs -- the only thing he wants from Constantinople is to sell his garden produce there.  He explains that all he does is work his twenty-acre plot of land with his children.  This work, he says, "keeps us from three great evils, boredom vice, and poverty" (413).

Candide seems impressed with what the old fellow has said, and everyone settles down to do some useful work on the farm.  They all resist Dr. Pangloss's continuing interest in speculation.  The most immediate object is to work and forget grand narratives -- that is, any attempts to contain, represent or arrange the world and rather high-handedly determine our place in it.  The point seems to be that we should work rather than speculate, that we should just begin with what is at hand right now and not worry about anything beyond that.  The garden metaphor usually evokes images of pleasure and paradise, but here it seems that Voltaire has reimagined and repurposed it, putting it to a bold and powerful new use in the service of simple amelioration.  In the end, Candide serves up a strong warning to anyone who indulges naively in fantasies about perfecting human individuals and the societies within which they life.  That doesn't mean Voltaire himself is incapable of optimism about humanity's prospects, it just means he doesn't get carried away with abstractions and grand speculations -- a healthy dose of reality and humility is required medicine for those who would try to map out the future of mankind.