Candide's Education

I didn't have time to copy down our remarks from the board at the end of our latest meeting: as I recall, I'd put up about six of your ideas in response to "What has Candide learned and how?" and added maybe three dichotomies, setting out the issues that were in conflict in the story (I should have added "What, if anything, has Candide learned?" in case anyone thinks that, now that he's found a bearable way to live, he's forgotten about all the suffering he experienced and observed). Remind me please of what they were, and add other ideas if you wish?

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From the 1986 New York City Opera production, also directed by Hal Prince. Get a load of the Grand Inquisitor. I saw this on tv as a kid, and it really messed me up: to add to the tension, Prince likes to repeat a musical phrase until it becomes grating or, in this case, kinda creepy.

What Makes Good Fiction?

I want to list the fruits of our discussion of quality in fiction from our first meeting. As I recall, various students suggested that good fiction might

• be emotionally involving

• be relatable to readers' lives

• provide suspense with unresolved actions and problems

• address topics readers know in advance they enjoy

• have a good prose style on the part of its writer

• have distinctive voices on the part of its characters

• have character development and depth in its protagonist

• have interesting interactions between its characters

• have a satisfying resolution at the end

• offer thought-provoking moral lessons

• offer thoughtful social comment

• provide escape from our everyday lives

• open us to experiences different from our own

Feel free in comments to add to these or consider whether what we're reading works on any of these terms.

Another Operatic Scene

Candide and Cunegonde's reunion in Lisbon (changed to Paris in this version). Not as lively as the 2005 production, but you get to see Lenny himself conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Exemplary Passage from Voltaire

MAN, GENERAL REFLECTION ON

It requires twenty years for man to rise from the
vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb,
and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his
early childhood, to the state when the maturity of rea-
son begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries
to learn a little about his structure. It would need eter-
nity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant
to kill him.

-Philosophical Dictionary

A Couple of Scenes from Candide

In 1958, a comic opera adapted from Candide was presented on Broadway, with music by Leonard Bernstein, story and dialogue by playwright Lillian Hellman, and lyrics by some of the prominent poets of the day. It flopped mightily. Fifteen years later, director Harold Prince decided that a problem with the original show had been the seriousness with which people took the project. Voltaire had passed off his story in 1759 as a schoolboy prank: although his ideas were meant seriously, the story's tone and attitude were no more respectable than, I dunno, South Park I guess. The 1958 Broadway team had approached the piece with High Seriousness as a Classic Work of Art: Prince kept the Bernstein music and some of the lyrics, threw out the old libretto, had his friend Stephen Sondheim write some new lyrics, cast young people rather than opera stars in the lead roles, and included plenty of low comedy. The new version was a big success, and has been the basis of subsequent versions, although various directors have kept introducing little revisions since.

Here's a couple of scenes from the 2005 production. We get to learn about Dr. Pangloss's philosophy and about Candide and Cunegonde's different views of The Good Life.

An Enlightenment Classic

Immanuel Kant's What Is Enlightenment?. Note that, in Prussia, he's living under a dictatorship, so he doesn't make the noises about political freedom that you'd hear in England and America: it's more about freedom of thought and expression than freedom from governmental coercion in one's behavior. Contrast the broader demands for freedom made by Jefferson.