Mock on •
Anthony Storr
Voltaire Haydn Mason (Granada pp. 208, /8.95) Voltaire was born in 1694 and died in 1778. This short study of him by the Professor of European Studies in the University of East Anglia is packed with information. Acknowledgment is especially made to Theodore Besterman's definitive Correspondence, which is quoted throughout. No attempt is made at a complete biography, which Professor Mason believes could not be undertaken in less than ten volumes. Instead, we are given accounts of key periods in Voltaire's long life, with scholarly comments on his battles with authority, the connection between events in his life and his more famous writings like Candide and L'Ingenu, and an assessment of his influence.
As Professor Mason says, study of Voltaire has become 'a major academic industry;' but 'how much he matters, outside the realms of academic specialists, is harder to say.' As Voltaire has been generally considered one of the most important precursors of the French Revolution, and is called, by Isaiah Berlin, 'the central figure of the Enlightenment,' Professor Mason's doubts about his ultimate importance may seem surprising. One key to those doubts, however, is to be found in the nature of Voltaire's writings, which run to 15 million words.
In his essay on 'Voltaire's Tragedies', Lytton Strachey wrote: 'The great potentate of the 18th century has suffered cruelly indeed at the hands of posterity. Everyone, it is true, has heard of him; but who has read him? It is by his name that ye shall know him, and not by his works. With the exception of his letters, of Candide, of Akakia, and of a few other of his shorter pieces, the vast mass of his productions has been already consigned to oblivion.' Voltaire was acclaimed as a dramatist as early as 1718: his last play, Irene, was produced in 1778. Too ill to attend the opening, he struggled to the penultimate performance, and was crowned with laurel at the Cornedie Fraricaise. I have read none of his plays; but I am content to accept Lytton Strachey's judgment that he lacked the power to create dramatic situation and character; and that his fame as a dramatist depended upon his technique and his vivacity. This view accords with the fact that the characters in Candide are pasteboard, representations of attrattites or philosophical points of view, not human beings; and it is only Voltaire's ironic wit which makes his most famous come still readable.
But Voltaire was a wonderfully gifted journalist. In this century, he would have founded his own Private Eye or The Week, and would have outshone both in malice, ridicule, and irony. Voltaire is sometimes criticised for publishing under pseudonyms, or denying authorship of some of his onslaughts upon the Establishment. But it must be remembered that he was twice imprisoned in the Bastille, publicly beaten by the servants of the Chevalier de Rohan, and had to fly to avoid arrest in 1734 after the Lettres Philosophiques appeared in Paris. If the 19-year-old Chevalier de la Barre could be tortured 'at length' and then burned at the stake for trivial acts of sacrilege, what might not happen to the most notorious critic of the religious establishment that France had ever known? Surely no one can blame Voltaire for his dissimulation? Throughout his life, even if he had to seek exile as a consequence, he kept up his attacks against tyranny, tried to save the lives of those he thought unjustly condemned, and to restore the reputation of those he could not save. Admiral Byng was shot on his own quarter-deck for 'not doing his utmost in the face of the enemy. in spite of the fact that Voltaire got the Due de Richelieu, Byng's opposing comenander, to testify to his bravery. Voltaire's ironic 'Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres' has rendered Byng's tragedy immortal. Voltaire spent no less than three years in successfully clearing the name of Jean Calas, who was unjustly tortured and broken on the wheel for the alleged murder of his own son.
There can be no question of Professor Mason's careful scholarship, although he writes of 1878 as the centenary of Voltaire's birth when he means his death. He subtitles his book 'A Biography', but has provided his readers with a useful work of reference rather than with a portrait. In fact, his book reads like a series of expanded lectures on different sections of Voltaire's life. For Voltaire's relation with Frederick the Great, Macaulay's essay on the latter is still incomparable. Voltaire's importance in the history of ideas is tellingly portrayed by Isaiah Berlin. His place in literature and his personality is vividly depicted by Lytton Strachey in several essays. For the common reader, Professor Mason's book is no substitute.
Voltaire's character was far from admirable. He was childishly touchy, and used to fly into petulant rages if crossed. Intensely sensitive to criticism himself, he was revengeful and extravagantly malicious towards those who disagreed with him. lie was financially untrustworthy, and graspingly avaricious. Professor Mason does not bother to recount his dispute with the President de Brosses, from whom Voltaire bought an estate, but it is a marvellous example of the lengths to which Voltaire would go in a dispute about a trivial sum, especially as it was owed to a peasant and not to the President himself. A chronic hypochondriac, he was nevertheless a lifelong sensualist, possibly bisexual, and an incredibly hard worker. A biography giving a coherent picture of so contradictory a character has still to be written. But, in spite of his many defects, Voltaire was one of the greatest fighters against tyranny who has ever existed, and, after two centuries, his battle-cry 'ecrasez l'infame' still rings in our ears.
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