Writer, the embodiment of the 18th-c Enlightenment, born in Paris, France. Educated by the Jesuits in Paris, he studied law, then turned to writing. For lampooning the Duc d'Orléans he was imprisoned in the Bastille (171718), where he rewrote his tragedy Oedipe. This brought him fame, but he gained enemies at court, and was forced to go into exile in England (17269). Back in France, he wrote plays, poetry, historical and scientific treatises, and his Lettres philosophiques (1733, Philosophical Letters). He regained favour at court, becoming royal historiographer, then moved to Berlin at the invitation of Frederick the Great (17503). In 1755 he settled near Geneva, where he wrote the satirical short story, Candide (1759). From 1762 he produced a range of anti-religious writings and the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764). Always concerned over cases of injustice, he took a particular interest in the affair of Jean Calas, whose innocence he helped to establish. In 1778 he returned as a celebrity to Paris. His ideas were an important influence on the intellectual climate leading to the French Revolution.
Voltaire was known for his sharp wit, philosophical writings, and defence of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and the right to a fair trial.
Biography
Early years
François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire was born in Paris in 1694, the son of François Arouet, a notary who was a minor treasury official, and his wife, Marie Marguerite d'Aumart, from a noble family of the Poitou. Before devoting himself entirely to writing, Voltaire worked as a secretary to the French ambassador in Holland. Most of Voltaire's early life revolved around Paris until his exile.
After graduating, Voltaire set out on a career in literature. Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as assistant to a lawyer, spent much of his time writing satirical poetry. While there, he wrote his debut play, Oedipe, and adopted the name Voltaire. Oedipe's success began Voltaire's influence and brought him into the French Enlightenment.
Exile to England
Voltaire's repartee continued to bring him trouble, however. After he offended a young nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan, the Rohan family had a lettre de cachet issued, a secret warrant that allowed for the punishment of people who had committed no crimes or who possibly posed a risk to the royal family, and used it to exile Voltaire without a trial. The incident marked the beginning of Voltaire's attempt to improve the French judiciary system.
Voltaire's exile to England greatly influenced him through ideas and experiences. In his younger years, he saw Shakespeare as an example French writers should look to, though later Voltaire saw himself as the superior writer. After three years in exile, Voltaire returned to Paris and published his ideas in a fictional document about the English government entitled the Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (Philosophical letters on the English). Because he regarded England's constitutional monarchy as more developed and more respectful of human rights (particularly religious tolerance) than its French counterpart, these letters met great controversy in France, to the point where copies of the document were burnt and Voltaire was forced to leave Paris.
The Château de Cirey
Voltaire then set out to the Château de Cirey, located on the borders of Champagne, France and Lorraine. Voltaire and the Marquise collected over 21,000 books, an enormous number for their time. Together, Voltaire and the Marquise also studied these books and performed experiments.
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica comments that "If the English visit may be regarded as having finished Voltaire's education, the Cirey residence was the first stage of his literary manhood." Having learned from his previous brushes with the authorities, Voltaire began his future habit of keeping out of personal harm's way, and denying any awkward responsibility. Again, a main source of inspiration for Voltaire were the years he spent exiled in England. During his time there, Voltaire had been strongly influenced by the works of Sir Isaac Newton, a leading philosopher and scientist of the epoch. Voltaire strongly believed in Newton's theories, especially concerning optics (Newton’s discovery that white light is composed of all the colors in the spectrum led to many experiments by him and the Marquise), and gravity (the story of Newton and the apple falling from the tree is mentioned in his Essai sur la poésie épique, or Essay on Epic Poetry). Although both Voltaire and the Marquise were also curious about the philosophies of Gottfried Leibniz, a contemporary and rival of Newton, the pair remained "Newtonians" and based their theories on Newton’s works and ideas. Voltaire wrote a book on Newton's philosophies: the Eléments de la philosophie de Newton (The Elements of Newton's Philosophies).
Voltaire and the Marquise also studied history - particularly the people who had contributed to civilization up to that point. Voltaire had worked with history since his time in England; Voltaire and the Marquise also worked with philosophy, particularly with metaphysics, the branch of philosophy dealing with the distant, and what cannot be directly proven: why and what life is, whether or not there is a God, and so on. Voltaire even claimed that "One hundred years from my day there will not be a Bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker."
After the death of the Marquise, Voltaire moved to Berlin to join Frederick the Great, a close friend and admirer of his. Faced with a lawsuit and an argument with the president of the Berlin Academy of science, Voltaire wrote the Diatribe du docteur Akakia (Diatribe of Doctor Akakia) which derided the president. Though he was received openly at first, the law in Geneva which banned theatrical performances and the publication of La pucelle d'Orléans against his will led to Voltaire's writing of Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Candide, or Optimism) in 1759 and his eventual departure. Candide, a satire on the philosophy of Leibniz, remains the work for which Voltaire is perhaps best known.
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Voltaire was a prolific writer, and produced works in almost every literary form, authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, over 20,000 letters and over two thousand books and pamphlets. In addition to his novels listed below, some of his most significant works include:
Oedipe (1718) Zaire (1732) Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (1733), revised as Letters on the English (circa 1778) Le Mondain (1736) Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme (1738) Micromégas (1752) Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) Épître à l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs (Letter to the author of The Three Impostors) (1770)Novels and Novellas
Zadig (1747) Micromégas (1752) Candide (1759) L'Ingénu (1767)Plays
Voltaire wrote between fifty and sixty plays, including a few unfinished ones. II 1763)
Poetry
From an early age, Voltaire displayed a talent for writing verse, and his first published work was poetry. Voltaire's minor poems are generally considered superior to either of these two works.
Prose and romances
Many of Voltaire's prose works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as polemics. In these works, Voltaire's ironic style without exaggeration is apparent, particularly the extreme restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment.
Voltaire also has, in common with Jonathan Swift, the distinction of paving the way for science fiction's philosophical irony, particularly in his Micromegas.
Voltaire's Deism
Voltaire, like many key figures of the European Enlightenment, was a Deist.
Because he believed in God based on reason and not on any of the religious books of any of the various revealed religions, Voltaire rejected the teachings of Christianity.
Views on Christianity
Voltaire opposed Christian beliefs fiercely but not consistently.
Voltaire is reputed to have proclaimed about the Bible, "In 100 years this book will be forgotten and eliminated...", although there is no direct evidence that he made such a statement. In his later years (1759) Voltaire purchased an estate called "Ferney" on the French-Swiss border. Voltaire's chateau is now owned and administered by the French Ministry of Culture.
Views on race
Voltaire expressed his views on race, mostly in his work Essai sur les mœurs, holding that black people, whom he called "animals", were a peculiar species of human because of what he perceived as great differences from other humans, both physically and mentally.
Philosophy
Voltaire's largest philosophical work is the Dictionnaire philosophique, comprising articles contributed by him to the Encyclopédie and of several minor pieces. It directed criticism against French political institutions, Voltaire's personal enemies, the Bible and the Catholic Church, showing the character, literary and personal, of Voltaire.
Views on New France
Voltaire was a critic of France's colonial policy in North America, dismissing the vast territory of New France as "a few acres of snow" ("quelques arpents de neige") that produced little more than furs and required constant - and expensive - military protection from the mother country against Great Britain's 13 Colonies to the south.
Correspondence
Voltaire also engaged in an enormous amount of private correspondence during his life, totalling over 21,000 letters.
Miscellaneous
In general criticism and miscellaneous writing, Voltaire's writing was comparable with that in his other works.
Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, constantly contain the word "l'infâme" and the expression (in full or abbreviated) "écrasez l'infâme." Particularly, it is the system which Voltaire saw around him, the effects of which he had felt in his own exiles and the confiscations of his books, and which he had seen in the hideous sufferings of Calas and La Barre.
Legacy
Voltaire perceived the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static force useful only as a counterbalance since its "religious tax" or the tithe helped to create a strong backing for revolutionaries.
Voltaire distrusted democracy, which he saw as propagating the idiocy of the masses. To Voltaire, only an enlightened monarch or an Enlightened absolutist, advised by philosophers like himself, could bring about change as it was in the king's rational interest to improve the power and wealth of his subjects and kingdom.
Voltaire is also known for many memorable aphorisms, such as: "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer" ("If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him"), contained in a verse epistle from 1768, addressed to the anonymous author of a controversial work, The Three Impostors.
Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, not to be confused with the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sent a copy of his "Ode to Posterity" to Voltaire.
Voltaire is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rights — the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion — and who denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the ancien régime.
Thomas Carlyle argued that while he was unsurpassed in literary form, not even the most elaborate of Voltaire's works was of much value for matter and that he never uttered an original idea of his own.
Voltaire did not let his ideals interfere with the acquisition of his fortune. According to a review in the March 7, 2005 issue of The New Yorker of Voltaire's Garden, a mathematician friend of his realized in 1728 that the French government had authorized a lottery in which the prize was much greater than the collective cost of the tickets.
The town of Ferney, France, where Voltaire lived out the last 20 years of his life, is now named Ferney-Voltaire.
The pen name "Voltaire"
The name "Voltaire," which he adopted in 1718 not only as a pen name but also in daily use, is an anagram of the latinized spelling of his surname "Arovet" and the first letters of the sobriquet "le jeune" ("the younger"): AROVET Le Ieune. The adoption of this name after his incarceration at the Bastille is seen by many to mark a formal separation on the part of Voltaire from his family and his past.
Richard Holmes in "Voltaire's Grin" also believes that the name "Voltaire" arose from the transposition of letters.
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