Voltaire

Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet, born in Paris on 21 November 1694 and dead on 30 May 1778. He was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, satirist, and historian, active in an age of strict censorship under the Catholic French monarchy. His writing was known for wit, sharp criticism of Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, and opposition to slavery. He argued for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state.

Voltaire’s range was unusually wide. He wrote plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, pamphlets, letters, and even scientific expositions. The scale of his output was immense: more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. His best-known work is Candide, a novella that comments on and ridicules many events, thinkers, and philosophies of his time, especially Gottfried Leibniz’s belief that this world is necessarily the “best of all possible worlds.”

His early life helped shape the restless mind behind that satire. Born the youngest of five children, he was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand from 1704 to 1711, where he studied Latin, theology, and rhetoric. Later he became fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but Voltaire wanted to write. Even when sent to study law, he continued producing poetry, essays, and historical studies.

From early on, his wit brought him both admirers and trouble. His critiques of government led to two prison sentences and one temporary exile to England. A satirical verse accusing the Régent of incest with his daughter brought him eleven months in the Bastille. After his release, the Comédie-Française staged his debut play, Œdipe, in November 1718. Its immediate critical and financial success established his reputation, and both the Régent and King George I of Great Britain gave him medals. That same year, after his imprisonment, he adopted the name Voltaire.

Voltaire’s work kept pressing against intolerance, religious dogma, and the institutions of his day. His play Artémire, set in ancient Macedonia, opened in 1720 but failed, and only fragments survive. He then turned to an epic poem on Henry IV of France. Denied permission to publish it in France, he sought a publisher outside the country, eventually securing one in The Hague. On returning to France, he arranged for La Henriade to be published clandestinely in Rouen, with copies smuggled into Paris after his recovery from smallpox in 1723.

His words still speak clearly because they are built from pressure: censorship, prison, exile, argument, and a deep suspicion of cruelty dressed up as authority. Voltaire could be cutting, but his aim was often humane. A line such as “The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us” carries the same hard clarity found in his public writing: do not surrender your mind, even when the world gives you reasons to do so.