Voltaire was born into the high bourgeoisie. Precocious and rebellious, he could never do what his father wanted, which was to follow in his footsteps as a career lawyer. They had an early test of wills and Voltaire eventually had the courage to pursue his calling as a writer. This forever alienated them. Davidson states that Voltaire first of all nurtured an oversized ambition to be a poet and playwright, rather than a philosopher or the leader of some political movement. In his early 20s, he enjoyed his first success in the Comédie-Française, the official state-sponsored theatre of the elite. It was a highly formulaic form of theatre that was supposed to balance scenes, produce uplifting nationalistic sagas and rarified concerns with honor and the like.
This catapulted him to fame, but his wit and irreverence earned the attention censors of the Ancien Régime regarding his work, which would dog him for the rest of his life. At this time, the narrowness of the society focused his energies on a path into royal circles as a courtier, with the eventual goal of getting voted into the Académie Française, a stuffy institution that supposedly set national literary standards. His acid tongue quickly led to his imprisonment and exile, a pattern which he would repeat many times. Interestingly, Davidson emphasizes that Voltaire made many needless political mistakes, often putting himself in dangerous situations or burning bridges with powerful personages, such as the king’s influential mistress, Madame de Pompadour.
His first long exile inspired him to write Lettres Philosophiques, a kind of travel log and analysis of British institutions and culture. Its success marked him as perhaps the most famous writer in Europe, which of course upset Louis XV as a critical comparison to France. Voltaire also came to be recognized as the patriarch of the Enlightenment, an intellectual lodestar for a movement promoting rationalism via the scientific method and eventually wider participation of the popular classes in the political process (which is not necessarily the same thing as democracy). He also lived for 3 years in Prussia, an intellectual ornament of Frederick the Great, whom he alienated early on with rather unethical financial speculation.
His personal life is a principal theme in the book. The guy got around, eventually settling into a long-term love match with Émilie du Châtelet, a brilliant married woman whose compliant husband allowed her the freedom to love others. They formed a partnership that was a unique, early form of intellectual celebrity. Du Châtelet was a mathematician, who translated Newton’s Principia into French; she widened Voltaire’s interests to include science. Following her death, he formed a secret amorous relationship with his niece, who was a strong, independent woman; they even raised a ward together. Finally, Davidson spends a lot of time describing his many chronic ailments.
The biggest surprise for me was that Voltaire was an extremely shrewd and energetic business man, starting first in financial speculation and ending his life as the entrepreneur who founded the Ferney watch-making industry. Not only did he provide early capital to talented craftsmen who felt politically stifled in Geneva, but he marketed the watches to his network, including Catherine the Great of Russia. All of this activity gave him financial independence, indeed phenomenal wealth, to pursue his literary ambitions as well as his many architectural adventures.
Once he was exiled from Paris in late life, Voltaire settled in the Republic of Geneva and later in Ferney, France, where he bought a Château. Amazingly, released from the strictures of courtier life and having found his admission to the Académie Française as largely meaningless, he entered an extremely happy phase of his life, socializing with friends, building private theatres on his properties, and writing prolifically. It was a new kind of freedom and perhaps his most creative period.
One of the few intellectual contributions that Davidson adequately covers is Voltaire’s late life concern with justice, especially for the common man, e.g. the Calas family. The cases he chose to pursue tended to illuminate the shortcomings of the French judicial system. Interestingly, they were often religious in nature, in which fanatics condemn the innocent to torture, humiliation and death without adequate evidence. In particular, he attacked the opaqueness of the procedures and the refusals to allow scrutiny of their methods, bringing cases to the attention of the king but also the public at large. He became a popular hero because of this. This is so interesting that I wish Davidson had covered his other intellectual endeavors.
Davidson based this intimate portrait on Voltaire’s letters, which form the overwhelming bulk of his footnotes. I wanted a more critical bio with greater content, but he states very clearly in the preface that that is not his purpose. While I would have liked more on what he was thinking and why his writing made him a major figure in 18th century European culture, this an absorbing bio of Voltaire the man. There is plenty of historical context This is beautifully written, indeed it is so engaging that I could not put it down.
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