Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I read Candide a long time ago. I don't really remember what happened, so I can't really connect with how you feel about this book. What didn't you like about this book? Did you read the book in English or the original French? I know that some English translations are not very accurate with what the French says.

Tiffany wrote: "I read Candide a long time ago. I don't really remember what happened, so I can't really connect with how you feel about this book. What didn't you like about this book? Did you read the book in En..."

It was just a tedious read for me. I didn't see any humor in the story at all.

I can only read in English and can make out some words in Italian but sadly I am not fluent in the language. I know no French at all. 😩

That's Voltaire's works for you. He wrote Candide as a satire of the events that were taking place around him. If I remember correctly, his Candide pokes fun at other philosophers and their works and other figures that were his contemporaries.

The ones that he was poking fun at didn't find Candide amusing, either. ;)

As a matter of fact, the authorities denounced Voltaire afterwards because Candide openly attacked the government. Voltaire led such an adventurous life, lol.

As always, the quality of the translation can have a lot to do with your response.

Also, an edition with background information might clarify for the reader what Voltaire was presenting in thinly disguised form, easily penetrated by contemporaries, but pretty much opaque these days.

Such as the actual claim by the German philosopher (as Tiffany mentioned) Leibniz (d. 1716) that indeed we live in "the best of all possible worlds." (His name is also spelled Leibnitz.)

Digression: outside an unpersuasive philosophy (which gets into some rather strange ideas about reality), Leibnizd also was a deviser of integral calculus and differential calculus, and got into a fight with Newton over priority. (Each seems to have come up with them independently.)

Of more immediate interest to most of us today may be his work with the binary system, basic to modern computers. And he was also involved in the development of mechanical calculators.

His Wikipedia article contains a lot more, most of which is also irrelevant to Candide.

(I have mostly forgotten the political references in "Candide," but the Leibniz material stuck with me because I studied some of it in an undergraduate philosophy course.)

Loretta wrote: "The best part of this book was that it ended and with a happily ever after."

No. You simply didn't get it.