OEuvres completes de Voltaire

Abstract

Thanks to the resourceful and unstinting labours of Nicholas Cronk and his team at the Voltaire Foundation (Janet Godden, Clare Fletcher, and, for these two volumes especially and respectively, Paul Gibbard and Martin Smith), Voltaire's Complete Works are now appearing at the rate of approximately five volumes a year. The Table of Contents alone runs to 118 pages, but almost half the projected volumes have now been published (in addition to the fifty-one volumes of Besterman's edition of the correspondence), and the Foundation has set itself the demanding target of 2018 for the appearance of the remainder (over sixty volumes). The first instalment of the seven-volume Questions sur l'Encyclopédie is imminent, while the first volume of the Essai sur les mœurs is promised for 2007. The two volumes under review bear continuing witness to the high standards of scholarship, commentary and production that characterize this enormous undertaking. In the first, Richard A. Francis provides an edition of L'Ingénu to rival Pomeau's authoritative Candide (volume 48). The textual scholarship is punctilious and includes one important correction (pp. 137–38) to Van den Heuvel and Deloffre's Pléiade edition. The Introduction, concerned almost exclusively with sources and reception, provides a judicious and extremely thorough account of the historical and literary contexts from which this conte arose and with which it so deftly and entertainingly engages. The Breton setting, for example, prompts the pertinent observation that many of Voltaire's enemies came from there, notably Desfontaines and Fréron (though more might perhaps have been made of the stereotypical ‘Hicksville’ status of the province, which dates back at least to Molière). One of many commendable views is that ‘the change in tone between the beginning and the end of the work may not simply be a result of two separate periods of drafting, but may in fact be a calculated effect’ (p. 13). The annotation is similarly thorough, though the Rohan who hired heavies to beat Voltaire up was then a chevalier not a duc (p. 247, note 6). The Ingénu's education at the Université de Paris (Bastille I) is exceptionally well glossed. While there is some limited comment in these notes on Voltaire's narrative and stylistic ploys (for instance, pp. 207, 273, 325), and in particular some perceptive remarks on the nature of character development within the story (pp. 262, 325), it would have been helpful nevertheless to have a section in the Introduction on the art of the conte and some discussion of L'Ingénu in relation to other contes. The second of these volumes, generously sponsored by the Domaine de Bélesbat and Air Artisan Paris, comprises seven texts and provides ample evidence of the seventy-six-year-old's enduring capacity to combine the roles of pugilist and wit. First comes René Pomeau's hitherto unpublished revised edition of Le Taureau blanc (first edition, 1957), the notes for the Introduction and text of which have here been posthumously revised and supplemented by Cotoni and Mervaud. Then come two short polemical pamphlets, informatively edited by Cronk: Lettre de M. de Voltaire à un de ses confrères de l'Académie and Lettre sur un écrit anonyme. In the former, Voltaire is responding to a satire by the would-be up-and-coming writer, Jean-Marie-Bernard Clément, and in the latter to an attack by Charles-Georges Le Roy, a member of D'Holbach's circle. These are followed by a conte en vers, La Bégueule (edited by Haydn T. Mason in collaboration with Cronk) — Voltaire's most entertaining example of the genre after Ce qui plaît aux dames (1764) and intended to provide, like its predecessor, the inspiration for an opéra-comique — and the quasi-Manichean poem Jean qui pleure et qui rit (edited by Mason). The volume closes with John Renwick's exhaustively researched and eloquent francophone editions of the Essai sur les probabilités en fait de justice and its sequel, Nouvelles Probabilités [sic? cf. probabilités] en fait de justice, Voltaire's attempts to apply the laws of probability to the notorious Morangiés affair (‘une des causes célèbres les plus embrouillées des dernières années de l'Ancien Régime’ (p. 249)). In this murky business, the comte de Morangiés, great-nephew of Voltaire's godfather and a sharp operator, would appear to have set out to con some plebeian usurers, only to be conned in his turn. After lengthy court proceedings and a public debate that brought all manner of pre-revolutionary issues to the boil, the dodgy aristocrat won the day. For Renwick, whose command of the evidence is at once limitless and wise, the Essai may appear to be no more than ‘une liste raisonnée des préjugés de Voltaire’ (p. 292), but should more aptly be viewed as a clever polemic on behalf of an innocent if undeserving man. In other words, the defender of Calas, Sirven and Monbailli was willing to champion justice even in a tainted and unglamorous cause.