Candide and the Lisbon Earthquake

The earthquake in CANDIDE which we read about for today's class has historical origins. It destroyed a major cultural center in Europe, and is believed to have been well above 8.5 on the Richter scale.

Voltaire was so moved by this event (as was all of Europe), that he composed a poem on the disaster. Here are a few lines:


UNHAPPY mortals! Dark and mourning earth!
Affrighted gathering of human kind!
Eternal lingering of useless pain!
Come, ye philosophers, who cry, "All’s well,"
And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,
This child and mother heaped in common wreck,
These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—
A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,
Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,
Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,
In racking torment end their stricken lives.
To those expiring murmurs of distress,
To that appalling spectacle of woe,
Will ye reply: "You do but illustrate
The Iron laws that chain the will of God"?
Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
"God is avenged: the wage of sin is death"?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.

Here, we see Voltaire's philosophy of anti-optimism revealed.

Quiz #1
Read the excerpt from "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster" again. What argument does Voltaire use to attack Leibniz's (and Pangloss') philosophy of "all is for the best"? Answer the question in a typed, double-spaced, reasoned paragraph for Friday.