Authors: Voltaire

Candide (21 page)

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Former title of the governor of Algiers.

An aga is an important Turkish official; the janisseries were an elite corps of Turkish troops.

Reference to Asov, near the mouth of the Don; besieged by Peter the Great in 1695 and 1696.

Muslim religious leader (Arabic).

Member of the aristocracy in czarist Russia.

Reference to an unsuccessful conspiracy against Peter the Great and his terrible reprisals, which took place in 1698.

Ironical reference to the Bible, Genesis 12:12-13, where Abraham lies to the Egyptians, telling them that Sarah was his sister and not his wife.

Municipal judge or officer (Spanish).

Police officers (Spanish).

In other words, he was part South American Indian and part European; Tucuman is a province in northern Argentina.

The Jesuit fathers.

Father Antoine Kroust, rector at Colmar from 1753 to 1763, was hostile to Voltaire and the
philosophes
; Voltaire quarreled with him during his stay in that city in 1754.

From the Spanish
orejones
, meaning “big ears,” a term used because these natives adorned their ears with huge hanging earrings.

The
Journal de Trévoux
, founded in 1701, was a Jesuit periodical hostile to Voltaire, the
philosophes
, and the Enlightenment.

Literally, “golden country” (Spanish); a mythical utopian society, with origins in travel accounts of the New World, that had great appeal for Europeans.

English soldier and explorer (1554?-1618).

Dutch colony in South America.

“My master” or “Sir” (Dutch).

This description of the cruel mistreatment of slaves is based on historical fact.

Scathing reference to a colonial system that placed profit above humane values.

Street fair held on the left bank of the Seine, in a quarter of Paris near the old church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

The Bible.

Contagious disease of domestic and wild animals; also known as red mange and sheep pox.

Poor, populous, and unattractive quarter of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine.

Ironical reference to medical remedies that had become old-fashioned by the middle of the eighteenth century.

Beginning in 1750
billets de confessions
were required of dying patients on pain of refusal of the sacraments and absolution.

Reference to
Le Comte
d’
Essex
, a tragedy by Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), brother of the more successful Pierre Corneille (1606-1684), who is considered a master of French tragedy.

Fashionable quarter of Paris on the right bank of the Seine.

Better known as faro; a card game, played with fifty-two cards, in which the players bet on the cards to be turned up from the top of the dealer’s pack.

An indication that there was cheating; a “paroli” is an illegal doubling of one’s bet.

Gabriel Gauchat, a contemporary critic hostile to Voltaire and the Encyclopedists.

Nicholas-Charles-Joseph Trublet, editor of the
Journal Chrétien
, and another enemy of Voltaire.

Latin name for the French province of Artois; Robert-François Damiens, who in 1757 failed in his attempt to assassinate Louis XV, came from Artois.

The Theatins were a Catholic order founded in 1524 to combat the Protestant Reformation.

Chief magistrate of Venice.

Based on Italian words; signifies “who could not care less.” who lives in that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains foreigners in the most polite manner. They claim this man has never known a moment of sorrow.” “I would like to see so extraordinary a being,” said Martin. Candide promptly sent a messenger to Signor Pococuranté, asking permission to see him the next day.

Raphael Sanzio (1483-1529), one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance.

Julius Caesar (100—44 B.C.), Roman statesman and general.

Cato the Younger, also known as Cato of Utica (95-46 B.C.), Roman statesman and enemy of Julius Caesar.

Great figure of ancient Greek literature and presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, epic poems ranked among the supreme literary achievements of Western literature.

Wealthy Roman (c.70-8 B.C.); friend and patron of Virgil and Horace.

Reference to Horace’s
Odes
(book 1, ode 1, lines 35-36):
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice
, Latin for “I shall strike the stars with my forehead.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman senator and orator (106-43 B.C.).

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c.4 B.C.-A.D. 65), Roman philosopher, dramatist, and statesman.

References to two Roman statesmen and soldiers: Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) and Marc Antony (c.82-30 B.C.).

The Order of the Dominicans was instrumental in organizing the Inquisition.

John Milton (1608-1674), one of the great English poets. The paragraph refers to Milton’s
Paradise Lost
; the epic poem appeared in ten books in 1667 and was expanded to twelve in 1674.

Ottoman sultan (1673-1736), deposed in 1730. “Viziers” were ministers of state in Muslim countries.

Ivan VI (1740-1764); as an infant, proclaimed czar; deposed in 1741, after which he was imprisoned for the rest of his life; executed in 1764.

Reference to Charles-Edward-Stuart (1720-1788), known as Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Young Pretender.

Reference to Augustus III (1696-1763), elector of Saxony and king of Poland; lost Saxony; dethroned by Frederick the Great in 1756.

Reference to Stanislaw I Leszczynski (1677-1766), father-in-law of Louis XV, driven off the throne of Poland in 1736 and subsequently made duke of Lorraine.

Baron Theodor von Neuhof (1694-1756), Westphalian adventurer elected king of Corsica in 1736; ruled for about eight months; tried unsuccessfully to regain the throne; lived in poverty in England after 1749.

The Sea of Marmora, between the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

Page of the Sultan.

Barber-surgeon; barbers were originally also surgeons.

Religious and military order of Malta that originated with the Crusades.

Muslim priest.

In the eighteenth century, certain ecclesiastical orders in Germany and France were open only to nobles.

A morganatic marriage; that is, one that grants no equality of rights or privileges to the spouse of lower social rank or his or her offspring.

Turkish titles: An
effendi
is a priest or a scholar, a
bashaw
a military chief or governor of a province, a
cadi
a minor Muslim magistrate or judge.

Originally the gate to the Sultan’s palace where justice was administered.

All the rulers mentioned in this long list met a terrible death.

BOOK: Candide

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