here is another satire on human nature, laid bare with all of its deficiency: cruel, stupid, ugly and senseless; and on this world: meaningless, indifferent and chaotic. it is a carefully constructed argument against the presumed purposeful human existence, expressed as "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". the rebuttal is caricatural but powerful; the stories, while sketchy and conceptual, are intriguing enough to hold one's attention and sympathy. from time to time, i mentally compared it to Gulliver's Travels. while it is cruder and less imaginative as literature, Candide does deliver its intended message effectively with blunt and brutal directness.
i had not read Voltaire's works till this novella and was rather surprised to learn, from wiki, that it was practically the only one of his thousand books still widely read. it seems sorrowfully inadequate to his lasting fame. evidently, one can be prodigiously intelligent and productive without being truly original. and time will erase all but the most indented traces. nonchalantly. without a yawn.
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