About five years ago, my family stopped at the Augustana College in South Dakota on the way back from a wedding in Wyoming. At the college bookstore, I purchased the Barnes & Noble Classics copy of “Candide”. In the back of this book, I found some discussion questions. One discussion question asked:
“What do you understand Candide to mean when he says that from now on he will “tend his garden”? Refrain from public life? Accept things as they are? Try to expand this phrase into a program for living.”
Gardens appear numerous times in “Candide”; the first garden shown is the garden by the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, where Cunegonde sees Pangloss and Paquette doing “experiments which were repeated before her eyes” (if you know what I mean); this is what inspired Candide and Cunegonde to kiss, which ultimately leads to Candide being kicked out of the castle. Some critics (including this reviewer on Amazon.com http://bit.ly/bdnWB9) have likened this event to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Another proverbial garden is the mysterious hidden utopia of El Dorado, where the dirt is made of gold, riches are bountiful (although they are not considered riches there; the landlord claims that El Dorado is a “poor village”), and, in Candide’s words, “no monks among you to dispute, to govern, to intrigue, and to burn people who are not of the same opinion as themselves.” Some other gardens include the Jesuits’ garden, Pococurante’s garden, Cacambo’s garden, and the garden Candide and his friends create when they live in Turkey. With all of these examples of gardens, it’s clear that Voltaire (an avid gardener himself) intended to have a garden motif.
I think that what Candide means by “tend his garden” is the fact that he wants to establish some sort of solace. By the end of the story, the whole company (Candide, Pangloss, Cacambo, Cunegonde, Martin, the old woman, Brother Giroflee, and Paquette) has survived numerous terrifying events, including rape, flogging, hanging, disease, and natural disasters. Taking care of this garden, recuperating, and exercising their individual talents provides a quiet, safe atmosphere of which they haven’t experienced in a while.
This situation concerning gardening can be phrased into a program for living that Voltaire would approve of: living is better with a purpose, a purpose that can be used to help ourselves and others.
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Going off of what you said, Quinn, I also feel as though throughout the book, Candide and his travelers were searching for happiness. More towards at the end of the book, they found themselves on a quest to find a truly happy person. They found a couple wandering on the street with smiles, and asked them to dinner only to find out that they were very unhappy. They went to a senator who they had heard had never had any troubles, and he turned out to be a very troubled man. They dined with former kings who had once had everything handed to them, and they too were unhappy. Only at the end of the book, does Candide meet a man who is very happy. This man had gardened and farmed all of his life, and had no drama with the towns-people or the world. Candide found a truly happy man, but had just been looking in the wrong places. I feel that from this, Voltaire is trying to convey to us that a man looking for happiness needs to take control of what he has in his life already, and make a living for himself. All the kings were unhappy because they had always had everything handed to them on a silver platter, and now that they are on they're own, they are clueless on how to live for themselves. I agree on all the points that Quinn has made, but i also feel that Candide is going to "tend his garden" and create his own happiness.
ReplyDeleteOne connection I made was that the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve was the place where evil started; and a garden is where Cunegonde first sees Pangloss and Paquette, which leads her to the the kiss with Candide, in turn gets Candide kick out. If you've could understand that, what I'm attempting to get at is that the "evil" that Pangloss and Paquette started resulted in Candide being kicked out and sent on this long journey.
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