Voltaire: An Adored, Un-Heroic National Hero

Preoccupied with his own glory as a young playwright, there was hardly a single heroic bone in the body of François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), known later by the pseudonym Voltaire. Already, in his teens, one can find a tendency to stay out of his strict father’s reach as much as he could. Friends of the family, with estates and chateaux in the vicinity of Paris, would not mind having the precocious, intellectually curious youngster around for weeks at a time. Like the Marquis de Saint Ange, Louis Urban de Caumartin, formerly a prominent statesman at the court of Louis XIV, served as a precious source of knowledge in French history for young Arouet. The history of civil war and bloody religious conflict, particularly in the 16^th century, fascinated him. In fact, it laid the ground for Voltaire’s grand epic, La Henriade.

During the long years of tug-of-war between father

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and son on the issue of career choice, direct confrontation was carefully avoided by young Arouet. Passive-aggressive tendencies, including manipulatively submissive behavior at times, was also reflected in his fantasy productions, Candide in particular. Most of his life, choosing the place for his home was dictated by concern about personal security. The risk of retribution by the long arm of the law for some of his anti-establishment writings was always on his mind. So, he would only feel safe in a place close to the Lorraine or Swiss borders, where he could step over into safe foreign land when feeling threatened to end up in the Bastille again. (He had been there before when, as a naïve young rebel, in one of his famous satires he dared to mock the Regent.) Bottled up resentment toward coercive paternal authority is bound to create a mighty internal (subliminal) force, analogous to the energy produced by a pressure cooker. If, then, there is unusual and persisting discomfort with expressing, or just contemplating, negative feelings toward someone emotionally close, whether by family ties or intimate friendship, relieving the pressure by allowing such feelings to surface will be well-nigh impossible.

The young poet’s painful frustration with the senior Arouet’s determined effort to block his son’s plans for a literary career was no secret, yet one cannot find a single word in Voltaire’s writings, recorded conversations with friends, or in his Memoires, showing rancor or as much as a hint of acrimonious feelings with reference to his father. This conspicuous clue about the poet’s extreme sensitivity on the matter (which would essentially block any possible relief) was astonishingly missed in all conventional biographies. A step-by-step exploration of what accounted for the extraordinary sensitivity, resulting in lasting repression, would, of course, be beyond the scope of this essay. Its importance, though, cannot be neglected: it signals an unusually radical form of repression. Correspondingly, conscious aware-

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ness—including his passion for reasoning—became disconnected from the emotional predicament, making conflict resolution through rational means unavailable to Voltaire.

In such situations, relief is often sought through some substitute target for the pent-up emotions. This is where the political conditions of 18^th century France had played into the poet’s hands: the pervasively unfair, unjust, religiously discriminating system of Church and State, robbing an innocent populace—Huguenots (French Protestants) in particular—of their rights to freedom in practicing their faith, choosing their occupation, receiving just treatment in the courts of law, etc., resonated strongly with Voltaire. He became a fierce champion of those rights, challenging the theocratically-biased, corrupt, and highhanded l’infâme (the infamy of intolerant, oppressive authority) as he preferred to call it. On a personal level, this fight indeed provided some relief. He once claimed that when he fought l’infâme, he experienced temporary relief from his chronic intestinal ailment.

So, how did the poet conduct his famous campaign against l’infâme? He did it in a typical Voltairean style, and in an amazingly multifaceted array of genres. There was hardly any literary format he had not tried at least once in his life. Early during his career as a playwright, it was one of the poet’s gimmicks to sandwich poetic lines of arousing political content into verses of his play. For instance, he did this in Oedipe, his very first tragedy and a spectacular success at the Comedie-Francaise. Voltaire proved himself a superb master in the art of eluding the censor’s attention, without losing the desired impact on the audience. The French theater-going public was thrilled by the liberating effect—at least for the moment—of the thinly veiled political message. The smuggled-in poetic lines, poking fun at the hated system, meant for his audience a glimmer of hope for change. For instance when he wrote that “Our priests are

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not what an idle populace imagines, their knowledge is merely our credulity” (Theodore Besterman, Voltaire, 1969, p. 76).

“Ridicule,” said Voltaire, “gets the better of anything; it is the most powerful of weapons. It is a great pleasure to laugh while taking one’s vengeance” (In a letter to d’Alembert). Satire, with its potential of exposing folly or vice, was another favorite genre of the poet.

In a politically effective approach—through pamphlets, leaflets, and occasional pieces published and distributed through clandestine channels, together with a continual flow of his enormous personal correspondence—Voltaire called nationwide attention to the sins of a theocratically-biased, autocratic, corrupt, and uncaring government. Relying on his uncommon gift as a publicist and propagandist—as well as the skills of a fine journalist, according to the eminent French critic, Gustave Lansone—he would energize the public to demand change. Arousing general outrage about the utterly inhumane, medieval practices of the French criminal justice system was among his objectives. It has been claimed that the concept, as well as the political power of public opinion, has its origin with Voltaire.

Sadly, the inner Voltaire, traumatically injured by early events in his life as now revealed by painstakingly thorough psychobiography research, presents a rather dismal picture. Perpetual, life-long repression of hurtful experiences and associated bitter feelings took their toll. Discharge of anger upon substitute targets, while providing some momentary relief, could evidently not rid the soul of deep feelings of resentment, hostility, and rage. We know this from sporadic asides and sudden, unexpected reactions, containing fantasies of uncontrolled anger and violence. Once, when asked what he would have done had he been born in zealously religious Spain, Voltaire answered, “I would have had a great chaplet,

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would have gone to mass every day, I would have kissed the monks’ sleeves, and I would have tried to set all their monasteries on fire” (Norman Torrey, “Voltaire and the English Deists,” in William Bottiglia, Voltaire: A Collection of Critical Essays, 1968, p. 4).

All the personal vulnerabilities notwithstanding, the poet’s influential role in the critical events of 18^th century French history is unquestionable. The public persona of paradoxical Voltaire served as a desperately needed catalyst for the masses’ disapproval of the prevailing theocratic/ political regime. Evidence of admiration of Voltaire as their national hero was overwhelming. When celebrated upon his return to Paris after 28 years of exile, the outpouring of jubilation and glorification in the streets of his beloved city was unprecedented. At his favorite theater, the Comedie-Francaise, the delirious excitement of the audience focused not on the stage, but on the loge where the idealized playwright was seated. At the demand of the public, he was crowned with a wreath of laurels. The packed house dissolved in happy pandemonium, widely celebrating their adored champion of freedom. The august body of the Academie-francaise honored him in a special session where he was asked to preside over the proceedings.

After the triumph of the Revolution, he was, in 1791, posthumously honored and lionized by his people. The National Assembly ordered Voltaire’s remains to be returned from their clandestine burial site and placed in the company of the nations’ greats in the Panthéon. A procession of 100,000 men and women escorted the cortège, while 600,000 flanked the route to the final resting place of the revered poet-philosophe, remembered as one who had single-mindedly and unremittingly challenged tyranny and paved the way to their liberty.

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If he were alive today and realized the service he had rendered his compatriots as, first of all, an uncommonly effective catalyst for their yearning for liberty and then as being instrumental in accelerating the downfall of the oppressive regime, he could take pride in the prominent role he played in those momentous pre-revolutionary events in his country’s history. Voltaire did much to destroy the old regime, the abuses of which he so hated.

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