art. Voltaire´s aesthetic pragmatism

Voltaire's Aesthetic PragmatismAuthor(s): Jack R. VroomanSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Autumn, 1972), pp. 79-86Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/429614 .

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JACK R. VROOMAN

Voltaire 's Aesthetic Pragmatism

IN THE REALM of aesthetic theory one may say almost anything about Voltaire and be right-or at least partially right. The nature of his genius was such that his life and work reflect antitheses, paradoxes, and contradic- tions that produce upon each new examnina- tion a myriad of ever-changing relationships between the reality of the "facts" resulting from the printed word and the statement of our own critical interpretation. Voltaire is, in a sense, all things if not to all men at least to different men: optimist and pessimist, relativist and absolutist, neoclassic and pre- romantic, traditionalist and reformer, be- liever and iconoclast.

The author whose epic poetry is counter- balanced by obscene verse and whose dramatic eulogies of virtue seem almost hypo- critical when viewed in the light of several private affairs cannot, however, be sum- marily categorized as public saint and private sinner. He loved luxury and decried the fact that France was becoming a nation of sybarites. He loudly condemned prejudice and injustice and yet was guilty of both. He championed the cause of reason while realiz- ing the superiority of sentiment. He wrote that prayers were useless and erected a church. By his own admission, having always "one foot in the grave," he continued "danc- ing a jig" to the age of eighty-four.

The list of such ostensible incongruities is

JACK R. VROOMAN is professor of French and Italian at the University of New Hampshire. His publications in- clude Voltaire's Theatre-The Cycle from "OE- dipe" to "Merope," Studies on Voltaire, vol. 75 (Geneva, 1970), and Rene Descartes-A Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1970).

endless. I cite these few examples merely to suggest that what may at first appear con- tradictory is not when examined in the light of the total complexity of Voltaire. The critic who states that the author of Zaire, Candide, and the Essai sur les moeurs was a rationalistic optimist is as right as (or no more wrong than) the one who labels him a sentimental pessimist, although the latter interpretation is certainly in the minority. The fact remains that Voltaire was both, at different times and almost simultaneously, so rapidly does the focus of his personal and literary activity shift. He could thus both admire and vilify Shakespeare without being inconsistent.

As a philosopher he was often unsystematic. As a man he acted virtually every role in the dramatic repertory with talent. As an artist he was totally dedicated to the effect he wanted to create. In many ways he is comparable to Diderot's portrait of Rameau's nephew: no matter what his role, no matter what mask he wears, he is always in essence himself, conscious of his part and faithful to his own moi. Given an individual with such multifarious interests and activities, one can easily extract and emphasize only those portions of his work that contribute to the presentation of a unified, usually over- simplified, and often quite erroneous picture of Voltaire's thought on a particular subject and within a specific framework.

Only recently have scholars begun to correct past misinterpretations that were largely the result of too limited a perspective.l The more one reads Voltaire's pronounce- ments upon literature and the other arts, the more one is struck by his unwillingness to



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commit himself wholeheartedly to any ortho- dox position. It is as if he had deliberately set out to thwart those who would categorize him. Many have tried, and certainly the work of Folkierski, Trahard, Naves, Lanson, and Pomeau contributes greatly to our understanding of Voltaire's views on aesthetic problems. Yet the general impression derived from their works is that he adhered fairly closely to the doctrines of French classicism while making certain changes usually labeled as romantic tendencies. It is not my purpose here to demonstrate his merit as an original thinker in the field of aesthetic theory. In- stead, this study attempts to re-examine the relationship between the beautiful and the useful in Voltaire's Weltanschauung in order to show the relative importance of aesthetic values in both his own art and his philosophy. One may rightly focus upon either word in the expression "aesthetic pragmatism." It might also read "pragmatic aestheticism," for Voltaire himself frequently oscillated between the two points of view: one that emphasized the utilitarian aspect of art and the other that accentuated the necessity for the primacy of artistic values.

Voltaire read, studied, and commented upon the principal aesthetic treatises of the past and of his contemporaries. For the most part he considered the rules found therein either useless or false. His own Essay upon Epick Poetry (1727) was not conceived as a rule book for aspiring poets; on the contrary, it was a defense in particular of his divergence from tradition in La Henriade and in general of artistic freedom from the restraints of conventional forms. As early as 1719 Jean Baptiste Du Bos's Reflexions critiques sur la poesie, la peinture et la musique had already marked a decided change from the conventional seventeenth-century formal treatise and had changed the critical focus from that of the early eighteenth-century "geometres" in the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns. The very title of Voltaire's Essay is indicative of this new trend. Only rarely does one see it quoted in its entirety, and many a student of French literature is unaware that it was written in English. The complete wording is An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, extracted from Curious Manuscripts, and Also upon the Epick Poetry of the European Na-

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tions, from Homer down to Milton. Unlike the seventeenth-century critics, Voltaire joined Du Bos in resisting the total rationalization of aesthetic doctrine, and along with the abbe, he was far more interested in the immediate practical application of his observations than in their theoretical uni- versality. Thus the title of his Essay reveals a relativistic cosmopolitanism, a historical interest as well as an artistic one, and an admixture of classical and modern education. As David Williams has pointed out, "it was not really until 1727, when Voltaire pointed to Milton, that they [the moderns] gained better weapons for their cause." 2 It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from this, as Williams does not, that Voltaire was a thoroughgoing partisan of the moderns, for despite his belief in the doctrine of progress, particularly scientific progress, there remains in his thought a nostalgia for the literary accomplishment of the ancients. He was indeed haunted at times by the literary excellence of his seventeenth-century predecessors, namely Racine, who had so perfected the art of tragedy begun by the Greeks. And the Essay bases much of its argument upon a sentimental approach to art that transcends national barriers.

One might expect to find a more definitive statement of his views on art and the nature of beauty in Le Temple du gout (1733); but even a cursory examination reveals it to be more a recording of contemporary taste and opinion than a compilation of rules. In sum it gives the author's personal views on the great figures of French literature but with very little rational argumentation for his acceptance or refusal. Perhaps the most notable aspect of the Temple is that Voltaire chose not to follow the example set by Boileau and other famous predecessors in the field and combined prose with verse, thereby provoking a storm of criticism from the purists. Much later, in 1761, he was to write his Parallele d'Horace, de Boileau et de Pope, but again the critic who is seeking a compre- hensive statement of his fundamental aesthetic beliefs will be disappointed. Even the Dic- tionnaire philosophique (1764), despite the promise of the article "Beau," remains largely theological in its orientation and does not offer a succinct statement of what Voltaire



Voltaire's Aesthetic Pragmatism

understood as Art or even beauty. In fact, he confesses outright that he was unable to write a treatise on the beautiful.

Voltaire's view of art, if one reconstructs it from countless observations scattered throughout prefaces, articles, and the correspondence, differs radically from the conventional seventeenth-century view. Central concepts for a definition of the nature of art, as conceived of by classical doctrine and subsequently modified by Voltaire, are the good, the true, and the beautiful. For him the good is no longer the absolute moral quality that it had been for the seventeenth century. It now carries a social rather than a religious connotation, and it is to be judged in relative terms by the individual conscience. Virtue has acquired a new meaning. Although Voltaire is careful to make the distinction that virtue is not un bien but rather un devoir, for him as well as for his contemporaries, virtue, le bien, and le bon all gradually become associated with feeling, with sentiment, with sensibilite. The passions, previously condemned, are now seen to be good, and they-not reason-are to govern the will. With this new manner of envisaging the good as the conformity between our desires and our ability to fulfill them, the strict classical dichotomy between virtue-vice and good-evil is destroyed, or at least its focus is shifted. Voltaire did not deny the existence of evil; but it comes to be synonymous with lack of feeling and good with the exploitation of one's senses to the fullest. As he expressed it in his article "Bien," "The greatest good delights with so much force that one is totally incapable of feeling anything else, just as the greatest evil deprives us of all feeling" (M. XVII, 575).3

A similar divergence between Voltaire's view and that of his seventeenth-century predecessors concerning the good occurs in their concepts of the true. For Boileau, truth is the fundamental principle of literature. It is constant and universal. It is synonymous with nature. In order for thought to reflect truth, it must satisfy reason. Boileau's state- ments are taken up by Voltaire. On the surface, he appears to praise such a view, but soon it becomes apparent that there is a change of emphasis from the absolute to the relative and that reason must no longer reign

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as the sole arbiter. What is nature for Boileau is not necessarily nature for Voltaire, and in "Du vrai dans les ouvrages," the latter im- mediately begins to attach true and false to the feelings. He praises his own work as being the equal of Moliere's for the truth of the characterization: "Moliere is true in everything he says. All the feelings expressed in the Henriade, in Zaire, in Alzire, and in Brutus em- body an obvious truth" (M. XXIII, 422).

Next he moves to sincerity as a criterion for the true: "There is another kind of truth that one seeks in writings; it is the conformity of what an author says with his age, his character, his status.... Those works are almost always insipid because they have not come from the heart of a truly sincere man" (M. XXIII, 422-423). Here, as was the case with the good, one sees the true to be dependent upon the intensity of the emotion. Voltaire concludes his remarks with a sum- mary of how truth in its varying manifesta- tions may be used as a means of judging a work of art: "In a word, the main rule for reading authors with profit is to examine if what they say is true in general; if it is true in the circumstances when they say it; if it is true in the mouths of the characters they make speak; for, in short, truth is always the first beauty, and any others should serve as ornaments. It is the touchstone in all lan- guages and in all literary forms" (M. XXIII, 423).

But the truth that Voltaire is talking about is not identical with Boileau's. For the author of the Art poetique, the content of a work of art is to be tested for its truth by man's reason; both the value and the beauty of any artistic creation depend upon the extent of its rationality. Boileau sees reason as man's principal, indeed exclusive, guide for judgment. Voltaire's truth, on the other hand, comes from the heart rather than from the head, and reason is not all sufficient: "Reason has wronged literature just as it has harmed religion; it has left it fleshless. Gone are the prophesies, the oracles, the gods, the magi- cians, the giants, the monsters, the cavaliers, the heroines. Reason alone cannot make an epic poem." 4 For Voltaire, reason is capable of error, particularly in matters aesthetic. Reason errs because its standard is external rather than internal, in the thing being



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judged rather than in itself. Voltaire questions man's capacity to know external reality. He reacts against the geometric spirit and pro- claims the validity of the feelings. At the very center of his aesthetic doctrine is the fundamental truth of man's emotions as opposed to the more illusory truth of his reasoned judgments: "What misled Descartes and Male- branche and all the others on this point is something actually very simple: we are much more certain of the truth of our feelings and of our thoughts than we are of the existence of exterior objects" (Best. 616).5 Voltaire is not advocating the overthrow of reason, but he is suggesting that there is a truth that is to be apprehended through the emotions more readily and more completely than through logic. No amount of reasoning, for example, will convince a man that he should not be bored, for he has the truth of his own emotional experience. Feeling cannot be anything but true because it has no reference to anything except itself. That this kind of truth is more important to Voltaire, espe- cially in aesthetics, is evident when he judges the relative worth of the vraisemblable: "A cold or chilling verisimilitude can never equal a moving or frightening game of blindman's buff. The public will become accustomed very quickly to the game when it is affected by the rest" (Best. 3228).

The importance assigned to truth and verisimilitude has changed since Boileau's Art poetique. Voltaire would not agree that truth must be a fundamental principle of art. Just as he enlarged the role of the feelings, he legitimatized that of the imagination. Illusion, such as the game of blindman's buff, has its own value, comparable at times to that of truth. For Voltaire, what was true was not necessairly good, but the false could be made synonymous with the good if the results justified its use.

In his reaction against Cartesian ration- alism, Voltaire called forth an appeal not only to the feelings but also to their display. One is to react and to react violently even in the realm of abstract ideas. Voltaire's own enthusiasm for science and philosophy carries a fervor which was lacking in his predecessors. He is not, however, an advocate of unbridled flights of passion, imagination, or enthusiasm. Recognizing the validity of the emotions, he

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places certain limits upon their exercise. He is against the geometric spirit, but he is equally against the total exclusion of reason. Enthusiasm must have limits and direction, and one can see particularly clearly in his article "Enthousiasme" the ideal balance that he seeks. It is doubly revealing because it shows by example; the feelings mentioned in the first paragraph are those that have been repeatedly portrayed in his own tragedies, and those in the second paragraph represent the different emotional reactions of an audience:

What do we understand by "enthusiasm"? How many nuances there are in our affections! Appro- bation, sensibility, emotion, trouble, shock, passion, anger, madness, fury, rage: there are all the stages through which may pass this poor human soul. A geometer attends a moving tragedy; he notices only that it is well constructed. A young man next to him is touched and notices nothing; a woman weeps; another young man is so transported that for his own misfortune he decides to write a tragedy himself: he has been stricken by the malady of enthusiasm. (M. XVIII, 552-553)

Obviously it is the woman's tears that receive Voltaire's approbation. And tears are the fitting emotional response not only to a situation in art but also to one in life, for in the paragraph that follows the one cited above, he constructs a parallel between the ideal theatergoer and the ideal military man. He concludes by saying, "Caesar cried at the sight of the statue of Alexander." Sensibility is therefore characterized by enthusiasm. En- thusiasm must be tempered by reason, and it is the perfect balance of the two that is the gift of the artist: "Rational enthusiasm is granted only to great people. This rational enthusiasm is the perfection of their art; it is what in former times made people think their poets were inspired by the gods, and one has never said that of other artists" (ibid., p. 554).

Now the highest expression of sensibility is tears, and it is here that his concept of the feelings joins his interpretation of truth. As stated earlier, one cannot deny the truth of the feelings; consequently, truth gradually becomes synonymous with that which elicits a sympathetic (emotional and enthusiastic) response from the observer. Voltaire had too much respect for science to disregard the importance of its findings; on the contrary,




he was a popularizer of newfound scientific truths. But he was at the same time acutely aware of another, a higher "truth" that was dependent not upon the factual precision of observation but upon the emotional intensity of involvement. This second kind of truth was to be perceived by the feelings rather than by the intellect and it often found its expression in tragedy-a tearful mirror of a pathetic reality.

Just as the good and the true were redefined by Voltaire, so it was with the beautiful. Even the most cursory investigation of his remarks upon the nature of beauty reveals an attitude that is at once relative and subjective: relative, in that he underscores how man's judgment of the beautiful varies from one period to another, one nation to another, one individual to another; subjective, in that he recognizes beauty not simply as an abstract quality inherent in an object but as dependent upon the observer. Despite his repeated insistence upon the relativity of standards in judging beauty, it would be a mistake to consider him as admitting to all criteria as equally valid. His relativism is qualified, and he constructs a hierarchy of taste in which he differentiates between essential and conventional beauties. The latter are relative insofar as they depend upon local customs and tastes; hence a French epic such as La Henriade need not have the same subject matter or design as the Iliad; the former, however, are absolute in that there are certain qualities shared in common by all works termed beautifiul. His hierarchy of the beautiful, although never expressed in a coherent form but rather scattered throughout his critical reflections, encompasses questions of subject matter, treatment, and audience reaction.

As far as subject matter was concerned, Voltaire protested the servile imitation of the ancients. While adhering to a fairly strict classical concept of separating the genres by subject matter, he admitted the introduction of "new" material that was historically more contemporary than the legends of Greece and Rome and that would mirror the civilization of countries other than France. The more elevated the subject matter, the more it approached his ideal of the beautiful. The majority of examples used to illustrate a

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beautiful subject mention an action. All men, he insists, are capable of seeing the beauty in a generous deed, whereas the beauties of Versailles might be veiled to an Oriental. When he writes, "Even a bad man will recognize the beauty of virtues he is incapable of imitating" (M. XVII, 558), it is clear that there has occurred an amalgamation of his concept of morality and his aesthetic. The beautiful is the virtuous. A woman may be considered beautiful by one man and not by another, but all men will perceive the beauty of a virtuous act. Actions and thoughts are beautiful to all, whereas judgments based on visual qualities vary.

Voltaire observes certain formal aspects, however, that are characteristic of all beautiful works. Unity he finds a prime virtue and along with it, clarity and simplicity. Perhaps the clearest and most systematic expression of his criteria for a well-constructed work of art appears in his Conseils 2 M. Helvetius sur la composition et sur le choix du sujet d'une epftre morale (1738). From the twelve rules stated therein, Raymond Naves has extracted and labeled as essential principles the following: "naturalness, variety, clarity, precision and appropriateness of terms, all simple qualities; and among those of a higher tone: sentiment, harmony, imagination." 6 He then summa- rizes with precision how the diverse applica- tions of Voltaire's theorizing can be reduced to a relatively simple formula: "...naturalness, which generates the others; purity, which includes appropriateness and correct- ness; clarity or precision; and finally, ease, which leads to elegance. Elegance, in fact, which crowns all other simple qualities, is already a temperate quality and it sum- marizes all the first stages of taste." 7

The quotation ends characteristically enough on the word taste, that faculty by which one is to judge beauty. The question of taste is crucial here because it leads to the relationship between the work of art and the spectator. Notwithstanding the quantity of Voltaire's remarks devoted to the qualities of the works themselves, his aesthetic is always focused upon the relationship of the work to the observer, and he is constantly re-establishing the rapport between art and life. His remarks upon taste bear this out and lead the reader back to the third and



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most important aspect of the beautiful: auX dience reaction.

For Voltaire, there is no such thing as a cold and impersonal beauty. Beauty must be felt and felt deeply. The greatest misfortune that could befall man would be the loss of all sensation. Inversely, the greatest good is a totality of feeling so forceful and encompassing "that one is totally incapable of feeling anything else." Thus, Voltaire's ultimate criterion for the beautiful, as it was for the good and for the true is emotional. Beauty can and should strike man's senses and his imagination, but unless it touches the heart, it remains uncertain. When one reviews all that he has said about the good, the true, and the beautiful, one can see that it is feeling that defines and unites the three. The good is judged on the morality of the feeling; the true, on the sincerity of the feeling; and the beautiful on the intensity of the feeling. There is an inevitable overlapping of the categories because of the vocabulary he has used to define his terms. Rather than have three distinct categories, each autonomous and yet synonymous, he has forged a new unity that has as its basis not universal reason but universal feeling.

No one was more aware than Voltaire that art is what it does, and throughout his definitions of its nature, he constantly refers to its effect. The beautiful, for example, is that which evokes admiration and pleasure. Many critics have emphasized the hedonistic aspects of his aesthetic and have shown pleasure to be art's principal goal; others have under- scored the practical and didactic qualities both of Voltaire's theory and of his practice. He did not vacillate between two polarities of either amusement or instruction but envisaged the function of art as peindre, amuser, and instruire-the threefold purpose being synonymous and simultaneous.

In 1740, he wrote a particularly telling remark to Argenson: "Mezeray and Daniel bore me because they can neither depict nor stir the passions" (Best. 2030). Inherent in this short sentence lies the crux of Voltaire's aesthetic theory. Art, above all else, must not bore. It must involve the spectator, and it must not only depict but it must also stir the passions. By his use of the word peindre, Vol- taire is cognizant of art's imitative function as

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a reflection of life. At the same time he differentiates between the activity of the historian's factual recording and the artist's creativity. "Every day I give another stroke of the brush to Louis XIV's beautiful century, of which I want to be the painter and not the historian" (Best. 870). The artist's r61e is thus larger than that traditionally assigned to the historian, for the artist will both depict and stir; in other words, art will both reflect and affect life. Art thus becomes both an etude de moeurs and an ecole de moeurs.

It is not enough for Voltaire that the heart be touched; it must be instructed and thereby improved. Art has, therefore, a didactic and frequently morally oriented aim. Man is to be instructed, man is to be moved, man is to be entertained. The three processes are inter- related. Fired by the imagination, reason acts upon the feelings to produce pleasure. The aesthetic experience produced by art involves both the intellect and the emotions. Entertain- ment, in Voltaire's eyes, cannot be separated from instruction, and it must be remembered that if the highest function of art is the production of pleasure, such a pleasure im- plies a total involvement. As he wrote to his friend Cideville, "One must give every possible form to one's being.... One must let every imaginable mood enter and open all the doors of one's spirit to all sciences and all feelings" (Best. 1227). Thus total involvement was both emotional and intellectual and embraced both the whole person and the totality of his world. Pleasure, as Lanson has pointed out,8 has become the supreme law, the goal towards which all men strive and the justification for tradition and in- novation alike. Its nature, however, is not passive, and its value-far from being a sybaritic self-indulgence-lies in its activity, in its individual and social utility.

Art is useful because it helps man to be happy. The highest pleasure lies in the aesthetic experience, and this is obtained through a mode of vision applicable to all realms of living. The aesthetic judgment, which is synonymous with gout, achieves more than the exclusively logical or emotional. It enables man to see the entire complexity of the relationships in the world that surrounds him and his own rapport with that world. It enables man to realize himself




to the limits of his human possibilities. Voltaire's aesthetic is best characterized by the word pragmatic. Herein lies its essential newness in contrast with the preceding century. Truth, for example, is to be tested by its practical consequences. And art is practical because it serves as a guide for action toward happiness. Art, in other words, is capable of transforming knowledge into wisdom by showing the practical relationship of facts to life.

Thus conceived, aesthetic pragmatism enables one to live as a critic in the highest sense. It is a joining of the critical and the creative processes. It is the perception of existing relationships, approbatory of beautes and censorious of defauts, and it is the continuous activity involved in the creation of new rapports. It is both Apollonian and Dionysiac. Voltaire destroyed old relationships and created new, always with an aesthetic standard in mind. It was through art that man could best come to an understanding of the past, to a living enjoyment of the present, and to a meaningful forging of the future. By destroying the old dichoto- mies between reason and sentiment, objec- tivity and subjectivity, science and art, Vol- taire created a new aesthetic oriented towards the fullest possible realization of man's earthly happiness.

Voltaire saw the value of art as relative to all other branches of human endeavor; but insofar as art enables man to see the complexity of his relationships, its highest function is that of helping him to realize his humanity. As such, Voltaire's own literary production is pragmatic in the most inclusive sense of the term. Each of his major works represents an extremely complex critical act and offers thereby not only the possibility of utilitarian application to the immediate problems that confront man, no matter what the century, but also the kind of aesthetic pleasure that is produced when suffering or ugliness is trans- formed and made beautiful.

Perhaps the most dramatic and the most significant aspect of his writing lies in his repeated effort to unite the moral universe (ethos) with a universe of emotion (pathos). In this effort, one finds both the destructive and the creative power of the artist-a process at once analytic and synthetic. His writing,

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encompassing as it does virtually every literary genre, embodies what Ernst Cassirer calls the dynamic process of life itself:

What we feel in art is not a simple or single emotional quality. It is the dynamic process of life itself-the continuous oscillation between opposite poles, between joy and grief, hope and fear, exultation and despair. To give aesthetic form to our passions is to transform them into a free and active state. In the work of the artist the power of passion itself has been made a formative power.9

Emotion can certainly be viewed as one of the motive forces in Voltaire's short stories and poems as well as in his tragedies and even histories. He did not, however, divorce feeling from thought. On the contrary, one was to lead to the other. Man usually progresses from emotion to ideas to action, and in action lies life.

Voltaire incorporated this dynamic process into his art. Each of his works may be viewed as a critical act. And yet despite the obviously propagandistic aim of many of his writings, his struggle for the establishment of a humani- tarian ideal always included an artistic con- sideration as well. This means that despite his insistence upon the moralizing value of art, particularly in the theater, he was able (as Diderot often was not) to avoid confusion between aesthetic and moral issues in his criticism and to emphasize the primacy of aesthetic pleasure as the only appropriate criterion.

Voltaire was not an aesthetician but rather a critic whose keen sense of taste directed a life oriented toward action rather than reflection. As was characteristic of his entire century, he sought happiness, which involved pleasure, not self-sacrifice. He would not, however, have accepted the formula attrib- uted to Mme du Ch&telet that "We have nothing else to do in this world but seek pleasant sensations and feelings." Far from expressing a hedonistic or epicurean view, Voltaire's early statement in Le Mondain (1736)

I love luxury, and even indolence, All pleasures, the arts of every kind, Cleanliness, taste, the embellishments: Every gentleman has such feelings.

O what a fine time is this iron century! The superfluous, a very necessary thing, Has united both hemispheres. (M. X, 83-84)



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should be interpreted not as mere dilettantism but rather as a profession of faith in the legitimacy of aesthetic pleasure.

The use of the veil in eighteenth-century painting has often been commented upon. This same veil is equally present in the literature of the period, and in their treatises the philosophes prided themselves on remov- ing nature's veil. This fascination with the veil is only another way of expressing the superiority of aesthetic pleasure to the purely rationalistic approach. In making this point, Voltaire gives a definition that might well be applied to the present day concern with censorship:

One does not understand the human heart if one thinks one can please more by offering licentious scenes; on the contrary, that closes the door of the soul to true pleasures. If everything is exposed from the outset, then one is satiated; there is nothing left to look forward to, and one suddenly becomes listless while hoping to attain a greater degree of voluptuous delight. That is why people of good breeding have pleasures that common folk do not understand. The spectators, in this case, are like lovers who are disappointed by enjoyment that comes too soon: it is only through a hundred scenes that one ought to catch a glimpse of ideas that would make one blush if they were presented too directly. It is this veil that creates charm for well-bred people; for them there is no pleasure without propriety. (M. II, 552-553)

Aesthetic pleasure remained a constant in Voltaire's hierarchy of values whether he wrote as a poet, dramatist, scientist, historian, or philosopher. Aesthetics and civilization were inextricably linked in his mind and this at a time when neither word had yet been invented! In studying the progress of civilization he remarked that commerce was the soul of the state and added, "It is thus that I love the fine arts, and I shall always consider them useful" (Best. 6536). At the

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time when he was most actively waging war against intolerance and superstition, his motto "Ecrasez l'infame!" went hand in hand with "Ecrasez le mauvais gout " Voltaire's criticism involved his total being, so much that he could complain that reading Lemierre's William Tell made him almostdie from indiges- tion. Throughout his career as a man of letters and of action, he maintained the supremacy of his own aesthetic values. Both by his evaluation of the past and by his efforts to forge the future, Voltaire exemplifies Schiller's words, "There is no other way of making a reasonable being out of sensuous man than by making him aesthetic first." 10

1Theodore Besterman, for example, has been one of the most influential writers in clearing up the apparent contradiction in Voltaire's treatment of

Shakespeare. See his Voltaire on Shakespeare, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 54 (Geneva: Institut et Musee Voltaire, 1967), and also his Voltaire (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969), pp. 125-52.

2 Voltaire: Literary Critic, Studies on Voltaire and the

Eighteenth Century 48 (Geneva: Institut et musee Voltaire, 1966): 45.

3 Unless otherwise indicated, all references to Vol-

taire's works are from the Oeuvres completes, ed. Louis

Moland, 52 vols. (Paris: Gamier, 1877-1885). All translations are my own.

4 From the "Piccini Notebooks," ed. Theodore

Besterman, The Complete Works of Voltaire 82 (Geneva: Institut et musee Voltaire, 1968): 517.

5Best. refers to the letter number in Theodore Besterman's edition of Voltaire's Correspondence, 107 vols. (Geneva: Institut et musee Voltaire, 1953-1965).

6 Le Goat de Voltaire (Paris: Gamier, 1938), p. 206. 7 Ibid. 8 Gustave Lanson, Voltaire, ed. Rene Pomeau

(Paris: Hachette, 1960), p. 85. 9 An Essay on Man (Yale Univ. Press, 1944), p. 149. 10 Friedrich Schiller, Letters on Aesthetic Education

(Yale Univ. Press, 1954).



art. Voltaire´s aesthetic pragmatism

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