前一阵在女儿留的几箱书里找书看，找到《安娜卡列尼娜》的同时，看到伏尔泰的《老实人》,书又薄又小，本来想先读这本薄本的，翻了翻，觉得不吸引人，就随手搁一边的，浑然不知这是伏尔泰的经典之作。
伏尔泰是十八世纪法国的哲学家、作家，据说这本小说是伏尔泰用了三天时间写成的小说，一经出版(1761－1765)，就被翻译成不同的语言，光英语就有三个不同版本，在这当时是很罕见的。这本小说短而精，一百多页的故事情节变化快，涵盖的内容、地域广，寓意深刻，讽刺了当时的宗教、政治、上层社会、丑恶的人性，人吃人(cannibals)的现象, 并结合当时的自然灾害，描绘出一幕幕令人震撼的混沌乱世。我想他作品的成功在于它的深刻性，十八世纪的作品在今天看来依然新鲜光亮，没有因历史岁月的变迁而失去其锋芒。书名《老实人》似乎在向世人传递这样一个信息，人之初，性本善，是这个世界人让人沉沦、堕落、犯罪。
当然，以我十分有限的历史、政治、哲学知识，是不敢枉评这本世界名著的，如果说，还想写点什么，那就是书中的第十七、十八章，写到男主人公和其同伴误闯误撞，漂到一个乌托邦之地的传奇故事，让我猛然间想起东晋陶渊明写的《桃花源记》,觉得两者颇有异曲同工之妙，感慨不已。
这两章故事的梗概是这样的。话说Candide和他的同伴在遇土匪强盗、经险滩，攀悬崖，弹尽粮绝，马匹也疲劳致死之后，绝望中坐上了河边的一只独木舟。经过24小时的漂流之后，他们来到一个被万刃峭壁所阻隔包围的一块宽阔的平原上，一个叫El Dorado的国家。那里遍地是黄金宝石，连马车都是金光闪闪的，那里的人们个个美丽光鲜，大地一派莺歌燕舞，真乃是个流奶和蜜的富庶之国。
172岁的长者接待他们，告诉他们这个国家的来历和历史。他们后来还得知，这是个没有高级法庭，没有议会，没有法律诉讼，没有监狱、甚至没有意见纷争的国家。国王的宫殿里养了五六千人的唱诗班，整日歌舞升平，唱颂感恩之歌。Candide和他的同伴在这样的花天酒地了吃喝玩乐了一个月，心里还是惦记着心爱的姑娘Cunegund, 最后向国王要求离开此地。
国王派了三千机械师花了五天时间造了艘结实的船只，带他们离开四壁悬崖的高山。临别时，国王还赠送了一百头羊，其中二十头装载着日常吃的用的， 三十头盛着奇珍异宝，另外五十头羊身上挂满了无数袋的金银珠宝钻石。他们这些珠宝富能敌国，比欧洲所以的国王都富有。就这样，他们离开了这个世外桃源，重新踏上了艰辛的旅程。
最终，这些钱财珠宝撒的撒，花的花，被偷的偷，被骗的骗，100头羊也死光光。Candide历经艰辛，终于找到了心上人, 却发现曾经貌美如花的她，早已花容失色，变得丑陋不堪。
The book Candide was accidentally selected the day when I rummaged for Anna Karenina in my daughter’s boxes of books. It was picked up because of its thinness, a small-sized book with only over 100 pages. When I had both a thick book and a thin one at hand, I chose to read the easy one first, putting aside Anna Karenina. But a few pages of Candide however turned me off, and I switched to Anna Karenina, not realizing what I gave up is Voltaire’s masterpiece.
Not until recently, the book caught my attention again. If a fifteen or sixteen-year-old high school student could read it, why cannot I?? Then in a hot summer weekend, I found myself immersed in the book and finished it in a stretch.
Written in the mid-1800s, the book is a tale of a gentle young man named Candide, whose exile began when he was kicked away from a baron’s castle. On his run for life and later his journey to find his lover Miss Cunegund, he witnessed hunger, poverty, cannibals, religious corruption, rape, violence, theft, injustice, catastrophe from nature as well as from human beings.These astonishingly depressing findings were in a stark contrast to what his tutor Dr. Pangloss had been advocating to him that they lived in “the best of all possible worlds”.
It happened that in the middle of his journey, he and his valet was taken by a canoe to a country called El Dorado, where its “roads were covered, or rather adorned, with carriages formed of glittering materials, in which were men and women of a surprising beauty”. Gold and precious stones, like emerald, can be found everywhere. But when “Candide asked to see High Court of Justice, the Parliament”, he was told that they had none in the country. Neither did they have any prisons, lawsuits or monks. People inside lived in peace and great happiness, but they were not allowed to get out. On top of that, the country, “bounded by a chain of inaccessible mountains” was not open to the outside world. This is undoubtedly a fictional scene and encounter.
Interestingly, this reminds me of a Chinese tale Peach Colony, written by Tao Yuanming, a poetic writer in about 400 AD. Some similarities could be found in the tales that both the fisherman and Candide were carried by the stream into a colony that was isolated from the outside world. More importantly, Tao and Voltaire both expressed their longings for a Utopia, a perfect world for living. But Tao’s tale came way before Voltaire’s, and if Tao’s work was ever translated into different languages, it is likely that our ancestors inspired the world philosophically.
When I read Peach Colony again today, all the passages still sound very familiar, some I could still recite, though not all, thanks much to the High School Chinese teacher, who made us to recite. Looking back, it is so worth it, our every effort to learn our Chinese masterpieces by memory.
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