This is one of those posts in which I could go on and on and on. I could talk about the original novel Candide by the 18th-century French satirist Voltaire, or the character of Candide in the novel, or the musical in its many iterations overseen by Leonard Bernstein, from which our selection is taken. I’ll try to hit each of these areas just a little.
So, to answer my rather silly question in relation to the above: No. Candide is not candid, but Candide is. Little grammatical joke there.
Voltaire’s novel is not in the least candid; that is, it is not naïve, gullible, sincere, or innocent. We use the word today in a slightly different sense; if you say to someone, “I’m going to be candid with you,” you usually mean “I’m going to say something tactless to you.” But you can see how this idea derives from the original definition. If you’re very frank and open yourself you’ll tend to be that way with other people. The novel itself, however, is biting, bitter and sarcastic, full of truly awful events. Even for modern readers, steeped in horror movies and violent video games, it doesn’t make for pleasant reading. (I personally could barely get through the synopsis on Wikipedia.)
The main character, Candide, for whom the work is named, does indeed start out as being completely clueless about the evils of the world, believing that, as his mentor Dr. Pangloss says, “All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” The progress of the novel takes him from a state of utter innocence and trust through a series of violent plot twists including murders, mutilations and treachery, with Candide himself enduring beating, torture, and a near hanging. He has every illusion about mankind stripped away from him. In the end, though, instead of becoming a part of evil himself, he marries Cunegonde, the young woman he’s been pursuing throughout the entire story, and they decide to settle down and learn to, literally, make their garden grow. I’m reminded of something that Martin Luther supposedly said: “If I knew that the world was ending tomorrow, I would still plant my little apple tree.”
Voltaire wrote his novel as a reaction to the philosophy of optimism then popular in Europe, a school of thought which said that since God was benevolent there could be nothing in the world that was truly evil. But then truly awful events would happen, thus challenging this view. The Lisbon earthquake in 1755 with its resulting tsunami and fires resulting in the deaths of thousands and then the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict that bears an eerie resemblance to World War I, were two catastrophes that were impossible for the optimists of that time to ignore. If their philosophy were correct, then such things—natural disasters, pointless wars–simply could not occur. But they did occur. How to proceed? Voltaire’s response was to reject traditional religious and governmental institutions as being fundamentally flawed, and to urge his readers through the voice of the chastened and enlightened Candide to “do the best we can.” Not surprisingly, the novel was banned because of this attitude but became a best seller anyway.
Whew! There’s much more to be said about the original novel, but I want to get to the musical from which our selection is taken. If you take the time just to read through the Wikipedia article on the musical you’ll end up wondering how the thing ever got written or performed. It went through so many revisions and so many creative people had a hand in it over the years that it should have just fallen apart. Instead, in spite of its initial lack of critical or audience acclaim, it eventually became a standard part of concert and stage repertoire.
I’m not going to attempt any kind of overall summary of the creative process, but I do want to hit a few high points. Y’all know how fascinated I am with how an idea gets started. For Candide, it all began with Lillian Hellman, the famous playwright and screenwriter, who had decided that she wanted to write a play based on Voltaire’s novel that included incidental music. She had produced a similar vehicle in an earlier play about Joan of Arc, The Lark, with Leonard Bernstein as the composer of the music. So why not do the same thing again? But Bernstein got excited about doing a full-fledged musical treatment of the story, and he persuaded Hellman to write a comic operetta libretto instead of a play. So Hellman wrote the non-musical dialogue and came up with the overall structure; this product is usually called a musical’s “book.” A parade of other writers contributed to the lyrics of the songs, with various verses being tossed out and others substituted. The poet James Agee didn’t make the cut; Dorothy Parker apparently did. There was a great cast and a well-known director for opening night in December 1956. But alas! All this firepower was not enough to rescue the musical; it was a box-office disaster and closed after a two-month run. Much of the blame fell on Hellman’s book (as tends to happen—I guess the motto is “blame the book”). She was accused of being “too serious” and not getting across the spirit of either Voltaire’s novel or Bernstein’s music. There were several revivals that were not overseen by Bernstein and for which Hellman refused to allow her work to be used, so others stepped in. In 1988, though, Bernstein decided he wanted to oversee the final, definitive version, which I assume is the source for our selection.
Candide is often performed in a semi-staged concert version, and since I have a soft spot for Kristin Chenoweth I’m posting the finale from the performance in which she appears.
And if you haven’t had enough Chenoweth, here she is singing the incredibly difficult and scintillating aria “Glitter and Be Gay”–
You’ve been a fool and so have I, I’ll be your wife
And let us try before we die to make some sense of life
We’re neither pure nor wise nor good; we’ll do the best we know;
And we’ll chop our wood and make our garden grow.
I thought the world was sugar cake, for so our master said;
But now I’ll teach my hands to bake our loaf of daily bread.
Let dreamers dream what worlds they please; those Edens can’t be found.
The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees, are grown in solid ground.
© Debi Simons
