Travel across continents, through disasters, and past every conceivable human misery with the most optimistic young man in literature. Read Voltaire’s savage, hilarious, and endlessly surprising masterpiece completely free online.
Published in 1759, Candide is the most brilliant assault on human complacency ever written. Voltaire, already famous as a philosopher, historian, and provocateur, turned his attention to the fashionable optimism of his day—the belief, associated with the philosopher Leibniz, that we live in “the best of all possible worlds.” His weapon was not argument but ridicule, not logic but laughter. The result is a book that has never gone out of print, a book that remains as fresh, as funny, and as devastating as the day it was published.
Candide is a young man, innocent and trusting, raised in the castle of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh. His tutor, Pangloss, teaches him that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Then Candide is expelled from the castle for kissing the Baron’s daughter, Cunégonde. He is conscripted into the army, beaten nearly to death, and forced to witness the horrors of war. He escapes, travels to Holland, Portugal, and the New World. He encounters earthquakes, inquisitions, enslavement, betrayal, and the systematic cruelty of his fellow humans. Through it all, he clings to Pangloss’s teaching—until, finally, he cannot.
On this page, you can experience the book that taught Europe to laugh at its own pretensions. We offer the complete 1759 text in English translation for online reading.
Book Info
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Title | Candide, or Optimism |
| Author | Voltaire |
| Year of Publication | 1759 |
| Genre | Satire, Philosophical Fiction, Novella |
| Language | English Translation (Original: French) |
| Legal Status | Public Domain Worldwide |
| Format | Online Reading |
Read Candide Online
Taste the best of all possible worlds and find it bitter. Begin Voltaire’s masterpiece by entering the castle of Thunder-ten-tronckh interactively below.
This preview introduces the innocent hero, his optimistic tutor, and the beautiful Cunégonde. However, the full, picaresque, devastating narrative—the Lisbon earthquake, the Eldorado, the loss of fortune, the reunion with the beloved, and the final, famous conclusion—is available in the complete text for our subscribers.
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About the Novella Candide
Candide is a machine designed to destroy complacency. It moves from disaster to disaster with the relentless momentum of a nightmare, each chapter a fresh proof that the world is not the best possible but the worst conceivable. And yet it is also, impossibly, one of the funniest books ever written.
Pangloss and Optimism
Pangloss is the most famous philosophy teacher in literature, and his teachings are the novel’s central target. He believes that everything happens for the best, that noses were designed to hold spectacles, that the horrors of the world are necessary components of the universal harmony. He is not merely wrong; he is monstrous. His optimism is a form of blindness, a refusal to see the suffering that surrounds him. When he is hanged by the Inquisition, we are not surprised; we are only surprised that it took so long.
The Lisbon Earthquake
The novel’s most famous episode is based on a historical event: the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which killed tens of thousands and profoundly shook European faith in divine providence. Voltaire’s Candide witnesses the earthquake and its aftermath, including the auto-da-fé organized by the Inquisition to prevent future disasters. The scene is savage comedy, a demonstration that human cruelty is at least as destructive as natural catastrophe.
Eldorado
Candide’s journey takes him to Eldorado, a utopian kingdom where gold is common as pebbles, where there are no priests, no prisons, no poverty. It is the one place in the novel where things are genuinely good. And Candide leaves. He cannot stay because he is still driven by his desire for Cunégonde, still attached to the world he has known. His departure from paradise is the novel’s most poignant moment, a reminder that we are not capable of happiness even when it is offered to us.
Cunégonde
Cunégonde, the beloved, passes through the novel as a series of disasters. She is raped, disemboweled, enslaved, sold. She grows old and ugly. When Candide finally finds her, she is no longer the beautiful girl he kissed in the castle; she is a wrinkled, bad-tempered woman. He marries her anyway, out of duty and habit. Their marriage is not a happy ending but a settling of accounts.
The Garden
The novel’s famous conclusion—”We must cultivate our garden”—has been interpreted in countless ways. Does it mean that we should tend to our own affairs and ignore the larger world? Does it mean that work is the only remedy for despair? Does it mean that philosophy is useless, that action is all? Voltaire does not explain. He leaves the line hanging, as ambiguous as the world it describes.
The Targets
Voltaire attacks everything: war, religion, philosophy, colonialism, love, hope, humanity itself. No institution is spared, no belief is safe. The novel is equal-opportunity offense, a declaration of war against all forms of certainty. Its only positive value is a kind of stoic endurance, the determination to keep going even when everything has gone wrong.
The Style
Candide is written in a style of devastating simplicity. Voltaire’s sentences are short, declarative, almost naive. He reports the most appalling events in the same flat tone he uses to describe the weather. This disparity between style and content is the source of the novel’s comedy and its horror. The prose is a mask, and behind the mask is rage.
Why Read Candide Today?
Because we need it now as much as Europe needed it in 1759. We are surrounded by optimists who tell us that everything is for the best, that technology will save us, that progress is inevitable, that history has a meaning and a direction. Voltaire’s answer is the same as it ever was: look at the world. Look at the suffering. Look at the cruelty. And then, perhaps, cultivate your garden.
FAQ
Is Candide a true story?
No. It is a satire, a philosophical fiction. But it is grounded in real events—the Lisbon earthquake, the Seven Years’ War, the atrocities of colonialism—that Voltaire knew and condemned.
Why was it banned?
Candide was banned by religious and civil authorities throughout Europe. It was considered blasphemous, seditious, and obscene. It was, and is, all of these things.
Is Pangloss a real philosopher?
He is a caricature of Leibniz, the German philosopher who argued that this is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire had no patience with Leibniz’s optimism, which seemed to him a denial of evident evil.
How long is it?
Approximately 100 pages in standard editions. It is a novella, designed to be read in a single sitting—though its implications will take much longer to digest.
Can I read it on my phone?
Yes. Its short chapters, rapid pacing, and savage wit make it ideal for mobile reading. But be warned: you will laugh, and then you will stop laughing, and then you will think.