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Voltaire

1694–1778

the French writer who believed in social and religious freedom

All through my life, one thing was important to me and that was freedom. Freedom to belong to any religion, freedom to work and earn a living, and most importantly, freedom of speech. I always said and wrote exactly what I thought.

I was born in Paris, France on 21^st November 1694 and I was the youngest of five children. My parents named me François-Marie and although my family name was Arouet, later as a writer, I chose the name Voltaire and that is how I am still known. My father, François Arouet was a public official, a lawyer, and my mother, Marie Marguerite d’Aumart, who died when I was 7 years old, came from an aristocratic family. Even though my father was considered to be upper-middle class and not part of the aristocracy, we lived well and did not have any financial problems. When I was 10 years old, in 1704, I started going to school at the Collège Louis-le-Grand. Here I was educated by Catholic priests and I discovered that I loved literature, theatre and writing, especially writing poetry and plays. From an early age I knew I wanted to become a professional writer. My father had other ideas – for some reason he did not want his son to follow a literary career – and so I was not allowed to continue studying what I loved. Instead, my father wanted me to become a lawyer and in 1711, when I left school, he found me a job in Paris as an assistant to a notary – a type of lawyer.

However, instead of learning about the law, I spent my time secretly studying and writing poetry. When I wasn’t writing, I spent my time with friends. I soon found out that I was able to write in a way that amused people and I wrote funny poems about well-known people – poems that often lacked respect and were sometimes even rude. When my father discovered what I was really doing, he was furious. He was angry, not only because I had lied to him but also because he did not approve of my friends. In 1713, he sent me away to Caen in Normandy to study law.

While I was in Normandy, my father arranged for me to move to the Netherlands to work as a secretary for the French Ambassador. In the Netherlands, I met a young French woman called Catherine Olympe Dunoyer who was a Protestant refugee. In France, the only religion that was allowed was Catholicism. If you were not Catholic, you could be punished. Catherine and her family had gone to live in the Netherlands, which was mainly Protestant, where they were safe. We loved each other and wanted to run away and get married. My father discovered our plans and stopped us. Once again he was angry with me. At the age of 19, in disgrace, I was sent back to France, where my father thought he could control me.

My relationship with my father had never been very good and I felt increasingly bitter and angry with the way he kept interfering in my life. I could not support myself because I had no money of my own and so I was forced to do what he wanted. I was also unhappy with the way French society was organized. For the past 50 years, France had been ruled by King Louis XIV. He believed that his right to be king had come from God. He also believed that God only supported Catholics and that every other religion should be forbidden. This made me furious because I completely refused to accept that God was only in favour of one religion. To me, it was impossible. I believed in a different kind of society – one where everybody had the same rights, no matter what their religion, gender or social class was. Only the aristocracy and the Church had rights in France and, thinking it was most unfair, I expressed my feelings in the things I wrote. In a country where there was no social freedom, this was dangerous and probably not very wise.

King Louis XIV of France

My writing became more satirical as I criticized the church, and the king and his advisors, and I started to make enemies. My father decided to send me away again and I went to stay with the Marquis de Saint-Ange, a friend who lived in the country. I stayed there for some months and when I came back in 1715, my father tried to introduce me to a new circle of friends that he thought would have a better influence on me. I joined the elite social circle – the Court Sceaux – of a woman called the Duchesse du Maine. Here I found that many people admired my satirical humour, which naturally encouraged me to write more, and I started to become famous. The following year, in 1716, I made fun of the Duc d’Orléans, who was ruling the country until the king was old enough to do it himself. Louis XIV had died and King Louis XV was only five years old. The Duke was so annoyed by what I had written that he exiled me to a place called Tulle, which was about 480 kilometres from Paris. After a short while, he let me come back home.

Then, in 1717, I was arrested for having written an offensive poem about members of the ruling aristocracy. I was sent to the Bastille, which was a prison in the middle of Paris, for 11 months. Conditions there were terrible. It was full of mad people and rats carrying all kinds of disease. Being locked up didn’t stop me from wanting to write about everything that I thought was wrong with French life. While I was in prison, I wrote my first play, called Oedipe, and I started to write La Henriade, which was a long poem that I didn’t publish until 1723. When I came out of the Bastille in 1718, Oedipe was performed for the first time and it was a great success. It was about this time that I adopted the name Voltaire.

In 1722, my father died and I started working for a man called Cardinal Guillaume Dubois as a secret diplomat. I hadn’t stopped writing and managed to publish my poem, La Henriade. In 1726, I had an argument with a man called Chevalier de Rohan, who was from one of the most powerful aristocratic families in France. He said that I had insulted him and he had me arrested. I was sent to the Bastille once more. After a few weeks, I was given a choice. I could stay in prison or I could leave the country. I did not hesitate for a moment and decided to leave France and go to live in exile in England.

In England I soon learned the language and I started studying the work of John Locke, a British philosopher who I admired very much and whose ideas were very close to mine. He believed in social equality and he shared my belief that no king had a God-given right to rule. He was in favour of religious tolerance and thought that the church should not be part of a country’s government. I also became fascinated by the work of Sir Isaac Newton, an English physicist, mathematician and, in his later years, philosopher. Through my writing, and all through my life, I tried to make the ideas of both of these great men better known. As a writer of plays, I was also interested in British theatre and in one writer in particular. His name was William Shakespeare. His plays were well known in Britain, but we had not heard of him in France. I loved the depth of his characters and the complicated plots, although I found the actual performances rather rough and lacking in style.

In 1729, I returned to Paris and spent my time writing. I was writing serious articles now, not just the satirical poems of my youth, but texts about the lack of social and religious freedom in France, which I found shocking. Poor people were being exploited by those who were rich and I wrote that the king and the Church were responsible for this situation.

In 1732, I published a play called Zaïre which was a success, not only in France but also throughout Europe and I became very well known. The following year I published a collection of essays called Letters On The English Nation that I had been working on since my time in England. The articles were based on what I had seen during my exile. I wrote about how easy it was for educated men who were not from the aristocracy to follow various professions, about the freedom the press had to say whatever they wanted, and about the respect that was given to ordinary people. I suggested that it would be beneficial if other societies adopted these approaches to governing a country. My work, quite rightly, was viewed as a direct criticism of France and I found myself in trouble once again. To avoid being sent to the Bastille, I exiled myself from Paris and went to live far away in Lorraine in the north-east of France near Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg.

In the meantime, I had met a woman called Émilie du Châtelet. When we were introduced, she told me that she had read my books and we soon became close friends. She brought light and happiness to my life and I recognized in her a rare combination of logic and a passion for life. She was extremely well educated and was interested in science and literature. We went everywhere together – to the opera, the theatre and were even guests of the king. In Lorraine, I stayed at the Château de Cirey which was owned by Émilie’s family.

The Château de Cirey, in Lorraine

In 1735, I was given permission to return to Paris but I rather liked living in Lorraine and I decided to stay there. I had made a lot of money from some clever investments in banking and being rich gave me the opportunity to spend my time exactly as I wanted. Because of Émilie’s interest in literature and science, we collected over 21,000 books. She worked hard on translating many scientific books from English to French and also read many books on philosophy and mathematics. We spent much time discussing philosophical and scientific theories, sometimes disagreeing. In 1738, with Émilie’s help, I published a book called Elements of the Philosophy of Newton which helped to make his theories of gravity known to people outside the world of science.

In 1742, I was sent by King Louis XV to Prussia on a secret trip to encourage the new king – Frederick II – to fight on the side of France in the War of the Austrian Succession. This was a series of wars lasting from 1740 until 1748 that began with the death of Charles VI, who was the Holy Roman Emperor. The wars were to decide who should take his place, as many royal figures thought they had the right to do so. Before Frederick had become king, he had read and enjoyed some of my work. He started writing to me and we became friends. I was successful in persuading him to fight on the side of France, and King Louis XV, who had never liked me personally, decided he would give me his attention once more. I was welcomed back into the elite social circles in France. From science, I turned my interest to history and, in 1745, King Louis XV made me the Royal Historiographer of France. A year later, I was elected to the French Academy. This institution had been set up in 1634 by Cardinal de Richelieu, who was the chief advisor of King Louis XIII, to protect the quality of literature and language.

In 1750, I was feeling unwelcome in Paris and disappointed with my life. Émilie had died the year before and I was terribly upset. Some of my recent plays had not been popular and although I was generally accepted in the royal court, there were very many people there who did not like me and certainly did not trust me. I had always found it difficult to keep my opinions to myself and I was constantly in trouble for having said or written tactless or cruel things about famous aristocrats or members of the Church. When my friend Frederick II invited me to go to his court in Potsdam near Berlin to be his official poet and philosopher, I accepted.

In the beginning things went well for me there. I wrote The Age of Louis XIV in 1751 and then the following year a short story called Micromegas was published. But then I began to quarrel with a man called Maupertuis who was President of the Scientific Academy in Berlin. I thought he was ridiculous and stupid and I wrote a long article about him which, although funny, was also really quite offensive. Frederick was furious with me and forbade me from ever coming to Berlin again. I left Prussia on 26^th March 1753 and by the time I was nearing Paris, news of Frederick’s anger had reached King Louis XV. He did not allow me to enter the city of Paris so I had to make other plans.

In 1754, I went to Geneva in Switzerland where I bought a large estate called Les Délices and I continued writing and producing plays. I met Jean-Jacques Rousseau who was a political philosopher and a composer, whose ideas later had great influence. However, Rousseau and I started to have serious philosophical disagreements. A recommendation by him that theatre was completely unnecessary and even harmful was partly responsible for theatrical performances being banned in Geneva and, without the theatre, I felt there was no reason for me to stay. In addition, in my usual satirical way, I had made the Swiss feel uneasy. By 1758, it was time for me to leave.

I moved back to France to a village called Ferney, which was close to the border with Switzerland. I bought a large house and land where I entertained many important, influential people who came to watch my plays. I also supported local industry so that the ordinary people of Ferney, who had no civil rights, could work and make a living. I wanted to help the local community in any way I could. Naturally, I experienced opposition from the local aristocracy, who thought I was causing trouble by behaving like a revolutionary. Later on, after the French Revolution, the ordinary people of Ferney changed the name of the village to Ferney-Voltaire and a statue of me with the words ‘Patriarch of Ferney’ was built.

I stayed in Ferney for 20 years and because of the work I wrote and published during this time people began to see me differently. In 1759, I published a short story called Candide, which became my most famous book. As well as writing professionally, I enjoyed writing letters and I wrote to a great many people. One of them was Catherine II – Catherine the Great – of Russia. I also started writing again to my old friend, Frederick II, who had, by this time, forgiven me. In addition to Candide, I also published many other books including the popular philosophical work Dictionnaire Philosophique, in 1764. This was followed by L’Ingénu in 1767 and Questions sur l’Encyclopédie which was published in nine books between 1770 and 1772.

When I was 83 years old, I decided to return to Paris. The year was 1778. My latest play, a tragedy called Irène was going to be performed and I wanted to be present for the rehearsals and preparation. On the day after I arrived in Paris, more than 300 people came to my house to visit me. Three months later, on 30^th May, I died peacefully in my sleep. It appears that after being away for 28 years I had come back as a popular man – some people even called me a hero.

The Life of Voltaire