Voltaire is among the West's greatest writers. He is right that we must "cultivate the garden" of our own private lives, even when the exterior world seems hopelessly chaotic.
Yes, Voltaire is part of the western canon for a reason and sometimes we lose sight of that (I mean the original qualities of the work and its multidimensionality). I'm trying to recover for myself (and sharing on my blog) and look with fresh at these amazing works to see what they can say today...
My own talismanic passage in this regard comes from Middlemarch, a novel which I cannot recommend strongly enough if you have the spare brain cells for a tremendous amount of lengthy, passive-voice narration:
"Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
You probably know that George Elliot was very much influenced by Spinoza's Ethics writing this book... I only found this out a couple of years ago (I think Clare Carlisle's publication of Elliot's translation of the Ethics from Latin to English alerted me to it). I did not realize this when I read Middlemarch (and I was only a little older than Dorothea reading it, so I missed a lot of things). I am now wondering how that final passage fits with Spinoza's account of causation and his account of free will? In any case, I really love this passage too. I missed much reading Middlemarch, it was tough in places to go on, but the end was very moving. I should reread it.
I decided last month to live my life by this precept from Voltaire. I'm focused on "cultivating my garden." Peace.
Voltaire is among the West's greatest writers. He is right that we must "cultivate the garden" of our own private lives, even when the exterior world seems hopelessly chaotic.
Yes, Voltaire is part of the western canon for a reason and sometimes we lose sight of that (I mean the original qualities of the work and its multidimensionality). I'm trying to recover for myself (and sharing on my blog) and look with fresh at these amazing works to see what they can say today...
My own talismanic passage in this regard comes from Middlemarch, a novel which I cannot recommend strongly enough if you have the spare brain cells for a tremendous amount of lengthy, passive-voice narration:
"Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother’s burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
You probably know that George Elliot was very much influenced by Spinoza's Ethics writing this book... I only found this out a couple of years ago (I think Clare Carlisle's publication of Elliot's translation of the Ethics from Latin to English alerted me to it). I did not realize this when I read Middlemarch (and I was only a little older than Dorothea reading it, so I missed a lot of things). I am now wondering how that final passage fits with Spinoza's account of causation and his account of free will? In any case, I really love this passage too. I missed much reading Middlemarch, it was tough in places to go on, but the end was very moving. I should reread it.