Zadig

I am reading (again, I think, after 30+ years) Voltaire’s 21-chapter story Zadig.

Is it just me, or is the style of Voltaire’s telling not far from Cabell’s in many of his tales, such as The Way of Ecben and The White Robe?

It is not novelistic. It is a tall tale with aphoristic lines and a general attitude of drollery. There is no attempt to “get into the character”; there is no psychological “interiority.”

Many other writers have written book-length fictions in this manner. If I remember correctly, A Cool Million by Nathanael West is in this vein, too.

Is this style also an example of what C. S. Lewis judged as the very opposite of a “realism of presentation” in An Experiment in Criticism? Set in pre-Islamic Mesopotamia, it has little more than a pretense of “realism of content.” (So far, there is no outright fantasy, as in “Micromegas,” but as I proceed I will see, won’t I?)

It is late at night. Perhaps I am not talking sense. But I am curious about the reaction of others.

I have not yet read any Voltaire, or if I have it was in excerpt and probably part of university and I have not retained anything specific.

But your general description of Cabell's style I find spot on. I'm quite curious about any antecedents and/or fellow-travelers, since I find it a very recognisable style and yet difficult to impart to others who have not experienced it firsthand. So many apt descriptors are likely to mislead: it is fantastical, yes, but don't think Tolkien or George R.R. Martin; it is modern but don't think Faulkner; it is humourous but don't think Tom Robbins or Brautigam. The realism is also difficult to pin down, I'm curious what others have to say about the Lewis critical lens.

I haven't read Zadig, though now I will have to soon. But when I read Candide it did strike me as somewhat proto-Cabellian.

Zadig was thought by many, in the 19th century, as Voltaire’s greatest literary achievement.

I noted with pleasure to find a formulation of the liberal principle of letting guilty men go free so as not to allow innocent men to be punished, early in the story.

I now read that Voltaire modeled his romances on Arabian Nights-like tales. This makes perfect sense. I had just read a few of the ancient tall tales off of Gutenberg.org before picking up Zadig. I must have known some connection of this type, for why else take a fancy to reading the Voltaire?

Sometimes a reader’s whims shoot up from hidden seeds, usually to be forgotten in the tangle of literary foliage.

I wrote this on Goodreads, for this story:

This is an excellent tale, echoing the manner of the Arabian Nights, filled with amusing episodes and light philosophical insights. I may be ambivalent about the story’s moral, but the character of the title character is heroic in his quests and honest in his struggle to meet his outrageous challenges in a world filled with pain and frustration and the betrayals and stupidities of his fellow men . . . all the while trying to puzzle out the nature of Fate. Its inspiration never flags.

It is worth mentioning the full title of the edition I read: Zadig, or Fate. Voltaire’s Deism shows in a revelation towards the end, with an angel even offering an explanation for the nature of a world with so much suffering. Very interesting. Today’s besotted youngsters might be amused to learn that Diversity Is a Sign NOT of Our Strength but of the Creator’s.

This is not a novel. Voltaire tells his story in the manner of ancient tall tales, not in the modern novelistic style with its characteristic attention to moment, aiming to induce the reader into the soul of the protagonist, whether hero, victim or anti-hero. There is no “interiority” here. Do not read it expecting anything like a modern thriller or popular novel, and especially not classic novels such as Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe and Fathers and Sons. This is a droll tale in the olden style, but with Voltaire’s wit woven in to leaven the lump.

I highly recommend Zadig. Every literate person should be familiar with this form of fiction. I believe it would properly be called an “anatomy,” to use the terminology of Northrop Frye, taken from Richard Burton. The ancient term is Menippean satire. Some of my favorite writers have engaged in this genre: Lucian, Denis Diderot, Aldous Huxley, and James Branch Cabell. But I also acknowledge and honor the more popular form of the novel, now standard. Yet, as I grow old, and soak up our civilization’s scattered stores of wisdom — wringing them out, periodically, in the course of my many follies and foibles — I find my taste for reveling in the arts of feeling, of streams of consciousness and flows of tropisms, wane.

What waxes, instead, are the dazzling perspectives provided by the satires of Lucian and Cabell. And Voltaire.

Anatomy I've heard before, but not Menippean satire. Yet a quick online search unearths a treasure trove of references. Time to dig in.

Joe Lee Davis argues in his study of Cabell (Twayne, 1962) that the anatomy was a form favored by Mr. Cabell.

That Cabell favored it and mastered it helps explain his near-worship by Jack Woodford. The latter claimed the former knew people by their types, had “seen them all before,” and could prophesy their futures by their types and situations. A normal novelist would have no clue about this, since she knows humanity mainly in the splendor of individuality and particularity; only the anatomist can take wisdom from the chaos and see the order of types, for that is the nature of the art, satirizing life according to types that he has, himself, formulated or mastered.