Candide is a short
novel by the
Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire.
Sardonic in outlook, it follows the naive protagonist Candide from his first exposure to the precept that "all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds," and on through a series of adventures that dramatically disprove that precept even as the protagonist clings to it.
Leonard Bernstein based an operetta (1956) on Voltaire's story. The overture is very popular as an orchestral piece.
- French text from University of Virginia: [1] (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed-french?id=VolCand&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=/lv1/Archive/french-parsed)
- English translation at the Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford (http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/x_voltfnd/etc/e-texts/prose/voltaire/index_prose_candi.html)
- A letter written by Voltaire to the Journal encyclopédique in which the author denies being the author of Candide: [2] (http://humanities.uchicago.edu/homes/VSA/Candide/Candide.letter.html)