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Paris

8476

Voltaire’s Paris

Voltaire was born in Paris in 1694, and died in Paris in 1778. Throughout his life, he had a complicated relationship with the city, for which he felt a simultaneous attraction and repulsion.  Voltaire admired the worldly and artistic side of Paris, but he also resented what he perceived as idleness, pretentiousness and superficiality among its citizens (Soprani 1014).

Voltaire was a resident of Paris and its suburbs from the time of his birth (1694) until 1726. During this period, he lived in a number of different homes in the city, notably near the Palais-Royal in what is now the 1st arrondissement; on the Rive Gauche near the Porte Saint-Michel; and on what is now the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in the 8th arrondissement (Soprani 1015). He attended the famed secondary school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, which continues to operate today in the 5th arrondissement of Paris <http://www.louislegrand.org/index.php/anglais-presentations-61>.

In 1717, Voltaire was imprisoned for the first time in the Bastille on charges of writing libelous poetry (rightfully) attributed to him and directed at the regent, Philippe II d’Orléans.  Voltaire’s life-long criticism of the French justice system was certainly informed in part by this stay in the cruel prison that was the Bastille: locked up without a trial as a result of a lettre de cachet, the young philosopher was forced to endure months of isolation, darkness, and meager food portions. Upon his release 11 months later, he was temporarily banned from Paris and relegated to live at his father’s home in Châtenay, at that time a small parish southwest of the capital[1]. Although he appeared to publicly take his imprisonment in stride, Voltaire privately remarked to a close friend that the Bastille was a “place of distress” and added that he “discovered in myself a courage which I had not expected, after the frivolity and errors of my youth” (Davidson).

Throughout Voltaire’s life, Paris was the cultural and literary center of France. His plays Œdipe (1718), Zaïre (1732), Alzire (1732), and Mérope (1743), were all performed—and became great successes—in the city. Still, he frequently criticized the city and its citizens. In La Princesse de Babylone (1768), he satirized the superficiality of Parisians, called “frivolity” their “important and unique affair,” and joked that Parisians were like children who constantly needed new playthings to be kept from crying (Soprani 1015-1016). In a poem (“La vie de Paris et de Versailles” – Épitre [OCV 31B]) sent on 28 July 1749 to his niece, Madame Denis[2], Voltaire wrote wearily of the court life at Versailles and Paris and lamented the monotony of the “insipid” daily routine of a courtier: “Sort pour sortir, sans avoir rien à faire” (Going out just to go out, without having anything to do).

In 1754 after nearly two decades spent variously in Prussia, England, and at the home of Émilie du Châtelet in Cirey (in the Haute Marne District, about 270 km south-East of Paris), Voltaire was forbidden by the King from returning to Paris or Versailles. He did not return to Paris for more than 25 years.

In February of 1778, Voltaire came back to Paris for the premiere of his tragedy Irene. Three months later, too weak to return to Ferney following a long period of illness, Voltaire died in the capital on May 30, 1778.
 
Danielle Mihram and Emily Rucker, May 2017.

Sources
Davidson, Ian. "From the Court to the Bastille." Voltaire: A Life. New York, NY: Pegasus, 2012, pp. 51-58.

Soprani, Anne. “Paris.”  Inventaire Voltaire, edited by Jean M. Goulemot, André Magnan, and Didier Masseau. Paris: Gallimard, 1995, pp. 1014-1016.

Waddicor, Mark.  “La Vie de Paris et de Versailles,” critical edition by Mark Waddicor. OCV, vol. 31B.
 
[1] Today named Châtenay-Malabry, approx. 30 km southwest of Paris <http://www.chatenay-malabry.fr/notre-ville/histoire.html>

[2] “La Vie de Paris et de Versailles” (Waddicor).  In his 28 July 1749 letter to Frederick (D3969), Voltaire notes that he is planning to send to Frederick this “épître”: “Vous y verrez sire la vie de Paris peinte assez au naturel” (“You will see therein, Sire, the life of Paris painted rather au naturel”).
 
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