SOURCE: Wade, I. O. “Voltaire and Candide.¹” In Voltaire: Candide, or Optimism: A New Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, edited by Robert M. Adams, pp. 142-51. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966.

In the essay below, Wade offers a brief critical history of Candide.

The Journal encyclopédique² was far from favorable in its review of Candide. Indeed, it was so severe that Voltaire felt constrained to take its editors to task for what he deemed their ineptitude. Their article, however, certainly merits attention, since it contains the type of ambiguous evaluation characteristic of all criticism of Candide down to the present day:

How to pass judgment on this novel? Those who have been amused by it will be furious at a serious criticism, those who have read it with a critical eye will consider our lenity a crime. The partisans of Leibnitz, far from considering it a refutation of optimism...