Posted by:
Backseater
(
)
Date: March 12, 2020 09:31AM
I read an abridgement of "Candide" (although not on gold plates) in a college Freshman history/literature/religion course in the early-to-mid-1960's. This was in an anthology called "The Heritage of Western Civilization," still available in a later edition from Amazon. Later I read the whole thing and discovered that they'd cut out some of the best juicy parts.
Voltaire had a way with words. I particularly like Candide's encounter with the Dutchman and his wife; and the old woman's story of being captured by the pirates.
In addition to Leonard Bernstein's operetta, there was also a 1960 film with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Daliah Lavi, updated to the WWII/cold war era. And of course there was "Candy" in 1968, with Richard Burton, Marlon Brando, Ringo Starr, James Coburn, John Huston, John Astin, Elsa Martinelli, Sugar Ray Robinson--and Walter Matthau as the superpatriotic, psychotic General Smight.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054719/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#casthttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062776/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2Here's a joke from that era that I believe puts the Candide-Polyanna-Pangloss attitude in perspective. Of course we were college students, and Vietnam was just beginning to appear regularly on the evening news.
Optimist: This is the best of all possible worlds.
Pessimist: Yes, I'm afraid you're right.