voix violons, singers — fiddlers
Page 27. — 1. Sadder; See Voltaire's Essai sur les mmurs,
«h. xi. "II (Zoroastre) ecrivit ou commenta, dit-on, le livre du Zend, que les Parsis, disperses aujourd'hui dans l'Asie, reverent comme leur Bible. M. Hyde qui nous a donne une traduction du Sadder, nous aurait procure celle du Zend s'il avait pu subvenir aux frais de cette recherche. Je m'en rapporte au moins au Sadder, a cet extrait du Zend, qui est le catechisme des Parsis."
Page 28. — 1. cire; there are various allusions to the language of the Old Testament in the foregoing lines.
Page 34. — I. pole de Canope; some editions have port de Canope, and in that case the reference would be to the city of Canopus in Egypt. The better reading however is pole and the Canopus meant is a star of the first magnitude in the constellation Argo, not visible at any latitude higher than the southern part of the Mediterranean. The whole passage means that Zadig guided himself by the stars and constellations to the southward.
Page 35. — I. atome de boue; for the thought cf. Tennyson's poem Vastness:
" Raving politics, never at rest — as this poor earth's pale history runs, — What is it all but a trouble of ants in the light of a million million of suns."
Page 37. — i. A d'autres, not I.
Page 3i>. — 1. pense1 etre, was near being.
Page 42. — I. Gangarides, ( rayyupT&u ), a people who, according to the ancient geographers, lived along the coasts of Bengal at the mouth of the Ganges.
Page 45. — i. gangaride. Cf. page 42, note 1.
Page 47. — I. homme de Cambalu, the man of Peking. "Cam balu est la viile capitale du Cathay ou de la Chine Orientale et septentrionale que nous appelons maintenant Pekin." D'Herbelot, BMiotheque Orientale (1697).
2. Li Tien, " Mots chinois qui signifient proprement : //', la lumicre naturelle, la raison; et Tien, le ciel; et qui signirient aussi Dieu." (Note de I 'oltuire.)
Page 48. — i. Teutath, Teututes, war god of Druidical religion. 2. il lui apprendrait a vivre, //<■ would give him o. lesson in
mm nners.
Page 49. — The main situation in this chapter goes back ultimately to a very old and famous Hindu story. For a comparatively modern form of the tale in Sanskrit (Upakoshd and her Four Lovers) see Kath&rsarifaagara (Tawney's translation, vol. I, pp. 17 ff.). "It is a story of ancient celebrity in Kurope as Constant du Hamelou /./ J><ime quiattrapa un Pr£trc,un Prevdtet nn Forestier."
PajfO 50. — I. ^oai7ri?, ox-eyed. i. e. having large, full, finely rounded t
Page 58. — I. Arable P6tree; Arabia was divided by the ancient geographers into three parts: Arabia Felix ("Araby the Blest "), Arabia Deserta and Arabia Petraea, the last division including the N. W. part of the country bordering on the Red Sea.
Page 63. — I. seigneurs de la bouche, lords of the {queen's) table.
Page 72. — I. en demoiselle suivante, like a maid in waiting.
Pagg 75. — i. apothicaire du corps, apothecary to his lordship's person; cf. page 63, note 1.
Page 80. — 1. L'Ermite; Voltaire's immediate source for the story in this chapter was Thomas Parnell's (1679-1718) poem The Hermit. Parnell was a friend of Swift's and was associated with Addison and Steele on the Spectator.
Page 91. — 1. Ciel ; " C'est ici que finit le manuscrit qu'on a retrouve de l'histoire de Zadig. On sait qu'il a essuye bien d'autres aventures qui ont ete fidelement ecrites. On prie messieurs les interpretes des langues orientales de les communiquer si elles parviennent jusqu' a eux." {Note de Voltaire?)
microm£gas.
Microme'gas (from /aikoos small and /u,eyas, great; the name contains the implication that all size is relative) was first printed at London in 1752 but was possibly written several years earlier. The first idea of Microme'gas goes back to Cyrano de Bergerac's Voyage dans la lune (1656) but Voltaire was more immediately inspired by Swift's Gulliver.
Renan has said, with some exaggeration perhaps, that the substitution in the 16th Century of the Copernican astronomy for the geocentric and anthropocentric view of the universe held in the middle ages is the capital event in modern thought. The new astronomy appealed to Voltaire especially as an engine of attack on the old theology. The real animus of the story appears in the burst of Homeric laughter with which the giant from Sirius greets the assertion of the Sorbonne doctor that the whole universe exists solely for the benefit of man and that the entire secret of creation is contained in the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas (see p. 114).
It may be noted as a curiosity of thought that the English scientist Alfred Russel Wallace has recently attempted to defend the anthropocentric theory with arguments drawn from the new astronomy itself.
Page 93. — I. college des j^suites, a tribute to the prominence of the Jesuit schools under the old Regime. Voltaire himself was educated at the Jesuit College de Louis-le-Grand.
2. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), author of the Pensies and Lettres frovinciales and one of the greatest masters of French prose.
3. Le mufti, an authority on Muhammadan law — especially the chief doctor of Muhammadan sacred law at Constantinople. Tht word as used here is a thinly disguised reference to the theological inquisitors of the Church of Rome.
Page 94. — 1. l'esprit et le CCeur ; Voltaire ridicules here and elsewhere this phrase which is used with special frequency by Rolhn ^1661 — 1 74 1) in his Traiti des etudes.
2. Derham (William), Vicar of (Jpminster, Essex (1657 1735). The reference here is explained by the following note on Derham in the Kehl edition of Voltaire: "Savant anglais, auteur de la tin ologie astronomique et de quelques autres ouvrages qui out pour oDjet de prouver Dieu par le detail des merveilles de la nature; malheureusement, lui et ses pareils se trompent SOUvent dans l'exposition de < es merveilles; ils s'extasient sur lasagesse qui se montre dans l'ordre d'un phenomene, et on decouvre que > e phenomi 1 tout different de ce qu'ils ont suppose; alors e'est cu nouvel ordie qui leur parait un chef-d'oeuvre de sagesse. Ce defaut, commun h tous les ouvrages de ce genre les ont decredites. On sait trop d'avance, que de quelque manure que les choses soient, l'auteui finira toujours par les admirer."
Page 95. — I. Lulli (1633-1687). Famous Florentine musician who introduced the opera at 1'aris. A bitter warfare was waged between the partisans of French and of Italian music during tlu 18th century.
2. secretaire de l'Acad£mie de Saturne ; Fontenelle ( 1657— 1757), secretary of the French academy, is meant. At the beginning of ch. II Voltaire ridicules him foi the priciosiU with which In his 1 iahguet tur ia pluralitf da mono he h.i^ adapted astronomy
to the taste of ladies and society people. For an impartial estimate of him see Sainte-Beuve, Caaseries du Lundi, vol. Ill, pp. 314 ff.
Page 99. — 1. illustre habitant; the reference is to Huyghena (1629-1697), famous Dutch physicist, geometrician and astronomer.
Page 100. — 1. le pere Castel, learned French Jesuit (1688- 1 757), author of various mathematical works. Castel's invention of the Clavecin des couleurs (intended to make sound visible) won for him from Voltaire the sobriquet of the Don Quixote of mathematics.
Page 101. — 1. nouveau style, the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar was still recent when Voltaire wrote. A date new style is eleven days in advance of the same date old style.
