The Black Captain and Scarmentado: Tyrant and Fool?

The Black Captain and Scarmentado: Tyrant and Fool?Roy s. Woiper The good reader—Dr. Johnson called him the common reader—is not usually ... a professional critic.1 G. B. Harrison Commentaries on the Histoire des voyages de Scarmentado have provided several examples of the misreading of a first-rate tale. To critics who mark off biographical signposts Scarmentado is Voltaire's preliminary sketch of Candide: "Les linéaments de l'oeuvre prochaine y apparaissent. Pour l'étude de ce phénomène mystérieux qui s'appelle l'élaboration littéraire, c'est un document précieux. Le lecteur fait de luim ême les rapprochements. Il découvre à l'état sommaire et comme naissant quelques-uns des épisodes. ..."2 No reader would deny the parallels between characters (in both, victims of the Inquisition had married "leurs commères"), landscapes (many of the same countries are visited), and incidents (Barneveldt's execution shocks Scarmentado as Admiral Byng's horrifies Candide). Measured against the more famous Candide, Scarmentado inevitably is found wanting. The earlier tale misses, for Jean Fournier, "un docteur Pangloss et un Martin pour ... encadrer [Scarmentado ]"; for George R. Havens, "the important thrusts at Optimism 1 Profession ofEnglish (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), p. 25. 2 Jacques Bainville, ed., Romans et contes de Voltaire (Paris, 1930), I, xvi. See also, for example, Pierre Grimal, ed., La Princesse de Babylone et autres contes (Paris: Armand Colin, 1963), p. 3 1; Peter Gay, ed., Candide (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963), p. xix; André Bellessort, Essai sur Voltaire (Paris: Perrin, 1925), p. 252; J. H. Brumfitt and M. I. Gerard Davis, eds„ "L'Ingénu" and "Histoire de Jenni" (Oxford: Basii Blackwell, 1960), p. 1; René Jasinski, Histoire de la littératurefrançaise (Paris: Boivin, 1947), II, 189. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 1 , Number 2, January 1989 120 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION and Providence"; for Lester Crocker, "sparks of brilliance"; for Christopher Thacker, an active hero ("le défaut principal de Scarmentado" is "une passivité qui continuerait jusqu'à l'infini").3 Scarmentado, however, does not need a Pangloss or a Martin (or a Cacambo or anyone else). It does not need to make sallies against optimism any more than it needs an active hero (incidentally, Scarmentado is not the passive character that he has been depicted to be). To see Scarmentado as a "little Candide " (Havens's phrase) is to hide the tale's brilliance behind ill-fitting clothes. The reader should try to see what is in Scarmentado itself. Even a full analysis, such as Jacques Van den Heuvel's which develops themes—"l'horreur, le meurtre, le feu, la fuite, la cupidité universelle, la nécessité de l'argent et du silence, la solitude, la séparation des consciences , l'état naturel de guerre entre les hommes"—misses the tale's centre because of its biographical orientation. "Scarmentado nous livre, à peine transposée dans un contexte historique, toute la mythologie personnelle de Voltaire au printemps de l'année 1754."4 This biographical certainty led Van den Heuvel to see Voltaire behind the black captain and Scarmentado, thus blurring both characters. This is a common blindness in much of the criticism of Voltaire's fiction , where scholars see the contes, in Theodore Besterman's words, as "Voltaire's ... interior biography."3 For example, Candide's "il faut cultiver notre jardin" becomes "Voltaire's solution" or "Voltaire's ... message to man."6 In Zadig, "Zadig is, of course, Voltaire himself."7 3 See respectively Fournier, ed., Romans et contes, by Voltaire (Paris: Les Nationales, 1948), p. 91; Havens, ed., Candide (New York: Henry Holt, 1934), p. xlvi; Crocker, ed., Candide (London: University of London Press, 1958), p. 13; Thacker, ed., Candide (Genève: Droz, 1968), p. 20. 4 Voltaire dans ses contes: de "Micromégas" à "L'Ingénu" (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967), pp. 230, 226. 5 Voltaire (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969), p. 418. See also Ruth P. Thomas, "The Theme of the Voyage in Voltaire's Contes Philosophiques," Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 16 (1969), 387, and John Charpentier, Voltaire (Paris: Jules Tallandier, 1938), p. 223. See also Norman Torrey, The Spirit of Voltaire (New York: Columbia...