Les vies de Voltaire: discours et représentations biographiques, XVIIIe–XXIe siècles éd. par Christophe Cave, Simon Davies (review)

simple activité ludique” et les lecteurs seraient les “grands perdants” (177). Influenc é par le freudisme (allié de Flaubert), le roman d’aujourd’hui débouche sur l’autofiction. Enfin, le roman flaubertien aurait “indirectement [alléluia!] contribué à la Shoah”: derrière Flaubert “se profile l’officier nazi écoutant du Mozart” (185). Mais Flaubert n’est pas le seul coupable et d’autres l’auraient précédé dans le culte de la forme et dans le mépris du public. Reniant alors les trois quarts de son analyse, Brix concède que l’image qu’il vient de défendre est simpliste et que l’homme-Flaubert est plus complexe. En fait, c’est le vingtième siècle qui est “responsable de la statufication de Flaubert en héraut de la noirceur” (191). L’écrivain, n’ayant “rien à dire”, cherche alors son inspiration dans les livres ou dans sa propre vie. Regrettant Balzac, Brix de conclure qu’un retour à la littérature “utile”, faite de “bons sentiments” sortirait de l’impasse la littérature fran- çaise contemporaine. Amen. North Carolina State University Yvonne Bargues Rollins CAVE, CHRISTOPHE, et SIMON DAVIES, éd. Les vies de Voltaire: discours et représentations biographiques, XVIIIe –XXIe siècles. SVEC 2008:04. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7294-0929-2. Pp. x + 478. $120. This volume is a collection of twenty-eight essays by leading scholars on Voltaire’s evolving image from the eighteenth century onward. The book’s introduction and opening chapter (Cave, Sgard) present the classic biographical conundrum . What is the purpose of literary biography? What is its value? How can one account for the changing focus of biographical writing over time? Finally, can the biography of a polemical figure such as Voltaire ever be objective? Following Pomeau’s masterful, collaborative Voltaire en son temps (1995), this volume presents a linear account of the tradition of Voltairean biography: childhood (MercierFaivre ), the famous altercation with the chevalier de Rohan (Duranton), Voltaire’s early attempts to recount his own life (Cave), and his tendency to see himself as a literary figure (Davies). Duranton’s essay deconstructs and re-interprets one of the most famous incidents in Voltaire’s early life: “Voltaire bastonné” (81–105). All Voltaire’s biographers refer to this incident as the turning point in the poet’s early life. Not so Duranton, who argues “on peut [...] s’inscrire en faux contre une interprétation qui veut que l’épisode ait eu pour lui (Voltaire) valeur de révélation soudaine dont il aurait été le premier surpris” (103). Will Duranton’s reinterpretation of this famous incident take hold? Time will tell. Solidly anchored in the discovery of new archival material is Nicholas Cronk’s “(Ré)écrire les années de Cirey” (171–87), where we learn that Longchamp’s mémoires—unique source of a number of familiar anecdotes relating to Voltaire’s life with Mme du Châtelet in the 1740s—were significantly altered by Longchamp ’s nineteenth-century editor. Even Longchamp’s original title was rewritten. The recent discovery of Longchamp’s original manuscript constitutes a major (and refreshing) breakthrough in Voltaire studies. Cronk’s article also demonstrates how an idea floated fifty years ago by William Barber (177) has inspired a new generation of scholarly investigation. Voltaire’s image in death was, if anything, more controversial than in life. The Revolution galvanized opinion for and against the great writer. Throughout Reviews 167 the early nineteenth century, Voltaire was a figure of bitter controversy. Thus we learn that the re-edition of his works in 1817 had a political as well as an intellectual basis (346). For some he was an “apostle of tolerance” (Sells, Landy, Kreif), for others the figure responsible for the worst excesses of the Terreur, an incarnation of the devil, in short, a figure of the “antichrist” (Trousson, Pascal). Not surprisingly , his final agony and death took on great symbolic importance, and it was recounted in print and represented on stage (Citton). The Jesuit Feller’s testimonial recounting Voltaire’s death throes was a nineteenth-century standard: “squelette informe, palpitant, mangeant jusqu’à ses excréments etc.” (303–04). As the nineteenth century progressed...