O che sciagὺra d'essere scenza coglioni!
Perhaps the most famous work of
Voltaire,
Candide is a biting
satire of
the then-popular view that we live in the
best of all possible worlds.
So you can guess what happens from that.
Candide is the story of Candide, the (possible) bastard nephew of
Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, and his attempts to marry Cunégonde, the baron's daughter. After attempting to
"explore cause and effect" with her, the Baron kicks Candide out of his castle. What follows could only be explained by the fact that Voltaire had an interesting sense of humor and a rather strong philosophical disagreement with one Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.
After being drafted into the
Bulgar army based solely on his height, Candide meets his philosophy professor Dr. Pangloss, who has been stricken with syphilis that he got from a woman working for the Baron
* that she got from a cavalry captain who got it from a marquise, who got it from a page, who got it from a Jesuit, who got it from a man who had gotten it directly from
Christopher Columbus himself]], is shipwrecked at Lisbon, kills two priests and a Jew, meets a woman who is missing
half a buttock due to cannibalism, goes to
the legendary city El Dorado where
gold is the same as dirt, meets someone who assures Candide that the chief occupations of every city, in order of importance, are "love-making, malicious gossip and talking nonsense," goes to Constantinople, and
gardens. Along the way he meets many other figures from his previous life, including Cunégonde, who have all gotten into
increasingly ridiculous predicaments and escaped them anyway, to join forces with him later.
For those who don't speak Italian, the above quote means
"Oh, what a misfortune to be without testicles!" And yes, it is in the book, though the last word may or may not be censored into a single 'C' and ellipsis.
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