How A Sentimental Education drew on Candide
A documented line of influence: Gustave Flaubert demonstrably engaged Voltaire’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Candide
Voltaire · 1759
EnlightenmentThe influenced
A Sentimental Education
Gustave Flaubert · 1869
The Age of the NovelRelevance
5/10
On A Sentimental Education’s page
- A Sentimental Education applies Voltaire's anatomy of human stupidity within Flaubert's realist register — he read Candide roughly a hundred times and called it one of his "sacred books"
- Voltaire's bêtise, sped through a picaresque, becomes Frédéric's slow drift through a real and disappointing world
- Read Candide first and the ending lands harder: "cultivate your garden" is the bright original that Flaubert dims into resignation
On Candide’s page
- Flaubert read Candide something like a hundred times and counted it among his "sacred books" — Voltaire's anatomy of human folly is the engine he carried into his own realism
- A Sentimental Education takes Voltaire's frantic, episodic catalogue of bêtise and slows it to the pace of one disenchanted life
- Watch what Flaubert does to the famous ending: Voltaire's brisk "cultivate your garden" curdles into Frédéric's resigned cultivation of lost memories