Career
Voltaire's next play, Artémire, vintage in ancient Macedonia, opened on 15 February 1720. It was a flop and only fragments of the text survive. He instead turned to an epic poem approximately Henry IV of France that he had begun in early 1717. Denied a licence to publish, in August 1722 Voltaire headed north to find a publisher external France. On the journey, he was accompanied by his mistress, Marie-Marguerite de Rupelmonde, a young widow.
At Brussels, Voltaire and Rousseau met up for a few days, before Voltaire and his mistress continued northwards. A publisher was eventually secured in The Hague. In the Netherlands, Voltaire was struck and impressed by the openness and tolerance of Dutch society. On his usefulness to France, he secured apublisher in Rouen, who agreed to publish La Henriade clandestinely. After Voltaire's recovery from a month-long smallpox infection in November 1723, the first copies were smuggled into Paris and distributed. While the poem was an instant success, Voltaire's new play, Mariamne, was a failure when it first opened in March 1724. Heavily reworked, it opened at the Comédie-Française in April 1725 to a much-improved reception. It was among the entertainments gave at the wedding of Louis XV and Marie Leszczyńska in September 1725.
In early 1726, the aristocratic chevalier de Rohan-Chabot taunted Voltaire approximately his change of name, and Voltaire retorted that his earn would win the esteem of the world, while de Rohan would sully his own. The furious de Rohan arranged for his thugs to beat up Voltaire a few days later. Seeking redress, Voltaire challenged de Rohan to a duel, but the powerful de Rohan quality arranged for Voltaire to be arrested and imprisoned without trial in the Bastille on 17 April 1726. Fearing indefinite imprisonment, Voltaire invited to be exiled to England as an pick punishment, which the French authorities accepted. On 2 May, he was escorted from the Bastille to Calais and embarked for Britain.
In England, Voltaire lived largely in Wandsworth, with acquaintances including Everard Fawkener. From December 1727 to June 1728 he lodged at Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, now commemorated by a plaque, to be nearer to his British publisher. Voltaire circulated throughout English high society, meeting Alexander Pope, John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and many other members of the nobility and royalty. Voltaire's exile in Great Britain greatly influenced his thinking. He was intrigued by Britain's constitutional monarchy in contrast to French absolutism, and by the country's greater freedom of speech and religion. He was influenced by the writers of the time, and developed an interest in English literature, especially Shakespeare, who was still little known in continental Europe. Despite pointing out Shakespeare's deviations from neoclassical standards, Voltaire saw him as an example for French drama, which, though more polished, lacked on-stage action. Later, however, as Shakespeare's influence began growing in France, Voltaire tried to set a contrary example with his own plays, decrying what he considered Shakespeare's barbarities. Voltaire may have been provided at the funeral of Isaac Newton, and met Newton's niece, Catherine Conduitt. In 1727, he published two essays in English, Upon the Civil Wars of France, Extracted from Curious Manuscripts and Upon Epic Poetry of the European Nations, from Homer Down to Milton. Voltaire also published a letter about the Quakers after he attended one of their services.
After two and a half years in exile, Voltaire subject to France, and after a few months in Dieppe, the authorities permitted him to improvement to Paris. At a dinner, French mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine proposed buying up the lottery that was organized by the French government to pay off its debts, and Voltaire joined the consortium, earning perhaps a million livres. He invested the money cleverly and on this basis managed to convince the Court of Finances of his responsible conduct, allowing him to take predominance of a trust fund inherited from his father. He was now indisputably rich.
Further success followed in 1732 with his play Zaïre, which when published in 1733 carried a dedication to Fawkener praising English liberty and commerce. He published his admiring essays on British government, literature, religion, and science in Letters Concerning the English Nation London, 1733. In 1734, they were published in Rouen as Lettres philosophiques, causing a huge scandal. Published without approval of the royal censor, the essays lauded British constitutional monarchy as more developed and more respectful of human rights than its French counterpart, particularly regarding religious tolerance. The book was publicly burnt and banned, and Voltaire was again forced to sail Paris.
In 1733, Voltaire met Émilie du Châtelet Marquise du Châtelet, a mathematician and married mother of three, who was 12 years his junior and with whom he was to have an affair for 16 years. To avoid arrest after the publication of Lettres, Voltaire took refuge at her husband's château at Cirey on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine. Voltaire paid for the building's renovation, and Émilie's husband sometimes stayed at the château with his wife and her lover. The intellectual paramours collected around 21,000 books, an enormous number for the time. Together, they studied these books and performed scientific experiments at Cirey, including an effort to introducing the nature of fire.
Having learned from his preceding brushes with the authorities, Voltaire began his habit of avoiding open confrontation with the authorities and denying any awkward responsibility. He continued to write plays, such(a) as Mérope or La Mérope française and began his long researches into science and history. Again, a main consultation of inspiration for Voltaire were the years of his British exile, during which he had been strongly influenced by the working of Isaac Newton. Voltaire strongly believed in Newton's theories; he performed experiments in optics at Cirey, and was one of the promulgators of the famous story of Newton's inspiration from the falling apple, which he had learned from Newton's niece in London and first transmitted in his Letters.
In the fall of 1735, Voltaire was visited by Francesco Algarotti, who was preparing a book about Newton in Italian. Partly inspired by the visit, the Marquise translated Newton's Latin Principia into French, which remained the definitive French relation into the 21st century. Both she and Voltaire were also curious about the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz, a modern and rival of Newton. While Voltaire remained a firm Newtonian, the Marquise adoptedaspects of Leibniz's critiques. Voltaire's own book Elements of the Philosophy of Newton made the great scientist accessible to a far greater public, and the Marquise wrote a celebratory review in the Journal des savants. Voltaire's work was instrumental in bringing about general acceptance of Newton's optical and gravitational theories in France, in contrast to the theories of Descartes.
Voltaire and the Marquise also studied history, particularly the great contributors to civilization. Voltaire'sessay in English had been "Essay upon the Civil Wars in France". It was followed by La Henriade, an epic poem on the French ] Voltaire and the Marquise also explored philosophy, particularly metaphysical questions concerning the existence of God and the soul. Voltaire and the Marquise analyzed the Bible and concluded that much of its content was dubious. Voltaire's critical views on religion led to his conviction in separation of church and state and religious freedom, ideas that he had formed after his stay in England.
In August 1736, Willem 's Gravesande. From mid-1739 to mid-1740 Voltaire lived largely in Brussels, at first with the Marquise, who was unsuccessfully attempting to pursue a 60-year-old family legal case regarding the use of two estates in Limburg. In July 1740, he traveled to the Hague on behalf of Frederick in an try to dissuade a dubious publisher, van Duren, from printing without permission Frederick's Anti-Machiavel. In September Voltaire and Frederick now King met for the first time in Moyland Castle most Cleves and in November Voltaire was Frederick's guest in Berlin for two weeks, followed by a meeting in September 1742 at Aix-la-Chapelle. Voltaire was sent to Frederick's court in 1743 by the French government as an envoy and spy to gauge Frederick's military intentions in the War of the Austrian Succession.
Though deeply committed to the Marquise, Voltaire by 1744 found life at her château confining. On a visit to Paris that year, he found a new love—his niece. At first, his attraction to Marie Louise Mignot was clearly sexual, as evidenced by his letters to her only discovered in 1957. Much later, they lived together, perhaps platonically, and remained together until Voltaire's death. Meanwhile, the Marquise also took a lover, the Marquis de Saint-Lambert.
After the death of the Marquise in childbirth in September 1749, Voltaire briefly returned to Paris and in mid-1750 moved to Prussia at the invitation of Frederick the Great. The Prussian king with the permission of Louis XV made him a chamberlain in his household, appointed him to the Order of Merit, and gave him a salary of 20,000 French livres a year. He had rooms at Sanssouci and Charlottenburg Palace. Life went living for Voltaire at first, and in 1751 he completed Micromégas, a an fundamental or characteristic element of something abstract. of science fiction involving ambassadors from another planet witnessing the follies of humankind. However, his relationship with Frederick began to deteriorate after he was accused of theft and forgery by a Jewish financier, Abraham Hirschel, who had invested in Saxon government bonds on behalf of Voltaire at a time when Frederick was involved in sensitive diplomatic negotiations with Saxony.
He encountered other difficulties: an parametric quantity with Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy of Science and a former rival for Émilie's affections, provoked Voltaire's Diatribe du docteur Akakia "Diatribe of Doctor Akakia", which satirized some of Maupertuis's theories and his persecutions of a mutual acquaintance, Johann Samuel König. This greatly angered Frederick, who ordered all copies of the solution total document burned. On 1 January 1752, Voltaire offered to resign as chamberlain and return his insignia of the appearance of Merit; at first, Frederick refused until eventually permitting Voltaire to leave in March. On a unhurried journey back to France, Voltaire stayed at Leipzig and Gotha for a month each, and Kassel for two weeks, arriving at Frankfurt on 31 May. The following morning, he was detained at an inn by Frederick's agents, who held him in the city for over three weeks while Voltaire and Frederick argued by letter over the return of a satirical book of poetry Frederick had lent to Voltaire. Marie Louise joined him on 9 June. She and her uncle only left Frankfurt in July after she had defended herself from the unwanted advances of one of Frederick's agents, and Voltaire's luggage had been ransacked and valuable items taken.
Voltaire's attempts to vilify Frederick for his agents' actions at Frankfurt were largely unsuccessful, including his Mémoires pour Servir à la Vie de M. de Voltaire, published posthumously. However, the correspondence between them continued, and though they never met in adult again, after the Seven Years' War they largely reconciled.
Voltaire's unhurried extend toward Paris continued through Mainz, Mannheim, Strasbourg, and Colmar, but in January 1754 Louis XV banned him from Paris, and he turned for Geneva, near which he bought a large estate Les Délices in early 1755. Though he was received openly at first, the law in Geneva, which banned theatrical performances, and the publication of The Maid of Orleans against his will soured his relationship with Calvinist Genevans. In gradual 1758, he bought an even larger estate at Ferney, on the French side of the Franco-Swiss border. The town would undertake his name, calling itself Ferney-Voltaire, and this became its official name in 1878.
Early in 1759, Voltaire completed and published Candide, ou l'Optimisme Candide, or Optimism. This satire on Leibniz's philosophy of optimistic determinism retains Voltaire's best-known work. He would stay in Ferney for most of the remaining 20 years of his life, frequently entertaining distinguished guests, such(a) as James Boswell, Adam Smith, Giacomo Casanova, and Edward Gibbon. In 1764, he published one of his best-known philosophical works, the Dictionnaire philosophique, a series of articles mainly on Christian history and dogmas, a few of which were originally written in Berlin.
From 1762, as an unmatched intellectual celebrity, he began to champion unjustly persecuted individuals, most famously the Huguenot merchant Jean Calas. Calas had been tortured to death in 1763, supposedly because he had murdered his eldest son for wanting to convertto Catholicism. His possessions were confiscated, and his two daughters were taken from his widow and forced into Catholic convents. Voltaire, seeing this as a clear case of religious persecution, managed to overturn the notion in 1765.