Sunday, July 12, 2009

On being human

Voltaire is my kind of guy. I am ashamed to admit I haven't read 'Candide' but it's adaptation as a musical by Leonard Bernstein is a delight!

Here's the finale, 'Make Our Garden Grow' which is the characters' conclusion, after all sorts of tragic, fantastical and testing ordeals, that all we really have is this flawed existence and we should try our best to be good and productive:

CANDIDE
You've been a fool
And so have I,
But come and be my wife.
And let us try,
Before we die,
To make some sense of life.
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow...
And make our garden grow.

CUNEGONDE
I thought the world
Was sugar cake
For so our master said.
But, now I'll teach
My hands to bake
Our loaf of daily bread.

CANDIDE AND CUNEGONDE
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow...
And make our garden grow.

(ensemble enters in gardening gear and a cow walks on)

CANDIDE, CUNEGONDE, MAXIMILLIAN, PAQUETTE, OLD LADY, DR. PANGLOSS
Let dreamers dream
What worlds they please
Those Edens can't be found.
The sweetest flowers,
The fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

ENSEMBLE (a cappella)
We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good
We'll do the best we know.
We'll build our house and chop our wood
And make our garden grow.
And make our garden grow!

To me this is not only Voltaire's damning of Dr Pangloss's foolish philosophy of optimism (that we live in 'the best of all possible worlds') but an antidote to religion's promise of a sublime hereafter and to man-made hierarchies of worth.

A bit of on-line research and I've found out that Voltaire was not an atheist but there's no doubt that his championing of reason and civil rights and his rejection of nationalism and a corrupt church and aristocracy make him a founder member of the secular humanist team that I bat for.

And on the subject of being human, with all the tedium, pain and ecstasy the condition implies, check out 'Being Human' - refreshing, clever and stylish television with a level of enlightenment I think Voltaire would condone. It's writer, Toby Whithouse, has done for my relationship with werewolves and vampires what Annie Proulx did vis a vis cowboys!

1 comment:

Tracey said...

loved reading this~!