Introduction
During the night of 25‒26 February 1745, Louis XV gave a lavish masquerade ball at Versailles to celebrate the Dauphin’s wedding. This ball became famously known as the “yew tree ball” (bal des ifs), as the king, amongst seven others, had taken the bizarre disguise of a yew tree and made his amorous intentions known to Jeanne-Antoinette Le Normant d’Etiolles, later Mme de Pompadour. The ball was immortalized by the artwork of Charles-Nicolas Cochin fils, depicting the festivities. Apart from the conspicuous yews, in the foreground on the right-hand side of the picture can be seen a group of people wearing Oriental disguises. Masquerading was not only a form of social entertainment; it could also be a literary one—the two sometimes blending into each other, as exemplified by Madeleine de Scudéry’s salon and works. Three years after the yew tree ball, Zadig ou la Destinée (Zadig or Destiny) was published, containing Oriental disguises of its own in the dedicatory epistle, including that of Mme de Pompadour as the sultane Shéraa.Footnote 1 Seven years later, in 1752, Mme de Pompadour commissioned from Carle Vanloo the painting Sultane buvant du café (Sultan’s Wife Drinking Coffee). The choice of the painting’s subject and the fact that it was seen as a portrait of the royal mistress seem to suggest Mme de Pompadour was happy to claim the literary persona Voltaire had created in Zadig.
The main function of a dedicatory epistle is to place a work under the patronage of an influential person. At a first level, the epistle in Zadig informs us that “Sadi” recommends the following “Histoire orientale” (“Tale of the Orient”) to the sultane Shéraa, understood to be Mme de Pompadour, by that time the king’s favorite mistress, and so it seems to be indeed fulfilling this function.Footnote 2 The epistle is followed by an approbation, as can be expected in a book published under the ancien régime. The function of the approbation was to show that the censor authorized the book’s publication. These paratextual elements, normally mere publishing formalities, are often ignored by the reader, who prefers to go straight to the main narrative. Yet in Zadig, the paratext subverts its official role and the approbation (certificate of approval) is clearly a spoof:
Je soussigné, qui me suis fait passer pour savant, et même pour homme d’esprit, ai lu ce manuscrit, que j’ai trouvé, malgré moi, curieux, amusant, moral, philosophique, digne de plaire à ceux mêmes qui haïssent les romans. Ainsi je l’ai décrié, et j’ai assuré monsieur le Cadi-Lesquier, que c’est un ouvrage détestable.
(I, the undersigned, being one who has succeeded in passing himself off as a man of learning, and even as a wit, have read this manuscript and found it, despite myself, to be interesting, amusing, moral, philosophical, and worthy to give pleasure even to those who hate romances. I have therefore disparaged it and assured His Honor the Cadi that it is a detestable piece of work.)Footnote 3
Playing with the linguistic conventions, Zadig’s approbation is deeply irreverent towards royal censors, themselves in Oriental disguise as cadis. It also invites the reader to take a second look at the dedicatory epistle. If one component of the paratext is untrustworthy, then why not the rest?
Zadig’s paratext acts as a masquerade: things are not what they seem to be. It is the ludic space for an “ouvrage, qui dit plus qu’il ne semble dire” (“a work which sayeth more than it may appear to say”).Footnote 4 As Russell Goulbourne states, Voltaire’s choice of pseudonyms goes far beyond mere fear of censorship:
Voltaire wears many different masks within his texts; he also disguises himself richly on the title pages to his texts. No fan of publishing his texts anonymously, he very often attributes his works to others, not just out of a fear of official censorship and repression, but for ludic and polemical reasons too. He sometimes attributes his texts to other well-known writers, and his choices are always laden with meaning.Footnote 5
The purpose of the present article is to investigate Voltaire’s choice of Saʿdi as author of the dedicatory epistle for Zadig. First, Voltaire’s use of pseudonyms as a protection against censorship and his choice of a Persian character in several of his works will be examined. The article will then focus on what images Persia and Saʿdi conjured up in the imagination of Voltaire and his contemporaries, and how this is integrated within Zadig. The article will also look at the way in which Saʿdi is placed at the heart of Voltaire’s playful manipulation of literary practices. Finally, the impact of Saʿdi’s presence on the meaning of the text as a whole will be analyzed. The article does not investigate Voltaire’s exact borrowings from Saʿdi. This work has already been done by Javâd Hadidi and Adel Khanyabnejad through close comparative analysis. Hadidi and Khanyabnejad have compared the chapter “Le brigand” (“The brigand”) in Zadig and passages from Gulistan and Bustan as evidence of Voltaire’s borrowing from Saʿdi, a point this article will touch upon. The scope of their work goes beyond Saʿdi and embraces other Persian sources which would have influenced Voltaire. They examine how Voltaire’s borrowings from Persian texts have appeared in other French sources predating Zadig, thus suggesting that these borrowings might have been indirect, with European travelers’ accounts and works of scholarship serving as intermediaries. Hadidi and Khanyabnejad also examine Voltaire’s interest in Zoroastrianism and its application in Zadig to the depiction of fate, the unfolding of events and the interplay of good and evil.Footnote 6
Voltaire, the Old Persian
As Nicholas Cronk remarks, the two main dangers Enlightenment philosophers faced were piracy and censorship. As an example of how Voltaire avoided the former, Cronk reminds us of Zadig’s unusual publishing with one half of the text sent for publication to Prault in Paris, the second to Lefèvre in Nancy.Footnote 7 To avoid the latter, Voltaire did not put himself down as the author of his more controversial works. Instead, he would frequently use pseudonyms, these not altogether credible so as to serve the double purpose of shielding him against the wrath of the censors whilst still being able to be identified by the discerning reader.Footnote 8 As Sarah Wilewski remarks, Voltaire “was playing safe since—no matter how transparent the pseudonym—from a legal perspective, [he] could always have denied any involvement with or responsibility for a publication.”Footnote 9 When Zadig was published in 1748, his name did not appear on the title cover as author, as was Voltaire’s wont for his more controversial works. Voltaire used Saʿdi as his authorial mask; the precise reasons for choosing this specific persona will be discussed later on.
The use of pseudonyms is the most recognizable component of romans à clef, a genre very popular in the eighteenth century due to strict censorship. The romans à clef blurred the lines between fiction and non-fiction as the characters served as a mask behind which were hidden actual individuals. Persia and Persians were not uncommonly used in this type of novel. One of the reasons for this is that travel writers would often draw comparisons between Persia and their own country to help their readers gain a more precise understanding of what they were describing. André Daulier Deslandes thus observed that “Hispahan, ou Spahan […] est aussi grand que Paris” (“Hispahan, or Spahan […] is as big as Paris”).Footnote 10 Such parallels must have facilitated the use of Persia in romans à clef. Les Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de Perse, first published in 1745, and which some have attributed to Voltaire, is an example of this, with Paris masquerading as Isfahan, Louis XIV as Abbas I, and even Voltaire making an appearance as a certain Coja Séhid.Footnote 11 From the publication of romans à clef using Persian references before 1748, it seems that, thanks to the success of travel writing on Persia, enlightened readers were able to decipher who was hiding behind the fictitious characters. Jeanne Chaybany confirms this view by stating that “une centaine d’années après l’invraisemblance persane du Grand Cyrus la connaissance de la Perse est assez généralisée pour qu’on puise des clefs qui permettent d’interpréter des faits et d’identifier lieux et personnages connus de tous” (“a hundred years after the Persian improbability of the Grand Cyrus, knowledge of Persia is common enough for drawing keys which allow to interpret facts and identify places and people known to all”).Footnote 12
Voltaire used similar tactics to the romans à clef in his own works, such as Le Monde comme il va, published for the first time in the same year as Zadig:
Bien sûr, les lecteurs savaient bien que Persépolis était Paris, la Perse était la France et Babouc, Voltaire lui-même qui rêvait de la ruine de Persépolis. Les indications qui jalonnent le récit, les palais, les parcs, les promenades, la grande rivière (= la Seine) qui traverse la ville, le temple (= Notre-Dame de Paris) situé au bord de cette rivière, les mœurs et coutumes des Perses, les rues et les sentiers de leur ville, tout rappelle Paris et les Parisiens.
(Of course the readers knew perfectly well that Persepolis was Paris, Persia was France and Babouc, none else but Voltaire who dreamt of the destruction of Persepolis. The clues which punctuate the narrative, the palaces, the parks, the walks, the great river [ = the Seine] which runs through the city, the temple [ = Notre-Dame cathedral] situated along its bank, the Persians’ behavior and customs, the streets and paths of their city, everything evokes Paris and the Parisians.)Footnote 13
Voltaire used Persia and Persians to criticize French society and to attack specific individuals, but he also donned the mask of the old Persian. This is of course the case in Zadig, but he uses the same ploy in the dedicatory epistle of his play Les Scythes (1767). Voltaire writes about a “bon vieillard qui cultivait son jardin” (“a gentle old man who tended his garden”) to complain about his own trials and tribulations. Persia’s geography and personalities act as a thin veil behind which the reader finds elements of Voltaire’s own life. Babylone is Paris, the Caucasus Switzerland and Artaxerxes Louis XV:
Ce bonhomme vivait sous Artaxerxes, plusieurs années après l’aventure d’Obéïde et d’Indatire; et il fit une Tragédie en vers persans … car il s’amusait à faire des vers persans assez passablement, ce qui lui avait attiré de violents ennemis dans Babilone, c’est-à-dire, une demi-douzaine de gredins qui aboyaient sans cesse après lui, et qui lui imputaient les plus grandes platitudes, et les plus impertinents livres qui eussent jamais déshonoré la Perse, et il les laissait aboyer, et griffonner, et calomnier; et c’était pour être loin de cette racaille qu’il s’était retiré avec sa famille auprès du Caucase, où il cultivait son jardin.
(This good man lived under Artaxerxes, a few years after Obéïde and Indatire’s adventure; and he composed a tragedy in Persian verses … for he found amusement in writing Persian verses, which he did satisfactorily. But in doing this he made many enemies in Babylon, that is to say half a dozen villains constantly nipping at his heels who falsely put on his account the greatest platitudes and the most impertinent books which ever dishonored Persia; and he left them growling, scribbling and lying. So as to put a distance between this riffraff and himself, he left with his family for the Caucasus where he tended his garden.)Footnote 14
Persia, Land of Religious Tolerance
French readers’ interest in Persia was mainly triggered by the publication of accounts of travel writers such as Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605‒89) and Jean Chardin (1643‒1713). These publications fed into the Enlightenment’s deep interest in comparing different social, cultural and governmental structures. Voltaire was no exception and, like many others, had read travel accounts to Persia.Footnote 15 He mentions Tavernier and Chardin in his Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations (1756), and had read Thomas Hyde’s Historia religionis veterum persarum (1700) and d’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale (1697).Footnote 16 Voltaire paid tribute to Hyde for his scholarship on Zoroastrianism, which was of particular interest to the French philosopher, who wrote an article on Zoroaster in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), calling him “le premier des hommes après Confucius” (“the first of men after Confucius”).Footnote 17 Hyde’s work on Zoroastrianism seems to have also led Voltaire indirectly to Saʿdi:
Il a fallu que, dans l’ouest de l’Angleterre il [Thomas Hyde] ait deviné la langue que parlaient les Perses du temps de Cyrus, et qu’il l’ait confrontée avec la langue moderne des adorateurs du feu.
C’est à lui surtout que nous devons ces cent portes du Sadder qui contiennent tous les principaux préceptes des pieux ignicoles.
Pour moi, j’avoue que je n’ai rien trouvé sur leurs anciens rites de plus curieux que ces deux vers persans de Sadi, rapportés par Hyde:
Qu’un Perse ait conservé le feu sacré cent ans,
Le pauvre homme est brûlé quand il tombe dedans.
(Living in the west of England, he [Thomas Hyde] must have conjectured the language which the Persians spoke in the time of Cyrus, and must have compared it with the modern language of the worshippers of fire. It is to him, moreover, that we owe those hundred gates of the “Sadder,” which contain all the principal precepts of the pious fire-worshippers.
For my own part, I confess I have found nothing in their ancient rites more curious than the two Persian verses of Sadi, as given by Hyde; signifying that, although a person may preserve the sacred fire for a hundred years, he is burned when he falls into it.)Footnote 18
Interest in Zoroastrianism was part of a larger examination into the coexistence of different religions within one country. One of the pictures which emerge from the travel accounts is that of Persia as a tolerant country. Travel writers were particularly struck by Abbas I’s hospitality and marks of religious tolerance at a time when in France Catholicism was being more rigorously imposed as state religion.Footnote 19 For Chardin, a French protestant who went into exile in England as a consequence of religious persecution culminating in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the cohabitation of different religions in Persia would have been particularly striking. Voltaire used the example of tolerance offered by Persia in his works of fiction, in particular his tragedies Les Scythes and Les Guèbres ou la Tolérance (1769), but also in his philosophical works. In the Essai sur les mœurs, Voltaire echoed this portrayal of Persia as a by-and-large religiously tolerant country:
La religion mahométane d’Aly, dominante en Perse, permettait un libre exercice à toutes les autres. Il y avait encore dans Ispahan des restes d’anciens Perses ignicoles, qui ne furent chassés de la capitale que sous le règne de Sha-Abbas … Plusieurs familles de ces dix tribus et demie, de ces Juifs samaritains transportés par Salmanazar du temps d’Osée, subsistaient encore en Perse, et il y avait au temps dont je parle près de dix mille familles des tribus de Juda, de Lévi et de Benjamin, emmenées de Jérusalem avec Sédécias leur roi, par Nabucodonosor, et qui ne revinrent point avec Esdras et Néhémie.
Quelques sabéens disciples de saint Jean-Baptiste … étaient répandus vers le golfe Persique. Les chrétiens arméniens du rite grec faisaient le plus grand nombre; les nestoriens composaient le plus petit; les Indiens de la religion des brahmanes, remplissaient Ispahan …
Enfin toutes ces religions étaient vues de bon œil en Perse, excepté la secte d’Omar, qui était celle de leurs ennemis.
(The Muslim religion of Ali, dominant in Persia, allowed free access to all other religions. There were still in Isfahan the remnants of the ancient Persian fire worshippers who were banished from the capital only under the reign of Abbas I … Several families of the ten and a half tribes, of those Samaritan Jews transported by Shalmaneser at the time of Hoshea, were still present in Persia; and at the time of which I speak there were about ten thousand families of the tribe of Judah, of Levi and of Benjamin, taken from Jerusalem with their king Zedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar, and who never returned with Ezra and Nehemiah. A few Sabians, disciples of Saint John the Baptist … were spread around the Persian Gulf. The Armenian Christians following the Greek rite made up the largest number; the Nestorians made up the smallest; the Indians of the Brahmin religion filled Isfahan … Finally, all these religions were looked upon kindly in Persia, except the sect of Omar, which was that of their enemies.)Footnote 20
Through enumeration, Voltaire puts emphasis on the religious diversity which could be found in Persia. The above passage from the Essai sur les mœurs remarkably echoes the chapter “Le souper” (“The supper party”) in Zadig:
Ce fut pour Zadig une consolation sensible de voir tant d’hommes de diverses contrées réunis dans la même place. Il lui paraissait que l’univers était une grande famille qui se rassemblait à Balzora. Il se trouva à table, dès le second jour, avec un Egyptien, un Indien gangaride, un habitant du Cathay, un Grec, un Celte, et plusieurs autres étrangers.
(It gladdened Zadig’s heart to see so many men from different countries brought together in one place. It was as if the world were one great family and they were all getting together in Balzora. Already, on the second day he found himself at table with an Egyptian, an Indian from the Gangarides, an inhabitant of Cathay, a Greek, a Celt, and several other foreigners.)Footnote 21
Witnessing people from different origins peacefully engaging in trade, Zadig’s faith in humanity is restored only to be dashed yet again. Commerce as a force for concord only goes so far as self-interest and, three sentences later, the old divisions quickly reassert themselves. As in the extract from the Essai sur les mœurs, diversity of origin leads to diversity of religion, and the discussion around the dinner table threatens to degenerate into a brawl as each of the guests views any other belief and practice than their own as misguided. Zadig manages to defuse the tension by taking the deist stance and arguing that they worship the same God, even though the manner in which they do so differs. In “Le souper,” Voltaire demonstrates that commerce alone cannot bring lasting harmony between men. Zadig breaks the cycle of intolerance and restores peace by bringing each guest’s beliefs together, instead of pitching them against each other. Thus, in this chapter, Zadig illustrates the function of polyphony in Voltaire’s philosophical approach whereby the juxtaposition of seemingly conflicting voices allows truth to emerge.
For Voltaire and his contemporaries Persia evoked a country where religious tolerance was practiced, a principle close to Voltaire’s heart and developed in Zadig. For these reasons, Voltaire’s decision to use a Persian figure as author of the epistle is understandable; however his choice of Saʿdi still needs to be explained.
Saʿdi and Persian Poetry
One of the pictures which emerges from the travel accounts is that of a national passion for poetry: “Ils [Persians] aiment surtout la poésie où ils font paraître tout le brillant et le feu de leur esprit” (“Most of all, the Persians love poetry in which they display all the brightness and fire of their intellect”).Footnote 22 Though agreeing on the Persian love of poetry, travel writers are divided on the subject of these poems’ literary worth, with on one side Tavernier qualifying them as “méchants vers” (“ugly verses”) and on the other Chardin declaring that Persian poetry “est partout noble, haute et relevée dans les pensées, douce dans les expressions, et juste dans les termes, qui sont toujours les plus propres, et qui peignent la chose à l’imagination aussi vivement qu’un ouvrage matériel” (“is unfailingly noble, dignified and refined in its thoughts, gentle in its expressions, true in its choice of words, always the most appropriate and which conjure up in the mind what they describe as vividly as a painting”).Footnote 23
Whatever side of the spectrum travel writers fell into, they all named Saʿdi as one of Persia’s favorite poets, thus bringing him to the attention of the French reader.Footnote 24 Saʿdi’s Gulistan had been translated in French by André du Ryer in 1634 and d’Alègre in 1704, who also gives a brief description of Bustan and says that it has already been translated in several languages.Footnote 25 However, if short passages appeared in anthologies of oriental stories and in travelers’ accounts, Bustan’s first full French translation was only published in 1880.Footnote 26 Putting aside the shortcomings of these translations, they played an important role in familiarizing French readers with Saʿdi and his work. By opting for Saʿdi, Voltaire found a historical figure known to his most discerning readers, which could easily be associated with Persia and everything it evoked. The fact that Saʿdi was a poet and a traveler, roles Voltaire would have identified with, also makes him a more likely candidate than many other well-known historical characters described in the travel accounts, as these were usually rulers. Javâd Hadidi suggests that Saʿdi’s outspokenness against the abuse of power was also part of the attraction:
Saʿdi, le seul écrivain moraliste persan qui n’ait pas toujours fait l’éloge des rois et des grands, et qui, tout au contraire, les a critiqués de façon parfois très audacieuse pour son temps, a été le premier poète persan connu en France. Si donc Voltaire se réclame de lui dans la dédicace de son roman, c’est qu’il trouve en lui une âme sœur de la sienne.
(Saʿdi, the only Persian moralist writer who did not constantly praise kings and other powerful men, and who on the contrary criticized them, sometimes very audaciously for his time, was the first Persian poet known in France. So if Voltaire associates himself with Saʿdi in his novel’s epistle, it is because he finds in Saʿdi a kindred spirit.)Footnote 27
However, our understanding of Voltaire’s perception of Saʿdi needs to be more nuanced. From the backhanded compliment he pays to Saʿdi in the Essai sur les mœurs, Voltaire does not appear altogether enthusiastic about the writings of the poet from Shiraz: “puisque les poésies du Persan Sady sont encore aujourd’hui dans la bouche des Persans, des Turcs et des Arabes, il faut bien qu’elles aient du mérite” (“since the poems by the Persian Saʿdi can still be found in the mouths of Persians, Turks and Arabs, they must be of some merit”).Footnote 28 This is followed by a generalization on Oriental literature, whose overly ornate style he attributes to the authoritarian mode of government:
Il est vrai qu’en général le bon goût n’a guère été le partage des Orientaux. Leurs ouvrages ressemblent aux titres de leurs souverains, dans lesquels il est souvent question du soleil et de la lune. L’esprit de servitude paraît naturellement ampoulé.
(It is true that on the whole Orientals have very little good taste. Their works are similar to their sovereigns’ titles, which hardly talk of anything else but of the sun and the moon. The spirit of servitude seems naturally overly ornate.)Footnote 29
Voltaire continues by nuancing his initial judgment and admitting that this literature does have some redeeming features, as can be found in Saʿdi’s writing:
Cependant ils ont de beaux éclats de lumière; ils peignent avec la parole; et quoique les figures soient souvent gigantesques et incohérentes, on y trouve du sublime. Vous aimerez peut-être à revoir ici ce passage de Sady que j’avais traduit en vers blancs, et qui ressemble à quelques passages des prophètes hébreux. C’est une peinture de la grandeur de Dieu; lieu commun à la vérité, mais qui vous fera connaître le génie de la Perse.
(They do however have some beautifully luminous pieces; they paint with speech; and even though their stylistic figures are exaggerated and incoherent, there are instances of sublime writing. You might like here to go back to this passage from Saʿdi which I translated in blank verse and which is similar to some passages from the Hebrew prophets. It is a painting of the greatness of God; a commonplace really, but which will introduce you to Persian character.)Footnote 30
These passages reappear nearly verbatim in Jaucourt’s article “Poésie orientale moderne” (“Modern Oriental Poetry”) for Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and would have thus shaped the views of the general public.Footnote 31
Sadi, not Saʿdi
What Voltaire has retained from Persian literature in Zadig’s epistle is not Saʿdi’s brilliance but an overly ornate and rather groveling style as can be seen in its opening and closing sentences:
Charme des prunelles, tourment des cœurs, lumière de l’esprit, je ne baise point la poussière de vos pieds, parce que vous ne marchez guère, ou que vous marchez sur des tapis d’Iran ou sur des roses. … Je prie les vertus célestes, que vos plaisirs soient sans mélange, votre beauté durable, et votre bonheur sans fin.
(O thou enchantment of the eye, thou torment of the heart, thou light of the mind! I shall not kiss the dust from thy feet, for thou walkest but rarely, and then thou walkest only upon the carpets of Iran or upon roses. … I pray the heavenly powers that thy pleasures be unalloyed, thy beauty everlasting, and thy happiness without end.)Footnote 32
The reason behind this needs to be addressed. Saʿdi’s style is known for its sobriety and efficiency, far from the profusely ornate style of the epistle.Footnote 33 The translations available in 1748, though unsatisfactory on many levels, do not offer such a stereotypical oriental style of writing.Footnote 34 Moreover, the translation Voltaire offered of Saʿdi’s verses in the Essai sur les mœurs is much closer to the style of the historical Saʿdi than to the one in Zadig. One explanation is that Voltaire is responding to his readers’ expectations of the exotic. A hyperbolic, obsequious and highly mannered language was already firmly seen as an Oriental stereotype and was famously used as one of Molière’s key comedic devices in his 1670 play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Against a backdrop of trade negotiations, linguistic and cultural diplomatic pitfalls and the interest in Oriental languages with the creation in 1669 of the École des jeunes de langues, Michèle Longino argues that in Molière’s play mimicry signals mockery and othering, but also the hold the Orient had on the French imagination.Footnote 35 References to Oriental language are commonly found in texts of the period depicting the exotic. For example, the introduction to the Lettres persanes explains that editorial choices have been made to eliminate it in the actual letters so as not to tire the French reader:
Je ne fais donc que l’office de traducteur: toute ma peine a été de mettre l’ouvrage à nos mœurs. J’ai soulagé le lecteur du langage asiatique, autant que je l’ai pu, et l’ai sauvé d’une infinité d’expressions sublimes, qui l’auraient ennuyé jusque dans les nues.
(I am therefore nothing more than a translator: all my endeavour has been to adapt the work to our taste and manners. I have relieved the reader as much as possible of Asiatic phraseology, and have spared him an infinitude of sublime expressions which would have driven him wild.)Footnote 36
In this case, the hyperbolic terms used (“une infinité d’expressions sublimes,” “jusque dans les nues”) reverse the process of othering; the French as much as the Orientals are prone to such exaggerations. Voltaire’s own mimicry of Oriental language inscribes Zadig within a specific literary tradition. Zadig’s subtitle, “A Tale of the Orient,” might indeed lead the reader to expect some exotic features and could explain why Voltaire makes his Sadi conform with these expectations. Another explanation, compatible with the first, emerges from the function of the epistle: it is to be expected that an author should flatter the person whose patronage is sought. This usage may be seen as a symptom of the connection Voltaire makes between speech and government in the Essai sur les mœurs. If the sultane Shéraa is indeed Mme de Pompadour, then the logical conclusion is that the sultan is Louis XV, though he is not named in the epistle. Voltaire was highly critical of Louis XV’s rule, which fostered a “spirit of servitude,” reflected in obsequious language. More essentially, by mimicking the Oriental language, Voltaire opens the text on a voice very clearly other, a key feature for his polyphonic intentions.
From an attentive reading of the epistle, a series of contradictions start to emerge. Not only is the style used not in keeping with Saʿdi’s, but the date also does not fit in with the poet’s personal chronology. The simple fact that the epistle is dated “Le 18 du mois de schewal. L’an 837 de l’hégire” (“This 18th day of the month of Schewal, in the 837th of the Hegira”), that is to say 29 May 1434, according to the Gregorian calendar, means that Saʿdi could not have been the author as he died in the thirteenth century.Footnote 37 Even though knowledge of Saʿdi’s biography was patchy, the date of the epistle would have seemed improbable. Chardin writes in his travel accounts that Saʿdi’s works were compiled in “l’an 626 de l’hégire, qui revient à l’an 1222 de notre compte” (“the year 626 of the Hegira, that is to say the year 1222 according to our own calendar”).Footnote 38 In his entry for “Saadi, & Sadi,” d’Herbelot writes that the poet was born in 571 AH and died in 691 AH.Footnote 39 As mentioned above, Voltaire had read d’Herbelot and could have easily provided a more credible date.
Such lack of concern with accuracy is rather surprising as it sabotages any attempt to create verisimilitude, and this at a time when authors sometimes went to great lengths to pass off their works as authentic. In the introduction to the Lettres persanes, the editor explains that he has come by Usbek’s and Rica’s letters as they all shared the same accommodation, and the two travelers, being so far away from home, had no particular reason to keep their secrets hidden. Another example can be found in Mme de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne, published a year before Zadig. In the “Avertissement,” the editor says that Zilia, the Peruvian princess, translated her own letters, passed them on to the chevalier Déterville, and then these letters came into the editor’s hands. As in the Lettres persanes, the editor justifies the decision to adapt the style.Footnote 40
A comparison between Zadig, the Lettres persanes and the Lettres d’une Péruvienne reveals that Montesquieu and Graffigny both discuss language as a marker of foreignness but without actually using it. The Lettres persanes and Lettres d’une Péruvienne also contain a certain number of precise and accurate (at least believed to be so at the time of writing) information to anchor the narrative in the civilization of the main characters, thus establishing verisimilitude. As for Voltaire, he uses stereotypical Oriental language, the Hijri calendar, has the epistle signed by Sadi, who brings in clichés associated with Persia with props such as “tapis d’Iran” (“Persian carpets”) and “roses.” He refers to the “Mille et un jours” (“The Thousand and One Days”) and the “Mille et une nuits” (“The Thousand and One Nights”), thus also strengthening the phonetic connection between the sultane Shéraa and the famous Scheherazade.Footnote 41 All these elements would normally be employed with the intention of creating verisimilitude, but Voltaire subverts this by inserting easily avoidable inaccuracies. Moreover, the epistle firmly places the setting in Persia, but this is not followed through in the main narrative. One of the main locations is indeed Babylon, a territory disputed between the Ottomans and the Safavids. However, the epistle and the use of Babylon as one of the main locations are insufficient to give Zadig a specifically Persian setting. The subtitle to the work is “A Tale of the Orient,” not “A Persian Story.” Zadig’s travels take the reader from Babylon, to Egypt, to Arabia, to the island of Serendib, that is to say Sri Lanka, and back, but, as René Pomeau comments, “nous demeurons dans la même contrée, qui est l’Orient philosophique du XVIIIe siècle” (“we remain in the same land, the philosophical Orient of the eighteenth century”).Footnote 42 The subversion of verisimilitude in the epistle and the fact that its Persian setting has morphed into a fantasized Orient in the main narrative raise the question as to what the purpose of the epistle actually is, beyond the request for patronage. These inconsistencies are purposeful and are there to be recognized by the reader. Voltaire uses the text as a ludic space inviting the reader to participate in the production of meaning and to take part in the discussion.
Zadig’s Translation
The complexities of the epistle’s function are doubled by those of the position of Sadi with regard to Zadig. Sadi is the author of the epistle, but not of the “Tale of the Orient,” which has been written by “un ancien sage, qui ayant le bonheur de n’avoir rien à faire, eut celui de s’amuser à écrire l’histoire de Zadig” (“a sage of yore who, having the good fortune to have nothing to do, had the further good fortune to pass his time in writing the story of Zadig”).Footnote 43 Even though vague, the description of the author serves as another pointer towards Voltaire and the circumstances in which he wrote Zadig. After having made an offensive remark at court, Voltaire had to make himself scarce and took refuge at the house of the Duchesse du Maine. To distract himself during this enforced exile, he wrote Zadig. The epistle makes clear that the story it introduces is a translation, not the original version. Sadi “offre la traduction d’un livre” (“present[s] … this translation of a book”) which “fut écrit d’abord en ancien chaldéen, que ni vous ni moi n’entendons. On le traduisit en arabe” (“was originally written in the ancient Chaldee [sic], which language neither thou nor I understand. It was translated into Arabic”).Footnote 44 So not only do we not know the name of the author, but we also have no information concerning the translator, who could not have been Sadi since he has no knowledge of the language in which Zadig was originally written. The repetition of the word “ancien” places the text in a distant past for Sadi and the sultana, and an even further one for the 1748 reader, thus conveniently making Zadig’s bibliographical information disappear in the mists of time.
By presenting Zadig as a text reaching its reader through translation, Voltaire is playfully anchoring his work within a specific literary lineage, which, though he does not name it (he does not have to) includes the Lettres persanes, also presented as a translation. The epistle compares Zadig to The Thousand and One Nights and The Thousand and One Days, both described as “des contes qui sont sans raison, et qui ne signifient rien” (“stories that make no sense and have no point”), and thus are inferior to Zadig.Footnote 45 Importantly, these are two texts which reached the French public through translation, The Thousand and One Nights having been (partially) translated by Antoine Galland and published in 1704, and The Thousand and One Days translated by François Pétis de La Croix and published in the 1710s. The story of the translation of The Thousand and One Days as told in its preface is rather suspicious. Pétis de La Croix supposedly obtained the tales from the “célèbre Dervis Moclès, que la Perse met au nombre de ses grands personnages” (“famous dervish Moclès that Persia counts as one of its great men”). Moclès himself is not the author but the translator:
Moclès étant encore fort jeune s’avisa de traduire en persan des comédies indiennes, qui ont été traduites en toutes les langues orientales, et dont on voit à la bibliothèque du roi une traduction turque sous le titre de Alfarage Bada Alschidda, ce qui signifie “la joie après l’affliction.” Mais le traducteur persan, pour donner à son ouvrage un air original, mit ces comédies en contes, qu’il appela Hezaryek-Rouz, c’est-à-dire Mille et un Jours. Il confia son manuscrit au sieur Pétis de La Croix, qui était en liaison d’amitié avec lui à Ispahan en 1675, et même il lui permit d’en prendre une copie.
(Whilst still very young Moclès decided to translate Indian comedies into Persian. These comedies have been translated into every Oriental language, and a Turkish translation can be found at the king’s library under the title Alfarage Bada Alschidda, which means “joy after affliction.” But to give his work a bit of originality, the Persian translator adapted these comedies into tales which he called Hezaryek-Rouz, meaning Thousand and One Days. He entrusted his manuscript to Sir Pétis de La Croix, with whom he was on friendly terms in Isfahan in 1675, and he even allowed him to take a copy of it.)Footnote 46
Yet again, we have an instance of the paratext aiming to establish the authenticity of the main text in a more or less credible way. Presenting Zadig as a translation is thus another way in which Voltaire plays with paratextual conventions.
Cosmopolitan Literature
As established above, the epistle makes it clear that Sadi could not have translated Zadig from ancient Chaldean into Arabic. Yet, as Voltaire’s own practice suggests, to view translation solely as writing from one language into another is rather restrictive.Footnote 47 In a letter dated from 5 June 1752 and addressed to Formey, Voltaire writes: “Vous me direz: est-ce que vous entendez le persan pour traduire Sady? Je vous jure, monsieur, que je n’entends pas un mot de persan, mais j’ai traduit Sady, comme La Motte avait traduit Homère” (“You will ask me: Do you understand enough Persian to translate Saʿdi? Sir, I swear I do not understand a word of it; yet I translated Saʿdi, just as La Motte translated Homer”).Footnote 48 The translation Voltaire offers of Saʿdi in the Essai sur les Mœurs is actually an adaptation of Chardin’s own translation. A comparison of the two versions reveals Voltaire’s modus operandi.Footnote 49 Voltaire made stylistic changes by making the sentences more fluid and more easily comprehensible, and by writing in alexandrine verse. The content has also been heavily reworked, with Voltaire omitting whole sections, especially those which do not square with his deist views. As Cronk states, “this is not so much a translation as a comprehensive rewriting, turning the thirteenth-century Persian into an eighteenth-century European deist, pure and simple.”Footnote 50 Through his comparison with Antoine Houdar de La Motte, who adapted Anne Dacier’s translation of the Iliad, Voltaire broadens the concept of translation, which can be better understood by going back to its etymology. The word “traduire” comes from the Latin “traducere,” meaning to convey from one place to another, to cross. The translator is thus the one who takes on the role of intermediary whether by transposing from one language into another, or by adapting, as in the case of Voltaire with Saʿdi’s verses. In the epistle, Sadi takes on this role of go-between, at several levels: between Zadig and the sultane Shéraa by presenting the text to her, between Voltaire and his readers as the mask dissimulating the author, between Europe and the Orient as he would have given French readers their first taste of Persian poetry, between Self and Other as Voltaire uses Sadi the foreigner and a “Tale of the Orient” to discuss themes common to all mankind. As Wilewski suggests, Voltaire’s use of foreign pseudonyms offered “an increased alienation from the stereotypically Catholic French [which] made it easier for criticisms to be made and opinions to be voiced from a position of fictional externality.”Footnote 51
Zadig’s first version was Memnon, histoire orientale which contained neither the epistle, nor the approbation, nor the chapter “Le souper,” amongst other episodes.Footnote 52 As this article has examined, the role of Zadig’s epistle goes far beyond simply seeking patronage. The chapter “Le souper” offers a scene of cosmopolitanism with travelers from different countries, cultures and religions coming together for a meal, overcoming their differences to focus on what they have in common. The cosmopolitanism to which Voltaire aspired occurs in Zadig at the intradiegetic level in “Le souper,” but also at the extradiegetic level in the epistle with the appearance of Sadi.Footnote 53 Indeed in the epistle, the French reader is sharing the same space as the sultane Shéraa, both hopefully agreeing with Sadi on the merits of the book. As Cronk remarks:
Such proliferating pseudonyms are part of a game which Voltaire enjoys with his reader. More than that, they reflect a fragmentation of a single authorial and authoritative voice, an effect that leads us into the heart of the style and form of Voltaire’s writing. In the polemical works in particular, Voltaire relishes all forms of literary device which multiply the voices within a single text.Footnote 54
Through the presence of Sadi in the epistle, Voltaire makes voices other than that of the author heard and he carries this on in the main narrative where Saʿdi is an intertextual presence. As Hadidi observes, the chapter “Le brigand” (“The brigand”) in Zadig brings together two stories from Saʿdi.Footnote 55 In the Gulistan Saʿdi tells of a poet who is at first attacked by thieves, but finally saved by their leader watching the scene from his castle’s window and who is amused by a witty remark the poet makes despite being in danger. Voltaire modifies the original story, replacing the poet with Zadig, and it is his valor, not his wit, which impresses the leader. The second story borrowed from Saʿdi’s Bustan is that of the pearl, which from insignificant beginnings, grew so large that it became one of the jewels gracing the crown of the king of India. In Zadig, this becomes,
il y avait autrefois un grain de sable qui se lamentait d’être un atome ignoré dans les déserts; au bout de quelques années il devint diamant; et il est à présent le plus bel ornement de la couronne du roi des Indes.
(There once was a grain of sand which complained that it was no more than an insignificant little speck in the midst of a desert. In a few years it turned into a diamond, and it is now the brightest jewel in the crown of the King of the Indies.)Footnote 56
To view these borrowings as mere plagiarism would be to ignore the fact that Voltaire named Saʿdi in the epistle and put him in a quasi-authorial position. Saʿdi’s place in Zadig is complex and paradoxical, being one of Voltaire’s sources, and, under the guise of Sadi, being simultaneously author of the epistle and literary creation tinged with Oriental clichés. More importantly, Saʿdi’s presence in Zadig participates in its wider purpose: the creation of a polyphonic space where voices from different civilizations fruitfully converse in a spirit of cosmopolitanism.
Conclusion
In Zadig, Voltaire transforms the paratext from an often-overlooked space reflecting the constraints of the eighteenth-century publishing context into one of playfulness. In the dedicatory epistle, Voltaire masquerades as Sadi and portrays his patron as the sultane Shéraa. Yet other layers, more relevant to the content of the text itself, are also to be found. Voltaire plays with verisimilitude, establishing it only to then destroy it; he places Zadig within a tradition of Oriental writing, sometimes genuine, sometimes not; by stepping behind Sadi, Voltaire forces the authorial voice to give way to others, thus enabling the philosophical conversation through which truth can emerge.
If Sadi offered Voltaire protection against the censors in 1748, he was unable to shield him against Fréron’s vitriolic attack twelve years later. In his “Lettre à M. de Voltaire sur Sadi, célèbre Poète Persan” (“Letter to Mr de Voltaire on Saʿdi, famous Persian Poet”), published in the Année littéraire in 1760, Fréron unmasked Voltaire and turned his tactics against him. Just as Voltaire used the sad story of the old Persian to talk of his own life in the epistle in Les Scythes, Fréron offers a portrait of Saʿdi in which he is unmistakably speaking of Voltaire, ferociously attacking his works and his person.Footnote 57 In Fréron’s letter, Saʿdi is a vain author in whose works wit ill conceals the lack of depth, a depiction, needless to say, which is a far cry from d’Herbelot’s own entry. Nevertheless, Fréron’s attack demonstrates that Saʿdi now stood for more than Persian poetry and wisdom, and had indeed been firmly enlisted in the Enlightenment’s struggles.
Appendix
Text 1
Il sait distinctement ce qui ne fut jamais.
De ce qu’on n’entend point son oreille est remplie.
Prince, il n’a pas besoin qu’on le serve à genoux;
Juge, il n’a pas besoin que sa loi soit écrite.
De l’éternel burin de sa prévision
Il a tracé nos traits dans le sein de nos mères.
De l’aurore au couchant il porte le soleil;
Il sème de rubis les masses des montagnes.
Il prend deux gouttes d’eau; de l’une il fait un homme,
De l’autre il arrondit la perle au fond des mers.
L’être au son de sa voix fut tiré du néant.
Qu’il parle, et dans l’instant l’univers va rentrer
Dans les immensités de l’espace et du vide;
Qu’il parle et l’univers repasse en un clin d’œil
Des abîmes du rien dans les plaines de l’être.
(He distinctly knows what never was.
Of what we cannot hear his ear is full.
Prince, he does not need to be served on bended knee;
Judge, he does not need his law to be written down.
With his eternal foresight,
He has chiseled our features in our mother’s womb.
From dawn to dusk he carries the sun;
He sows the hard mountains with rubies.
He takes two drops of water; the first he makes into a man,
With the second he smooths the pearl at the bottom of the sea.
At the sound of his voice, life sprang from chaos.
At his command, the universe would instantly return
To the vastness of space and void;
At his command, the universe would return in a flash
From the abyss of nothingness back to the plains of life.)Footnote 58
Text 2
Dans les choses qui ne sont point, sa connoissance est distincte;
De celles dont on n’a jamais parlé, son oreille est remplie.
Par sa force, il conserve les choses hautes et basses.
Dieu est seul roi et juge au jour du jugement,
N’ayant besoin pour son service que le dos de personne ploie,
Ni que pour observer ses saintes lois, on prenne à la main le livre sacré.
De la plume de la prévision il trace les linéamens dans la matrice;
Du bout du doigt il porte le soleil d’Orient en Occident.
D’un souffle, il fait aller les grands navires sur les flots enfoncés.
La terre désobéissante et tremblante comme ayant la fièvre,
Il l’a clouée ferme avec les montagnes enfoncées dans ses entrailles.
Il rend une goutte de semence une nymphe céleste.
Qui pourroit concevoir qu’on fît un corps solide avec de l’eau!
La masse des cailloux, il l’a semée de rubis et de turquoises;
A des fils d’émeraudes il pend des escarboucles;
Il prend deux gouttes d’eau, l’une dans la nue qu’il lance en la mer,
L’autre dans le corps humain qu’il porte en la matrice,
De celle-là il fait le globe brillant de la perle,
De celle-ci une figure mouvante et raisonnante, droite comme un pin.
Quelle chose seroit obscure à sa connoissance,
Puisqu’à sa connoissance, le caché et le découvert est tout un!
Il apprête la nourriture pour les serpens et pour les fourmis,
Et il la présente toute prête à ce qui n’a ni pied, ni main, ni mouvement.
Par sa force, l’être a été tiré du néant.
Qui peut hors lui faire quelque chose avec rien?
Il réduira ce qui est dans les espaces de ce qui n’est pas,
Et derechef de l’abîme du néant, il fera revenir dans les plaines de l’être.
(Of things which do not exist, his knowledge is clear;
Of those which have never been spoken of, his ear is full.
By his strength, he maintains high and low things.
God only is king and judge at the day of judgement,
Requiring for his service nobody’s bent back,
And for his holy laws to be observed, not needing the holy book to be placed in men’s hands.
With the pen of forethought, he draws the outlines in the womb;
At the end of his fingertips he carries the sun from East to West.
By his breath the great ships are set in motion on the raging seas.
As for the earth, unruly and shaking as if in a fever,
He has pinned it down with mountains driven in to its hearts.
One drop of seed he turns into a heavenly nymph.
Who could possibly conceive that a solid body could be made of water!
The mass of rocks he has sown with rubies and turquoise;
To threads of emerald, he has braided garnets;
He takes two drops of water, one from the sky which he casts into the sea,
The second from the human body which he places in the womb,
The first he crafts into the shimmering globe of the pearl,
The second into a moving and reasoning body, straight as a pine tree.
What could possibly be unfathomable to his knowledge,
Since his knowledge holds as one the hidden and the revealed!
He supplies food for the snake and the ant,
And he presents it all ready to what has neither foot, hand, nor movement.
By his strength, being has been pulled out from the void.
Apart from him, who can make something out of nothing?
He will reduce what is in the spaces of what is not,
And in a flash, from the depths of chaos,
He will bring back forth the plains of life.)Footnote 59
