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Apr 12, 2021 · Why is it so interesting – especially for today’s young audience – to see a mini-series about Voltaire? How does Voltaire’s life and legacy resonate today?
- Alexander Durie
Even to this day, putting on a Voltaire play in France is something people do with caution. Just to name a few, Irene, Mahomet, The Orphan of China and Alzire are among the more controversial.
Apr 12, 2021 · Variety talked to Georges-March Benamou, creator, writer and producer of the show, about why a series on Voltaire is relevant in 2021 through its invoked themes of freedom of speech, religion...
- Alexander Durie
- The Origins of His Famous Pen Name Are unclear.
- He Was Imprisoned in The Bastille For Nearly A year.
- He Became Hugely Wealthy by Exploiting A Flaw in The French Lottery.
- He Was An Extraordinary Prolific Writer.
- Many of His Most Famous Works Were banned.
- He Helped Popularize The Famous Tale About Sir Isaac Newton and The Apple.
- He Had A Brief Career as A Spy For The French Government.
- He Never Married Or Fathered children.
- He Set Up A Successful Watchmaking Business in His Old Age.
- He Continued Causing Controversy Even in death.
Voltaire had a strained relationship with his father, who discouraged his literary aspirations and tried to force him into a legal career. Possibly to show his rejection of his father’s values, he dropped his family name and adopted the nom de plume “Voltaire” upon completing his first play in 1718. Voltaire never explained the meaning of his pen n...
Voltaire’s caustic wit first got him into trouble with the authorities in May 1716, when he was briefly exiled from Paris for composing poems mocking the French regent’s family. The young writer was unable to bite his tongue, however, and only a year later he was arrested and confined to the Bastillefor writing scandalous verse implying the regent ...
In 1729, Voltaire teamed with mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine and others to exploit a lucrative loophole in the French national lottery. The government shelled out massive prizes for the contest each month, but an error in calculation meant that the payouts were larger than the value of all the tickets in circulation. With this in mind,...
Voltaire wrote more than 50 plays, dozens of treatises on science, politics and philosophy, and several books of history on everything from the Russian Empire to the French Parliament. Along the way, he also managed to squeeze in heaps of verse and a voluminous correspondence amounting to some 20,000 letters to friends and contemporaries. Voltaire ...
Since his writing denigrated everything from organized religion to the justice system, Voltaire ran up against frequent censorship from the French government. A good portion of his work was suppressed, and the authorities even ordered certain books to be burned by the state executioner. To combat the censors, Voltaire had much of his output printed...
Though the two never met in person, Voltaire was an enthusiastic acolyte of the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Upon receiving a copy of Newton’s “Principia Mathematica,” he claimed he knelt down before it in reverence, “as was only right.” Voltaire played a key role in popularizing Newton’s ideas, and he offered one of the fi...
Voltaire struck up a lively correspondence with Frederick the Great in the late 1730s, and he later made several journeys to meet the Prussian monarch in person. Before one of these visits in 1743, Voltaire concocted an ill-advised scheme to use his new position to repair his reputation with the French court. After hatching a deal to serve as a gov...
While Voltaire technically died a bachelor, his personal life was a revolving door of mistresses, paramours and long-term lovers. He carried out a famous 16-year affair with the brilliant—and very married—author and scientist Émilie du Châtelet, and later had a committed, though secretive, partnership with his own niece, Marie-Louise Mignot. The tw...
While living in Ferney, France, in the 1770s, Voltaire joined with a group of Swiss horologists in starting a watchmaking business at his estate. With the septuagenarian Voltaire acting as manager and financier, the endeavor soon grew into a village-wide industry, and Ferney watches came to rival some of the best in Europe. “Our watches are very we...
Voltaire died in Paris in 1778, just a few months after returning to the city for the first time in 28 years to oversee the production of one of his plays. Over the last few days of his life, Catholic Church officials repeatedly visited Voltaire—a lifelong deist who was often critical of organized religion—in the hope of persuading him to retract h...
Jun 3, 2021 · Voltaire’s interest in literature beyond Europe is intimately connected with his historiographical interests more generally. Before the Enlightenment, what was called ‘universal history’ in Christian Europe was invariably the history of the Christian world.
Oct 20, 2021 · The return of the L.A. Dance Project's exclusive annual gala was well worth the wait. Co-chaired by Jane Fonda, Natalie Portman, and Benjamin Millepied, with support from Zoe Saldana, Marco Perego...
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Voltaire. Francois-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) was better known under his nom de plume of Voltaire. A prolific writer of over 2,000 books and booklets and over 20,000 letters, he is best remembered for novels such as 'Candide'.
