The Philosophy Club: Voltaire

The philosophy club is back with a very special one: Voltaire's poem Man of The World https://catoabroad.com/voltaire-the-worldling-le-mondain/. Derek Guy and Avery discuss what it means to love this messed-up, materialist, consumerist world-- at least in the way that Voltaire does. Special musical guest Avery Friedman https://linktr.ee/averyfriedman To listen to this episode in full, without ads, become a paid substack subscriber https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I was really excited for this conversation. I've been reading about Voltaire for the last month and have found him incredibly fascinating.

• 0:08Avery Trufelman?

  We can.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  I mean, there could be, there could be literally a 24-episode podcast season on Voltaire alone.

• 0:17Avery Trufelman?

  Yes.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  And each episode, I guarantee you, would be fascinating because the man's life was unbelievable.

• 0:25Avery Trufelman?

  The man's life was insane. And the funny thing is, this one biographer, Derek Parker, said, even today in France, his plays are regarded as unperformable and almost unreadable. And later on, he says, Voltaire is not to 21st century taste a great, or perhaps even good poet, even though he was revered by almost every contemporary critic. And so it's interesting, even though I think this, this one poem is tremendous, it seems like now in hindsight, he's much more regarded for his life than his works. It does confirm my deepest, darkest fear, which is like, oh no, what if influencing is the truest art? You know, if like his greatest contribution was just the life he lived and the documenting of it?

• 1:09Avery Trufelman?

  Like, oh, fuck, like, why bother? Why bother using a medium such as plays or poetry when you could just live an interesting life?

• 1:17Speaker 00

  This poem that we read, The Man of the World, I'm not a, I'm not a scholar on poetry, but I thoroughly enjoyed his work.

• 1:24Avery Trufelman?

  A hundred percent. I also, I find poetry generally intimidating.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29Avery Trufelman?

  But this was the sort of poem that I was like, oh, I could really just analyze it. It's so rich. It's such a rich text. Do you want to start with a little bit of background? I don't know how.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:38Avery Trufelman?

  I'd be like to, normally with any other writer, I'd be like, let's say a little bit about who he was. But I think we're going to spend a lot of time talking about who he was and then get to the poem, whenever we get to the poem. Oh, we will get to the Voltaire poem we read. But first, a little break.

• 1:55Speaker 02

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• 5:03Avery Trufelman?

  So yeah, who was Voltaire?

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Yes, Voltaire was, was a Frenchman who lived during the 18th century. He had an incredibly illustrious career, marked by politics, theater, convorting with aristocrats, which all kind of eventually led up to the French Revolution, in which he was kind of canonized. As I was reading him, many of the ideas that he put forward were not necessarily his invention. But I think Voltaire's skill was, he found a way to phrase certain ideas very well so that they could easily catch on. He just came up with these like witty lines. You know, the way that you would sum him up is he's an Enlightenment thinker.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  Voltaire thought we could have a better society than one where the church determines everything, and often prejudicially. He was deeply critical of the way society was being run, which was heavily influenced by the church and dogmatism and fanaticism. He was upset about religious wars. He was upset about religious persecutions, essentially masquerading as justice. And to talk about his thoughts or his worldview of religious tolerance, free trade, indulging in certain pleasures, so on and so forth, some of these views would almost be kind of banal to us today. They're just so obvious because the Enlightenment thinkers essentially want,

• 6:27Speaker 00

  we live in a world that is ruled by science and liberalism and democratic society. And I think you can understand Voltaire in the context of that time, which the Enlightenment thinkers were kind of thinking of a more rational society, a society that put man as an individual situated in society rather than focusing on man's relationship with God. But many of the ways that people describe Voltaire as being anti-church then sometimes leads to conclusions that are kind of modern in framing. So.

• 6:59Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, I noticed this all the time. I would think it like, oh, he's this liberal guy.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  No.

• 7:05Avery Trufelman?

  And he's a nut.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  He's not.

• 7:08Avery Trufelman?

  You can look at his values of championing justice and freedom of religion as super liberal, but they're really not because, well, they're not not. They're just more complicated, like.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  They're more complicated.

• 7:19Avery Trufelman?

  They're way more complicated. Like, Voltaire obviously and essentially set the stage for the French Revolution, even though it happened after his death. And by all accounts, he would not have liked it. He loved the monarchy. He did not believe the masses should govern themselves. He was really not one for the common man. He was a consummate snob. He wasn't for democratic ideals. And also, I think something that was a really interesting distinction is that he wasn't an atheist, as some people describe him. He was a deist, which, reading about it, I'm like, oh, is that what I am? I kind of wish there was more of a language around this, where he was like, I do believe there is a primary mover. You know, there is a clockmaker.

• 8:03Avery Trufelman?

  If all the world is a giant clock that runs perfectly, like someone had to make it. But he believed it is not organized religion. It's not a big man in the sky. But he did believe that there was a God and something out there. He just was convinced it was not the Christian God. And also, for as much as he appreciated and wanted religious freedom, he was a virulent anti-Semite. He hated Jews. But I have to hand it to him, like I was writing in the margins, I was like, at least he was doing it for like, original reasons. It wasn't because, it wasn't like the usual reasons. It wasn't like, oh, they eat Christian babies, or they killed Christ, or the like moneylender thing.

• 8:46Avery Trufelman?

  It was because he was like, they created Christianity. They were the cradle of Christianity. Neglecting to acknowledge that these are in fact separate religions and probably should be tolerated for his ideals of religious freedom, but whatever.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  I thought that there are, people contest whether he was actually anti-Semitic.

• 9:07Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, really?

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:08Avery Trufelman?

  That's the thing. Every aspect of his life seemed extremely contested, even from, I'm sure you must have read about how sick he was and how, how sickly he was his entire life. And in all of his letters, he's like, I'm about to die. I can't get back to you soon because I'm dying. And he wrote this at 30, he wrote this at 50, he wrote this until he died at a. Nice old age in his eighties.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, eighty-four, I think.

• 9:37Avery Trufelman?

  Eighty-four. You get this image that he's sort of outrunning death. But then other people are like, he was making it up. He was a consummate hypochondriac. And so it's really hard to know which parts are true, especially because there are so many biographies of this man.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think there are two things come to mind on that. One is on the issue of whether or not he believed in God. Two things come to mind. One is that my understanding is that at a very young age, he was taken up by the Society du Temple, which is a free-thinking group composed of aristocrats and notable poets. And in this group, people celebrated Epicurean pleasures involving woman, wine, and song. And Voltaire thrived in this place that celebrated a kind of libertine liberty and showed a particular talent for satirical verses. And in this group, if we can understand it as a bunch of Epicureans, and we go back to what Epicurus actually believed.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  I mean, nowadays, we usually use the term to say that somebody indulges in pleasure. Epicurus himself thought of pleasure in terms of long-term durable pleasure. So instead of gorging yourself on potato chips and drinking a liter of whiskey or whatever, he would say that what you want to do to maximize pleasure is to go for long-term pleasure, which means to minimize pain and suffering and discomfort. And then just have one potato chip and maybe a glass of wine a week or something so that you can enjoy it throughout your whole life. And Epicurus had a material view of the world. And he thought that the gods probably did create the world, but they are not interventionist.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  So he had no kind of view for providence that, you know, God would intervene in your life. They created the world and they're like somewhere out there and they're just doing their own thing.

• 11:26Avery Trufelman?

  The clockmaker. They set everything in motion. Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Right. And so Voltaire could have had that view. He could have been Epicurean because he joined an Epicurean group. Another view, I think, is that, you know, the church loomed so large over society, you could be prosecuted if you published something that was considered, you know, bad, whether you're criticizing the church or leaders or whatever. But manuscripts were not held to the same standard.

• 11:53Avery Trufelman?

  Oh.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  So Voltaire often wrote a manuscript, but did not take it to a printer, which at the time would have been a publisher. They were the same thing essentially at the time. So he'd write a manuscript and he would distribute the manuscripts. But since they were outside the law, you couldn't necessarily prosecute him. He also often penned his manuscripts and did not sign them. He wrote them anonymously, but since his voice was very clear, everyone knew it was Voltaire. And then he would also, he knew that the manuscripts would catch a lot of attention because he's essentially criticizing the church. He would then do these things where he would write letters to friends saying things like,

• 12:37Speaker 00

  "Oh, I recently heard this guy wrote this horrible thing. I disagree with it so much. If I happen to come across a copy of it, I'll try to find it and send it to you so that you can refute it."

• 12:47Avery Trufelman?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  And he would do this because if the police came and said, "You wrote this. We know you wrote this." He'd be like, "No, I have proof. Months ago, I sent this letter to Avery saying that I hate this thing."

• 12:59Avery Trufelman?

  Right, right.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Like Avery, you have to see this thing that's so horrible that we both have to refute it. And he also knew that when he circulated these letters to friends because he was famous, sometimes the letters would be read to people. So people would say like, "Voltaire wrote me. Let me read you this letter." And it would be read to a bunch of people in the room. So one, this would prove that he was not responsible for this quote-unquote "bad" or illegal or critical text. But two, he also knew that he could plant certain stories to grow his celebrity. And his celebrity not only enriched him, but also protected him to some degree because it allowed him to cavort with aristocrats and nobles.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  And he was born to a man who was a lawyer. His father was a lawyer. Voltaire's original name is not Voltaire. He created this image of essentially an aristocrat. And I think that's why it's hard to really parse some parts of Voltaire's life is because he created this image of Voltaire the man. So many of the things that we come across are often of his making. And then with this issue of antisemitism and whether or not, you know, I'll give you another example. It was said sometimes that he made money off of slavery, even though he was a proponent of individual freedom.

• 14:20Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, really? Yeah, he had a lot of business ventures.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Yes. Somebody, I don't know if it was after his death or while he was alive, but someone attached to the Catholic Church wrote a fake letter pretending to be Voltaire and bragging about how wealthy he got off of enslaving people. And the Catholic Church was essentially trying to discredit this man, saying the person that you believe to be the champion of individual freedom and whatnot is actually a guy who is happy that he made money off of slaves. It is true that he did derive some of his money from slaves because all bourgeois people at the time,

• 15:05Speaker 00

  he had investments in other companies, which sometimes involved slaves. So this is one of those things where, you know, I'm talking to you using devices that are probably used, you know, some mineral that involves slave or something. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I believe in labor exploitation. It's just the world that I live in.

• 15:25Avery Trufelman?

  It's true, although I do think, I don't know. I do think we might be giving Voltaire a little too much credit. I mean, he was a bit rapacious in his desire to make money. And apparently he had quite a talent for business. He would loan money out to friends and acquaintances with

• 15:45Speaker 00

  High interest rate.

• 15:46Avery Trufelman?

  High interest, at a very high interest rate. I don't think he would have inquired and been like, "Is there slave labor?" He'd be like, "Just, you know, don't ask."

• 15:53Speaker 00

  No, yeah.

• 15:54Avery Trufelman?

  Wait, may I go back very quickly and talk about this kind of cradle of his intellect that you described, the temple? But in this biography by Derek Parker, he really talks about it in a way that shocked me. I mean, it was like a den of hedonism. It was wild. It's funny because, you know, not to get too hung up on linguistics, but I love that, you know, one definition of it is Epicurean. And Derek Parker describes that in this Jesuit school, Voltaire was taught libertinism, both intellectual and physical. And I was like, what does libertinism actually mean? Like as opposed to hedonism?

• 16:40Avery Trufelman?

  And according to Wikipedia, which this is like my cardinal sin of podcasting. I hate when they're like, Webster's dictionary defines like philosophy as XYZ. But I did find this really interesting, that hedonism is the principle of seeking as much pleasure as possible. And libertinism is about rejecting constraints and actively eschewing social norms. Like Marquis de Sade was a libertine. And it's about not seeking balance or moderation. It's like the opposite of Epicurean. And so again, with Voltaire, we're like, which one is it? But it's wild because in this Jesuit school, there were a lot of clergy members, but it was completely debauched.

• 17:25Avery Trufelman?

  They would have these big feasts every night. They would have sex in public. They would write songs and poems. One prominent member had two nephews who were his catamites. And I had to look that up. And it is like young boys used for sex. Like, it's disgusting. And he later like died in bed with a ballet boy from the opera. It was this like den of sin. And truly, I mean, the level of pedophilia in this society rivals our own. It's kind of wild.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  When I read that part of his life, I thought of Bernard Mandeville that we talked about.

• 18:01Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Mandeville's talking about how the elites will preach virtue, but behind the scenes, they're just as corrupt as the thieves and the pickpockets and whoever else that you're jailing. When I read about Voltaire's concern about how essentially the church rules society, but actually people are engaged in all sorts of like libertine and hedonistic behavior.

• 18:23Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, yeah. And he saw the hypocrisy that these clerics, secular and religious clerics, were living these sinful decadent lifestyles.

• 18:33Avery Trufelman?

  And then they'd go pray it all off every Sunday. So these were the guys who encouraged young Voltaire, whose name was not yet Voltaire. It was François Marie Arulay. And they were like, you should write poems with us. And everybody was sort of reciting poems and having a good time. And Voltaire's dad needed him to get away from these guys. That's part of why he encouraged his son to study law. He's like, these guys are a terrible influence. And then the interesting thing is when he went away to law school, he had this sort of White Lotus season three moment. Did you watch White Lotus?

• 19:05Speaker 00

  I haven't.

• 19:06Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, there's this moment when this rich girl thinks she wants to join a monastery. And she gets there and she's like, the beds are so small. It's so dirty. I hate it here. And Voltaire had this moment of being like, oh, I really, I don't like it. It's, he had a taste of this delicious life very early on. And there's this period after Louis XIV died in 1715. His rightful heir was only five years old and so he couldn't take it over. And so the deceased king's nephew, the 40 year old, my French is so pathetic. Uh, Duc de Orleans, Duc de Orleans? Duc de Orleans, sorry, I'm American.

• 19:47Avery Trufelman?

  He took over and, oh my God, he was just like, in, in, in the words of Derek Parker, "He had been brought up by his homosexual father to be ignorant of the meaning of the word restraint, was a drunkard and kept innumerable mistresses and spent his leisure hours in the company of men who appeared to be chosen for their willingness to spend freely on furnishing their houses with the most beautiful women and the most luxurious means of making love to them." And he was also supposedly in an incestuous relationship with his daughter, but like, bleh. But during this time, there's a big relaxation of social and sexual conventions. And as one French historian put it, debauchery became a kind of etiquette. It's like what you did.

• 20:30Avery Trufelman?

  And that's the interesting thing is Voltaire did lead this sort of debauched life, but by all accounts, he wasn't that into sex. He was really way more into friendship and kind of meetings of minds. And he also was not as into drinking as he was into coffee, although that was also considered a drug at the time. Yeah, debauchery was just the, the rule of the day. But Voltaire, as you were saying, he like wrote these verses and distributed them about talking about the current ruler, the duke's relationship with his daughter and saying that he got her pregnant. And he swore up and down, he was like, I didn't write these, I didn't write these. And then rather than sending him to the Bastille,

• 21:13Avery Trufelman?

  they sent him out of Paris and he was living in exile in a small town. And he was like living as a throuple with an actress and his good friend who was bisexual. It's like pretty modern stuff. So he secretly moved back to Paris and pleaded for a pardon to move back to Paris, even though he was already living in Paris. And he got pardoned and then he started shit talking the duke again at a bar unknowingly in the company of a police spy. And then he spent 11 months in the Bastille, although the imprisonment was kind of like Martha Stewart prison. He could have visitors, he was able to exercise outside, he went out to dinner. But he actually was extremely productive in the Bastille and got a lot of work done.

• 21:55Avery Trufelman?

  And then he emerged with the name Voltaire. But wherever did the name Voltaire come from? A few theories after the break. Every single month you pay your rent or your mortgage. Are you getting any rewards or anything in return for that? If the answer is no, you need to check out Built. Becoming a Built member means earning points on every housing payment, no matter where you live. This is a payment you're gonna make anyway, and it's probably your largest monthly expense. So you might as well get something back for it. Built points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, Lyft rides, amazon.com purchases, even future housing payments and so much more.

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  I love using my Built points for Lyft rides. It basically costs the same as the subway once I apply all my points. But it's not just the points. An unexpected benefit that Built gives every single member is access to its neighborhood concierge in the Built app. So you can ask it to pay your rent, make dinner reservations, book a fitness class, schedule a Lyft, and it will automatically apply your member benefits along the way. Download the Built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com articals. That's J O I N B I L T dot com slash articles. And use that link so they know I sent you. There are a lot of theories as to why he chose this mononym. Did you come across any?

• 23:20Speaker 00

  No. Oh, well, I, I did see that it is, I couldn't quite understand. There apparently if you, if you use his original name, if you swap some letters that are kind of interchangeable in Latin, it can be used to spell Voltaire. Um, that is one theory that I read.

• 23:38Avery Trufelman?

  And then another theory is that it came from the phrase, je vole ma terre. Je vole ma terre means I'm stealing my land. Or it comes from Volterra, which is a place in Italy and the birthplace of the author Perseus. Or it could be from a nickname that he had when he was young, le Voltaire, the stubborn one. Or it could come from the town Arvo, where the Arulay clan did a lot of business and it's close to their place of origin. I don't know. Basically, nobody knows. There are lots of theories. Nobody knows why he chose the name, but the name is kick ass. It's so cool.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  It is really good.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. One thing that I, I, that I thought was funny was that in 1726, he had insulted a nobleman who eventually sent his servants to go beat his ass while he, while the nobleman sat in a carriage far away, looking at Voltaire getting his ass beat. And this, uh, this kind of broke Voltaire for a while and he eventually moved to England.

• 24:45Avery Trufelman?

  Can I elaborate that a little bit more? The spat he got in, I think it's so funny. Cause it happened at the opera and it was so over nothing. So Voltaire and this French aristocrat were visiting the main actress of this opera in her dressing room. And the nobleman kind of made a dig at Voltaire because of his fake name. He said, Monsieur Voltaire, or whatever your name is. I suppose you do have one. And Voltaire said something back supposedly to the effect of how like the nobleman dragged his name behind him and Voltaire brought honor to his own. And then the nobleman reached for his cane and Voltaire reached for his sword. And then the actress fainted and so they stopped.

• 25:29Avery Trufelman?

  But then later, as you said, the nobleman sent some men to beat up Voltaire at his home. And he watched from his carriage and is said to have called out, be careful of his head, there might be something worthwhile in it. And Voltaire was really pissed because he had all these nobleman friends who he had charmed in his illustrious circles. And none of them would support him against this nobleman. They were like, well, you're just an author. We don't want to go up against this powerful guy. And so Voltaire started taking swordsmanship lessons and like plotting his revenge. And you get sort of like Rocky montage of him getting ready to take his life into his own hands. And then he challenged the nobleman to a duel, which by honor, you have to accept, you can't be like, no.

• 26:13Avery Trufelman?

  But then the nobleman very quietly sort of like whispered around and had Voltaire sent to the Bastille in April of 1726.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Amazing. Incredible.

• 26:25Avery Trufelman?

  And so, yeah, then he went to England, which really changed him. Like England was a very different place than France at the time.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, Letters, I think Letters Concerning the English Nation, uh, published in 1733 is one of his more important works because essentially it masqueraded as a travelogue. But what he was really doing was talking about enlightenment values. Letters Concerning the English Nation is comprised of 20 or so short essays concerning science, politics, religion, literature and so forth. But in, in these letters, he's essentially,

• 27:03Speaker 00

  I mean, again, he is traveling through England and he's remarking on the freedoms in English society, but doing it in a way that he's also obviously criticizing French society in that it's not as free. And he's, again, he's always riding this line, tempting authorities. And Letters of the English Nation is essentially kind of a celebration of enlightenment values.

• 27:27Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, yeah. He's in his 30s around this point and I think it's so cool. All of the different minds that he interacted with, even tangentially. In England, he was supposed to meet with Isaac Newton, which is so cool. Although Newton died before the meeting took place. So Voltaire was at his funeral in Westminster Abbey and was like, wow, they bury scientists here in this prestigious church next to statesmen and aristocrats and royalty. And he believed that France would have derided science. And the English also respected the arts. There were actors and authors also buried at Westminster Abbey.

• 28:09Avery Trufelman?

  And Quakers and other sects were not oppressed in England. He has this great quote, "An Englishman, as a free man, goes to heaven by whatever route he likes." So he really believed in the like plurality of English life.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:24Avery Trufelman?

  So when he goes back to France, I believe it's when he goes back to France. When he was 38, he fell in love with a 26 year old Gabrielle Emile.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:34Avery Trufelman?

  She was married to someone else, but it was sort of whatever. And they were considered a perfect match. They were passionate, they were intellectually curious, they were best friends for life. I mean, she is so cool. She was like a scientist and an artist in her own right. She was apparently very beaut-, not beautiful, but like very charming in the same way that Voltaire. Yeah. Charming. Voltaire was apparently not very good looking. He described himself as thin, stringy and fleshless without buttocks.

• 29:04Avery Trufelman?

  But he was very witty and stylish and very good at wearing clothes.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:09Avery Trufelman?

  Which I think also is important for this poem, how much he enjoys.

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 29:14Avery Trufelman?

  Artifice. If left to his own natural devices, he's just like this stringy buttless guy. He really loves the artifice of the world. But anyway, so he and Gabrielle Emilie, Emilie,

• 29:30Avery Trufelman?

  are so in love, they're soulmates. Voltaire moves back to France and one of his many society friends are like, you can live in this abandoned ruined chateau that I have and you can crash here. And then he lived there for 15 years and his mistress Emilie came to join him in October 1734 with 200 pieces of luggage. Voltaire eventually got this fan letter from the Prince of Prussia, Frederick, and they begin this long epistolary relationship. Voltaire would be like, I think the church has terrible values. And Prince Frederick would be like, hard agree. You're amazing. And they both are just like, you're incredible,

• 30:11Avery Trufelman?

  you're incredible, you're incredible. And there's this weird sort of competition for Voltaire's affections between his mistress and the Prince of Prussia, who eventually, you know, becomes Frederick the Great. And Frederick is like, move to Prussia, please, you know, live with me, come over here. And his mistress is like, no way. You can't do that. So they're both like competing for his attentions. And it's in the middle of this kind of tug of war that he writes this poem.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:45Avery Trufelman?

  Man of the World.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  The poem itself, the general idea that modern life during the time of this poem's publishing, which is in the mid 18th century, is pretty good. That's what he's putting forward. But there are just so many parts of his verse that are really good. Much of the poem is, you can take at face value. There's, there's not very much kind of hidden meaning. And so what he's essentially saying is during the time, there are these discussions of how society has gotten worse. And this is a constant theme through history. Everyone thinks society is getting worse. Can I recite to you two sections that I think neatly sum up what he's trying to say?

• 31:24Avery Trufelman?

  Please.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  So in the very beginning, a few lines down, he writes, "Do you our ancestors admire because they wore no rich attire? Ease was like wealth to them unknown. Wasn't virtue ignorance alone? Would any fool had he a bed on bare ground have laid his head? My fruit-eating first father say..." He's saying that in the far distant past, people essentially didn't have nice clothes. They didn't have any wealth. They, they lived like essentially animals. He says that Adam, the first father, essentially spent time doing nothing except eating fruit and having sex with Eve. And then he goes on to insult Adam by saying

• 32:04Speaker 00

  that he had long nail, long dirty nails. He couldn't comb his hair. Notably, throughout his life, he was, he believed in polygenesis, which is the idea that people may have come from different origins. And so he probably did not necessarily believe in the story of Adam and Eve, that we all descend from

• 32:23Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  this couple.

• 32:24Avery Trufelman?

  Definitely.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  But he's also poking fun at this idea that the past was necessarily better because it was not enjoyable to live like a brute animal. And so this virtuous world that you're describing wasn't really virtuous at all because there were no temptations. People were not tempted by these things that you consider evil. And then for the rest of the poem, he goes on to praise all of the production of the time, what was modern life. So all of the fine clothes and the paintings and the literature. And he says, "I love the pleasures of a court. I love the arts of every sort. Magnificence, fine buildings strike me. In this, each man of sense is like me."

• 33:06Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  So that part is essentially him saying, I actually like the modern age. I don't actually think that living in the past was better.

• 33:14Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  And so the whole poem is sort of a celebration of material abundance of production of modern life. Yeah, I thought, I thought this poem was incredibly interesting, even though compared to our other readings, the poem itself was fairly light, kind of easy to get through.

• 33:34Avery Trufelman?

  I know. It was fun. Actually, I

• 33:37Speaker 00

  It's a really good poem.

• 33:38Avery Trufelman?

  It's a great poem. And as a treat for listeners, and actually, this is a surprise for you, I've commissioned a songwriter who I really love, whose name is also Avery, Avery Friedman, to make it into a song.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 33:53Avery Trufelman?

  Because I was like, it's, it's short enough that we could just read the entire thing. But I was like, surely there has to be a more fun way to do it.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  That is so great.

• 34:03Avery Trufelman?

  So here it is, a tight edit of Voltaire's poem, Man of the World, set to music and sang by the one and only Avery Friedman. Enjoy.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Do you our ancestors admire because they wore no rich attire?

• 34:34Speaker 03

  Ease was like wealth to them unknown. Was it virtue or ignorance alone?

• 34:50Speaker 03

  And would any fool had he a bed on bare ground have laid his head? My fruit-eating first father say, in Eden how roll time away? Did you work for the human race? Class'd Eve with close embrace. How long that your nails you could not bear? And that your disordered hair? And that you were swarthy in complexion? And that your amorous affection had very

• 35:32Speaker 03

  little better in it than downright animal instinct? Weary of the marriage yoke, you supped each night beneath an oak.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Millilitre water had unmasked, and having finished your repast, on the ground you were forced to lie, exposed to the inclement sky. Such in the state of simple nature is man a helpless wretched creature? Would you know in this cursed age, against wit's eld so much rage? What men blessed with taste attend? In cities how their time they

• 36:39Speaker 03

  spent? Garden of Eden much renowned, since there the devil and fruit were found. I ate this cow we learned in bold, inquired were Eden laid of gold. I am not so critically nice. Peristomies a paradise. Peristomies a paradise. Peristomies a paradise. Peristomies a paradise. Peristomies a paradise.

• 37:23Avery Trufelman?

  So how did that poem go over once Voltaire put it out into the world? And what does it mean for the way we dress today? To listen to the full conversation, become a paid subscriber and listen on your podcast player of choice at articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen.