Cultivating Wisdom: Voltaire’s Garden Philosophy
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 30, 1778
On this day, the great French writer Voltaire departed this mortal realm, leaving behind a legacy that continues to bloom in literary gardens across the centuries. How fitting that one of his most enduring works should contain wisdom so pertinent to those of us who prefer soil beneath our fingernails!
Voltaire's masterpiece Candide: or, Optimism follows its young protagonist on a global adventure of misfortunes that would wilt the spirit of lesser men.
Yet through flood and famine, war and woe, our Candide maintains the sort of unwavering optimism that gardeners must summon when facing an April frost or summer drought.
The novel's most celebrated passage arrives at its conclusion, when after witnessing the world's countless horrors, Candide delivers perhaps the most sensible advice ever penned:
"All I know," said Candide, "is that we must cultivate our garden."
"You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was placed in the garden of Eden, he was put there 'ut operaretur eum', so that he might work: which proves that man was not born for the rest."
"Let us set to work, for that is the only way to make life bearable."
How deliciously subversive!
In an age of philosophical grandstanding and endless theoretical debate, Voltaire's hero concludes that tending one's own plot of earth is the surest path to contentment. Is this not what every gardener discovers in those quiet moments between the seedling and the harvest?
Imagine the scandal this must have caused among Voltaire's intellectual contemporaries! T
o suggest that practical work—the kind that dirties hands and produces tangible results—might be superior to lofty philosophical musings. No wonder the church found him so troublesome.
Yet centuries later, we gardeners know the truth of Candide's wisdom. There is something profoundly satisfying in the cultivation of growing things, in partnering with nature to create beauty and sustenance. When the world grows chaotic (and when does it not?), the garden remains our refuge, our workspace, our classroom, and occasionally, our battlefield.
Voltaire himself was known to garden extensively at his estate in Ferney, writing to friends about his fruit trees and vegetable plots with the same passion he reserved for his literary and philosophical endeavors.
Perhaps his greatest legacy isn't found in his volumes of writing, but in this simple reminder that life's meaning often resides in the humble act of nurturing growth.
So the next time you find yourself overwhelmed by the world's complexities, remember Candide's conclusion.
Return to your garden.
Dig your hands into the soil.
Plant something that will outlive today's troubles.
Cultivate your own small corner of Eden.
After all, what better philosophy could a gardener possibly need?
