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Voltaire

Voltaire

1694 - 1778

Franco Maria Aduet, known worldwide by his literary name Voltaire. He was the leading figure of the French Revolutionary movement in the eighteenth century. He was a poet, playwright, essayist, short story writer, historian, philosopher, and a messenger of intellectual and mental liberation.

Voltaire was born in 1694 in Paris, into a middle-class family, and his father was a lawyer. Voltaire studied law, but amended it, and was famous for his intelligence, intuitive presence, intelligent humor, and satirical poems. In the era of the old regime before the French Revolution, this type of danger was dangerous to its owner, and therefore we see Voltaire throwing some of his political poems in the Bastille prison. He wrote during the year he spent in prison his epic (Henriid), which won literary admiration later on. After his release from prison in 1718), his play (Oedipus) appeared, which was a resounding success. At the age of twenty-four, Voltaire became famous, and for the next sixty years in which he remained alive, he was the leading figure in the life of France's literary intelligence.

Voltaire was as good at collecting coins as he was at arranging words. Gradually he became a rich man who relied on himself. But there was a setback for him that he got involved in a verbal quarrel with one of the aristocrats who sent him some scoundrels who beat him (leech), then this noble was not satisfied with that, but sent him to the Bastille, but soon Voltaire was released on the condition that he leave France, so he left to England, where he stayed There are two and a half years.

Voltaire's stay in England was a turning point in his life. He learned to speak and write in English and learned the works of famous Englishmen such as John Locke, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and William Shakespeare. He was influenced by Shakespeare, English science and the experimental method, but what he enjoyed and influenced him more is the English political system, democracy and personal freedom that showed a flagrant contrast with the political conditions that prevailed in his country - France.

When Voltaire returned to France, he wrote the first famous philosophical book (Philosophical Letters), and this book, which was published in 1734, was the true beginning of the Enlightenment movement in France in the eighteenth century. In this book, he presented a loving description of the English political system and the ideas of John Locke and other English thinkers. The publication of this book angered the French authorities and forced Voltaire to leave Paris again.

Voltaire spent most of the fifteen years. Next, he is in Serre, in eastern France, where he falls in love with Madame de Chaelet, an intelligent, educated, and brilliant woman, and the wife of the Marquis.

In 1750, a year after the death of his beloved, Voltaire went to Germany at a personal invitation he received from Emperor Frederick the Great, King of Prussia. Voltaire spent three years at Frederick's court in Potsdam, but their friendship did not last long, and Voltaire had to leave Germany in 1753.

Voltaire settled in an estate near Geneva, where he was honest from both France and Frederick. However, his liberal ideas made even Switzerland a dangerous place for him, so he moved to a new estate in (Verney) near the French-Swiss border, where there were two ways to escape if something happened, but he stayed Peacefully in that manor for twenty years during which he was. Literary and philosophical works Saba, and he used to correspond with intellectual leaders in Europe, and receive and celebrate his many visitors.

Voltaire was a multi-talented and prolific writer. His writings, which totaled more than 30,000 pages, include heroic poems, lyric poems, personal letters, pamphlets, novels, short stories, plays, and historical and religious books.

Voltaire believed in religious tolerance, and he believed that the aristocrats in France were neither wiser nor wiser than him. Viewers of his novels heard his harsh criticism of the divine right of the king. Voltaire was more influential than Jean-Jacques Rousseau in French society.