Zweig MS 144

Autograph draft. Heavily corrected with numerous deletions and insertions; the opening line and half struck through.

A picaresque continuation of Voltaire's satire Candide, first published in 1759.

Begins: ' Candide cultivait son jardin depuis bien de années . . .'

Ends: ' . . . Candide faisait de son mieux pour imaginer le néant.'

In Duhamel’s story, the aging Candide embarks optimistically on a voyage to see the 'magnificent world' for one last time. Everywhere he goes, fellow travellers point out innocent-looking places where political opponents and convicts are incarcerated. Disillusioned, Candide only wants to retire to his garden, but he dies when the ship is blown up and is conducted to paradise by a guardian angel. There too he hears of dissenters, Lucifer and other agitators, and in the end can only try to imagine nothingness.

Zweig and Duhamel were friends for thirty years although the date of their first meeting is uncertain. Zweig in The World of Yesterday claimed that he met Duhamel with other members of the Abbaye de Créteil commune in Paris, in 1904, whereas Duhamel dated their first encounter around 1909. Besides being a doctor, author and founder of the commune for young writers, musicians and painters, Duhamel was a member of Académie française and director of the publishers Mercure de France. Zweig persuaded Anton Kippenberg to appoint Duhamel editor of the French poetry volume in the Bibliotheca Mundi series, Anthologie de la poésie lyrique française de la fin du XVe siècle à la fin du XIXe siècle (Leipzig: Insel, 1923). He collaborated with Zweig and Maxim Gorky on the production of the Liber Amicorum in celebration of Romain Rolland’s 60^th birthday (Erlenbach-Zürich: Rotapfel-Verlag 1926). In a letter of 22 January 1921, Zweig said of Duhamel 'au dela de la difference des nos langues, je me sens plus proche de vous que de beaucoup de mes confrères’

The relationship cooled briefly following elections at the International PEN Club meeting in Buenos Aires in September 1936. Duhamel had ambitions to succeed H. G. Wells as President, but Zweig, failed to rally to his support and his rival Jules Romains was elected. Zweig knew both candidates personally and admitted his dilemma in a letter to Raoul Auernheimer written on the return voyage (17 September 1936 in Knut Beck and Jeffrey B. Berlin (eds.), Stefan Zweig Briefe 1932-1942, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2005). Duhamel’s view of Zweig’s conduct is reflected in his journal, published as Le livre de l’amertume (Paris: Mercure de France,1984), p. 258, where he also quotes a conciliatory note from Zweig. The gift of the present manuscript, made in the following month of October, might be seen as a gesture of apology.

Zweig did not own any other Duhamel manuscripts, but two Voltaire autographs passed through his hands: a fragment from ‘La philosophie’ acquired in 1916 and now Institut et Musée Voltaire, Geneva, and ‘Morale’ prepared for the Dictionary, acquired in 1921 and now in the Bodmer Foundation, Geneva.