But let us cultivate our garden (2018)
3 comments
·January 20, 2025labster
This reminds me of the scene in Return of the King, where the One Ring tempts Samwise by offering him infinite gardens, paving the countryside in lawns, hedges, and flowers. Which seems mighty attractive, until he realizes that all he truly needs is the garden that he tends with his own hands.
locallost
I was unaware there was much controversy over the meaning of Voltaire's garden. To me it was obvious (although apparently I could be way wrong), it's similar to the saying that optimism and pessimism are two sides of the same coin. The small recap in this article misses the important point of Candide meeting and discussing life with Martin, the opposite of everything he'd known up to that point - Martin is a pessimist. Thus, in the end neither pessimism nor optimism are the answer, as they are different forms of fatalism, the idea we leave ourselves to faith. Instead, cultivate your garden, as well as you can because that's all you can really do.
Homage to Candide, by Voltaire. In other words, "world peace begins at home"
Leonard Bernstein's Candide is delightful, and ends with "Make Our Garden Grow" by the entire company.
You can stream or download the mp4 at the Archive, with Bernstein himself conducting, and giving a mini-lecture at the beginning.
https://archive.org/details/leonard-bernstein-candide-englis...