“…And this public, he knew how to get hold of it; a public intelligent and fickle, inquisitive and sophisticated, whom one trifle would displease and another trifle amuse, a public with a narrow and delicate taste, with a short attention span, which one must constantly catch and intrigue. Every single day for twenty-three years he served up to it the sauce of wit, satire, jokes, and smut with which it was necessary to season his ideas.
Above all, he wrote clear, short, and quick. No more big works. Little twelve-page tracts, leaflets a couple pf pages long. “Twenty volumes in folio…will never make a revolution; it’s the little pocket-volumes at thirty cents apiece that have to be watched. If the New Testament had cost 4,200 sesterces, the Christian religion would never have taken root.” These “little pot-pies,” these portable scandal sheets, easy to read, and continuously exciting,…emerged in all forms, on all subjects, in verse, in prose, dictionaries, stories, tragedies, diatribes, extracts on history, literature, metaphysics, religion, the sciences, politics, legislation, Moses, snails, Shakespeare, and notes written by a gentleman. In reality, dearly as he prized the arts of literature and poetry, they became nothing more for him than a means to an end. Tragedies and verses served to hasten the spread of his ideas.
He repeated himself, he went over the same ground again and again. He was aware of it, and started the same ideas on still another round. For he knew that ideas enter the public mind only by dint of repetition. But the seasoning must be varied, to prevent disgust; and at that art he was a past master.
He as all the qualities, with many of the faults, of the journalist, above all the gift for the immediate, and the penetrating voice which carries and fixes our attention through the noisy confusion of life. But it is not enough to say Voltaire is a journalist; all by himself he is a journal, a great journal. He does the whole thing himself, the serious articles, the spot-reporting, the gossip column, the funny papers, the crossword-puzzles. He is a journal, but also a review, an encyclopedia; all the jobs of popularisation, propaganda, polemic, and information fall together in his hands. This quick old man is a whole press, a complete popular library.
Finally, by means of his innumerable letters, which reached people of every rank and every nation -the king of Prussia, the Empress Catherine, German princes, Russian or Italian gentlemen, English thinkers, ministers, courtiers, provincials, judges, comedians, abbés, men of letters, administrators, merchants, lawyers, women of the world -by these thousands of letters one which does not contain a compliment to the addressee’s self esteem, a joke for his amusement, and a thought for him to mull over, Voltaire interested I know not how many individuals in the success of his propaganda. He made them carriers, voluntary and uncontrollable, of his ideas. He strengthened, he doubled, by means of his correspondence, the effect of his pamphlets.”
-Gustave Lanson, Voltaire at Les Délices and at Ferney.
Advertisement
Like this:
Be the first to like this post.
Voltaire, Patron Saint of Bloggers
“…And this public, he knew how to get hold of it; a public intelligent and fickle, inquisitive and sophisticated, whom one trifle would displease and another trifle amuse, a public with a narrow and delicate taste, with a short attention span, which one must constantly catch and intrigue. Every single day for twenty-three years he served up to it the sauce of wit, satire, jokes, and smut with which it was necessary to season his ideas.
Above all, he wrote clear, short, and quick. No more big works. Little twelve-page tracts, leaflets a couple pf pages long. “Twenty volumes in folio…will never make a revolution; it’s the little pocket-volumes at thirty cents apiece that have to be watched. If the New Testament had cost 4,200 sesterces, the Christian religion would never have taken root.” These “little pot-pies,” these portable scandal sheets, easy to read, and continuously exciting,…emerged in all forms, on all subjects, in verse, in prose, dictionaries, stories, tragedies, diatribes, extracts on history, literature, metaphysics, religion, the sciences, politics, legislation, Moses, snails, Shakespeare, and notes written by a gentleman. In reality, dearly as he prized the arts of literature and poetry, they became nothing more for him than a means to an end. Tragedies and verses served to hasten the spread of his ideas.
He repeated himself, he went over the same ground again and again. He was aware of it, and started the same ideas on still another round. For he knew that ideas enter the public mind only by dint of repetition. But the seasoning must be varied, to prevent disgust; and at that art he was a past master.
He as all the qualities, with many of the faults, of the journalist, above all the gift for the immediate, and the penetrating voice which carries and fixes our attention through the noisy confusion of life. But it is not enough to say Voltaire is a journalist; all by himself he is a journal, a great journal. He does the whole thing himself, the serious articles, the spot-reporting, the gossip column, the funny papers, the crossword-puzzles. He is a journal, but also a review, an encyclopedia; all the jobs of popularisation, propaganda, polemic, and information fall together in his hands. This quick old man is a whole press, a complete popular library.
Finally, by means of his innumerable letters, which reached people of every rank and every nation -the king of Prussia, the Empress Catherine, German princes, Russian or Italian gentlemen, English thinkers, ministers, courtiers, provincials, judges, comedians, abbés, men of letters, administrators, merchants, lawyers, women of the world -by these thousands of letters one which does not contain a compliment to the addressee’s self esteem, a joke for his amusement, and a thought for him to mull over, Voltaire interested I know not how many individuals in the success of his propaganda. He made them carriers, voluntary and uncontrollable, of his ideas. He strengthened, he doubled, by means of his correspondence, the effect of his pamphlets.”
-Gustave Lanson, Voltaire at Les Délices and at Ferney.
Like this: