Being Candid Poem by gershon hepner

Being Candid



Accepting what we cannot change
while changing what we can,
we males upon the human range
roam far less candid than
the hero favored by the French,
for being candid won’t
enable us to win the wench
whose reflexes say “Don’t! ”

Looking for his Cunégonde,
Candide would feel extremely lost
until he found she would respond,
whenever their two lovepaths crossed,
if he behaved as Voltaire said
he should. I’m not a philosophe,
and mostly when I try to bed
a wench I tick her badly off
by telling her the changes I
expect that she will make for me,
which makes her say to me “Goodbye! ”
I know I ought to try to be
accepting of my wenches’ deeds,
but do not try to change myself,
because I’m following Candide’s
advice, so like him––on the shelf.

Inspired by an article on Voltaire’s Candide by the emeritus professor of French at Leeds University, David Coward (“To get the Beast by the tale, ” TLS, October 23,2009) :

In his lifetime, Voltaire (1694–1778) was the greatest French everything: poet, historian, playwright, correspondent, wit, crusading philosophe and the enemy of the Catholic church and established authority. He was the most famous Frenchman of his day, and is still the figure of the French Enlightenment. Paul Vaéry called him “infiment actuel”. Yet his permanently indispensable spirit has lasted rather better than his books. Of his enormous output, only his “philosophical tales” in prose continue to find new readers. Not all are delicious, but some are extremely so, but Candide, ou l’optimisme, published exactly 250 years ago, is the most delicious of all. It tells how Candide, a naïve and idealistic youth, learn what to make of life and how to cope with it. His tutor, Pangloss, explains why he should always look on the bright side. Candide embarks on a quest to find his lovely, lost Cunégonde which takes him to many countries, including El Dorado. He is opposed by men and events at every turn…But in him, hope springs eternal and he concludes that human wretchedness is best treated not with precepts and philosophies, but by accepting what we cannot change and changing what we can.

10/27/09

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