Cuentos Y Relatos Libertinos

by Voltaire

Tras los últimos y sombríos años del reinado de Luis XIV las costumbres cambian por la aristocracia se entrega al lujo, convierte el deseo en motor de su vida y hace del amor un juego presidido por una libertad absoluta que provoca unos excesos que los siglos siguientes no alcanzarán. La novela libertina da cuenta de esa realidad, con delicadeza unas veces, con crueldad otras, pero siempre con la mujer como centro de todas las pasiones, capaz de seguir el juego con delicadeza o dejarse arrastrar hasta los límites más arriesgados del deseo. Toda la sociedad del siglo se embarca en un derroche de sentimientos que hizo de esa época un caso único en la historia, mientras la filosofía ilustrada iba sembrando los valores de una libertad más amplia y más igualitaria. De esas transformaciones, de esas galanterías y seducciones, de esos excesos dan cuenta las novelas libertinas seleccionadas en este volumen. En ellas se citan mesalinas, sectas lésbicas, hijos del burdel que muestran al desnudo la sociedad, víctimas de la pasión desbocada de los poderosos, condesas que tienen delicados caprichos de una noche, ingenuas seducidas por las trampas de la galantería, enamorados infieles que se inician en el sexo en cama ajena, o un canapé que, recuperada su forma humana, relata las aventuras que ha visto y soportado...

784 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Complete works (1880) : https://archive.org/details/oeuvresco...

In 1694, Age of Enlightenment leader Francois-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was born in Paris. Jesuit-educated, he began writing clever verses by the age of 12. He launched a lifelong, successful playwriting career in 1718, interrupted by imprisonment in the Bastille. Upon a second imprisonment, in which Francois adopted the pen name Voltaire, he was released after agreeing to move to London. There he wrote Lettres philosophiques (1733), which galvanized French reform. The book also satirized the religious teachings of Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal, including Pascal's famed "wager" on God. Voltaire wrote: "The interest I have in believing a thing is not a proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire's French publisher was sent to the Bastille and Voltaire had to escape from Paris again, as judges sentenced the book to be "torn and burned in the Palace." Voltaire spent a calm 16 years with his deistic mistress, Madame du Chatelet, in Lorraine. He met the 27 year old married mother when he was 39. In his memoirs, he wrote: "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did, and decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind." He dedicated Traite de metaphysique to her. In it the Deist candidly rejected immortality and questioned belief in God. It was not published until the 1780s. Voltaire continued writing amusing but meaty philosophical plays and histories. After the earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755, in which 15,000 people perished and another 15,000 were wounded, Voltaire wrote Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (Poem on the Lisbon Disaster): "But how conceive a God supremely good/ Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,/ Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?"

Voltaire purchased a chateau in Geneva, where, among other works, he wrote Candide (1759). To avoid Calvinist persecution, Voltaire moved across the border to Ferney, where the wealthy writer lived for 18 years until his death. Voltaire began to openly challenge Christianity, calling it "the infamous thing." He wrote Frederick the Great: "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." Voltaire ended every letter to friends with "Ecrasez l'infame" (crush the infamy — the Christian religion). His pamphlet, The Sermon on the Fifty (1762) went after transubstantiation, miracles, biblical contradictions, the Jewish religion, and the Christian God. Voltaire wrote that a true god "surely cannot have been born of a girl, nor died on the gibbet, nor be eaten in a piece of dough," or inspired "books, filled with contradictions, madness, and horror." He also published excerpts of Testament of the Abbe Meslier, by an atheist priest, in Holland, which advanced the Enlightenment. Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was published in 1764 without his name. Although the first edition immediately sold out, Geneva officials, followed by Dutch and Parisian, had the books burned. It was published in 1769 as two large volumes. Voltaire campaigned fiercely against civil atrocities in the name of religion, writing pamphlets and commentaries about the barbaric execution of a Huguenot trader, who was first broken at the wheel, then burned at the stake, in 1762. Voltaire's campaign for justice and restitution ended with a posthumous retrial in 1765, during which 40 Parisian judges declared the defendant innocent. Voltaire urgently tried to save the life of Chevalier de la Barre, a 19 year old sentenced to death for blasphemy for failing to remove his hat during a religious procession. In 1766, Chevalier was beheaded after being tortured, then his body was burned, along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. Voltaire's statue at the Pantheon was melted down during Nazi occupation. D. 1778.

Voltaire (1694-1778), pseudónimo de François-

Reviews

[Víctor Sampayo]

Aunque hay grandes nombres entre los seleccionados para este volumen (Voltaire y Sade, por mencionar a los más conocidos), desde el plano puramente estético no siento que haya joyas que destaquen entre estas narraciones que recorren de punta a punta el siglo XVIII francés. De hecho, se trata más de una exploración historiográfica, sumamente minuciosa, eso sí, acerca de la evolución del género libertino, de cómo desató persecuciones y encarcelamientos por la manera en que ridiculizaba o denunciaba los vicios y perversiones de la aristocracia y el clero, y de cómo toda esa decadencia coincide con el flujo histórico que desembocaría en la revolución francesa.