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Micromégas

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Le Micromégas

Author	Voltaire
Country	Kingdom of France
Language	French
Genre	Science Fiction
Published	1752

Le Micromégas is a 1752 novella by the French philosopher and satirist Voltaire. Along with his story "Plato's Dream", it is an early example in the literary genre of science fiction that draws upon the author's reading of Lucian's Icaromenippus, or the Sky Man, and is a significant development in the history of literature. Some uncertainty surrounds the first publication of Micromégas, with Peter Lester Smith making the argument that it was in print as early as August of 1751 but with the widely accepted publication being in 1752.

The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius, and of his companion from the planet Saturn.

The technique of using an outsider to comment on aspects of Western culture was popular in this period; Voltaire also used it in Zadig. Montesquieu, too, applied it in Persian Letters, as did José Cadalso in Cartas marruecas and Tomás Antônio Gonzaga in Cartas Chilenas.^{[citation needed]}

Contents

• 1Plot
• 2See also
• 3References
• 4External links

Plot[edit]

The story is organized into seven brief chapters. The first describes Micromégas (whose name literally means "small-large"), an inhabitant of one of the planets that orbits Sirius. His home world is 21.6 million times greater in circumference than Earth. Micromégas stands 120,000 feet (37 km) tall. When he is almost 450 years old, approaching the end of his infancy, Micromégas writes a scientific book examining the insects on his planet, which at 100 feet (30 m) are too small to be detected by ordinary microscopes. This book is considered heresy, and after a 200-year trial, he is banished from the court for a term of 800 years. Micromégas takes this as an incentive to travel around the Universe in a quest to develop his intellect and his spirit.

After extensive celestial travels he arrives on Saturn, where he befriends the secretary of the Academy of Saturn, a man less than a twentieth of his size (a "dwarf" standing only 6,000 feet (1.8 km) tall). They discuss the differences between their planets. The Saturnian has 72 senses while the Sirian has 1,000. The Saturnian lives for 15,000 Earth years while the Sirian lives for 10.5 million years; Micromégas reports that he has visited worlds where people live much longer than this, but still consider their lifespans too short. At the end of their conversation, they decide to take a philosophical journey together.

Eventually, they arrive on Earth and circumnavigate it in 36 hours, with the Saturnian only getting his lower legs wet in the deepest ocean and the Sirian barely wetting his ankles. They decide that the planet must be devoid of life, since it is too small for them to see with the naked eye. In the Baltic Sea, the Saturnian happens to spot a tiny speck swimming about, and he picks it up to discover that it is a whale. As they examine it, a boatful of philosophers returning from an Arctic voyage happens to run aground nearby.

The space travellers examine the boat and, upon discovering the lifeforms inside it, they conclude that the tiny beings are too small to be of any intelligence or spirit. Yet they gradually realize the beings are speaking to each other, and they devise a hearing tube with the clippings of their fingernails in order to hear the tiny voices. After listening for a while, they learn the human language and begin a conversation, wherein they are shocked to discover the breadth of the human intellect.

The final chapter sees the humans testing the philosophies of Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz and Locke against the travellers' wisdom. When the travellers hear the theory of Aquinas that the universe was made uniquely for mankind, they fall into an enormous fit of laughter. Taking pity on the humans, the Sirian decides to write them a book that will explain the point of everything to them. When the volume is presented to the French Academy of Sciences, the secretary opens the book only to find blank pages.

Publication

The 1950's saw some controversy over the date of the composition of Micromégas. Conflicting arguments were put forth by Ira O. Wade, who argued that the novella was written much earlier than its 1752 edition, even as early as 1739, and William H. Barber, who argued that it could not have been written so early and that the 1752 edition was the first. Peter Lester Smith would weigh in in 1975 with an article in Modern Philology asserting that Micromégas was in print before 1752 due to a lawsuit filed on May 1, 1752 about an illegal reprint of the tale which was resolved by proof of an edition that was published six months earlier. Lester went on to further specify that some form of the novella was in print at least by August of 1751 due to the existence of correspondence between Lefebvre de Beauvray and Pierre-Michel Hennin that mentions Micromégas as a new work in circulation in London, Dresden, and Paris. Lester believed that Voltaire had handed the manuscript for the tale, among other things, for delivery to one Michel Lambert for publishing by Christoph Heinrich Von Ammon. The Lambert edition was published in April of 1751 sans Micromégas due to the intervention of Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes but the tale was soon published by Jean-François Grangé.

Influence of Lucian

Ralph Arthur Nablow drew the connection between Micromégas and the work of the Ancient Assyrian satirist and rhetorician Lucian, particularly Lucian's Icaromenippus, or the Sky Man. Nablow looked to Voltaire's exile in England to find that the author had become familiar with Lucian's works due to his knowledge of Joseph Addison's Spectator, which led him down a path to where his library contained several volumes containing Lucian's works.Voltaire's work and letters are riddled with references to Lucian. He was quoted praising Lucian on June 5, 1751 for always making one think and saying that "we are always trying to add to his dialogues." This was, of course, very near the time of Micromégas's composition and publication and hints, according to Nablow, at Voltaire's recent re-reading of Lucian in relation to his writing Micromégas. Further indication of the influence of Lucian on Voltaire's tale is found in the wealth of similarities between Micromégas and Icaromenippus. Nablow points out that both works prominently deride philosophy for its contradictions and endless arguments over the metaphysical through the lens of observation upon the Earth from a great distance above. Both stories end with the putting of philosophers in their place by delivering to mortal humans that it is impossible to know the fundamental truths that philosophers seek and that there is no point in speculating on them. In Icaromenippus this comes in the form of Zeus' condemnation of philosophers and in Micromégas it is the blank book of wisdom given to them by Micromégas. Both works also use the technique of observation from above in order to scale the Earth down to a miniscule scale as a means of emphasizing Man's smallness in the universe and to criticize human vanity. They also use this to show the absurdity of the concept of war. Voltaire takes this further to mock the misguided conclusions that can result from scientific speculation specifically.

See also[edit]

• Novels portal

• Frankenstein
• True History
• "Plato's Dream"
• Sirius in fiction
• The Last Man
• Utopia

External links[edit]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Micromégas

• Gutenberg Project Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas (in French)
• Gutenberg Project Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas (in English)
• An English translation of Micromegas
• Analysis and plot overview (in French)
• Micromégas, audio version  (in French)
• Le Micromégas De M. de Voltaire, À Londres [1752].
• Micromegas public domain audiobook at LibriVox