Emperor China mentioned in Voltaire's poems is Qianlong (1711-1799). Voltaire praised Emperor Qianlong of China, who was 17 years younger than him. Unfortunately, Qianlong knew nothing about it. It's hard to imagine if ganlong knew someone.
It is said that Gan Long wrote the most poems in China. He wrote more than 40 thousand poems in his life, with an average of more than one poem a day. Qianlong ascended the throne 13 years later, he had his own engraving of poetry. In 65,438+0770, this poem was published in France. Voltaire, who was over 70 years old at that time, read this poem and wrote: "After reading it, he wrote. Obviously, Voltaire did not completely regard Qianlong as an emperor here, but as a poet. The mutual appreciation among poets made Voltaire dissatisfied with the French poets around him. He went on to write: "This is a good poem, but the emperor is very modest, unlike us little poets, who are full of arrogance everywhere. " 。
In fact, Voltaire praised Qianlong's modesty for a special purpose. Voltaire believes that the Confucian culture in China shows a kind of tolerance that is rare in other cultures, and this tolerance is really pitiful under the religious rule in Europe. Many years later, the German scholar Long Fang wrote a book called Tolerance, which systematically pointed out this big problem of western culture, including a chapter devoted to Voltaire. By the way. Generally speaking, political systems can be divided into three types: harmony and absolute monarchy. Voltaire and others think that China's political system belongs to an enlightened monarchy, not an authoritarian one, which is why Voltaire likes the British constitutional monarchy. We'll talk about this later.
From the deep meaning of Voltaire's love for Qianlong, we can see an important feature of Voltaire's thought: many contents of China society were used by him as a weapon to criticize European religious rule. It can even be said that by comparing the reality of China with the religious rule in Europe, Voltaire and others think that China represents freedom and happiness. From this, we can understand why Voltaire praised China's "polygamy". Voltaire wrote: "Adultery is rare in the East ... it has almost become a common occurrence in Europe ... Therefore, it is better to admit polygamy or make it immoral." Although Voltaire's statement is biased today, his real intention is to criticize the moral hypocrisy under European religious rule.