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Updated: May 12, 2025
Some days before the deplorable scene which I have related he invited Bonaparte and all the inmates at Malmaison to witness a theatrical representation. 'Alzire' was the piece performed. Elise played Alzire, and Lucien, Zamore.
ZAMORE: Reconnais ton amant. ALZIRE: Zamore aux pieds d'Alzire! Est-ce une illusion? It was no illusion; and the unfortunate princess was obliged to confess to her lover that she was already married to Don Gusman.
Our object is to review some specimen of what would have been recognised by his contemporaries as representative of the average flight of his genius. Such a specimen is to be found in Alzire, ou Les Américains, first produced with great success in 1736, when Voltaire was forty-two years of age and his fame as a dramatist already well established.
Voltaire pensively surveying Life, brushes the sounding strings; and hums to himself, the carbuncle eyes carrying in them almost something of wet: "MON Henri Quatre ET MA Zaire, ET MON AMERICAIN Alzire, NE M'ONT VALU JAMAIS UN SEUL REGARD DU ROI; J'AVAIS MILLE ENNEMIS AVEC TRES PEU DE GLOIRE: LES HONNEURS ET LES BIENS PLEUVENT ENFIN SUR MOI POUR UN FARCE DE LA FOIRE."
It is singular enough that Voltaire, in his restless search after tragic materials, has actually travelled the whole world over; for as in Alzire he exhibits the American tribes of the other hemisphere, in his Dschingiskan he brings Chinese on the stage, from the farthest extremity of ours, who, however, from the faithful observation of their costume, have almost the stamp of comic or grotesque figures.
Model Epic, HENRIADE; model History, CHARLES DOUZE; sublime Tragedies, CISAR, ALZIRE and others, which readers still know though with less enthusiasm, are blooming fresh in Friedrich's memory and heart; such Literature as man never saw before; and in the background Friedrich has inarticulately a feeling as if, in this man, there were something grander than all Literatures: a Reform of human Thought itself; a new "Gospel," good-tidings or God's-Message, by this man; which Friedrich does not suspect, as the world with horror does, to be a new BA'SPEL, or Devil's-Message of bad-tidings!
Never would any one have suspected the old marechal, whose parsimony was almost proverbial, of making such a magnificent present. In honour of the tragedy of Alzire, I christened my little negro Zamor, to whom by degrees I became attached with all the tenderness of a mother. You ask me why?
Voltaire, probably by way of apology for the poor success which the piece had on its representation, says, "This piece is perhaps in the English taste." Heaven forbid! We return to the earlier tragedies of Voltaire, in which he brought on the stage subjects never before attempted, and on which his fame as a dramatic poet principally rests: Zaire, Alzire, Mahomet, Semiramis, and Tancred.
In the Henriade, in Zaire, and in Alzire, Christian piety is exhibited in the most amiable form; and, some years after the period of which we are writing, a Pope condescended to accept the dedication of Mahomet.
There began a course of metaphysics, tales, tragedies; Alzire, Merope, Mahomet, were composed at Cirey and played with ever increasing success. Pope Benedict XIV. had accepted the dedication of Mahomet, which Voltaire had addressed to him in order to cover the freedoms of his piece.
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