{"id":47,"date":"2010-09-10T11:08:59","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T15:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=47"},"modified":"2013-08-28T17:29:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T21:29:38","slug":"analects-of-the-core-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2010\/09\/10\/analects-of-the-core-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Analects of the Core: Voltaire on loving the burden of life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mceTemp mceIEcenter\">\n<dl id=\"attachment_49\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 410px;\">\n<dt class=\"wp-caption-dt\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/19942\/19942-h\/images\/002.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" height=\"399\" width=\"400\" alt=\"illustration from a 1918 edition\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2010\/09\/voltaire.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-49\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2010\/09\/voltaire.jpg 400w, https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2010\/09\/voltaire-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/files\/2010\/09\/voltaire-300x299.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>illustration from a 1918 edition<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote><p>Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j&#8217;aimais encore la vie.  Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-\u00eatre un de nos penchants les plus funestes; car y a-t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu&#8217;on veut toujours jeter par terre [\u2026]<\/p>\n<p><strong>I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in  love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most  melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be  eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211;         complaint of the one-buttocked old woman, in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Candide-Optimism-Penguin-Classics-Voltaire\/dp\/0140440046\">Candide<\/a><\/em> by Voltaire, translated by John Butt (Penguin, 1950). A 1918 edition of the text, translated by Philip Littell, is available online at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/19942\/19942-h\/19942-h.htm\">Project Gutenberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>illustration from a 1918 edition Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j&#8217;aimais encore la vie. Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-\u00eatre un de nos penchants les plus funestes; car y a-t-il rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu&#8217;on veut toujours jeter par terre [\u2026] I have wanted to kill myself [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3691],"tags":[48735,3713,3714],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2901,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/2901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}