Voltaire in the Round

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 420, 11 July 1947, Page 9

Voltaire in the Round

-yNE of the most interesting ‘speakers in the 4YA Winter Course series, The Man, the Times, and the Theory, was Dr, Silver on "Voltaire." Dr. Silver, professor of Modern Languages at Otago University, has an easy delivery and avoids the fault of many Winter Course lecturers; that of sounding dry and pedantic; also he possesses something dear to the heart of the Dunedinite, a pleasant trace of Scottish accent. (Strange how the possession of this natural grace immediately predisposes the fellow Scot to believe in the speaker’s intellectual infallibility.) Out of the mass of facts and arguments contained in Dr. Silver’s talk it is scarcely possible to select anything for repetition; nothing would suffice but the entire talk. What emerged was a fine and liberal portrait of a remarkable human being; indeed, no facet of Voltaire’s multiple personality was omitted-ais ability to seize and propagate new ideas, the fecundation of his intelligence by his stay in England, his prodigious outpourings of writings on all imaginable subjects, his intolerance of injustice and his fight for freedom of expression, his attitude to revealed religion (the latter fairly and ably summed up in Dr, Silvers exposition). At the same time the speaker made no attempt to gloss over any of Voltaire’s failings, and the result was a portrait "in the round," rather than the silhouette which might have resulted had the speaker shown bias on way or the other. I am looking forward to hearing Dr. Silver again, and I hope that his next subject, whatever it be, will afford him as magnificently wide a scope,