The Lisbon Earthquake

As the poem’s subtitle, “An inquiry into the maxim, ‘whatever is, is right,” suggests, Voltaire’s “The Lisbon Earthquake” is primarily concerned with the philosophical implications of the 1755 earthquake. During the Enlightenment era, essays and arguments were commonly presented in poetic form. Alexander Pope’s long poem An Essay on Man, is probably the best-known example of a verse essay in English. Voltaire’s “The Lisbon Earthquake,” which in part is a response to Pope’s Essay on Man, takes on this same form.

Voltaire and Pope both make masterful use of poetic techniques to articulate their argument and sharpen their points. However, since “The Lisbon Earthquake” is a translation from the original French “Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne”  and the translator has taken liberties to fit the poem into English heroic verse, many of Voltaire’s poetic nuances have been lost. This analysis, therefore, foregrounds the argument and imagery in Fleming’s translation of “The Lisbon Earthquake” insofar as it is consistent with Voltaire’s original.

Like an essay, the poem’s opening lines state two theses and the evidence that will be used to support them. The first thesis is that “man’s the victim of unceasing woe,” and the speaker claims that that