Unsure about your French table manners? Published 27 December by Leyla Alyanak — Parisian by birth, Lyonnaise by adoption, historian by passion. I would uncover facets I never suspected about the life of Voltaire. Especially his love life and his everyday existence. It was the Enlightenment in France, a time of erudition in certain classes and grand ideas and social exploration, a time that so fascinates me that as soon as I heard about this chateau and its links to Voltaire, I had to know more.
It was the "Age of Reason", and came with new ideas of freedom and tolerance, upending traditional blind obedience to authority church and monarch and opening avenues to change.
Life in the Enlightenment. The power couple of the Enlightenment. Chateau Cirey: idyllic backdrop for an illicit affair. Daily life at the Chateau de Cirey.
The end of an idyll. Voltaire's private theater. The Chateau de Cirey today. Voltaire's adoption of these "newfangled" ideas got him into no end of trouble, leading to exile and imprisonment. By , when they formally met at some Parisian high-society do, they would certainly have been aware of one another. They had friends in common, and Emilie had attended some of Voltaire's plays. They fell almost instantly in love, an attraction as intellectual as it was emotional.
Contrary to custom, they didn't keep their liaison hidden and went out together, in love, under the eyes of the "tout-Paris", shocking some people and captivating others. Soon, though, Voltaire would have one of the many encounters with authority for which he was famous. The publication of his pro-English Lettres Philosophiques was seen as critical of the French regime and he wisely fled to the countryside. The Lettres Philosophiques got Voltaire into trouble.
