Twentieth Century

The Twentieth Century is presented as a restless age of speed and changing belief, but also as a moment still measured against the literary wit of the Eighteenth Century. In Philip Littell’s account, its central irony is that a period fascinated by acceleration has not matched the extraordinary pace of Voltaire’s Candide; at the same time, its unsettled new faiths make it fertile ground for satirists.

A Century Watched by Its Predecessors

Max Beerbohm’s cartoon turns the passage of time into a generational scene: the young Twentieth Century moves at top speed while the Nineteenth Century looks on with grave misgivings and the Eighteenth with wicked amusement. The contrast makes the new age seem at once energetic and suspect. Its progress is not simply celebrated; even the label progress is treated as uncertain, as though acceleration itself cannot establish where the century is going.

Speed and the Measure of Candide

The century’s mania for speed gives Littell a pointed comparison. Despite all its haste, the Twentieth Century has not come near the speed of Voltaire’s prose tale. Candide moves rapidly without seeming hurried: its mockery, inventions, concrete details, and quick intellectual turns make it feel full rather than compressed. Its pace is likened to high spirits playing a game, and its gaiety gives the attack on optimism an energy that, in Littell’s contrast, leaves many optimists looking damp and depressed.

New Doctrines, New Targets

The Twentieth Century also supplies prospective subjects for satire because its new faiths are still changing the structure of the world and remain open to deformation by their disciples. Littell argues that either hostility to a new faith or hostility to everyone else’s interpretation of it can furnish a satirist with a motive. He imagines younger writers trying their hands at figures representing Militarism, Pacifism, Pragmatism, or Freudianism, while retaining the lightness of touch associated with Voltaire. The century is therefore not only the object of an older age’s amusement: its unsettled doctrines create an opportunity to renew the philosophic tale.