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| France banknotes10 Francs banknote, Voltaire |
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| 10 French francs banknote - Voltaire |
French currency 10 French Francs note (1963-1973) Voltaire, issued by the Bank of France - Banque de France.
French banknotes, French paper money, French bank notes, France banknotes, France paper money, France bank notes, collection of French paper money, Billets de banque en franc français, collection de papier-monnaie billets français, Les billets de la Banque de France, Papier monnaie - Billets France.Obverse: Portrait of François-Marie Arouet better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade.- from an engraving by Dominique Vivant, baron de Denon;
Palais des Tuileries in Paris engraved after the painting by Francis Raguenet as Voltaire could see from his apartment where he died.
Reverse: Portrait of Voltaire wearing a wig and writing with a quill pen. View of Castle Cirey-sur-Blaise Haute-Marne (Lorraine), area of the Marquise du Chatelet, where the Voltaire lived from 1733 to 1740.
Watermark: Head of Voltaire.
French Banknotes
1962-1979 Issue
5 Francs Louis Pasteur 10 Francs Voltaire 50 Francs Jean Racine
François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.
François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris, the youngest of the five children (three of whom survived) of François Arouet (1650 – 1 January 1722), a lawyer who was a minor treasury official, and his wife, Marie Marguerite d'Aumart (ca. 1660 – 13 July 1701), from a noble family of the province of Poitou. Some speculation surrounds his date of birth, which Voltaire always claimed to be 20 February 1694. Voltaire was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704–1711), where he learned Latin and Greek; later in life he became fluent in Italian, Spanish and English.
By the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer. Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, spent much of his time writing poetry. When his father found out, he sent Voltaire to study law, this time in Caen, Normandy. Nevertheless, he continued to write, producing essays and historical studies. Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. His father then obtained a job for him as a secretary to the French ambassador in the Netherlands, where Voltaire fell in love with a French Protestant refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer. Their scandalous elopement was foiled by Voltaire's father and he was forced to return to France.
Most of Voltaire's early life revolved around Paris. From early on, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for critiques of the government and religious intolerance. These activities were to result in numerous imprisonments and exiles. One satirical verse about the Régent, in which Voltaire accused the Régent of incest with his own daughter, led to his imprisonment in the Bastille for eleven months. While there, he wrote his debut play, Œdipe. Its success established his reputation.
He mainly argued for religious tolerance and freedom of thought. He campaigned to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority, and supported a constitutional monarchy that protects people's rights.
The name "Voltaire"
The name "Voltaire", which the author adopted in 1718, is an anagram of "AROVET LI," the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, and the initial letters of "le jeune" ("the young"). The name also echoes in reverse order the syllables of the name of a family château in the Poitou region: "Airvault". The adoption of the name "Voltaire" following his incarceration at the Bastille is seen by many to mark Voltaire's formal separation from his family and his past.
Richard Holmes supports this derivation of the name, but adds that a writer such as Voltaire would have intended it to also convey its connotations of speed and daring. These come from associations with words such as "voltige" (acrobatics on a trapeze or horse), "volte-face" (a spinning about to face one's enemies), and "volatile" (originally, any winged creature). "Arouet" was not a noble name fit for his growing reputation, especially given that name's resonance with "à rouer" ("to be broken on the wheel" – a form of torture then still prevalent) and "roué" (a "débauché").
In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Rousseau in March 1719, Voltaire concludes by asking that, if Rousseau wishes to send him a return letter, he do so by addressing it to Monsieur de Voltaire. A postscript explains: "J'ai été si malheureux sous le nom d'Arouet que j'en ai pris un autre surtout pour n'être plus confondu avec le poète Roi", (I was so unhappy under the name of Arouet that I have taken another, primarily so as to cease to be confused with the poet Roi.) This probably refers to Adenes le Roi, and the 'oi' diphthong was then pronounced like modern 'ouai', so the similarity to 'Arouet' is clear, and thus, it could well have been part of his rationale. Indeed, Voltaire is known also to have used at least 178 separate pen names during his lifetime.
Major Works
Voltaire's major fall into four categories: poetry, plays, historical works and philosophical works. His most well-known poetry includes the epic poems Henriade (1723) and The Maid of Orleans, which he started writing in 1730, but never fully completed.
Among the earliest of Voltaire's best-known plays is the tragedy Oedipus, which was first performed in 1718. Voltaire followed Oedipus with a string of dramatic tragedies, including Mariamne (1724). His Zaïre (1732), written in verse, was something of a departure from his previous tragedies. Until that point, Voltaire's tragedies had centered on a fatal flaw in the protagonist's character; the tragedy in Zaïre was the result of circumstance. Following Zaïre, Voltaire continued to write tragic plays, including Mahomet in 1736 and Nanine in 1749.
Voltaire's body of writing also includes the notable historical works The Age of Louis XIV (1751), and Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). In Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations, Voltaire took a unique approach to tracing the progression of world civilization by focusing on social history and the arts.
Voltaire's popular philosophic works took the form of the short stories Micromégas (1752) and Plato's Dream (1756), along with his famed satirical novella Candide (1759). In 1764, he published another of his most important philosophical works, Dictionnaire philosophique, an encyclopedic dictionary embracing the concepts of Enlightenment and rejecting the ideas of the Roman Catholic Church.
Arrests and Exiles
In 1715, Voltaire was exiled to Tulle for mocking the regent Orleans. In 1717, he returned to Paris, only to be arrested and exiled to the Bastille for a year on charges of writing libelous poetry. Voltaire was sent to the Bastille again in 1726, for arguing with the Chevalier de Rohan (Guy Auguste de Rohan-Chabot). He was detained there for two weeks before being shipped off to England, where he would remain for the next three years.
In 1733, the publication of Voltaire's Letters on the English Nation angered the French church and government, forcing the writer to flee to Lorraine. He remained there for the next 15 years with his mistress, Emile de Breteuil, at the Château de Cirey, visiting Paris occasionally as of 1735, when he was granted re-entry. By 1778, the French public had begun to regard Voltaire as a literary genius, and he returned to Paris a hero.
Death
Two months before his death, the ailing Voltaire bid the crowd farewell at a production of his play Irene: "I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition." Voltaire died in his sleep on May 30, 1778, in Paris, France.