Candide's Advice By VERLYN KLINKENBORG he most famous line in Voltaire's "Candide" is the final one: "We must cultivate

our garden." That is Candide's response to the philosopher Pangloss, who tries again and again to prove that we live in the best of all possible worlds, no mat ter what disasters befall us. Ever since "Candide" was published in February 175 9, that line has seemed to express a reluctance to get involved, an almost quiet ist refusal to be distracted by the grand chaos of earthly events. And that read ing might make sense, if Candide hadn't already lived through a lifetime of woe. In fact, that line is the summation of Candide's wisdom, his recognition that n o matter how you choose to explain the world, the garden still needs cultivating . I thought of Candide the other morning at 6:15, on hands and knees in my own gar den. I was transplanting tomatoes and peppers. It takes some practice getting on hands and knees at first. Not physically that comes easily enough. The hard par t is psychological. Walking through the garden, upright, I can maintain a certai n aloofness. But to kneel in the straw-bedded pathways, to pluck lamb's-quarters from among the kale, is a powerful form of submission. The first time I really surrendered to my garden work this season, I remember thinking that none of this seemed very important, the weeding, the watering, the planting. It is such a ti ny gesture, after all, to pull up a mallow or an oxalis before it gets away from you. Surely there were more important things to do: calls to make, books and ar ticles and editorials to write, news to follow, beat by beat. I wondered, on that first day on hands and knees, just what I was avoiding by we eding so meticulously. That's what brought "Candide" to mind. I had to reread th e story to realize that Candide was avoiding nothing. What mattered was what he was facing. A vegetable garden seems like such a simple thing. The seeds lie in wait for just the right moment. With the first day of heat this past week, the c orn and beans that hadn't risen suddenly rose. The beets snapped to attention. Candide's most important lesson comes from a Turk who sends his fruit to be sold in Constantinople. "Work," the Turk says, "keeps us from three great evils: bor edom, vice and need." But even this is too much explanation. As the garden takes on substance, it grows in imagination, too. It wakes me up at first light, when the air is still cool. I go out with a basket of seeds and a small hand-hoe, an d nothing seems more important.