Chapter 1

List of Illustrations

Comedie D'amour Series Émile Zola Jeanne's Illness Malignon Appoints a Rendezvous With Juliette The Meeting of Hélène and Henri

ZOLA AND HIS WRITINGS

Émile Zola was born in Paris, April 2, 1840. His father was Francois Zola, an Italian engineer, who constructed the Canal Zola in Provence. Zola passed his early youth in the south of France, continuing his studies at the Lycée St. Louis, in Paris, and at Marseilles. His sole patrimony was a lawsuit against the town of Aix. He became a clerk in the publishing house of Hachette, receiving at first the modest honorarium of twenty-five francs a week. His journalistic career, though marked by immense toil, was neither striking nor remunerative. His essays in criticism, of which he collected and published several volumes, were not particularly successful. This was evidently not his field. His first stories, _Les Mystères de Marseilles_ and _Le Voeu d’Une Morte_ fell flat, disclosing no indication of remarkable talent. But in 1864 appeared _Les Contes à Ninon_, which attracted wide attention, the public finding them charming. _Les Confessions de Claude_ was published in 1865. In this work Zola had evidently struck his gait, and when _Thérèse Raquin_ followed, in 1867, Zola was fully launched on his great career as a writer of the school which he called “Naturalist.” _Thérèse Raquin_ was a powerful study of the effects of remorse preying upon the mind. In this work the naturalism was generally characterized as “brutal,” yet many critics admitted that it was absolutely true to nature. It had, in fact, all the gruesome accuracy of a clinical lecture. In 1868 came _Madeleine Ferat_, an exemplification of the doctrine of heredity, as inexorable as the “Destiny” of the Greek tragedies of old.

And now dawned in Zola’s teeming brain the vast conception of a “Naturalistic Comedy of Life.” It was to be Balzac “naturalized,” so to speak. The great cycle should run through the whole gamut of human passions, foibles, motives and interests. It should consist of human documents, of painstaking minuteness of detail and incontrovertible truth.

The idea of destiny or heredity permeates all the works of this portentously ambitious series. Details may be repellant. One should not “smell” a picture, as the artists say. If one does, he gets an impression merely of a small blotch of paint. The vast canvas should be studied as a whole. Frailties are certainly not the whole of human nature. But they cannot be excluded from a comprehensive view of it. The “_Rougon-Macquart_ series” did not carry Zola into the Academy. But the reputation of Moliere has managed to survive a similar exclusion, and so will the fame of Zola, who will be bracketed with Balzac in future classifications of artistic excellence. For twenty-two years, from _La Fortune des Rougon_, in 1871, to _Docteur Pascal_ in 1893, the series continued to focus the attention of the world, and Zola was the most talked about man in the literature of the epoch. _La Fortune des Rougon_ was introductory. _La Curée_ discussed society under the second Empire. _Le Ventre de Paris_ described the great market of Paris. _La Conquete de Plassans_ spoke of life in the south of France. _La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret_ treated of the results of celibacy. _Son Excellence Eugene Rougon_ dealt with official life. _L’Assommoir_ was a tract against the vice of drunkenness. Some think this the strongest of the naturalist series. Its success was prodigious. In this the marvellous talent of Zola for minute description is evinced. _Une Page d’Amour_ (A Love Episode) appeared in 1878. Of _Nana_, 1880, three hundred thousand copies were quickly sold. _Pot-Bouille_ portrayed the lower _bourgeoisie_ and their servants. _Au Bonheur des Dames_ treated of the great retail shops. _La Joie de Vivre_ came in 1884. _Germinal_ told of mining and the misery of the proletariat. _L’Oeuvre_ pictured the life of artists and authors. _La Terre_ portrayed, with startling realism, the lowest peasant life. _Le Reve_, which followed, was a reaction. It was a graceful idyl. _Le Reve_ was termed “a symphony in white,” and was considered as a concession to the views of the majority of the French Academy. _La Bete Humaine_ exhausted the details of railway life. _L’Argent_ treats of financial scandals and panics. _La Debacle_, 1892, is a realistic picture of the desperate struggles of the Franco-Prussian war. _Le Docteur Pascal_, 1893, a story of the emotions, wound up the series. Through it all runs the thread of heredity and environment in their influence on human character.

But Zola’s work was not finished. A series of three romances on cities showed a continuance of power. They are _Lourdes_, _Rome_, and _Paris_. After the books on the three cities Zola planned a sort of tetralogy, intended to sum up his social philosophy, which he called the “Four Gospels.” _Feconditie_ is a tract against race suicide. The others of this series are entitled _Travail_, _Verite_ and _Justice_, the latter projected but not begun.

The attitude which Zola took in reference to the wretched Dreyfus scandal will add greatly to his fame as a man of courage and a lover of truth. From this filthy mess of perjury and forgery Zola’s intrepidity and devotion to justice arise clear and white as a lily from a cesspool.

Several of Zola’s books have been dramatized.

Zola died suddenly at his home in Paris, in September, 1902. He received a public funeral, Anatole France delivering an oration at the grave. There is every indication that Zola’s great reputation as an artist and philosopher will increase with the passing of the years.

C. C. STARKWEATHER.

A LOVE EPISODE