“If you ask me what I came to do in this
world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.” ~ Émile
Zola
Still in the
event of A Victorian Celebration, I have a plan to explore two non-English
Victorian authors of my favourites. This particular post would be about one of
them: Émile-Édouard-Charles-Antoine Zola, who is famously called Émile Zola.
Born in Paris on April 2, 1840 from an Italian engineer, Zola is mostly
recognized for his naturalism theory and his political move in the Dreyfus
affair—a case of a falsely-accused man, besides his novels.
Naturalism
Naturalism
is an extension of realism movement in literature. “In literature it extended the tradition of realism, aiming at an even
more faithful, unselective representation of reality, a veritable “slice of
life,” presented without moral judgment. Naturalism differed from realism in
its assumption of scientific determinism, which led naturalistic authors to
emphasize man’s accidental, physiological nature rather than his moral or
rational qualities.” [Encyclopedia Britannica]. It is believed that Émile
Zola was the first author to introduce the use of the term ‘naturalism’.
Life
and early career
His father
died when Zola was four years old, and left the family with a small pension.
Actually his mother had wanted Zola to take a law career, but he failed in his examination.
Since childhood Zola made friend with Paul Cézanne, a famous artist and a
Post-Impressionist painter, who painted Zola together with his writer friend, Paul
Alexis on 1869-1870. However, the friendship broke up after Zola fictionalized Cézanne
and his Bohemian painter friends’ life in his novel: The Masterpiece (L'Œuvre).
 |
Paul
Cézanne, Paul Alexis reading to Emile Zola
1869-1870
|
Before
starting his writing career seriously, Zola worked as a clerk in shipping firm,
then in a publishing company named Hachette. There he made many interesting
contacts and learned the new rules of the literary market. He also became a
politic journalist for the same publisher, where he never hid his dislike
against Napoleon III. When his second novel—an autobiographical one—La Confession
de Claude was being published on 1865 and got police attention, he was fired
from the publishing company.
His
writing
Therese
Raquin could be assumed as Zola’s first major novel (his very first book was Contes
à Ninon, published in 1864). And after that, in the age of 28, Zola began his
plan for a series contained of 20 novels called Les Rougon Macquart, about two
branches of a family under the Second Empire: the respectable (legitimate) one—Rougon
and the illegitimate one—Macquart, which Zola described as:
"I want to portray, at the outset of a
century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush
to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is
derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of
a new world."
Zola has
thought from the start the big layout of the stories theme. Being a Naturalist,
and in order to make them cover only Truth, Zola had developed a systematic
method to create the whole plan. First he collected news articles,
investigation notes, and studies by informers, notes on settings or on
language, and completed his historical, sociological, or lexical information. The
preliminary files also contained plan, list of characters and their individual
files. From those preliminary files, Zola then wrote the rough draft of each
novel.
If you have
read Therese Raquin and L’Assommoir, you would have noticed how thoroughly Zola
described the scenes in both novels. It appeared that Zola had seen the
particular passage du Pont Neuf (from Therese Raquin) and rue de la Goutte-d’Or
(from L’Assommoir) from the eyes of his painter friend, then recreated them in
his writings.
 |
Illustration
of the passage du Pont Neuf,
appeared in the opening of chapter 1 of
Therese Raquin
|
 |
Illustration
of rue de la Goutte-d’Or,
appeared in chapter XII of l’Assommoir
|
J’Accuse
and The Dreyfus Affair
One of his
famous attempts in politics—which brought a high risk for his career and life—was
his open letter to President Félix Faure which was published on the front page
of Paris daily newspaper L’Aurore, on 13 January 1898. J’Accuse..! was the title, in which Zola accused the highest level
of French army has been conducting injustice and anti-semitism against Alfred
Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer in French army. French intelligent had found
out that someone had given their military secrets to German embassy, and
Dreyfus was put under suspicion and convicted to life-imprisonment although there
had not been any direct evidence against him. Zola's intention was that he be
prosecuted for libel so that the new evidence in support of Dreyfus would be
made public. The Dreyfus Affair became a huge issue at that time, dividing the
nation into two sides—reactionary army and church on one side and the more
liberal commercial society on the other side.
On 7
February 1898 Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel, as the reaction of
his J’Accuse. He was convicted, but rather than going to jail, Zola fled to
England, and only returned to Paris eight months later after charge against him
was dismissed.
His
Death
On the 29th
of September 1902 Zola was found dead at his home in Paris because of carbon
monoxide poisoning caused by a stopped chimney. It was assumed that his
politics enemies were behind the poisoning, although there was no clear
evidence against it. However, decades later, a Parisian roofer made a claim
during his last minutes of life, to have closed the chimney of Zola’s house for
political reasons. Is that true? Sadly—we will never know…
Zola was
initially buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris but on 4 June 1908,
almost six years after his death, his remains were moved to the Panthéon, where
he shares a crypt with Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.
His
Legacies
“The artist is nothing without the gift, but
the gift is nothing without work.” ~Émile Zola
Every great
man must have had people who criticized them. Unlike Charles Dickens, Zola has
been criticized to be lack of the power of creating life-like and memorable
characters, and to make his characters true to life. Zola himself insisted that
he refused to make any of his characters ‘larger than life’, that it was either
scientifically or artistically justifiable to create larger-than-life
characters. This is what—I think—differ Zola from the most Victorian authors—especially
Dickens.
“I am little concerned with beauty or
perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life,
struggle, intensity.” ~Émile Zola
Bibliography:
Les Rougon-Macquart Series
The Fortune
of the Rougons - book 1
La Curée -
book 2
The Belly of
Paris - book 3
La Concuête
de Plassans - book 4
La Foute de
l'Abbé Mouret - book 5
Son
Excellence Eugène Rougon - book 6
L'Assommoir
- book 7
Une Page
d'Amour - book 8
Nana - book
9
Pot-Bouille
(Restless House) - book 10
The Ladies'
Paradise - book 11
The Joy of
Life - book 12
Germinal -
book 13
The
Masterpiece - book 14
The Earth -
book 15
The Dream -
book 16
La Bête
Humaine - book 17
L'Argent -
book 18
La Débâcle -
book 19
Le Docteur
Pascal - book 20
Three Cities Trilogy
Lourdes
Paris
Rome
Les Quatre Evangiles Tetralogy
Fécondité
(Fruitfullness)
Travail
(Work)
Vérité
(Truth)
Justice
(Justice -- not end)
Other Novels
Thérèse
Raquin
The Dreyfus'
Affair: "J'Accuse" and Other Writings
Madeleine
Férat
The
Mysteries of Marseilles
Contes à
Ninon
La
Confession de Claude
Short Stories
The Attack
on the Mill and Other Stories
For A Night
of Love
La Mort
d'Olivier Becaille
Novella
The Flood
Source:
Wikipedia
Goodreads
This is such a great post. I appreciate all of the research that went into it. I was not familiar with Émile Zola. He sounds like an outspoken risk taker.
ReplyDeleteActually, he's more than that, he wrote honestly (being a Naturalist), and that what makes me like him.
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