The Paradou in The Sin of Abbé Mouret | #ZolaStyle

The Paradou is the replica of Adam and Eve's Paradise. It is an abandoned huge garden with various species of plants. As Zola is a great artist in vividly portraying natural landscape into his prose, one cannot resist becoming a little artsy...

As Zola is an active supporter of Impressionist artists at his time, I pick paintings from this era too, mostly from Claude Monet, one of Zola's best friends. Monet owned a beautiful garden at his house in Giverny, and has produced quite many flower and garden paintings. The Sin of Abbé Mouret has also inspired two paintings by Joseph Edouard Dantan and John Collier.

Albine guided Serge to the right, into a field which seemed a sort of cemetery for the flower garden. Scabious were in mourning here. Funeral processions of poppies went along in line, stinking of death, and displaying their heavy flowers with their feverish brilliance.

Poppy Field Near Giverny by Claude Monet

All around them the rose trees bloomed. It was a wild and loving flowering, full of laughter--laughter red, rosy, and white.

Then they went slowly on into the arbour of roses. It was indeed a wood, with a veritable forest of tall standard roses, spreading out leafy canopies as large as trees, and huge rose bushes, like impenetrable thickets of young oaks.

Le Jardin by Claude Monet

New natural paths had formed in the midst of the woods, narrow alleys, and wide avenues, delightful covered passages where one could walk in the shade and the fragrance. These paths led to crossroads and clearings, went under arches of little red roses, and between walls covered with little yellow roses. Some sunny patches gleamed like swathes of green silk, patterned with bold splashes of colour; some shady parts had the seclusion of alcoves, the scents of love, and the warmth of a bouquet wilting on a woman's breast.

Pathway in Monet's Garden at Giverny by Claude Monet

The glade was of big rose trees, rising one above the other in an orgy of branches, a tangle of thorny tendrils, like thick layers of foliage, clinging to each other in the air, and hanging there, stretching from bush to bush like parts of the roof of a flying tent. Through the holes in the lace-like patterning of the leaves, one could see only the tiniest dots of light--an azure screen, letting through light and an impalpable spray of sunshine.

The flower garden, carefully tended for a master with a passion for flowers, had once displayed a wonderful selection of plants in flower beds neatly trimmed borders. Now one could see the same plants, but perpetuated and enlarged into such innumerable families, all gallivanting to the four corners of the garden, that the whole garden was now just a riot, an unruly shrubbery-school, beating against the walls, a suspect area in which drunken nature hiccupped verbena and carnations.

The Swinging in Zola’s A Love Story | #ZolaStyle | #Zoladdiction2018

I am reading A Love Story for #Zoladdiction2018, and loved this scene which I found very picturesque and full of life burst, as you would always find in Zola’s novels.

…Then standing on the swing, her arms spread wide and hanging on to the ropes, she shouted gaily: “Come on then, Monsieur Rambaud… Gently at first!”

Monsieur Rambaud hung his hat on a branch. His wide, pleasant face lit up with a fatherly smile. He made certain the ropes were strong, looked at the trees, and decided to give her a light push. Hélène had just cast off her widow’s weeds for the first time. She wore a grey dress, decorated with mauve bows.

The dress described in this particular passage turns out to be inspired by Renoir's painting The Swing (1876) which was shown in the Impressionist exhibition of 1877, while Zola was writting this book.

And sitting straight, she started off slowly, skimming the ground, as though rocked in a cradle. “Faster!” she said. Then, his arms at full length, Monsieur Rambaud seized the swing as it came back, pushed on it harder. Hélène rose into the air, each time increasing her height. But she still retained her steady rhythm. She looked correct still, rather serious, eyes shining bright in her fine, quiet face, her nostrils alone distended, as if to drink in the wind….

“Faster, faster!” A sudden push carried her up. She rose up to the sun, higher and higher. The displaced air blew over the garden; and she was moving at such a speed you could no longer see her very clearly. …. But Hélène was right up in the sky. The trees were bending and cracking as though beneath gusts of wind. All you could see were her skirts whirling round, making a noise as though in a storm. When she came down, her arms spread out, breasts thrust forward, she lowered her head a little, paused for a second; then she was sent aloft and came down again, head thrown back, fleeing and swooning, her eyelids closed.

Don’t you suddenly want to swing as well, reading this scene?