A Love Story by Émile Zola

Une Page d'Amour is the eight novel in Rougon-Macquart series, if you follow Zola's recommended order of reading. Helen Constantine titled this new translation published by Oxford World's Classics with A Love Story, instead of 'an episode of love'—the closest translation to Zola's original title—because she found that this book is not only about love affairs, but also represents Zola's love for Paris.

Hélène Grandjean (nee Mouret) is the daughter of Ursule Mouret (nee Macquart)--the illegitimate daughter of Aunt Dide (the matriarch of the Rougons and the Macquarts – The Fortune of the the Rougons). After her husband's death, she lives tranquilly with her sickly 7 y.o. daughter Jeanne. Their neighbors are a young Doctor Henri Deberle and his wife Juliette. Henri attends Jeanne when she's having a seizure. She is believed to suffer the 'hereditary lesion' as was her grandmother (Aunt Dide). A sexual passion then starts slowly to grow between Hélène and Henri.

On the other hand, an Abbe Jouve and his respectable but boring brother Monsieur Rambaud are regular visitors to Hélène's home. The Abbe has at first advised Hélène to remarry with M. Rambaud to protect her honor, but a passionless marriage—just what she had had with her late husband—does not interest her. One day, Hélène learns that Juliette Deberle too—as is many other women—is having an affair with another man. That encourages her to finally give up her modesty, and gives herself to Henri. Is that all? Of course not! It's just the beginning of an impending doom.

As I said earlier, this novel is not all about love story or love affairs. Two things have intrigued me during my reading. The first is Jeanne. She seems to share her mother's growing sexual tension. She becomes more and more suspicious and jealous on Doctor Deberle, and even feels ashamed and humiliated when the doctor saw her naked breast. And she is tormented during her mother's love making with Henri. She seems to know what is going on with the two lovers, and her anxiety grows parallel with the growing intensity of her mother’s passion.

Then, there was also the parallel between Hélène’s emotional condition and her views of Paris. Hélène lives in a suburb called Passy. From her bedroom window, she has a complete view of Paris. She and Jeanne love to stand by the window to look at and adore the city. There are a lot of passages where Zola described (or literally painted) the panoramic view of Paris. At first I thought it’s his passion for Paris that drove Zola to capture it in different conditions (sunshine, raining, starry, or blazing). But along the chapters, I began to realize that the current condition of Paris correlated with the current level of Hélène’s emotion. When her sexual desire began to kindle, Paris began also to ablaze with lights. That was just remarkable! I found an interesting piece from the Introduction (by Brian Nelson) about this: “[following Freud] …that a dream-landscape is most often a representation of the sexual organs. The female sexual connotations of the landscape are plain:  the focal centre of the city is the Seine, with Paris seen as an immense valley. The violence of the storm as it sweeps across the city matches the phallic significance of the Panthéon, in which Jeanne momentarily imagines her mother to be…”

So… what is this novel really about? That’s my direct question after finishing it. I can only guess that it is a kind of psychological study on love and sexuality—how it grows, and many variations of it (I think Rosalie-Zéphyrin’s relationship serves as the opposite of Helen-Henri’s—the healthy v passionate relationship?) Or, is it a critic against the hypocritical bourgeoisie, who ‘condone’ a married woman of having love affair, but ‘condemn’ a widow of having done the same? Either way, this has been an interesting reading. Not my favorite, perhaps, but it’s still beautiful, as always…

My rating: 4/5

Paris, oh Paris! | #ZolaStyle | #Zoladdiction2018

I have been “warned” in the Translator’s Note by Helen Constantine (translator of A Love Story – Oxford World’s Classics edition) that ‘[Zola’s] abiding passion for Paris shines throughout its pages.’ Nonetheless, I was not prepared to find copious “portraits” of Paris flooded the novel. Paris at twilight, Paris at night, Paris after raining, Paris in the morning; seems that Zola has captured his beloved Paris at every condition. At times, Zola could write a whole page and more, just to tell us about how Paris looks at night! Here I share some for you…

Paris was brightening in the burst of sunshine. After the first ray of light had fallen on Notre-Dame, other rays followed and struck the city. As it went down, the sun caused breaks in the clouds. Then the quartiers spread out in variegations of shade and light. At one minute all the Left Bank was a leaden grey, while the circles of light streaked along the Right Bank, unrolling next to the river like the pelt of some gigantic beast. [...] A ray of light, whose shafts sprang out like rain from the fissure in the cloud, fell into the empty chasm that it left. You could see its golden dust trickle like fine sand, grow into a vast cone, and pour down in torrents on the Champs-Élysées, dancing and splashing with light. This sparkling shower lasted a long time, like the constant firing of a rocket.

Beyond the irregular towers of Saint-Sulpice, the Panthéon stood out on the skyline with a subdued glow like a royal palace of fire about to be burnt to cinders. Then the whole Paris was lit up at the pyers of monuments as the sun went down. Flickers of light gleamed on the tops of roofs […]. All the façades which faced towards the Trocadéro were reddening, their glass sending out showers of sparks, which rose from the city as though some bellows were ceaselessly firing up that colossal forge. Fountains of light, constantly renewing themselves […]. Even on the far plain, from beyond the rusty embers that buried the ruined faubourgs, which were still hot, the odd rocket, shooting up from some suddenly reignited fire, blazed. 

Night was falling. From the pale sky where the first stars were shining, a fine ash seemed to be raining down on the city, that slowly but surely was disappearing. Shadows were already massing in the dips while an ink-black line rose from below the horizon, devouring the remains of the day, the hesitant glow that was retreating towards the setting sun. Beneath Passy there remained only a few stretches of roof still visible. Then came the black flood as darkness fell. [...] They were silent, their eyes still raised, dazzled and trembling a little beneath this, as it seemed, ever vaster teeming in the heavens. Beyond the thousands of stars, thousands more appeared, more and more, in the infinite depths of the firmament. It was a continual flowering, an ember fanned into life, of worlds that burned with the quite brightness of jewels. The Milky Way was already whiter, spreading its starry atoms so innumerable and distant that they were no more than a scarf of light in the round firmament. 

To the left, another gap appeared, the Champs-Élysées led a regular procession of stars from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where there was a glittering constellation; the the Tuileries, the ouvre, the blocks of houses next to the river, the Hôtel de Ville right at the back formed a dark shape, separated here and there by a large brightly-lit square. [...] On the other bank, on the right, only the Esplanade was clearly visible with its rectangle of flames like some Orion of the winter nights who had lost his belt. The long streets in the Quartier Saint-Germain were lit rather despondently at intervals. Beyond them, the populous quartiers scintillated, lit up with the little flames packed closely together, glowing in a misty nebula.

On the Pont des Invalides stars constantly crossed, while below, along a black, thicker band, was a miraculous thing, a group of comets, whose golden tails stretched out into a rain of sparks. These were the reflections of the lamps on the bridge in the waters of the Seine. But beyond that, began the unknown. The long curve of the river was etched out in a double string of gaslights attached to other strings of lights, from place to place, square to square. You would have thought that a ladder of light had been thrown across Paris, resting at two ends on the edge of the sky, in the stars. 

All you could see in the far distance was a bank of clouds which were heaping up a landslip of chalky boulders. Now in the pure, intense blue sky, puffs of cotton wool were sailing by at a leisurely pace, like flotillas of little boats billowing out in the wind. To the north, over Montmartre, a web of exquisite pale silk stretched over a section of the sky, like a fishing net on a calm sea. But as the sun went down over the hills of Meudon, the last of the downpour must still have been obscuring the sun, for Paris, under the brightness, was still dark and damp, beneath the steam of the drying roofs. The Seine had the dull sheen of an old silver ingot. [paris-rain]

I could have shared more, but I have to stop now before hurting my arm from continual typing!

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?