XXII

ZOLA AND DAUDET

THE "Social novel," which, fortunately, did not altogether succeed with Balzac, owing to his passionate temperament and the poetical impetus which he allowed to carry him away, was far more successful in the case of Émile Zola, who possessed a far calmer and more balanced disposition and was not betrayed by poetic inspiration.

This judgment is at variance with that generally accepted, because there hardly exists a history of modern French literature which does not take exception to Zola's attempt at experimental fiction,"

directed towards the establishment or verification of "scientific laws," especially that of "heredity." But since other artists are pardoned for attempting an art which shall be, for instance, philosophy or morality, and Balzac himself is pardoned for laying down "social laws" in a cycle of novels, it does not seem fair to make Zola's theoretic illusion weigh upon him too heavily. It will be said that those other artists went wrong rather as critics than as artists, and that they applied morality, philosophy or social laws to their works from without; but Zola also went wrong in this respect as critic rather than as artist, and he too was only able to apply his “law of heredity" and the genealogical table of the Rougon Macquart to his work from without; because it was

also not permitted to him to tear in pieces the nature of things and to make experiments where experiments were impossible. Perhaps the reason why people are severe with Zola and indulgent with others is that all are able to see at a glance the absurdity of experiments instituted upon facts that have been imagined, but all have not sufficient acumen to discern the equal absurdity of poetry turned into morality or philosophy. But it is not only equity that demands an equal indulgence towards him as towards the others; for we must almost be grateful to him for having left to history a most significant document as to the extent to which heads were turned in the second half of the nineteenth century by the amorous intoxication and dizziness inspired by physiology, pathology, zoology and the other natural sciences. He formulated all this with the utmost simplicity of spirit in his experimental fiction.

Zola is further blamed for mental narrowness and limitation and for his simple faith in those same sciences, or in what was called Science, redemptress of society. I do not wish to maintain that there was not some trace of truth in all this, nor that Zola's intelligence was fine or profound. But here too I fail to comprehend why Balzac should be thanked for his theory of social salvation by means of religion and monarchy (a reactionary theory, applicable, in any case, only to particular countries and historical moments), and Zola treated with severity for having admired in the crude form of what is called Science a really and perpetually redeeming force, namely, criticism or thought.

Finally-and this is the capital accusation-it is remarked that Zola has limited himself to representing

the base, the animal, the instinctive, and has not rendered the more spiritual and more highly evolved aspects of men, or when he has attempted to do so, has been most infelicitous, false and insipid. And this too is perfectly true, for it does not take long to see that Zola lacked both the natural breadth of mind and the culture necessary for the comprehension of the highest forms of reality and life. He did not even possess the sort of philosophy that artists are wont to acquire by means of the poetical and literary works of various times, of which he seems to have been both ignorant and incurious. But what does it all amount to? Non omnia possumus omnes, and if Zola courageously carried out his typical representation of modern society in certain of its aspects, vulgar and material as they were, he fulfilled his share in the sort of collaboration which also regulates the life of science and of art.

And could it ever be contested that he rendered admirably peasants and populace, big and little citizens, politicians and men connected with banks and speculation, proletarians and industrials, courtesans and honest working women, soldiers and officials, priests and devotees? Could greater energy be displayed in describing environments, markets, drinking-booths, mines, shops, fields of battle, railways, pilgrimages and great cities like Paris at all hours of the day and in all their principal moments ? He accomplished an enormous labour, for which he conscientiously prepared himself, visiting the places and conversing with men of various classes, examining monographs, reports and journals. For twenty years the world read his representations and descriptions and there learned, or believed that it learned, the

various aspects of modern life and the way the great

social machine worked.

Zola possessed uncommon aptitude for the formation of those representations, since he knew how to note the characteristic signs by which types are recognized, so that the figures he draws, the gestures and utterances fixed by him, lend themselves to being recalled to memory and employed proverbially in daily conversation. He placed his personages in conditions suitable to them with equal ability and determined the actions and reactions that they must necessarily accomplish. Let us mention, as one instance in a thousand, that of the bad workman, exploiter of women and dabbler in politics, Lantier, of the Assommoir, and in the same novel the old workman le père Bru, worn out with labour and struggles, resigned and indifferent. At the banquet in Gervaise's shop the guests count one another and find that they are thirteen:

"Attendez !-reprit Gervaise. -Ça va s'arranger. Et, sortant sur le trottoir, elle appela le père Bru, qui traversait justement la chaussée. Le vieil ouvrier, entra, courbé, roidi, la face muette.

Asseyez-vous là, mon brave homme,- dit la - Vous voulez bien manger avec nous,

blanchisseuse.

n'est-ce pas ?

Il hocha simplement la tête. Il voulait bien, ça lui était égal."

The most varied figures pass across the stage of his novels, from the horrible to the comic, expressed in a style that is disdainful of refinements, softness and vagueness, made all of things.

His manifold representations do not, however, follow one another without connection and intention, because we feel everywhere there the soul of Zola, which was not moved, as his adversaries and calumniators maintained, by a sort of satyriasis of the base and ignoble, or by the commercial advantage to be gained by speculating upon the evil tendencies and the unhealthy curiosity of readers, but was serious and thoughtful, feeling deeply the surrounding misery and corruption, observing and revealing them all, tearing aside every veil, like a doctor who wishes to ascertain the extent of an illness and measure its gravity, in order to prepare the remedy. And what a doctor he was, what hopes shone before him, what remedies he set to work to compose, were afterwards seen in his later volumes. He was something of a country practitioner, if you will, not troubled with the critical doubts of the truly scientific man nor weakened by the elegant scepticism of subtle intellects : he was too much of a doctor, that is to say, he relied too much on remedies derived from external things, yet he was worthy of respect for his steady faith in the profession that he exercised. His followers, like all followers, pushing the spirit of the master to the point of exaggeration, arrived finally at-what shall we say?—at Charlot s'amuse.

Zola's fame, most brilliant between 1875 and 1895, is now obscured, and his books are far less read, especially by the cultured, so that nowadays it is almost a sign of bad taste to admit an inclination for him. And this decline was to be expected, because, both the matter of his representations and yet more the ideology that guided him have in great part become historical. The corruption of French politics