The Fortunes of the Rougons - Emile Zola

 Finally, I found where to begin with Zola's Rougon-Macquart sequence.   Some of the novels I have already read and reviewed here belong to the cycle (The Belly of Paris, The Debacle, Germinal) but I wanted to start at the undisputed beginning.   That is here, with The Fortunes of the Rougons (1871).

The book is set in December 1851, when a coup d'etat in Paris installed Napoleon III and the Second Empire.   The key events were in Paris but there were also popular uprisings all over the country, including Provence.   Zola was partly raised in Aix-en-Provence which here he renames Plassans.

Zola made a key decision - to confine the action to Plassans and its immediate neighbourhood.   Action elsewhere is brought in by letter and, to a much lesser extent, newspapers.   There is a key period in the month when nobody in Plassans knows what is happening elsewhere.   Pierre Rougon, a middleaged bourgois, has a son in Paris who keeps him as up-to-date as he can.   Backed by his ambitious wife Felicite, Pierre seizes control of the town and acts as mayor - the actual mayor having been taken prisoner by the local insurgents.

The complicating factor, the stroke of authorial brilliance, is that Rougon's implacable enemy is his half-brother Antoine Macquart, who sets himself up as a rebel purely to oppose Pierre.   There was also a half-sister, Ursule, who married and moved away.   One of her sons has married one of Pierre's daughters, the other, seventeen year-old Silvere, is living in Plassans with his grandmother, the half-mad eccentric 'Aunt Dide'.

Silvere begins and ends the novel.   It begins with him and his thirteen year-old sweetheart waiting to join the army of insurgents heading their way.   The rebels pass through Plassans at dead of night, simply capturing a trio of big wigs they happen upon and moving on.   Around the midpoint of the book there is a battle in which the rebels are defeated.   Miette is killed, Silvere captured.   It ends with him being returned to Plassans where a gendarme he accidentally injured executes him.

Zola's second key decision is the way in which he includes the necessary back story.   There is a lot of it and it has to go in because, as he tells us in the preface, Zola's purpose is to prove that "Heredity, like gravity, has its laws."   Yet it must not be allowed to outweigh or unbalance the narrative.   So in Chapter One he deals with the rebels passing through Plassans and leaving with Silvere and Miette.   Chapter Two describes Plassans waking the next day, speculating on what happened.   Thus we meet people who live there and the relationships between some of them.   We meet the Rougons.   Pierre is embarrassed by his mother and half-siblings.   We then go back fifty years to when Dide was widowed and took up with the poacher Macquart, who sired Antoine and Ursule.

And so on...   The book hops backward and forwards in time in substantial chunks.   This means we always know when and where we are and are always uncovering more insights into the main characters.   By the end of the book this is what we are expecting, so Zola cleverly does something different.   The first clues to Silvere's death are delivered in what seems like a waking dream of Aunt Dide.   Even she does not know if it is real or not.   Antoine and Pierre both assume she is talking about the long-gone poacher Macquart and his lifelong war with the gendarmerie.   But no, Dide actually witnessed the death of her grandson while out buying brandy for Antoine - and wow, does that hit home.

I've been spending a lot of time recently considering the French Naturalists and Realists, notably the trio of Zola, Maupassant and Huysmans.   The fact is, I enjoy them all.   The Fortunes of the Rougons I particularly enjoyed.

Next question: do I continue in publication order or in the order recommended by whoever wrote the Wikipedia  essay?

Boule de Suif - Guy de Maupassant

 In 1880, at the height of his novel-as-experiment phase, Emile Zola put together a collection of six shortish nouvelles by himself and five of his fellow devotees of naturalism.   He named it after the house at Medan which his success had bought him, and the gatherings of disciples he convened there: Les Soirees de Medan.    He went first, with 'Attack on the Mill', then came 'Boule de Suif' by Maupassant and... 

And very few readers got any further.   Les Soirees was no great success - it has never, so far as I can tell, been translated into English.   But Maupassant, making his debut, was all anyone spoke about, a tremendous and continuing success.   Many Maupassant fans still regard it as his best work.   It laid the secure foundation for the hectic decade that followed, during which he produced hundreds of stories and half-a-dozen novels, before his decline and death in the sanatorium at Passy.   Even across the Channel, where Francophobia is bred in the bone, Boule de Suif was translated within months.   And - get this - it retained, and still retains, the French title.   It means ball of suet, but that doesn't work, nor does dumpling or butterball.   No, Boule de Suif is perfect.

The stories in Les Soirees shared a common theme.   All were set during the recent Franco-Prussian war which France, it may be recalled, lost disastrously.   In Boule de Suif as bunch of townsfolk attempt to escape from Rouen, which has fallen to the Germans.   Ten of them share a coach, three couples, ranging from lower middle class to aristocracy, two nuns, a liberal agitator called Cornudet, and Elisabeth Rousset, known professionally as Boule de Suif, a fat and popular prostitute.

During the first leg of the journey the decent folk steer well clear of the courtesan.  But only she has had the sense to bring food, which she is perfectly happy to share, so the snobs and the religious are willing to compromise.   Snowfall means they have to stop overnight at an inn.   Unfortunately it is the inn where the Prussian officer in charge locally is also staying.   That evening he sends a message down to the dining room.   Will Mademoiselle Rousset spend the night with him?   No she won't.   Next morning, the officer won't allow the coach to leave.   This goes on for several days - every night, the invitation, the refusal, and in the morning no coach.

The others become restive.   They supported Boule de Suif to start with but the continued impasse is interfering with their plans.   They conspire to persuade her and eventually succeed.   They sit in the dining room drinking champagane and cheering on the thumbs and bumps from the bedchamber above.   Next morning, bright and early, the coach stands ready to leave.   Boule de Suif, distressed and ashamed, is last to join the party (Cornudet is staying on, a personal protest against the hypocrisy of the others).   The 'respectable' folk can hardly refuse to travel with the prostitute.   She is the only reason they are allowed to travel.   But they don't have to speak.  Indeed, they feel free to speak about her...

Hypocrisy and double standards are Maupassant's speciality and he hit the ground running with Boule de Suif.   I prefer Bel-Ami, personally, but Boule de Suif comes very close.    As a longish short story it may very well be, like its title, perfect.

Bel-Ami - Guy de Maupassant

 I remember the BBC adaptation of Bel-Ami when I was still at school, but I had never read it or, indeed, very much of Maupassant's works.   I bought a copy a month or so ago as background reading for a couple of projects I'm working on.   I also bought a book, Some French Writers, which I will review later, when I've finished it.   I have read the chapter of Maupassant, though, which includes this:

Bel-Ami reads like nothing so much as a monstrous dream.   Is it imaginable that so basely loathsome a creature as Georges Duroy - a cur as well as a scoundrel, a man of only the lowest degree of intelligence and most vulgar type of physical good looks - should start at page 1 from the gutter, and at page 441 be the husband of a charming young wife, the lover of every desirable woman that he has met, the owner of millions of money (francs, to be sure, but that is bad enough) and moreover a person of political as well as social power and prestige?

That was published in book form in 1893, less than a decade after the book (1885) was written.   It was previously published in the Fortnightly Review and may have been written while Maupassant was still alive.    Regarding which the author, Edward Delille, says: "I cannot help believing that if Bel-Ami and Mont-Oriol, in particular, may be regarded as exact presentments of contemporary society in France, then perhaps M. Guy de Maupassant's madness may have causes and excuses."   For those who don't know, Maupassant had syphilis which progressed to the tertiary stage.   He tried to slit his throat but was prevented from dying and spent his final year in a specialist asylum.   He died there in July 1893, aged 42.

In fairness, Delille does admit that Bel-Ami is superficially attractive and definitely well-written.   I found it to be a masterpiece, full of colour and character and compelling detail.   Is Georges Dural immoral?   Yes.   Is he a monster?   No.   He is amoral.   He doesn't make his women do anything they don't want to do.   He has one mistress throughout, Madame de Marelles.   She is married and therefore not available for Georges to marry.   It is noteworthy that Georges does not have sex with either of his two wives before marriage.   He plots to marry them, obviously, but doesn't everyone?   His first wife, Madeleine, is complicit in his career-building and is soon having an affair of her own with a leading politician.   Georges does seduce his boss's wife, Madame Walter, but she wholeheartedly indulges whilst her husband makes millions in a financial scam.   Georges's second wife, Suzanne, is the Walters' daughter.   Georges elopes with her but they very pointedly do not sleep together.   The novel effectively ends with their marriage.

The fact is, Georges deploys his only talent - attractiveness to women - to his advantage.   Those who he is involved with, male and female, are complicit in his rise.   It could be said that he is the product of a corrupt society.   Maupassant does not pass judgment.   He describes the world as he sees it and he does so brilliantly.   I found Bel-Ami less stark than Zola, more humane than Huysmans.   Maupassant was famously the pupil of Flaubert, whom I haven't yet read, so can't comment.   The final touch of genius, for me, in Bel-Ami is not make Duroy a hero.   You can make excuses for him right up to the point, towards the end, where he loses control and beats up Madame de Marelles.   The final twist is that she is there, nevertheless, at his second wedding.   She takes his hand and gently squeezes.   She is content for their affair to continue...   Wow.

The Belly of Paris - Emile Zola

 

This is the Modern Library translation of Zola's shortish novel of Les Halles, the third in the Rougon-Macquart sequence.  Florent Quenu has finally returned to Paris, having escaped from Devil's Island.  He was unfairly imprisoned for a minor role in an abortive uprising.  He finds sanctuary with his brother who runs a successful charcuterie on the fringes of the newly-built market complex with his wife, the Beautiful Lisa.  Florent is ultimately found a job as inspector of the fish market where he is targeted by the Beautiful Norman, who initially only wants to spite her rival Lisa.

Meanwhile Florent has slipped back into his anti-establishment ways.  He gets subsumed (he rarely takes action) into a gaggle of local hotheads who gather at a local bar.  This draws the attention of the market busybodies and ultimately leads to disaster.

The Belly of Paris hinges on the fat and the thin.  Florent is constitutionally thin whereas Lisa is fat and complacent and conservative.  All of life is contained within the huge market, a world of its own with officials like Florent, merchants like the Norman, and an underclass which subsists on the leftover produce.  As always with Zola the world is mapped and documented.  What makes this novel different is the focus on food.  Several times key revelations are set against the preparation of food.  This is where this translation comes into its own.  Mark Kurlansky is a food writer who came into translation through his researches into international cuisine.  He knows exactly what Zola is talking about and the food sequences really glisten with fat and scent and colour.

A wonderful translation of an interesting book.  Highly recommended.

The Debacle - Emile Zola

The Debacle is intended to be part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, but it is really a historical novel - recent history which Zola himself witnessed and reported as a journalist.  That is both the problem and the book's appeal.

Jean Macquart is a peasant who has joined the army to better himself.  This plunges him, in 1870, into the disastrous Franco-Prussian war, which was short and brutal, which set the scene for the horrors of World War I, and which haunted French sensibilities for almost a century.  The French were beset with hopeless leaders, political and military.  Napoleon III was dying and wasn't even emperor in his own household.  Macmahon, marshal of France, suffered the indignity of being shot in the backside very early in the climactic battle of Sedan and was hors de combat for the rest of the day.  The Prussians had Bismarck and needed no more.  The army in the field surrendered, Napoleon abdicated, but Paris refused to give in.  The Prussians therefore laid siege over the winter.  Early in 1871 the Government of National Defence under Adolphe Thiers made peace and the Prussians withdrew.  Again Paris struck out on its own, forming the Commune, the first socialist, feminist, revolutionary autonomy.  Thiers, now President of the Second Republic, moved to Versailles and set about conquering his own capital.  The Commune only lasted from the middle of March to the end of May before going out - literally - in a blaze of glory.  They burned down official buildings, monuments and the imperial palace.  One of the city arsenals blew up.

It's an incredibly complex story which Zola divides into three: the build-up to battle, the battle, and the siege and commune.  He sets his tangled personal stories against this background but, being real events which the majority of his first readers (in 1892) had experienced, historical fact always has to dominate fictional fancy.  The result is inevitable - fiction loses every time.  Jean is wounded in the battle - he has to spend an unconscionable time recovering (and is then hospitalised for fever in Brussels) but is suddenly fit enough to enlist in time for the Versailles army to invade Paris because Zola needs to bring him face to face with his counterpart Maurice Levasseur, who has taken up the cause of the Commune.

Frankly, the characterisation is so sketchy that I didn't know the surnames were Macquart and Levasseur until I looked them up just now.  Jean is simple and honest, Maurice is educated and unpredictable, his sister is an angel, their uncle a goblin.  And yet, as always with Zola, there are fictional moments of astonishing power: for example, what the saboteurs hiding in the woods do to the spy 'Goliath', and particularly the unspoken interaction between Goliath and the girl he fathered a child with.

I can't pretend I loved The Debacle - Zola is not a lovable writer.  But I was impressed, startled and always intrigued.  I bought the ebook because I was researching the Paris Commune for one of my own projects and was frustrated by the lack of impartial witnesses.  Zola certainly filled that hole and I can confirm that nothing here is contradicted by historical scholars.  On the contrary, there is something the scholars can never tell us - what it was like to be there.

Down There - J K Huysmans

 

The ultimate fin de siecle degenerate novel, so they say.  In fact La Bas is an academic discussion about the state of French literature at the end of the Nineteenth Century.  It was decadent, certainly, but that does not make a book about it decadent.  Durtal, our unheroic hero, is a middleaged novelist who has followed the naturalism of Zola about as far as it will go and found it lacking substance.  What he misses is the human soul.  So he sets out to bring naturalism and psyche together in a historical study of Gilles de Rais, the notorious 'Bluebeard' of medieval France.

Gilles de Rais interests Durtal because he started out as a pious soldier, the most important ally of Joan of Arc.  But after Joan's execution and the end of the war with England he becomes dissolute, debauched and appallingly depraved.  After he has defiled, butchered and discarded countless young children he is finally brought to book.  At his trial he confesses everything but recovers his Christian faith to such an extent that the parents of his victims escort him to his death, praying for his salvation.

Durtal wants to wallow in faith of the medieval kind.  He befriends the bellringer of St Surplice and through him an eccentric astrologer who claims he is being murdered remotely by a priest who has gone rogue and now celebrates the Black Mass.  It is the Black Mass which Durtal ultimately witnesses that gives the book its reputation.  Actually, this is nothing at all alarming, more childish than satanic.  What really did raise my eyebrows was what startled me a couple of years ago when I read Zola.  It's the sex.  Durtal finds himself being seduced by the wife of another dining companion and sleeps with her only because she can get him admitted to the Black Mass.

The end of the novel is something of an anticlimax.  The rest of it is absolutely fascinating.

La Bete Humaine - Emile Zola

Zola's naturalism at its most extreme, humanity reduced to its most bestial. La Bete Humaine is really tough going. Everybody is determined to kill everyone else. Roubaud and Severine murder Grandmorin on the train between Paris and Le Havre. This takes place near the signal box run by Misard and the level crossing operated by his stepdaughter Flore. Misard is slowing poisoning his wife for her inheritance and Flore kills a dozen people because she is infatuated with her foster brother Jacques. Jacques's little problem is that he wants to murder every woman who excites him. He thinks that Severine has helped him over this minor difficulty and joins in her plan to murder her husband Roubaud. This is more than a tangled web. This is crazy. Yet Zola's gifts as a storyteller somehow carry the reader forward. It is one of those books you are going to finish, whether you like it or not. Personally, I'm not sure whether I like it. I certainly admire it. And I'm definitely glad I read it.

Germinal - Emile Zola

Yes, here we are – another classic writer I have not read until late in life. Another I wish I had found earlier, though Zola wasn’t as prolific as many and there may yet be time.

I remember watching a BBC adaptation of Germinal back when I was a teenager, with Michael Bryant, I think, and maybe Rosemary Leach. Having read the book I now understand why nothing similar is offered today. For a book published in 1885 Germinal is tract for today – about the exploitation and progressive impoverishment of the poor by international capitalism. What struck me is that Zola is explicit – he uses those terms – and is equally open about the appeal of pure communism. This translation is by the first sexologist, Havelock Ellis, and he naturally does not seek to sanitise or euphemise Zola’s vocabulary for dealing with sex and nudity, of which there is plenty.

Zola was apparently criticised at the time for his lack of flowery description and for his unsentimental characterisation. For me the semi-journalistic style worked fine and the characterisation was plenty good enough to distinguish who people are among the huge cast. The main character is Etienne, who pitches up jobless and becomes leader of an all-out strike. The main female is the truck-puller Catherine, who Etienne should have taken up with to begin with. The ending, with the two of them trapped for days in the flooding mine, took my breath away. Superb.