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French writer Zola Emil. Works that are not forgotten after many years

Zola Émile (1840–1902), French writer Born April 2, 1840 in Paris, in an Italian-French family: an Italian was his father, a civil engineer. Emil spent his childhood and school years in Aix-en-Provence, where one of his closest friends was the artist P. Cezanne.

He was less than seven years old when his father died, leaving the family in distress. In 1858, counting on the help of her late husband's friends, Madame Zola moved with her son to Paris.

The only happiness in life is the constant striving forward.

Zola Emil

In early 1862, Emil managed to find a job at the Ashet publishing house. After working for about four years, he quit in the hope of securing his existence by literary work.

In 1865 Zola published his first novel - a tough, thinly veiled autobiography Claude's Confession (La Confession de Claude, 1865). The book brought him scandalous fame, which was further increased by the ardent defense of E. Manet's painting in his review art exhibition 1866.

Around 1868, Zola had the idea of a series of novels dedicated to one family (Rougon-Macquart), whose fate is being explored for four or five generations. A variety of novel plots made it possible to show many sides french life during the period of the Second Empire.

The terrible words were once uttered: "Blessed are the poor in spirit" - because of this pernicious delusion, mankind suffered for two thousand years.

Zola Emil

The first books in the series did not arouse much interest, but the seventh volume, The Trap (L'Assommoir, 1877), was a great success and brought Zola both fame and fortune. He bought a house in Meudon near Paris and gathered around him young writers (among them were J.C. Huysmans and Guy de Maupassant), who formed a short-lived "naturalistic school".

Subsequent novels in the series were met with great interest - they were vilified and extolled with equal zeal. The twenty volumes of the Rougon-Macquart cycle represent the main literary achievement Zola, although it should be noted that Teresa Raquin (Thérèse Raquin, 1867), written earlier, is a deep study of the feeling of remorse that comprehends the killer and his accomplice.

IN last years Zola's life created two more cycles: Three cities (Les Trois Villes, 1894-1898) - Lourdes (Lourdes), Rome (Rome), Paris (Paris); and the Four Gospels (Les Quatre Évangiles, 1899–1902), which remained unfinished (the fourth volume was not written).

The writer is both a researcher and an experimenter.

Zola Emil

Zola was the first novelist to create a series of books about members of the same family. Many followed his example, including J. Duhamel (Pasquier chronicles), D. Galsworthy (Forsyte Saga) and D. Masters (books about Savage). One of the reasons that prompted Zola to choose the structure of the cycle was the desire to show the operation of the laws of heredity.

The Rougon Macquarts are the offspring of a feeble-minded woman who dies in latest volume series, reaching a hundred years of age and completely losing his mind. From her children - one legitimate and two illegitimate - three branches of the family originate. The first is represented by the prosperous Rougons, members of this family appear in such novels as His Excellency Eugene Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, 1876) - a study of political machinations in the reign of Napoleon III; Booty (La Curée, 1871) and Money (L'Argent, 1891), where we are talking about speculation in landed property and securities.

The second branch of the genus is the Mouret family. Octave Mouret, an ambitious red tape in Nakipi (Pot-Bouille, 1882), creates one of the first Parisian department stores on the pages of Ladies' happiness (Au Bonheur des dames, 1883), while other members of the family lead a more than modest life, like the village priest Serge Mouret in the enigmatic and poetic novel The Misdemeanor of Abbé Mouret (La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, 1875).

Superstition weakens, deafens.

Zola Emil

Representatives of the third branch, the Macquarts, are extremely unbalanced, since their ancestor Antoine Macquart was an alcoholic.

Members of this family play a prominent role in Zola's most powerful novels - such as The Womb of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris, 1873), which recreates the atmosphere of the capital's central market; A trap that depicts in harsh tones the life of Parisian workers in the 1860s; Nana (Nana, 1880), whose heroine, a representative of the third generation of Makkarov, becomes a prostitute and her sexual magnetism confuses the high society; Germinal (Germinal, 1885), the greatest creation of Zola, dedicated to the miners' strike in the mines of northern France; Creativity (L'Oeuvre, 1886), which includes the characteristics of many famous artists and writers of the era; The Earth (La Terre, 1887), a story about peasant life; Beast Man (La Bête humaine, 1890), which describes the life of railway workers, and, finally, Defeat (La Débâcle, 1892), image Franco-Prussian War and the first major war novel in French literature.

By the time the cycle was completed (1903), Zola enjoyed worldwide fame and, by all accounts, was the largest French writer after V. Hugo. All the more sensational was his intervention in the Dreyfus affair (1897-1898). Zola became convinced that Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of the French General Staff, a Jew by nationality, was unjustly convicted in 1894 for selling military secrets to Germany.

A work of art is a piece of nature filtered through the temperament of the artist.

Zola Emil

The denunciation of the military leadership as chiefly responsible for the apparent miscarriage of justice took the form of an open letter to the President of the Republic with the heading I Accuse (J'accuse, 1898). Sentenced for libel to a year in prison, Zola fled to England and was able to return to his homeland in 1899, when the tide turned in favor of Dreyfus.

Years of life: from 04/02/1840 to 09/28/1902

French writer and public figure. One of the founders and ideologists of naturalism in literature.

Emile Zola, whose works occupy a leading place in French naturalism, was himself half French. Half Greek, half Italian, his father was a civil engineer in Provence, where he led the construction water networks city of Aix. Mother Zola, originally from northern France, was a hardworking, disciplined woman. She could not find a use for herself in a cheerful, cheerful Provence. Emil's father died when the boy was six years old, leaving his wife alone with increasing poverty and a lawsuit against the city of Aix. Much in Zola's work can be explained by the reaction to the views of his strong, domineering mother, to her dissatisfaction with the bourgeoisie, who did not accept this woman, to the hatred she had for the local poor, afraid to slide to the same level. If the thesis is true that the best critics of society are those whose own position in this society is flawed, then Zola really was destined for the role of a social novelist, and his work was a kind of revenge on the city of Aix. The result of the influence of the mother can also be considered that Zola chose sexual themes in order to express his rejection of the society that rejected him. The poor are promiscuous, the middle class is hypocritical, the aristocracy is vicious - these ideas run like a red thread through all Zola's novels.

From the age of seventeen to twenty-seven, Zola led a bohemian life without succeeding in anything. He studied in Paris and Marseille but never graduated. He wrote articles for newspapers, including those on the arts. At one time, Zola rented an apartment with his childhood friend from Aix, the artist Cezanne. He also worked as an employee for the Parisian publisher and bookseller Ashette. At times, his financial situation was so difficult that he had to catch sparrows in the attics and roast them. Zola had a mistress - Alexandrina Meley, a serious, prudent girl, with developed maternal instincts and the ambition of a middle-class person. Even Zola's mother approved of their relationship. This relationship gave the writer much-needed emotional calm for his work. In 1870 Alexandrina and Emil got married.

Zola considered his life's work a series of twenty novels, conceived in imitation of " human comedy"Balzac and tracing the fate of one family during the Second Empire. The ancestor of this family came from the city of Plassans in Provence (obviously, Aix). Legitimate descendants, the Rougon family, are very active, smart people who supported Louis Napoleon during the coup of 1851 and came to power with him. One of them, Eugene, becomes a minister in the government, where his natural unscrupulousness promotes a career. The other, illegal branch of the family, the Mouret are middle-class entrepreneurs. One of the members of this family opens a huge department store in Paris and builds his fortune on the ruin of small competitors. Another illegal branch is Makkara. These are proletarians, from whose midst come thieves, prostitutes, and alcoholics. Among them are Nana and Etienne - the main characters of the two novels considered in this book. Zola's task is to explore every corner of French society, to reveal the vices that reign there. His novels are a series of consistent attacks on the officially proclaimed ideals of that time: the honor of the army, the piety of the clergy, the sanctity of the family, the work of the peasant, the glory of the empire.

The intended novels had just begun to be created when the Second Empire unexpectedly collapsed. The flow of events forced Zola to compress the time frame of the novels, and this was done quite clumsily. These novels create situations that are more suited to the seventies and eighties than to the fifties and sixties. The defeat of France at Sedan gave Zola material for the creation of a large military novel, Defeat. Others important works, standing apart among those already mentioned are "Earth", a dark and violent study of peasant life, and "The Trap", a description of the degradation of the human personality under the influence of alcohol. Although the main characters of these works are related, each of the novels has its own merits and can be read independently of the others.

Zola, who once worked as a journalist, knew very well that books that touch people's feelings bring income. His works, written with this in mind, made their author rich. Over time, he satisfied the ambitions of a man who owes everything only to himself. Zola moved into a "chic" house in a fashionable area and furnished it with luxurious pomp. Zola was never able to achieve his other conceited goal - to get into the French Academy, despite all his efforts, although he remained in history as her "eternal candidate".

Enemies tried to present the writer as a monster of vice, bathing in garbage. His defenders, on the contrary, saw in him a fierce moralist, denouncing the vices of the era. Zola himself preferred to be an independent and objective scientist, investigating the results of the influence of heredity and environment on human personality. In this he resembles the French historian Taine, who argued that vice and goodness are the same natural products as sugar and vitriol. Zola was certainly not a scientist. He had to rely on the psychology of the time, which was based on purely materialistic views. Thus, it was recognized that antisocial behavior is the result of degeneration nervous system inherited. Zola was so fascinated by the prestige of science that he regarded his novels as laboratories where experiments are carried out with heredity placed in certain conditions of existence. The writer also described the reaction of heredity to these conditions. Similar theoretical views are reflected in Zola's "Experimental Novel". Probably few authors could show such a lack of understanding of their own creative process.

Zola's own literary practice is better known under the name "naturalism". She established traditions somewhat different from Flaubert's early realism. Togo was equally interested in the phenomena of things, and the truthful reproduction of reality. But he had no inclination to describe vices and ugliness. Moreover, Flaubert's realism was literary program devoid of any metaphysics. That is why the impact of these two writers was different. Flaubert's followers were sophisticated stylists concerned with the perfection of art for art's sake, while Zola's followers were more heavy-handed social novelists like Frank Norris.

As soon as the Rougon-Macquarts were written, Zola chose a different, more optimistic direction in literature. He began to sincerely believe that society is capable of correcting itself. Hints of this appear already in the novel "Germinal". This is more evident in the work "Labor", which depicts a utopian, socialist society. One reason for this turn of events can be found in the change in Zola's personal life. For many years, his marriage to Alexandrina was overshadowed by infertility. In 1888, he falls in love with a young washerwoman, Jeanne Rozera, buys her a house and, much to his joy, becomes the father of two children. When rumors of this reached Madame Zola, she smashed some of her husband's luxurious furniture in a rage. But Zola's new relationship brought relief from self-doubt as a man. Over time, he achieves satisfaction, but his work gradually loses its power and becomes almost sentimental.

His famous defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army convicted on trumped-up charges of espionage that shook the Third Republic to its foundations, however, was anything but sentimental. In this case, the writer's opponents were old enemies - the army, the church, the government, the upper strata of society, anti-Semites, wealthy people, who today would be called the "establishment". The salvo that Zola sent to this end was a letter addressed to President Fauré and published in the Aurora - "I accuse." Zola deliberately went on the charge of defamation and succeeded in this. The courtroom became the arena he wanted to acquire. The court delivered a guilty verdict, against which an appeal was filed. The second trial began, but shortly before the verdict, Zola, reluctantly and on the advice of lawyers, left for England. Here he courageously endured all the inconveniences of the English climate and cuisine, until the honor and dignity of Dreyfus were restored.

Emile Zola biography briefly outlined in this article.

Emile Zola biography short

Émile Zola is a French writer, publicist and politician.

Émile Zola was born April 2, 1840 in Paris in an Italian-French family. Emil spent his childhood and school period in Aix-en-Provence. When he was not yet 7 years old, his father died and the family was in a difficult financial situation, and he and his mother returned to Paris.

In early 1862, Emil got a job at the Ashet publishing house. He reads a lot, writes, makes acquaintance with popular writers, tries himself in prose and poetry.

Zola worked at the publishing house for about 4 years and quit to write more. And in 1864 he published his debut book, Tales of Ninon, which brought together stories from different years. He writes the novels Claude's Confession, Testament of the Dead, Secrets of Marseilles, where he shows stories of sublime love, the opposition of reality and dreams, the character of the ideal hero is conveyed.

The novel "Confessions of Claude" brought the long-awaited popularity to the writer.

Around 1868, Emile had the idea of writing a series of novels that would be dedicated to one family - the Rougon-Macquarts. The fate of these people has been investigated for several generations. The first books in the series were not very interesting to readers, but the 7th volume of The Trap was doomed to great success. He not only increased the glory of Zola, but also his fortune. And all subsequent novels in the series are fans of this French writer welcomed with great enthusiasm.

The twenty volumes of the great Rougon-Macquart cycle are Zola's most important literary achievement. But earlier he still managed to write "Therese Raquin". After his overwhelming success, Emil published 2 more cycles: "Three Cities" - "Lourdes", "Rome", "Paris"; as well as "Four Gospels" (there were 3 volumes in total). Thus, Zola became the first novelist to create a series of books about members of the same family. The writer himself, naming the reasons for choosing such a structure of the cycle, argued that he wanted to demonstrate the operation of the laws of heredity.

During this period, aesthetic and Political Views Zola is finally installed. The Republican and Democrat collaborates with the opposition press, writes and distributes articles exposing the French military and the reactionary regime of Napoleon.

When Zola intervened in the scandalous Dreyfus affair, it became a sensation. Émile was convinced that Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of the French General Staff, who was Jewish by nationality, was unfairly convicted in 1894 for selling military secrets to Germany. So the writer exposed the army leadership, pointing out their responsibility for the miscarriage of justice. Zola formalized his position in the form of an open letter and sent it to the president of the republic with the heading "I accuse". For libel, the writer was sentenced to a year in prison. But Emil fled to England and returned to his homeland in 1899, when Dreyfus was acquitted.

September 28, 1902 the writer, due to an accident, died suddenly in his own Parisian apartment. He got poisoned by carbon monoxide. But, most likely, this was set up by his political enemies. Emile Zola was a passionate defender of humanism and democracy, for which he paid with his life.

Death

Zola died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning, according to official version- due to a malfunction of the chimney in the fireplace. His last words addressed to his wife were: “I feel bad, my head is splitting. Look, the dog is sick too. We must have eaten something. Nothing, everything will pass. There is no need to disturb anyone ... ". It was suspected by contemporaries that it might have been murder, but no hard evidence for this theory could be found.

In 1953, the journalist Jean Borel published in the newspaper "Liberation" an investigation "Is Zola killed?" stating that Zola's death is possibly a murder and not an accident. He based his claim on the revelations of the Norman pharmacist Pierre Aquin, who said that the chimney sweep Henri Bouronfossé confessed to him that he had deliberately blocked the chimney of Emile Zola's apartment in Paris.

Personal life

Émile Zola was married twice; from his second wife (Jeanne Rosero) he had two children.

Memory

The Paris metro has a station Avenue Emile Zola on line 10 next to the street of the same name.

Depicted in French postage stamp 1967.

Creation

First literary performances Zola refers to the 1860s - "The Tales of Ninon" ( Contes a Ninon, 1864), "Confessions of Claude" ( La Confession de Claude, 1865), "The testament of the deceased" ( Le vœu d "une morte, 1866), "Marseille secrets" ( Les Mysteres de Marseille, 1867).

Emile Zola with his children. 1890s

The young Zola swiftly approaches his main works, the central node of his creative activity- 20-volume series "Rougon-Macquart" ( Les Rougon Macquart). Already the novel "Thérèse Raquin" ( Therese Raquin, 1867) contained the main elements of the content of the grandiose "Natural and social history of one family in the era of the Second Empire".

Zola goes to great lengths to show how the laws of heredity affect individual members of the Rougon-Macquart family. The whole epic is connected by a carefully developed plan based on the principle of heredity - in all the novels of the series, members of the same family appear, so widely branched that its processes penetrate both the highest layers of France and its bottom. The unfinished series "The Four Gospels" ("Fecundity" ( Fecondite, 1899), "Labor", "Truth" ( Verite, 1903), "Justice" ( Justice, incomplete)) expresses this new stage in the work of Zola.

In the interval between the Rougon-Macquart series and the Four Gospels, Zola wrote the Three Cities trilogy: Lourdes ( Lourdes, 1894), "Rome" ( Rome, 1896), "Paris" ( Paris, 1898).

Emile Zola in Russia

Emile Zola gained popularity in Russia several years earlier than in France. Already "Tales of Ninon" were marked by a sympathetic review ("Notes of the Fatherland".. T. 158. - S. 226-227). With the advent of translations of the first two volumes of "Rougon-Maccarov" ("Bulletin of Europe",. Books 7 and 8), its assimilation began by wide reading circles. Translations of Zola's works came out with cuts for censorship reasons, the circulation of the novel "Production", published in the ed. Karbasnikova (1874) was destroyed.

The novel "The Womb of Paris", translated simultaneously by "Delo", "Bulletin of Europe", "Notes of the Fatherland", "Russian Messenger", "Iskra" and "Bibl. desh and public." and published in two separate editions, finally established Zola's reputation in Russia.

Zola's latest novels were published in Russian translations in 10 or more editions at the same time. In the 1900s, especially after, interest in Zola noticeably subsided, only to revive again after. Even earlier, Zola’s novels received the function of propaganda material (“Labor and Capital”, a story based on Zola’s novel “In the Mines” (“Germinal”), Simbirsk,) (V. M. Fritsche, Emil Zola (To whom the proletariat erects monuments), M. , ).

Artworks

Editions in Russian

Collected works in 14 volumes. - St. Petersburg, 1896-1899.
Collected works in 18 volumes. - M .: Pravda, 1957. (Library "Spark").
Collected works in 26 volumes. - M .: State publishing house of fiction, 1960-1967. - 300,000 copies.
Collected works in 20 volumes (16 books). - M .: Voice, 1992-1998.
Collected works in 12 volumes. - M.-Tver: Fiction, Alba, 1995-2000.
Collected works in 20 volumes. – M.: Terra, 1996–1998.
Collected works in 16 volumes. – M.: book club"Knigovek", 2011.
Teresa Raken. Germinal. - M .: Fiction, 1975. (Library of World Literature).
Rougon career. Mining. - M .: Fiction, 1980. (Library of the classics).
Trap. Germinal. - M .: Fiction, 1988. (Library of the classics).

Selected literature on Zola

List of compositions

Complete works of E. Zola with illustrations. - P. : Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1906.
L'Acrienne. - 1860.
Temlinsky S. Zolaism, Critical study, ed. 2nd, rev. and additional - M., 1881.
Boborykin P. D.(in Otechestvennye Zapiski, 1876, Vestnik Evropy, 1882, I, and The Observer, 1882, XI, XII)
Arseniev K.(in Vestnik Evropy, 1882, VIII; 1883, VI; 1884, XI; 1886, VI; 1891], IV, and in " critical studies”, Vol. II, St. Petersburg. , )
Andreevich V.// Vestnik Evropy. - 1892, VII.
Slonimsky L. Zola. // Vestnik Evropy. - 1892, IX.
Mikhailovsky N.K.(in Complete collected works, vol. VI)
Brandes G.// Vestnik Evropy. - 1887. - X, to in Sobr. sochin.
Barro E. Zola, his life and literary activity. - St. Petersburg. , 1895.
Pelissier J. french literature XIX century. - M., 1894.
Shepelevich L. Yu. Our contemporaries. - St. Petersburg. , 1899.
Kudrin N. E. (Rusanov). E. Zola, Literary and biographical essay. - "Russian Wealth", 1902, X (and in the "Gallery of Contemporary French Celebrities", 1906).
Anichkov Evg. E. Zola, "The World of God", 1903, V (and in the book "Forerunners and Contemporaries").
Vengerov E. Zola, Critical and biographical essay, "Bulletin of Europe", 1903, IX (and in " literary characteristics", book. II, St. Petersburg. , 1905).
Lozinsky Evg. Pedagogical ideas in the works of E. Zola. // "Russian Thought", 1903, XII.
Veselovsky Yu. E. Zola as a poet and humanist. // "Bulletin of education", 1911. - I, II.
Friche V. M. E. Zola. - M., 1919.
Friche V. M. Essay on the development of Western European literature. - M. : Giz, 1922.
Eichengolts M. E. Zola (-). // "Print and Revolution", 1928, I.
Trunin K. Emile Zola. Criticism and analysis of the literary heritage. - 2018.
Rod E. A propos de l'Assomoir. - 1879.
Ferdas W. La physiologie expérimentale et le roman expérimental. - P. : Claude Bernard et E. Zola, 1881.
Alexis P. Emile Zola, notes d'un ami. - P., 1882.
Maupassant G. de Emile Zola, 1883.
Hubert. Le roman naturaliste. - 1885.
wolf e. Zola und die Grenzen von Poesie und Wissenschaft. - Kiel, 1891.
Sherard R.H. Zola: biographical and critical study. - 1893.
Engwer Th. Zola als Kunstkritiker. - B., 1894.
Lotsch F. Uber Zolas Sprachgebrauch. - Greifswald, 1895.
Gaufiner. Étude syntaxique sur la langue de Zola. - Bonne, 1895.
Lotsch F. Wörterbuch zu den Werken Zolas und einiger anderen modernen Schriftsteller. - Greifswald, 1896.
Laport A. Zola vs Zola. - P., 1896.
Moneste J. L. Real Rome: Zola's replica. - 1896.
Rauber A.A. Die Lehren von V. Hugo, L. Tolstoy und Zola. - 1896.
Laport A. Naturalism or the eternity of literature. E. Zola, The Man and the Work. - P., 1898.
Bourgeois, Zola's work. - P., 1898.
Brunet F. After the process, 1898.
Burger E. E. Zola, A. Daudet und andere Naturalisten Frankreichs. - Dresden, 1899.
Macdonald A. Emil Zola, a study of his personality. - 1899.
Vizetelly E.A. With Zola in England. - 1899.
Ramond F.C. Characters of Rougeon-Macquart. - 1901.
Conrad M.G. Von Emil Zola bis G. Hauptmann. Erinnerungen zur Geschichte der Moderne. - Lpz. , 1902.
bouvier. L'œuvre de Zola. - P., 1904.
Vizetelly E.A. Zola, novellist and reformer. - 1904.
Lepelletier E. Emile Zola, sa vie, son œuvre. - P., 1909.
Patterson J.G. Zola: characters of the Rougon-Macquarts novels, with biography. - 1912.
Martino R. Le roman realiste sous le second Empire. - P., 1913.
Lemm S. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Emil Zolas "Rugon-Macquarts" und den "Quatre Evangiles". - Halle a. S., 1913.
Mann H. Macht and Mensch. - Munich, 1919.
Oehlert R. Emil Zola als Theaterdichter. - B., 1920.
Rostand E. Deux romanciers de Provence: H. d'Urfe et E. Zola. - 1921.
Martino P. Le naturalisme francais. - 1923.
Seillere E.A.A.L. Emile Zola, 1923: Bailot A., Emile Zola, l'homme, le penseur, le critique, 1924
France A. La vie literaire. - 1925. - V. I. - pp. 225–239.
France A. La vie literaire. - 1926. - V. II (La pureté d'E. Zola, pp. 284–292).
Deffoux L. et Zavie E. Le Groupe de Medan. - P., 1927.
Josephson Matthew. Zola and his time. - N.Y., 1928.
Doucet F. L'esthétique de Zola et son application à la critique, La Haye, s. a.
Bainville J. Au seuil du siècle, études critiques, E. Zola. - P., 1929.
Les soirées de Médan, 17/IV 1880 - 17/IV 1930, avec une préface inédite de Léon Hennique. - P., 1930.
Piksanov N.K., Two centuries of Russian literature. - ed. 2nd. - M. : Giz, 1924.
R. S. Mandelstam Fiction in the evaluation of Russian Marxist criticism. - ed. 4th. - M.: Giz, 1928.
Laporte A. Emile Zola, l'homme et l'œuvre, avec bibliographie. - 1894. - pp. 247–294.

Screen adaptations

Notes

Links

Emile Zola:

Zola, Emil in the library of Maxim Moshkov
Lukov Vl. A. Zola Emil (indefinite) . Electronic encyclopedia"Contemporary French Literature" (2011). Date of access 24 November 2011. Archived from the original on 4 February 2012.

The article uses the text of I. Anisimov and M. Clément, which was transferred to

In Wikisource.

Tombstone of Zola in the Pantheon

How highest point Zola's political biography should be noted for his participation in the Dreyfus affair, which exposed the contradictions of France in the 1890s - the famous "J'accuse" ("I accuse"), which cost the writer exile in England ().

Zola died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the official version - due to a malfunction of the chimney in the fireplace. His last words to his wife were: “I feel bad, my head is splitting. Look, the dog is sick too. We must have eaten something. Nothing, everything will pass. There is no need to disturb anyone ... ". Contemporaries suspected that it could be a murder, but they could not find irrefutable evidence for this theory.

A crater on Mercury is named after Émile Zola.

Creation

Zola's first literary appearances date back to the 1860s. - “Tales to Ninon” (Contes à Ninon,), “Confessions of Claude” (La confession de Claude,), “The Testament of the Dead” (Le vœu d’une morte,), “Marseille Secrets”. The young Zola is rapidly approaching his main works, the central node of his creative activity - the twenty-volume series "Rougon-Macquarts" (Les Rougon-Macquarts). Already the novel "Thérèse Raquin" (Thérèse Raquin,) contained the main elements of the content of the grandiose "Natural and social history of a family in the era of the Second Empire".

Zola goes to great lengths to show how the laws of heredity affect individual members of the Rougon-Macquart family. The whole huge epic is connected by a carefully developed plan based on the principle of heredity - in all the novels of the series, members of the same family appear, so widely branched that its processes penetrate both the highest layers of France and its deepest bottoms.

The latest novel in the series includes the Rougon-Macquart family tree, which is meant to serve as a guide to the highly intricate maze of kinship relationships that underlies the grand epic system. The real and truly deep content of the work is, of course, not this side, connected with the problems of physiology and heredity, but those social images that are given in Rougon-Macquarts. With the same concentration with which the author systematized the "natural" (physiological) content of the series, we must systematize and understand its social content, the interest of which is exceptional.

Zola's style is contradictory in its essence. First of all - this is a petty-bourgeois style in an extremely bright, consistent and complete expression - "Rougon-Macquart" is not accidental " family romance”, - Zola gives here a very complete, direct, very organic, in all its elements vital disclosure of the being of the petty bourgeoisie. The artist's vision is distinguished by exceptional integrity, capacity, but it is precisely the petty-bourgeois content that he interprets with the deepest penetration.

Here we enter the area of the intimate - from the portrait, which occupies a prominent place, to the characteristics of the objective environment (remember the magnificent interiors of Zola), to those psychological complexes that arise before us - everything is given in exceptionally soft lines, everything is sentimentalized. This is a kind of pink period". The novel The Joy of Living (La joie de vivre, ) can be seen as the most holistic expression of this moment in Zola's style.

It is planned in the novels of Zola and the desire to turn to the idyll - from real life images to a kind of philistine fiction. In the novel "Page of Love" (Une page d'amour,) an idyllic image of a petty-bourgeois environment is given while maintaining real everyday proportions. In The Dream (Le Rêve,) the real motivation has already been eliminated, the idyll is given in a naked fantastic form.

We also meet something similar in the novel “The Crime of Abbé Mouret” (La faute de l’abbé Mouret,) with its fantastic Parade and fantastic Albina. “Petty-bourgeois happiness” is given in the style of Zola as something falling, being repressed, fading into non-existence. All this stands under the sign of damage, crisis, has a "fatal" character. In the titled novel The Joy of Living, along with a holistic, complete, deep disclosure of petty-bourgeois being, which is poetized, the problem of tragic doom, the impending death of this being, is given. The novel is structured in a peculiar way: the melting of money determines the development of the drama of the virtuous Shanto, the economic catastrophe that destroys “petty-bourgeois happiness” seems to be the main content of the drama.

This is expressed even more fully in the novel The Conquest of Plassans (La conquête de Plassans, ), where the collapse of petty-bourgeois well-being, an economic disaster is interpreted as a tragedy of a monumental nature. We meet with a whole series of such "falls" - constantly recognized as events of cosmic importance (a family entangled in insoluble contradictions in the novel "The Beast Man" (La bête humaine,), old Bodiu, Burra in the novel "Lady's happiness" (Au bonheur des dames, )). When his economic well-being collapses, the tradesman is convinced that the whole world is collapsing - economic catastrophes in Zola's novels are marked by such specific hyperbolization.

The petty bourgeois, experiencing his decline, receives from Zola a complete and complete expression. It is shown from different sides, revealing its essence in an era of crisis, it is given as a unity of versatile manifestations. First of all, he is a petty bourgeois who is going through the drama of economic disintegration. Such is Mouret in The Conquest of Plassant, this new petty-bourgeois Job, such are the virtuous rentiers of Chanteau in the novel The Joy of Living, such are the heroic shopkeepers, swept away by capitalist development, in the novel The Happiness of the Ladies.

Saints, martyrs and sufferers, like the touching Pauline in The Joy of Living, or the unfortunate René in La curée (1872), or the gentle Angelica in The Dream, which Albina so closely resembles in The Crime of the Abbé Mouret, - here is a new form of the social essence of the "heroes" of Zola. These people are characterized by passivity, lack of will, Christian humility, humility. All of them are distinguished by idyllic good-heartedness, but they are all crushed by cruel reality. The tragic doom of these people, their death, despite all the attractiveness, the beauty of these "wonderful creatures", the fatal inevitability of their gloomy fate - all this is an expression of the same conflict that determined the drama of Mouret, whose economy was collapsing, in the pathetic novel "The Conquest of Plassant ". The essence here is one, - only the form of the phenomenon is different.

As the most consistent form of the psychology of the petty bourgeoisie, numerous truth-seekers are given in Zola's novels. All of them are striving somewhere, embraced by some hopes. But it immediately turns out that their hopes are vain, and their aspirations are blind. The harried Florent from the novel The Belly of Paris (Le ventre de Paris, ), or the unfortunate Claude from Creativity (L'œuvre, ), or the vegetating romantic revolutionary from the novel Money (L'argent, ), or the restless Lazarus from The Joy of Living - all these seekers are equally groundless and wingless. None of them can achieve, none of them rises to victory.

These are the main aspirations of the hero Zola. As you can see, they are versatile. The more complete and concrete is the unity in which they converge. The psychology of the declining petty bourgeois receives an unusually deep, holistic interpretation from Zola.

Arise in the works of Zola and new human figures. These are no longer petty-bourgeois Jobs, not sufferers, not vain seekers, but predators. They succeed. They achieve everything. Aristide Saccard - a brilliant rogue in the novel "Money", Octave Mouret - a high-flying capitalist entrepreneur, owner of the "Ladies' happiness" store, bureaucratic predator Eugene Rougon in the novel "His Excellency Eugene Rougon" () - these are the new images.

Zola gives a fairly complete, versatile, detailed concept of it - from a predator-acquirer like Abbé Fauges in "The Conquest of Plassant" to a real knight of capitalist expansion, like Octave Mouret. It is constantly emphasized that despite the difference in scale, all these people are predators, invaders, pushing out the respectable people of that patriarchal petty-bourgeois world, which, as we have seen, was poetized.

The image of a predator, a capitalist businessman, is given in the same aspect with the material image (market, stock exchange, shop), which occupies such a significant place in the system of Zola's style. The assessment of predation is also transferred to the material world. Thus, the Parisian market and the general store become something monstrous. In the style of Zola, the objective image and the image of the capitalist predator must be considered as a single expression, as two sides of the world, which the artist is learning, adapting to the new socio-economic order.

In the novel "Lady's Happiness" a clash of two essences is given - petty-bourgeois and capitalist. On the bones of the ruined small shopkeepers, a huge capitalist enterprise arises - the whole course of the conflict is presented in such a way that "justice" remains on the side of the oppressed. They are defeated in the struggle, destroyed in fact, but morally they triumph. This resolution of the contradiction in the novel "Lady's Happiness" is very characteristic of Zola. Here the artist bifurcates between the past and the present: on the one hand, he is deeply connected with the collapsing being, on the other, he already thinks of himself in unity with the new way of life, he is already free enough to imagine the world in its actual connections, in the fullness of its content.

Zola's work is scientific, he is distinguished by the desire to raise literary "production" to the level of scientific knowledge of his time. His creative method was substantiated in a special work - "Experimental Novel" (Le roman expérimental,). Here you can see how consistently the artist pursues the principle of unity of scientific and artistic thinking. "The 'experimental novel' is the logical consequence of the scientific evolution of our age," says Zola, summing up his theory of the creative method, which is the transference to literature of techniques scientific research(in particular, Zola relies on the work of the famous physiologist Claude Bernard). The whole series of "Rougon-Macquart" was carried out in terms of scientific research carried out in accordance with the principles of the "Experimental Novel". The scientific nature of Zola is evidence of the artist's close connection with the main trends of his era.

The grandiose series of "Rougon-Macquart" is oversaturated with elements of planning, the scheme of the scientific organization of this work seemed to Zola an essential necessity. The plan of scientific organization, the scientific method of thinking - these are the main provisions that can be considered the starting points for Zola's style.

Moreover, he was a fetishist for the scientific organization of the work. His art constantly violates the boundaries of his theory, but the very nature of Zola's planned and organizational fetishism is quite specific. This is where the characteristic mode of presentation that distinguishes the ideologists of the technical intelligentsia comes into play. The organizational shell of reality is constantly taken by them for the whole of reality, the form replaces the content. Zola expressed in his hypertrophies of plan and organization the typical consciousness of the ideologist of the technical intelligentsia. Approximation to the era was carried out through a kind of "technization" of the bourgeois, who realized his inability to organize and plan (for this inability he is always castigated by Zola - "Happiness of the Ladies"); Zola's knowledge of the era of the capitalist upsurge is realized through planned, organizational and technical fetishism. The theory of the creative method developed by Zola, the specificity of his style, which is exposed in the moments turned to the capitalist era, goes back to this fetishism.

The novel Doctor Pascal (Docteur Pascal,), which completes the Rougon-Macquart series, can serve as an example of such fetishism - the issues of organization, systematics, and construction of the novel stand out in the first place here. This novel reveals a new human image. Dr. Pascal is something new in relation to both the falling philistines and the victorious capitalist predators. The engineer Gamelin in "Money", the capitalist reformer in the novel "Trud" (Travail,) - all these are varieties of a new image. It is not developed enough in Zola, it is only outlined, only becoming, but its essence is already quite clear.

The figure of Dr. Pascal is the first schematic sketch of the reformist illusion, which expresses the fact that the petty bourgeoisie, the form of practice of which Zola's style represents, "technicalizing", reconciles itself with the era.

The typical features of the consciousness of the technical intelligentsia, above all the fetishism of the plan, system and organization, are transferred to a number of images of the capitalist world. Such, for example, is Octave Mouret from The Happiness of the Ladies, not only a great predator, but also a great innovator. Reality, which until recently was assessed as a hostile world, is now perceived in terms of some kind of "organizational" illusion. The chaotic world, the brutal cruelty of which was only recently proved, is now beginning to be presented in pink clothes of the “plan”, not only the novel, but also social reality is planned on scientific foundations.

Zola, who always gravitated towards turning his creativity into a tool for "reforming", "improving" reality (this was reflected in the didacticism and rhetoric of his poetic technique), now comes to "organizational" utopias.

The unfinished series of "Gospels" ("Fecundity" - "Fécondité", "Labour", "Justice" - "Vérité",) expresses this new stage in Zola's work. Moments of organizational fetishism, always characteristic of Zola, here receive a particularly consistent development. Reformism is becoming an ever more exciting, dominating element here. Fertility creates a utopia about the planned reproduction of mankind, this gospel turns into a pathetic demonstration against the fall in the birth rate in France.

In the interval between the series - "Rougon-Macquarts" and "Gospels" - Zola wrote his anti-clerical trilogy "Cities": "Lourdes" (Lourdes,), "Rome" (Rome,), "Paris" (Paris,). The drama of Abbé Pierre Froment, seeking justice, is given as a moment of criticism of the capitalist world, opening up the possibility of reconciliation with it. The sons of the restless abbot, who has taken off his cassock, act as evangelists of reformist renewal.

Emile Zola in Russia

Zola gained popularity in Russia several years earlier than in France. Already "Contes à Ninon" was marked by a sympathetic review ("Notes of the Fatherland", vol. 158, pp. 226-227). With the advent of translations of the first two volumes of "Rougon-Maccarov" ("Bulletin of Europe", books 7 and 8), its assimilation by a wide readership began.

The novel Le ventre de Paris, simultaneously translated by Del, Vestnik Evropy, Otechestvennye Zapiski, Russkiy Vestnik, Iskra, and Bibl. desh and public." and published in two separate editions, finally established Zola's reputation in Russia.

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