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As for Balzac, he was a most remarkable combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples. The former was entirely his own. The difference between such a book as M. Zola's L'Assommoir and Balzac's Illusions Perdues is the difference between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality.
My-Boots is most likely in there." And as they reached the bottom of the street they indeed caught sight of My-Boots inside Pere Colombe's. In spite of the early hour l'Assommoir was flaring, the shutters down, the gas lighted. Lantier stood at the door, telling Coupeau to make haste, because they had only ten minutes left. "What!
It is simply the indignation of Tartuffe on being exposed. But from the standpoint of art, what can be said in favour of the author of L'Assommoir, Nana and Pot-Bouille? Nothing. Mr. Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot's novels as being like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus, but M. Zola's characters are much worse. They have their dreary vices, and their drearier virtues.
Yet she turned around to smile at him, apparently happy to know that he never drank. Yes, certainly, she would say "yes" to him, except she had already sworn to herself never to start up with another man. Eventually they reached the door and went out. When they left, l'Assommoir was packed to the door, spilling its hubbub of rough voices and its heavy smell of vitriol into the street.
As for Balzac, he was a most remarkable combination of the artistic temperament with the scientific spirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples. The former was entirely his own. The difference between such a book as M. Zola's L'Assommoir and Balzac's Illusions Perdues is the difference between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality.
He almost smashed a pane of glass with his shoulder as he missed the door. He was in a state of complete drunkenness, with his teeth clinched and his nose inflamed. And Gervaise at once recognized the vitriol of l'Assommoir in the poisoned blood which paled his skin.
Besides, it really scarcely seemed to her the proper place for a respectable woman. Twice she went back and stood before the shop window, her eyes again riveted to the glass, annoyed at still beholding those confounded drunkards out of the rain and yelling and drinking. The light of l'Assommoir was reflected in the puddles on the pavement, which simmered with little bubbles caused by the downpour.
The doors swung to and fro, letting a smell of wine and a sound of cornet playing escape into the open air. There was a gathering in front of Pere Colombe's l'Assommoir, which was lighted up like a cathedral for high mass.
And finally those whose taste or lot has kept them "raking in the dirt of mankind" will think their view of truth best expressed by "L'Assommoir" or "Nana." But we would not be understood to mean that a novelist or a painter is realistic, because he represents nature as it appears to him, whether he look at it through a glass couleur de rose, or with the distorted eye of a cynic.
Will she be on her guard against shrinking to the prejudices and flirtations of a coterie, dying to all finer and higher issues? Will she worship virtue more and viceroys less? Will Hogarth keep wine-bibbers from the bottle, or can you make men sober by acts of "L'Assommoir"? Will "Madame Bovary" stay a sister's fall, or "Sapho" repel an eligible young man?
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