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As to Zola, there is little need now for critical judgments on his work. He is definitely "placed"; we know him for what he is a romancer of a violent idealistic type masquerading as an implacable realist; a lyric pessimist at the beginning of his literary career, a sonorous optimist at the close, with vague socialistic views as to the perfectibility of the human race.
And the argument consists chiefly of "this happened to me," "I saw this and did not like it," "I was driven to this or that," until the mass of circumstantial incident and sensation reminds one of the works of Zola and the scientific naturalists who half a century ago tried to put society as an organism into fiction and art.
"Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon, Zola amid the jeers of the Philistines and the hisses of the pompiers, the academicians, and the public, Zola said: 'I look forward to the day when Manet's picture will hang in the Louvre opposite the Odalisque of Ingres, and it will not be the Odalisque which will gain by comparison. It'll be there. Every day I see the time grow nearer.
WITH the present work M. Zola completes the "Trilogy of the Three Cities," which he began with "Lourdes" and continued with "Rome"; and thus the adventures and experiences of Abbe Pierre Froment, the doubting Catholic priest who failed to find faith at the miraculous grotto by the Cave, and hope amidst the crumbling theocracy of the Vatican, are here brought to what, from M. Zola's point of view, is their logical conclusion.
How far M. Zola actually carried his study of English I could hardly say, but during the last months of his exile he more than once astonished me by his knowledge of an irregular verb or of the correct comparative and superlative of an adjective. And if he seldom attempted to speak English, he at least made considerable progress in reading it.
It may be that this narrative, should it meet the learned gentleman's eye, will for the first time acquaint him with what was intended by M. Zola, acting under Maitre Labori's advice.
Not the thing itself, but the idea of the thing evokes the idea. Schopenhauer was right; we do not want the thing, but the idea of the thing. The thing itself is worthless; and the moral writers who embellish it with pious ornamentation are just as reprehensible as Zola, who embellishes it with erotic arabesques. You want the idea drawn out of obscuring matter, this can best be done by the symbol.
Botts moved an immense congregation to tears with his sermon, 'Does Radium Cure Cancer? Trinity Sunday he spoke on 'Zola and His Place in Literature. The second Sunday in Advent he discussed 'The Position of Woman in the Fiji Islands. We can only pick a subject here and there out of his other numerous pastoral speeches: 'Is Aviation an Established Fact? 'The Influence of Blake Upon Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 'Dalmatia as a Health Resort, and 'Amatory Poetry Among the Primitive Races.
'Roman d'un Spahi deals with Algiers. Taton-gaye is a true 'bete-humaine', sunk in moral slumber or quivering with ferocious joys. It is in this book that Loti has eclipsed Zola. In 1884 was published 'Les trois Dames de la Kasbah, relating also to Algiers, and then came 'Madame Chrysantheme' , crowned by the Academy.
She read the sprightly "Duchess" novels, where mad offers of marriage were always made in flower-scented conservatories; she read Dickens, and Thelma, and old bound Cosmopolitans, and Zola, and de Maupassant, and the "Wide, Wide World," and "Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates," and "Jane Eyre." All of which are merely mentioned as examples of her catholicism in literature.
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