Zola, le saut dans les etoiles (review)

Simply put, Zola: le saut dans les étoiles by Colette Becker is a long-needed analysis of Emile Zola, the most popular and widely-read author in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but often misconstrued nowadays as a realist writer who applies himself to scrutinizing his contemporary society. In a lucid and graceful style which conceals her skillfully built argumentation, Becker intends to dispel once and forever longstanding misjudgments of Zola's importance as a major nineteenth-century author. Through carefully aligned chapters which may at first appear random (they figure under somewhat unusual headings such as "Living in the present time," or "Temperament"), she gradually pushes her reader to discover unexpected facets of Emile Zola and to think of this complex author in more nuanced terms. In so doing, she invites us to reevaluate our entire view of the naturalist movement, and, for that matter, all narrowly defined schools of thought.

Becker begins her study by taking Zola at the earliest point in his career (thankfully not, as most studies would, by beginning with the earlier part of his life) in order to show the unusual development of his literary thought and his penchant for theorizing about writing rather than copying reality. While drawing inspiration from the large number of contemporary authors he reads as head of publicity at the famous Hachette publishing company (Taine, Littré, Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac, Victor Hugo are the authors who will have the most effect on him), he concomitantly follows with great interest the ideas of avant-garde painters who refuse to comply with the traditional "good taste" of the French Academy, and becomes their leading voice in the press. We learn for example how Edouard Manet, a painter systematically rejected by the Salons for his untraditional subjects, substantiates Zola's conviction that only an artist who succeeds in imposing his style (or, as Zola calls it, his "temperament") on the public—and not someone who strives to adjust to the standards of the French Academy—can be considered to have talent. We then follow with Becker the itinerary of an exceptionally optimistic and strong-minded aspiring author who wishes to open up the eyes of the public, and who learns to put forth his vigorous literary ideas in the daily press. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Zola's theory, she goes on to explain, is his firm resolution to place his art within his contemporary world, and not to indulge in idealistic yearnings for exotic cultures or distant times (a direct attack on the Parnassian group of poets who sought exotic and classical subjects which they treated with rigidity of form and emotional detachment). In his view, art should not be a "flimsy candle in an artist's shanty," but "a splendid torch which brightens up the path of humanity." And then, to the surprise no doubt of many of us, we learn that in order to best tackle contemporary subjects, Zola, the purported leader of the naturalist movement, adamantly rejects all schools of thought, which are by definition the "very negation of human liberty." Realism, Becker explains, is a term which means nothing at all to Zola, whose sole concern is to render the living aspect of things in his novels (or "life" as he plainly puts it himself).

After unhinging this first cliché about Zola's "realism," Becker questions another common platitude: his passion for science. She explains how Zola's tendency to "dissect" his characters signifies more than a distasteful morbid interest on his part: because of his perpetual desire to improve the human race, he wants his novels to be true "textbooks of moral anatomy" which would serve to explain the forces that drive human behavior. The surest way to achieve this, she adds, is for the writer to refrain from personal comment, just as a scientist would, and to seek to understand how things operate rather than why. Physiology, only recently structured as a science, provides Zola with the perfect link between writing and scientific...