Everything about Mile Zola totally explained
Émile Zola (
2 April,
1840 –
29 September,
1902) was an influential
French writer, the most important example of the literary school of
naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted Army officer
Alfred Dreyfus.
Biography
Émile François Zola was born in
Paris in 1840. His father, François Zola, was the son of an
Italian engineer with a French wife, and his mother was Émilie Aubert. The family moved to
Aix-en-Provence, in the southeast, when he was three years old. Four years later, in 1847, his father died, leaving his mother on a meagre pension. In 1858, the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile became friends with the painter
Paul Cézanne and started to write in the
romantic style. Zola's widowed mother had planned a law career for him, but he failed his
Baccalauréat examination.
Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm, and then in the sales department for a publisher (
Hachette). He also wrote literary and art reviews for newspapers. As a political journalist, Zola didn't hide his dislike of
Napoleon III, who had successfully run for the office of President under the constitution of the
French Second Republic, only to misuse this position as a springboard for the
coup d'état that
made him emperor.
Career
During his early years, Émile Zola wrote several short stories and essays, four plays and three novels. Among his early books was
Contes à Ninon, published in 1864. With the publication of his sordid autobiographical novel
La Confession de Claude (1865) attracting police attention, Hachette fired him.
After his first major novel,
Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola started the long series called Les Rougon Macquart, about a family under the
Second Empire.
Literary output
More than half of Zola's novels were part of this set of 20 collectively known as
Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike
Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthetized his work into
La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the outset at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence,
alcohol, and
prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the industrial revolution. The series examines two branches of a single family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts, for five generations.
As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that can't restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."
Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood and in youth, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the
Bohemian life of painters in his novel
L'Œuvre (
The Masterpiece, 1886).
From 1877 onwards with the publication of
l'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy–he was better paid than
Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with
Guy de Maupassant,
Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880.
Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities',
Lourdes in 1894,
Rome in 1896 and
Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author.
Self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of
Gustave Charpentier, notably
Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of
heredity (
Claude Bernard), social
manichaeism and idealistic
socialism, resonate with those of
Nadar,
Manet and subsequently
Flaubert.
Activism on behalf of Captain Dreyfus
Émile Zola risked his career and even his life on
13 January 1898, when his "
J'accuse"
(External Link
),
(External Link) was published on the front page of the Paris daily,
L'Aurore. The newspaper was run by Ernest Vaughan and
Georges Clemenceau, who decided that the controversial story would be in the form of an
open letter to the President,
Félix Faure. Émile Zola's "
J'accuse" accused the highest levels of the French Army of obstruction of justice and
antisemitism by having wrongfully convicted a
Jewish artillery captain,
Alfred Dreyfus, to life imprisonment on
Devil's Island in
French Guiana. Zola declared that Dreyfus' conviction and removal to an island prison came after a false accusation of espionage and was a miscarriage of justice. The case, known as the
Dreyfus affair, divided France deeply between the reactionary army and church, and the more liberal commercial society. The ramifications continued for many years; on the 100th anniversary of Zola's article, France's
Roman Catholic daily paper,
La Croix, apologized for its
antisemitic editorials during the Dreyfus Affair. As Zola was a leading French thinker, his letter formed a major turning-point in the affair.
Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel on
9 June 1899, and was convicted on
23 February, sentenced, and removed from the
Legion of Honor. Rather than go to jail, Zola fled to
England. Without even having had the time to pack a few clothes, he arrived at Victoria Station on July 19. After his brief and unhappy residence in London, from October 1898 to June 1899, he was allowed to return in time to see the government fall.
The government offered Dreyfus a pardon (rather than exoneration), which he could accept and go free and so effectively admit that he was guilty, or face a re-trial in which he was sure to be convicted again. Although he was clearly not guilty, he chose to accept the pardon. Zola said, "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it." In 1906, Dreyfus was completely exonerated by the Supreme Court.
The 1898 article by Émile Zola is widely marked in France as the most prominent manifestation of the new power of the
intellectuals (writers, artists, academicians) in shaping
public opinion, the media and the State. The power of intellectuals lasted well into the 1980s, with a peak in the 1960s with
Jean-Paul Sartre and
Albert Camus.
Death
Zola died in Paris on
29 September 1902 of
carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a stopped chimney. He was 62 years old. His enemies were blamed, but nothing was proven. (Decades later, a Parisian roofer claimed on his deathbed to have closed the chimney for political reasons). Zola was initially buried in the
Cimetière de Montmartre in
Paris, but on
4 June 1908, almost six years after his death, his remains were moved to the
Panthéon.
The biographical film
The Life of Émile Zola won the
Academy Award for Best Picture in 1937. The film focuses mainly on Zola's involvement in the Dreyfus Affair.
In January 1998, President
Jacques Chirac held a memorial to honor the centenary of
J'accuse.
Quotations
"And let us never forget the courage of a great writer who, taking every risk, putting his tranquility, his fame, even his life in peril, dared to pick up his pen and place his talent in the service of truth." —
Jacques Chirac
"The artist is nothing without gift, but the gift is nothing without work." - Émile Zola
“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I'll answer you: I'm here to live out loud.” - Émile Zola
"Zola descends into the sewer to bathe in it, I to cleanse it." —
Henrik Ibsen
"Civilization won't attain perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest." — Émile Zola
"...but I affirm, with intense conviction, the Truth is on the march and nothing will stop it." — Émile Zola
"The action I'm taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I've but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight!" — Émile Zola, J'accuse! (1898)
Bibliography
- Contes á Ninon, (1864)
- La Confession de Claude (1865)
- Thérèse Raquin (1867)
- Madeleine Férat (1868)
- Le Roman Experimental (1880)
Les Rougon-Macquart
Les Trois Villes
- Lourdes (1894)
- Rome (1896)
- Paris (1898)
Les Quatre Evangiles
- Fécondité (1899)
- Travail (1901)
- Vérité (1903, published posthumously)
- Justice (unfinished)
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Mile Zola'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://__mile_zola.totallyexplained.com">Émile Zola Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
