ZOLA'S EARLIEST WORK.* IF ever we consider Zola's influence or
rank as a writer, it can only be with respect to such of his works as have made him justly famous, and given worthy results of his convictions con- cerning truth in literature. For Zola has had convictions as to his mission as an author, convictions which, through their very strength and persistence, have degenerated into manias.
• Le Yam dune Norte. Par Emile Zola. Paris G. Charpontier of Cie. His virulent pantheism, which reached its artistic culmination in La Faute de l'Abbe Mouret, and in this work possesses a kind of savage grandeur, has run riot ; and from the worship of certain forces of Nature, Zola has passed to the contempla- tion of those forces in their most terrible and bestial aspect. The very horror that has come upon him from this con- templation seems to have compelled him to dwell on and communicate it ; it has acted on and possessed his imagina- tion like a nightmare he can no longer flee from. A world festering with vice and corruption, human beings monsters of depravity, human laws instruments of incon- ceivable iniquity,—this state of things has gradually ended by becoming truth to Zola. Therefore, certain of his later works can only be regarded as manifestations of a completely diseased view of life to which he has become a victim. The mere knowledge of certain things may be said to be hurtful ; but the way in which this knowledge is conveyed is principally responsible for the degree in which it is so. At all times Zola should be distinguished from that set of writers tolerated, and even successful, in France, whose one conviction is that the pollution of minds by the representation of the most in- sidious and refined vice is a sure and, to themselves, pleasant way to success, whose greatest triumph is to render the human organism capable of the largest variety of agreeable sensations,—this at the cost of all morality or self-respect. No such method is Zola's. He is neither a cynic nor a sen- sualist. He plunges into the mire with grim deliberation. All that he withdraws is brought forth with unsparing hand. His pictures of vice are so terrible, so conscientiously repulsive, that they might make even a vicious man recoil, and certainly deter others from falling into the abyss. He follows up the law of atavism with the inexorability of a scientific student and the insistance of a moralist.
An author's first work is usually rather a reflection of his own personality than of his particular talent. In Le Voeu d'une Morte, Zola's first novel, there is no indication of his future bias. It is not realistic as a whole, scarcely so in some few details. It is the work of a young man with an average share of pessimisn, and (for a Frenchman) an unusual share of idealism. Daniel Raimbault, the hero, is an orphan, adopted and placed at school by a young girl of noble family, who preserves her incognito until several years after she is married, and is on her death-bed. A few days before her death, she sends for him. Daniel is an awkward youth, with an unlimited capacity of devotion and gratitude. His expression of it so touches and impresses his benefactress, Madame de Rionne, that while she is bitterly reflecting on the sadness of her married life, from which all dignity or possible happiness has been banished by a husband of base and self- indulgent nature, and on the approaching separation from her little girl of six, an idea suddenly occurs to her. Daniel has implored her to give him something to accomplish, to prove his everlasting gratitude to her. She recommends to his care her little one, imploring him to watch over and guard her as far as is in his power. The idea is far-fetched, but not too much so for Daniel, who seizes upon this mission with the fervour of a fanatic. Henceforth the key-note of his life is self-renunciation. The greatest sacrifices count for nothing— even to that of his own love, and the possible gratification of it—to what he believes to be the happiness of his charge. After this he seems to float in a kind of spiritual world, from which all terrestrial desires and cravings are eliminated. But such a state is hardly reconcilable with earthly con- ditions, and Daniel's physical frame gradually succumbs. He dies, but with the consoling presence of the woman whose guardian angel he has been, and who only finds it out shortly before his death. The whole conception is overstrained and improbable. But the idea of renunciation is one which has a strong hold upon Zola. It is the one religious element in his writing. In Daniel Raimbault's character we have the immature germ of the idea he has so powerfully embodied in the person of Pauline, in La Joie de Vivre. In one of Zola's heroines, and Pauline is his finest and most characteristic, we must not look for a woman of refined or ethereal attributes, but a creature of strong natural instincts and desires, physi- cally and morally robust, an animal in the strength of her natural passions, but most human in the possession of an inexhaustible spring of tenderness and love, and a quite sublime idea of duty and abnegation. Pauline accomplishes the greatest sacrifice any woman can accomplish ; but we
learn to know and understand her nature so well, that we feeI she is capable of it. The personal love she has felt it her duty to repress has passed into a wider channel, the love of humanity, and her unsatisfied maternal instincts find an outlet in teaching and reforming the children of her village, little reptiles, for the most part, whose natural perversity exercises all the intellectual ingenuity and patient indulgence of her nature. Pauline is a character unique in conception, and would give Zola a just title to the greatest praise he has ever aspired to,. although La Joie de Vivre is marred by the inconceivable want of artistic discrimination, and the absence of the most ordi- nary reticence, which Zola displayed in introducing descrip- tions such as should only figure in a medical work, and then be clothed in the phraseology of science, and not of narrative.
Perhaps, of the characters in Le Vau d'une Morte, that of M. de Rionne, though but a mere sketch, is the most true to life,—a nature in which weak sensibility takes the place of real emotion :—" Il ant jete cent francs it un pauvre, it n'eult pas sacrifie un seal de ses plaisirs. 11 fuyait les emotions, et
pour ne pm blesser la bonte y avait en lui, it s'arrangeait de facon it se dire quand meme que tout allait Bien." The agitation he feels when summoned to his wife's death-bed does not arise from love or pity for her, but from a horror of being brought into contact with what is sad or unpleasant, and yet, real, in life :-
" Les larmes lui monterent aux yeux de pour et d'angoisse. C'etait une souffrance personnelle, egoiste qui to torturait. S'il s'etait interroge it aurait vu que sa femme ne se trouvait pas an
fond de son desespoir Il n'avait jamais vu mourir, et, comme it n'eprouvait pm la vraie douleur, celle qui est aveugle, qui embrasse avec emportement le cadavre d'une personae aimee,
it analysait l'horreur de l'agonie Elle mourait, et co n'etait pas une lecon pour lui, c'etait uniquement un accident lamentable auquel it etait force d'assister at qui le torturait."
It is impossible not to feel sympathy and liking for Daniel,
although he is drawn from imagination, not from life. For this reason, it appears only suitable that all the details of his. every-day life, his struggles, and final success, which would give such reality to a lifelike character, should be left. dans le vague. Indeed, it is curious to notice the absence of tediously accurate description which Zola usually devotes to each of his personages, their origin, surroundings, and general setting. In Daniel's contempt for ordinary society and ordinary drawing-room conversation, which, if somewhat intolerant and crude in expression, is at bottom honest and, powerful, we divine Zola himself as a young man. There is a most clever and amusing sketch of M. Tellier, a Deputy to whom Daniel becomes secretary. The nature is essentially French in its weaknesses :-
" M. Teller etait loin d'etre un mechant homme, et it avait fait preuve parfois d'une intelligence suffisante. Trois ou quatre ideas solennelles, lorsqu'on poussait certains ressorts, se pro- menaient dans son cerveau, pareilles it ces petites poupees qui tournent dans les orgues do Barbaric. Il n'avait qu'un seul vice, celui de so croire tm profond politique. Il clabaudait gravement, it gouvernait les Etats comme les portieres gouvernent leur
repetant les memes phrases, delayant ses rares pensees dans un deluge de mots Des l'enfance, it avait parle du peuple et de la liberte avec des solennites ecrasantes. Plus tard, en pleine prosperite, ayant sous ses ordres tout un monde d'ouvriers, it con- tinua sea discours philanthropiques, sans songer qu'il ferait mieux de parler moins et d'augmenter lea salaires. Mais le peuple et la liberte etaient pour lui des choses abstraites fallait aimer platoniquement."
The Vceu d'une Morte, as a whole, is immature and incom- plete ; it does not foreshadow any particular tendency of the author, but merely shows him to be a man of strong earnest, feelings who might become anything but trivial.
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