Zola's Search for the Truth:
FARRELL, JAMES T.
Zola's Search for the Truth By James T Farrell Author, "Studs Lonigan," "The Face of Time," and many other novels THE FINAL LINES of Zola's Germinal help explain the spirit of his writing: "Men...
...It is the story of a French courtesan during the period of the Second Empire...
...He contributed, as Have-lock Ellis observed, toward broadening and liberating literature in England...
...In the midst of her fame and glory, she abandons her career to live with an ugly actor...
...His characters are personifications of these forces and laws...
...He was strongly opposed to the romantic writers who preceded him, and Nana at times reads like an anti-romantic tract...
...All the settings of her life are romantic...
...We see her as infantile, narcissistic,completely self-centered...
...When Nana returns, she becomes a devourer of men...
...Just as in Germinal the mine is like an elemental force devouring men, so here Nana is an elemental force that also devours and destroys...
...Nana, representing the elemental force of sex, dies...
...In the last analysis, the themes of Zola's books are forces rather than character...
...And then Nana disappears...
...Men commit suicide...
...She is an elemental force...
...At the opening of Nana, she is appearing in a light opera, playing the role of Venus...
...But she has come back ill, with the small pox...
...Then he became lazy and fell to drinking...
...Her love affairs, her very home have an almost operatic character...
...If her father catches her, he beats her...
...And Zola was attacked because this is precisely what he tried to do in his novels...
...Zola is often regarded as a literal and photographic realist...
...The vicious, ragged little girl of the Parisian gutters develops into the all-punishing, monstrous courtesan...
...She is wasteful, immoral, irresponsible, childish...
...Like the father, she disintegrated ??a process that took the form of overeating and growing obesity...
...On to Berlin...
...Nana is probably the most widely read of Zola's books...
...Zola, the republican, was also speaking in this novel...
...In this environment, the child, Nana, grows more and more vicious...
...Her father was a good workman until he sustained a disabling injury...
...It mounts into a crescendo of madness...
...She is impelled to destroy...
...In an astonishing way, she acquires the wasteful and demoralizing traits of her parents, both of whom end up as insane alcoholics...
...She delights in seeing her father and mother abuse one another...
...He exerted a strong influence on Frank Norris...
...On Sundays, she roams the streets of Paris, flirting as do the other girls of her neighborhood...
...Thus, Nana was spared this last terror...
...The novelist, he held, should seek the truth, and when he finds it, he should tell the truth...
...When Nana first appeared in England, the publisher was indicted for publishing obscene literature and was driven into bankruptcy...
...I attempted to interpret it only after I had had the enjoyable experience of reading this dramatic novel, so rich in insight and observation...
...She watches her parents, as well as her mother and the lover, in intimate relationships...
...Nana is a success on the stage purely because of her sex appeal, and becomes the talk of luxury-loving Paris...
...Zola observed that she no longer had "the strength to be frightened when she thought of the future...
...High officials sacrifice their careers for her...
...A vicious press campaign was carried on by the defenders of drawing-room hypocrisy...
...He should not varnish it with romantic phrases...
...He should not soften its impact with polite circumlocutions...
...When I first read it, my head was filled with theories about Zola, and I lost all its excitement...
...Only when he locks her out does she rise again...
...She takes the paramours of other courtesans away from them...
...Nana's death occurs on the day that the Franco-Prussian War begins...
...Nana today remains a highly readable book...
...And yet, at the same time, Nana becomes a romantic symbol in reverse...
...He stands behind Dreiser...
...Hortense Schneider, Zulma Bouffar and others whom we would call the glamour girls of the era of Offenbach and Louis Napoleon...
...She lived in her glory in the days of the Second Empire, and then, one day, the beautiful and glamorous courtesan became a dust heap...
...His effects are achieved by a massive piling on of facts and details...
...When I re-read Nana, I did so as though reading a contemporary novel, and I found it an exciting book...
...His work also served as an example for the earlier American realists...
...Nana becomes a flower girl...
...Nana's childhood is described in Zola's great novel of disintegration, L'Assommoir...
...She is supported in luxury...
...Yet, luxury and success do not touch her...
...All sorts of rumors are flying when suddenly she returns to Paris...
...and war comes...
...The mother eventually abandoned her efforts to hold the family together and to develop her small laundry business...
...The crowds outside, shouting their determination to take Berlin in a week, were symbolic of the fact that the entire social structure which made Nana possible was on its way to becoming an historical dust heap...
...She accepts beatings and even takes to the streets, descending to the lower depths of Parisian life in order to feed the actor whom she loves...
...All of Nana's later traits are thus foreshadowed in Zola's account of her childhood...
...They are ruined financially paying for her luxuries...
...Then she plunges once again into her life of pleasure...
...He brought a former lover of his wife's into the household and turned her over to him...
...And, as she lies dying, crowds on the boulevards are shouting again and again: "On to Berlin...
...Homes are wrecked...
...There is more psychological insight in his books than the reader is immediately aware of...
...Today...
...Above all else, "germination" in Zola's work and thought meant the triumph of the truth...
...She reverts to her childhood, and to the pattern of her mother...
...Almost overnight, she finds herself a famous courtesan...
...Her mother was a laundress who walked with a slight limp...
...The shouting crowds, led by working men in blouses, introduce a new elemental force...
...Zola's Search for the Truth By James T Farrell Author, "Studs Lonigan," "The Face of Time," and many other novels THE FINAL LINES of Zola's Germinal help explain the spirit of his writing: "Men will spring forth, a black avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows, growing toward the harvests of the next century, and this germinating will soon overturn the earth...
...Energy, power, the working out of the laws of heredity and environment as they were seen scientifically in Zola's day??these are almost the real protagonists of his work...
...When her grandmother dies, Nana immediately takes the latter's bed, enjoying its comforts without a thought of the old woman who has just died...
...I stress this because, on comparing Nana with her parents and noting her traits as a child, I have come to the conclusion that the critics have done Zola an injustice...
...She has childish fears of death, and becomes utterly terrified by fears of hellfire...
...But Zola's influence was not halted...
...In collecting material for this novel, Zola went to friends who had known Cora Pearl...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 50
