Zola, Emil

Childhood and Youth in Provence

Emil Zola was born on April 2, 1840 in Paris, in the family of an engineer of Italian descent, François Zola (in Italian, the surname reads Zola ), who accepted French citizenship, and the mother of a Frenchwoman ^[1] . In 1843, Emil's father received a contract for the construction of a canal in Aix-en-Provence and moved his family there. Together with financial partners, he creates a company to carry out planned projects in Provence. Work on the construction of a canal and dam to supply the city with water began in 1847, but in the same year, François Zola died of pneumonia.

After the death of her husband, Emil’s mother is in great need, living on a meager pension. In 1851, she returned with her son to Paris to follow the lawsuit initiated by creditors against the company of the late Francois Zola. In 1852, the company is declared bankrupt, and the next year the channel changes owners.

Emil began to receive education relatively late for that time - at seven years old. His mother puts him in a boarding house at Bourbon College in Aix-en-Provence, where he studies for five years. In Provence, Zola also receives a religious education - he passed the first communion in 1852.

In Aix-en-Provence, one of Emil Zol’s closest friends is the artist Paul Cezanne , with whom he will maintain friendship until the mid-1880s. At the same time, Zola is fond of the works of Alfred de Musset , Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo . He himself is trying to write poetry, but they are now lost. The town of Aix-en-Provence and the entire region will become sources for many scenes and plots in his future novels from the Rugon-Mccara series. The image of the city itself is displayed in books under the assumed name Plassan .

Bohemian life

With regret for himself, in 1858 Emil moved to his mother in Paris. They live in fairly modest conditions. Zola’s mother planned a lawyer's career for her son, but he failed twice in his bachelor's exam.

During the winter of 1860-1861, Emil makes a love affair with a girl named Bert, who he himself called a “girl with parties” ( French une fille à parties ), that is, a prostitute. He nurtured the idea of ​​“pulling it out of the stream”, introducing it into a decent occupation, but this idealism could not resist the realities of life in Paris. This failure will serve as the basis of his first novel, Confession of Claude (1865). Later, the plot will be partially retold by Emil in his Rugon-McCara series. Among the protagonists of his works there will be a similar supporter of religious education and a similar desire for a life without commitment.

At this time, Zola comprehends a humanistic culture, reading Moliere , Montaigne and Shakespeare , and also falls under the influence of the more modern Jules Michelet . He is also interested in painting, closely converges with the Impressionists: Eduard Manet , Camille Pissarro , Auguste Renoir , Alfred Sisley , Jan Bartold Jongkind . Eduard Manet writes several portraits of Zola, and Paul Cezanne continues to be his closest friend. For many decades, the writer and artist will maintain warm relations, help each other financially, and conduct extensive correspondence. But after the publication of the novel "Creativity", in which Cezanne unpleasantly recognizes himself in the image of the artist Claude Lantier, their friendship ceases. Cezanne sent Zola's last letter in 1886, and since then they will no longer see each other.

First publications

Zola began his literary career as a journalist (collaboration in L'Evénement, Le Figaro, Le Rappel, Tribune); many of his first novels are typical “ feuilleton novels ” (The Marseille Secrets ( Les Mystères de Marseille , 1867)). Throughout the course of her career, Zola has remained in touch with journalism (collections of articles “What I hate” ( Mes haines , 1866), “Campaign” ( Une campagne , 1882), “New Campaign” ( Nouvelle campagne , 1897). These speeches are a sign of his active participation in political life.

Zola stood in the center of literary life in France of the last thirty years of the 19th century and was associated with the largest writers of this time (Lunches of Five (1874) - with the participation of Gustave Flaubert , Ivan Turgenev , Alfons Daudet and Edmond Goncourt ; Medan Evenings (1880) - the famous collection, which included works by Zola himself, Joris Karl Huysmans , Guy de Maupassant and a number of minor naturalists like , and ).

In the last period of his life, Zola gravitated toward a socialist worldview, without going beyond the scope of radicalism . As the highest point of Zola’s political biography, his participation in the Dreyfus affair , which exposed the contradictions of France in the 1890s , is the famous article “J'accuse” ( “I Blame” ), for which the writer paid exile in England (1898).

In 1901 and 1902, a member of the French Academy, Marseille Berthelot, nominated Emile Zola for the Nobel Prize in literature ^[2] .

Death

Zola died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning , according to the official version - due to a malfunction in the chimney in the fireplace. His last words addressed to his wife were: “I feel bad, my head is cracking. Look, and the dog is sick. We must have eaten something. Nothing, everything will pass. No need to disturb anyone ... ". Contemporaries suspected that this could be a murder , but no conclusive evidence of this theory could be found.

In 1953, journalist Jean Borel published an investigation in the Liberacion newspaper, “Is Zola killed?” Stating that Zola’s death is probably a murder, not an accident. He based his claim on the revelations of the Norman pharmacist Pierre Akin, who said that the chimney sweep Henri Buronfoss admitted to him that he deliberately blocked the chimney of Emil Zol’s apartment in Paris.

Personal life

Emil Zola was married twice; from his second wife (Jeanne Rosro) he had two children.

In honor of Emil Zola, a crater on Mercury is named.

In the Paris metro there is a station Avenue Emile Zola on the 10th line next to the street of the same name.

Depicted on a 1967 French postage stamp.

The first literary speeches of Zola date back to the 1860s - “Tales of Ninon” ( Contes à Ninon , 1864), “Confession of Claude” ( La Confession de Claude , 1865), “Testament of the deceased” ( Le vœu d'une morte , 1866) , “Marseille Secrets” ( Les Mystères de Marseille , 1867).

Young Zola is rapidly approaching his main works, to the central node of his creative activity - the 20-volume series “ Les Rougon-Macquart ”. Already the novel "Theresa Raken" ( Thérèse Raquin , 1867) contained the basic elements of the content of the grandiose "Natural and social history of one family in the era of the Second Empire ."

Zola spends a lot of effort to show how the laws of heredity affect individual members of the Rugon-Makkarov family. The whole epic is connected by a carefully designed plan based on the principle of heredity - in all the novels of the series are members of the same family, so widely branched that its processes penetrate both the highest layers of France and its lower classes. The unfinished series “The Four Gospels” (“Fertility” ( Fécondité , 1899), “Labor”, “Truth” ( Vérité , 1903), “Justice” ( Justice , not completed)) expresses this new stage in the work of Zola.

In the interval between the series “Rugon-MacCara” and “The Four Gospels” Zola wrote the trilogy “Three Cities”: “Lourdes” ( Lourdes , 1894), “Rome” ( Rome , 1896), “Paris” ( Paris , 1898).

Emil Zola gained popularity in Russia a few years earlier than in France . Already, "Tales of Ninon" were marked by a sympathetic review (" Domestic Notes ". 1865. T. 158. - P. 226—227). With the advent of translations of the first two volumes of the Rugon-Makkarov ( Vestnik Evropy , 1872. Books 7 and 8), assimilation of it by broad readership began. Translations of Zola’s works came out with banknotes for censorship reasons, the circulation of the novel “Production”, published in the ed. Karbasnikova (1874) was destroyed.

The novel "The Womb of Paris", translated simultaneously by "Delo", "Herald of Europe", "Fatherland Notes", "Russian Herald", "Iskra" and "Bible. desh. and obshchostost. ”and published in two separate editions, finally established Zola’s reputation in Russia.

In the 1870s Zola was assimilated mainly by two groups of readers - the radical heterodox and the liberal bourgeoisie. The former were attracted by the sketches of the predatory customs of the bourgeoisie that we used in the struggle against the fascination with the possibilities of the capitalist development of Russia. The second found material from Zola that clarified their own position. Both groups showed great interest in the theory of a scientific novel, seeing in it a solution to the problem of constructing biased fiction ( Boborykin P. Real novel in France // Domestic Notes . 1876. Book 6, 7).

The Russian Herald took advantage of the pale outline of the Republicans in the Rugon Career and Womb of Paris to combat the hostile ideology of the radicals. From March 1875 to December 1880, Zola collaborated in Vestnik Evropy. 64 “Paris letters” printed here were composed of social essays, short stories, literary and critical correspondence, art and theater criticism, and for the first time laid out the foundations of “naturalism”. Despite success, Zola’s correspondence frustrated radical circles in the theory of an experimental novel. This entailed, with little success in Russia, such works of Zola as The Trap, The Page of Love, and the scandalous fame Nana, the fall of Zola’s authority ( Basardin V. The Newest Nana-Tourism // Case. 1880. Book 3 and 5; Temlinsky S. Zolaism in Russia. M., 1880 ).

Since the early 1880s the literary influence of Zola became noticeable (in the novels “Varenka Ulmin” by L. Ya. Stechkina , “Stolen Happiness” by you. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko , “Kennel”, “Training”, “Young” P. Boborykin ). This influence was insignificant, and most of all it affected P. Boborykin and M. Belinsky ( I. Yasinsky ).

In the 1880s and the first half of the 1890s . Zola’s novels did not enjoy ideological influence and existed mainly in bourgeois readership (translations were published regularly in “Prince. Week” and “Observer”). In the 1890s Zola again gained great ideological influence in Russia in connection with the echoes of the Dreyfus case , when a noisy polemic arose around the name of Zola and in Russia (Emil Zola and Captain Dreyfus. New Sensational Novel, issue I — XII, Warsaw, 1898 ).

Zola’s latest novels appeared in Russian translations in 10 or more editions simultaneously. In the 1900s , especially after 1905 , interest in Zola subsided noticeably in order to revive again after 1917 . Even earlier, Zola’s novels got the function of propaganda material (“Labor and Capital”, a novel based on Zola’s novel “In the Mines” (“Germinal”), Simbirsk, 1908 ) ( V. M. Frice , Emil Zola (To whom the proletariat erects monuments), M ., 1919 ).

• Collected works in 14 volumes. - St. Petersburg, 1896-1899.
• Collected works in 18 volumes. - M.: True, 1957. (Library "Twinkle").
• Collected works in 26 volumes. - M.: State Publishing House of Fiction , 1960-1967. - 300,000 copies.
• Collected works in 20 volumes (16 books). - M.: Voice, 1992-1998.
• Collected works in 12 volumes. - M. – Tver: Fiction, Alba, 1995–2000.
• Collected works in 20 volumes. - M .: Terra, 1996-1998.
• Collected works in 16 volumes. - M.: Book Club "Bookstore", 2011.
• Theresa Raken. Germinal. - M.: Fiction, 1975. (Library of World Literature).
• Career Rugonov. Production. - M.: Fiction, 1980. (Classics Library).
• Trap. Germinal. - M.: Fiction, 1988. (Classics Library).

• Biblioweb.org/-ZOLA-Emile-
• Zola, Emil in the library of Maxim Moshkov
• List of adaptations of the work of E. Zola on IMDB
• Lukov Vl. A. Zola Emil (neopr.) . Electronic Encyclopedia "Modern French Literature" (2011). Date of treatment November 24, 2011. Archived on February 4, 2012.

The article uses the text of I. Anisimov and M. Clement , which passed into the public domain . The article is based on the materials of the Literary Encyclopedia of 1929-1939 .