Emile Zola short biography and creativity. Brief biography and analysis of the work of Émile Zola. Literary activity and family life

Death

Zola died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning, according to official version- due to a malfunction of the chimney in the fireplace. His last words to his wife were: “I feel bad, my head is pounding. Look, the dog is sick. We must have eaten something. It’s okay, everything will pass. There is no need to disturb anyone...” Contemporaries suspected that it could have been a murder, but no conclusive evidence for this theory could be found.

In 1953, journalist Jean Borel published an investigation in the newspaper Libération entitled “Was Zola Killed?” stating that Zola's death may have been a homicide rather than an accident. He based his claim on the revelations of the Norman pharmacist Pierre Aquin, who said that the chimney sweep Henri Bouronfosse confessed to him that he had deliberately blocked the chimney of Emile Zola's apartment in Paris.

Personal life

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

Memory

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

Shown in French postage stamp 1967.

Creation

Zola's first literary performances date back to the 1860s - "The Tales of Ninon" ( Contes a Ninon, 1864), "Confession of Claude" ( La Confession de Claude, 1865), “Testament of the Dead” ( Le vœu d'une morte, 1866), “The Mysteries of Marseilles” ( Les Mystères de Marseille, 1867).

Emile Zola with his children. 1890s

Young Zola quickly approaches his main works, the central hub of his creative activity- 20-volume series “Rougon-Macquart” ( Les Rougon-Macquart). Already the novel “Thérèse Raquin” ( Thérèse Raquin, 1867) contained the main elements of the content of the grandiose “Natural and social history 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 Rougon-Macquart family. The entire epic is connected by a carefully developed plan based on the principle of heredity - in all the novels of the series there are members of the same family, so widely branched that its branches penetrate both the highest strata of France and its lower strata. Unfinished series “Four Gospels” (“Fruitfulness” ( Fécondite, 1899), “Labor”, “Truth” ( Verite, 1903), "Justice" ( Justice, not completed)) expresses this new stage in the works of Zola.

In the interval between the Rougon-Macquart and Four Gospels series, Zola wrote the Three Cities trilogy: Lourdes ( Lourdes, 1894), "Rome" ( Rome, 1896), "Paris" ( Paris, 1898).

Emile Zola in Russia

Emile Zola gained popularity in Russia several years earlier than in France. Already “Tales of Ninon” were noted by a sympathetic review (“Notes of the Fatherland”. T. 158. - P. 226-227). With the advent of translations of the first two volumes of Rougon-Macquart (Bulletin of Europe, Books 7 and 8), its assimilation by a wide readership began. Translations of Zola's works were published with cuts for censorship reasons; the circulation of the novel "Prey", published in the publishing house. Karbasnikova (1874) was destroyed.

The novel “The Belly of Paris”, translated simultaneously by “Delo”, “Bulletin of Europe”, “Notes of the Fatherland”, “Russian Bulletin”, “Iskra” and “Biblical. cheap and public access.” and published in two separate editions, finally established Zola’s reputation in Russia.

Latest novels Zola's works were published in Russian translations in 10 or more editions simultaneously. In the 1900s, especially after, interest in Zola subsided noticeably, only to be revived again after. Even earlier, Zola’s novels received the function of propaganda material (“Labor and Capital”, a story based on Zola’s novel “In the Mines” (“Germinal”), Simbirsk) (V. M. Fritsche, Emil Zola (To whom the proletariat erects monuments), M. , ).

Works

Editions in Russian

Collected works in 14 volumes. – St. Petersburg, 1896–1899.
Collected works in 18 volumes. – M.: Pravda, 1957. (Library “Ogonyok”).
Collected works in 26 volumes. – M.: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1960–1967. - 300,000 copies.
Collected works in 20 volumes (16 books). – M.: Golos, 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 “Knigovek”, 2011.
Teresa Raquin. Germinal. – M.: Fiction, 1975. (Library of World Literature).
Career of the Rougons. Extraction. – M.: Fiction, 1980. (Library of classics).
Trap. Germinal. – M.: Fiction, 1988. (Library of classics).

Selected literature about Zola

List of essays

Complete works of E. Zola with illustrations. - P.: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1906.
L'Acrienne. - 1860.
Temlinsky S. Zolaism, Critical. sketch, ed. 2nd, rev. and additional - M., 1881.
Boborykin P. D.(in “Domestic Notes”, 1876, “Bulletin of Europe”, 1882, I, and “Observer”, 1882, XI, XII)
Arsenyev K.(in "Bulletin of Europe", 1882, VIII; 1883, VI; 1884, XI; 1886, VI; 1891], IV, and in " Critical studies", vol. II, St. Petersburg. , )
Andreevich V.// "Bulletin of Europe". - 1892, VII.
Slonimsky L. Zola. // "Bulletin of Europe". - 1892, IX.
Mikhailovsky N.K.(in Complete collected works, vol. VI)
Brandes G.// "Bulletin of Europe". - 1887. - X, to the Collection. composition
Barro E. Zola, his life and literary activity. - St. Petersburg. , 1895.
Pelissier J. French literature XIX century - M., 1894.
Shepelevich L. Yu. Our contemporaries. - St. Petersburg. , 1899.
Kudrin N. E. (Rusanov). E. Zola, Literary and biographical sketch. - “Russian wealth”, 1902, X (and in the “Gallery of Modern French celebrities", 1906).
Anichkov Evg. E. Zola, “God’s World,” 1903, V (and in the book “Forerunners and Contemporaries”).
Vengerov E. Zola, Critical-biographical essay, “Bulletin of Europe”, 1903, IX (and in “Literary Characteristics”, book II, St. Petersburg, 1905).
Lozinsky Evg. Pedagogical ideas in the works of E. Zola. // “Russian Thought”, 1903, XII.
Veselovsky Yu. E. Zola as a poet and humanist. // “Bulletin of Education”, 1911. - I, II.
Fritsche V. M. E. Zola. - M., 1919.
Fritsche V. M. Essay on the development of Western European literature. - M.: Giza, 1922.
Eichenholtz M. E. Zola (-). // “Press and Revolution”, 1928, I.
Trunin K. Emile Zola. Criticism and analysis literary heritage. - 2018.
Rod E. A propos de l'Assomoir. - 1879.
Ferdas V. La physiologie expérimentale et le roman expérimental. - P.: Claude Bernard et E. Zola, 1881.
Alexis P. Emile Zola, notes d'un ami. - P., 1882.
Maupassant G.de Emile Zola, 1883.
Hubert. Le roman naturaliste. - 1885.
Wolf E. Zola und die Grenzen von Poesie und Wissenschaft. - Kiel, 1891.
Sherard R.H. Zola: biographical and critical study. - 1893.
Engwer Th. Zola als Kunstkritiker. - B., 1894.
Lotsch F.Über Zolas Sprachgebrauch. - Greifswald, 1895.
Gaufiner. Étude syntaxique sur la langue de Zola. - Bonne, 1895.
Lotsch F. Wörterbuch zu den Werken Zolas und einiger anderen modernen Schriftsteller. - Greifswald, 1896.
Laporte A. Zola vs Zola. - P., 1896.
Moneste J.L. Real Rome: Zola's replica. - 1896.
Rauber A. A. Die Lehren von V. Hugo, L. Tolstoy und Zola. - 1896.
Laporte A. Naturalism or the eternity of literature. E. Zola, Man and Work. - P., 1898.
Bourgeois, a work by Zola. - P., 1898.
Brunetje F. After the trial, 1898.
Burger E. E. Zola, A. Daudet und andere Naturalisten Frankreichs. - Dresden, 1899.
MacDonald A. Emil Zola, a study of his personality. - 1899.
Vizetelly E. A. With Zola in England. - 1899.
Ramond F.C. Characters Roujon-Macquart. - 1901.
Conrad M. G. Von Emil Zola bis G. Hauptmann. Erinnerungen zur Geschichte der Moderne. - Lpz. , 1902.
Bouvier. L'œuvre de Zola. - P., 1904.
Vizetelly E. A. Zola, novelist and reformer. - 1904.
Lepelletier E. Emile Zola, sa vie, son œuvre. - P., 1909.
Patterson J. G. Zola: characters of the Rougon-Macquarts novels, with biography. - 1912.
Martino R. Le roman réaliste sous le second Empire. - P., 1913.
Lemm S. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Emil Zolas "Rugon-Macquarts" und den "Quatre Evangiles". - Halle a. S., 1913.
Mann H. Macht und Mensch. - Munich, 1919.
Oehlert R. Emil Zola als Theaterdichter. - B., 1920.
Rostand E. Deux romanciers de Provence: H. d'Urfé et E. Zola. - 1921.
Martino P. Le naturalisme français. - 1923.
Seillère E.A.A.L. Emile Zola, 1923: Baillot A., Emile Zola, l’homme, le penseur, le critique, 1924
France A. La vie littéraire. - 1925. - V. I. - pp. 225–239.
France A. La vie littéraire. - 1926. - V. II (La pureté d’E. Zola, pp. 284–292).
Deffoux L. et Zavie E. Le Groupe de Médan. - P., 1927.
Josephson Matthew. Zola and his time. - N.Y., 1928.
Doucet F. L'esthétique de Zola et son application à la critique, La Haye, s. a.
Bainville J. Au seuil du siècle, études critiques, E. Zola. - P., 1929.
Les soirées de Médan, 17/IV 1880 - 17/IV 1930, avec une préface inédite de Léon Hennique. - P., 1930.
Piksanov N.K., Two centuries of Russian literature. - ed. 2nd. - M.: Giza, 1924.
Mandelstam R. S. Fiction in the assessment of Russian Marxist criticism. - ed. 4th. - M.: Giza, 1928.
Laporte A. Emile Zola, l'homme et l'œuvre, avec bibliographie. - 1894. - pp. 247–294.

Film adaptations

Notes

Links

Emile Zola:

Zola, Emil in the library of Maxim Moshkov
Lukov Vl. A. Zola Emile (undefined) . Electronic encyclopedia"Modern French literature"(2011). Retrieved November 24, 2011. Archived February 4, 2012.

The article uses the text of I. Anisimov and M. Clement, which was transferred to

Emile Zola (French: Émile Zola). Born April 2, 1840 in Paris - died September 29, 1902 in Paris. French writer, publicist and politician.

One of the most significant representatives of realism second half of the 19th century century - leader and theorist of the so-called naturalistic movement, Zola stood at the center literary life 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 Sergeevich Turgenev, Alphonse Daudet and Edmond Goncourt, “Evenings of Medan” (1880) - famous collection, which included works by Zola himself, Joris Karl Huysmans, Guy de Maupassant and a number of minor naturalists such as Henri Cear, Léon Ennick and Paul Alexis).

The son of an engineer of Italian origin who took French citizenship (in Italian his surname is read as Zola), who built a canal in Aix. Zola began his literary career as a journalist (collaboration with L’Evénement, Le Figaro, Le Rappel, Tribune); many of his first novels are typical “feuilleton novels” (“The Mysteries of Marseille” - “Les mystères de Marseille”, 1867). Throughout the subsequent period of his creative path Zola maintains contact with journalism (collections of articles: “Mes haines”, 1866, “Une campagne”, 1881, “Nouvelle campagne”, 1886). These speeches are a sign of his active participation in political life.

Zola's political biography is uneventful. This is the biography of a liberal living during the formation of an industrial society. IN last period Throughout his life, Zola gravitated towards the socialist worldview, without going beyond the bounds 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, should be noted - the famous article “J’accuse” (“I accuse”), for which the writer paid with exile in England (1898).

Zola died in Paris from carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the official version - due to a malfunction of the chimney in the fireplace. His last words to his wife were: “I feel bad, my head is pounding. Look, the dog is sick. We must have eaten something. It’s okay, everything will pass. There is no need to disturb anyone...” Contemporaries suspected that it could be a murder, but irrefutable evidence of this theory could not be found.

Emile Zola was married twice, with his second wife Jeanne Rosero he had two children.

A crater on Mercury is named after Emile Zola.

Zola's first literary performances date back to the 1860s - “Tales to Ninon” (Contes à Ninon, 1864), “Claude’s Confession” (La confession de Claude, 1865), “The Testament of the Dead” (Le vœu d "une morte, 1866 ), "Marseille Secrets".

Young Zola quickly approaches his main works, the central hub of his creative activity - the twenty-volume series “Rougon-Macquarts” (Les Rougon-Macquarts). Already the novel Thérèse Raquin (1867) contained the main elements of the content of the grandiose “Natural and Social History of a Family during the Second Empire.”

Zola spends a lot of effort to show how the laws of heredity affect individual members of the Rougon-Macquart family. The entire huge epic is connected by a carefully developed plan based on the principle of heredity - in all the novels of the series there are members of the same family, so widely branched that its branches penetrate both the highest layers of France and its deepest bottoms.

The last novel in the series includes the Rougon-Macquart family tree, which is intended to serve as a guide to the extremely intricate labyrinth of family relationships that form the basis of the grandiose epic system. The real and truly deep content of the work is, of course, not this side associated with problems of physiology and heredity, but those social images that are given in Rougon-Macquart. With the same concentration with which the author systematized the “natural” (physiological) content of the series, we must systematize and understand its social content, the interest of which is exceptional.

Zola's style is contradictory in its essence. First of all, this is a petty-bourgeois style in an extremely bright, consistent and complete expression - “Rougon-Macquart” is not by chance “ family romance“- Zola gives here a very complete, immediate, very organic, vital revelation of the existence of the petty bourgeoisie in all its elements. The artist’s vision is distinguished by exceptional integrity and capacity, but it is the bourgeois content that he interprets with the deepest penetration.

Here we enter the realm of the intimate - from the portrait, which occupies a prominent place, to the characteristics subject environment(remember the magnificent interiors of Zola), to those psychological complexes that arise before us - everything is presented in extremely soft lines, everything is sentimentalized. This is a kind of " pink period" The novel “The Joy of Living” (La joie de vivre, 1884) can be considered as the most holistic expression of this moment in the style of Zola.

There is also a desire to turn to the idyll in Zola's novels - from real everyday life to a kind of petty-bourgeois fantasy. The novel “Page of Love” (Une page d'amour, 1878) gives an idyllic image of the petty-bourgeois environment while preserving real everyday proportions. In “The Dream” (Le Rêve, 1888), the real motivation has already been eliminated, and the idyll is given in a naked fantastic form.

Something similar is found in the novel “The Crime of Abbé Mouret” (La faute de l'abbé Mouret, 1875) with its fantastic Parade and fantastic Albina. “Philistine happiness” is given in the style of Zola as something falling, being forced out, receding into oblivion. All this stands under the sign of damage, crisis, has a “fatal” character. In the named novel “The Joy of Living”, next to the holistic, complete, deep disclosure of petty-bourgeois existence, which is poeticized, the problem of tragic doom, the impending death of this existence is given, the novel is structured in a unique way: the melting of money. determines the development of the drama of the virtuous Chantos, the economic catastrophe that destroys “philistine happiness” seems to be the main content of the drama.

This is expressed even more fully in the novel “The Conquest of Plassans” (La conquête de Plassans, 1874), where the collapse of bourgeois prosperity and economic catastrophe are interpreted as a tragedy of a monumental nature. We encounter a whole series of such “falls” - constantly perceived as events of cosmic importance (a family entangled in insoluble contradictions in the novel “The Beast Man” (La bête humaine, 1890), old Baudu, Bourra in the novel “Ladies’ Happiness” (Au bonheur des dames, 1883)). When his economic well-being collapses, the tradesman is convinced that the whole world is collapsing - such specific hyperbolization marks economic disasters in Zola’s novels.

The petty bourgeois, experiencing his decline, receives full and complete expression from Zola. It is shown from different sides, revealing its essence in an era of crisis; it is presented as a unity of diverse manifestations. First of all, he is a petty bourgeois who is experiencing the drama of economic collapse. Such is Mouret in The Conquest of Plassans, this new bourgeois Job, such are the virtuous rentiers of Chanteau in the novel The Joy of Living, such are the heroic shopkeepers swept away by capitalist development in the novel Ladies' Happiness.

Saints, martyrs and sufferers, like the touching Pauline in “The Joy of Living” or the unfortunate Rene in the novel “The Prey” (La curée, 1872), or the gentle Angelique in “The Dream”, which Albina so closely resembles in “The Crime of Abbe Mouret”, - here is the new form social essence"heroes" of Zola. These people are characterized by passivity, lack of will, Christian humility, and submission. All of them are distinguished by idyllic beauty, but they are all crushed by cruel reality. The tragic doom of these people, their death, despite all the attractiveness, the beauty of these “wonderful creatures”, the fatal inevitability of their gloomy fate - all this is an expression of the same conflict that determined the drama of Mouret, whose economy was collapsing, in the pathetic novel “The Conquest of Plassans” " The essence here is the same; only the form of the phenomenon is different.

As the most consistent form of the psychology of the petty bourgeoisie, Zola's novels provide numerous truth-seekers. They are all striving somewhere, filled with some kind of hope. But it immediately becomes clear that their hopes are vain and their aspirations are blind. The hunted Florent from the novel “The Belly of Paris” (Le ventre de Paris, 1873), or the unfortunate Claude from “Creativity” (L’œuvre, 1886), or the vegetating romantic revolutionary from the novel “Money” (L’argent, 1891), or the restless Lazarus from “The Joy of Living” - all these seekers are equally groundless and wingless. None of them is allowed to achieve, none of them rises to victory.

These are the main aspirations of Zola's hero. As you can see, they are versatile. All the more complete and concrete is the unity in which they converge. The psychology of the falling petty bourgeois receives an unusually deep, holistic interpretation from Zola.

Two novels about the working class - “The Trap” (L"assomoir, 1877) and “Germinal” (Germinal, 1885) - seem to be characteristic works in the sense that here the problem of the proletariat is refracted in the petty-bourgeois worldview. These novels can be called novels about the “class neighborhood." Zola himself warned that his novels about workers are aimed at streamlining and improving the system of relations of bourgeois society and are not at all “seditious.” There is a lot of objective truth in these works in the sense of Zola’s depiction of the modern proletariat.

The existence of this social group Zola's works are full of the greatest tragedy. Everything here is in turmoil, everything stands under the sign of the inevitability of fate. The pessimism of Zola's novels finds expression in their peculiar, “catastrophic” structure. The contradiction is always resolved in such a way that tragic death is a necessity. All of these novels by Zola have the same development - from shock to shock, from one paroxysm to another, the action unfolds in order to reach a catastrophe that explodes everything.

This tragic awareness of reality is very specific to Zola - here lies characteristic feature his style. Along with this, an attitude towards the bourgeois world arises, which can be called sentimentalizing.

In the novel "Money" the stock exchange appears as something opposite to the degenerating petty bourgeoisie; in "Ladies' Happiness" - a grandiose department store is revealed as an affirmation of a new reality; Railway in the novel “The Beast Man”, a market with the entire complex system of commodity economy in the novel “The Belly of Paris”, a city house presented as a grandiose “machine pour vivre”.

The nature of the interpretation of these new images is sharply different from everything Zola depicted previously. Here things rule, human experiences are pushed aside by problems of management and organization, the artist deals with completely new materials - his art is freed from sentimentalism.

New human figures also appear in Zola's works. These are no longer bourgeois Jobs, not sufferers, not vain seekers, but predators. They succeed. They achieve everything. Aristide Saccard - a brilliant rogue in the novel "Money", Octave Mouret - a high-flying capitalist entrepreneur, owner of the Ladies' Happiness store, bureaucratic predator Eugene Rougon in the novel "His Excellency Eugene Rougon" (1876) - these are new images.

Zola gives a fairly complete, versatile, developed concept of him - from a predator-money-grubber like Abbe Fauges in The Conquest of Plassans to a real knight of capitalist expansion, which is Octave Mouret. It is constantly emphasized that despite the difference in scale, all these people are predators, invaders, displacing respectable people of that patriarchal bourgeois world, which, as we have seen, has been waxed poetic.

The image of a predator, a capitalist businessman, is given in the same aspect with the material image (of the market, exchange, store), which occupies such a significant place in the system of Zola’s style. The assessment of predation extends to the material world. Thus, the Parisian market and department store become something monstrous. In Zola's style, the object image and the image of the capitalist predator must be considered as a single expression, as two sides of the world, cognizable by the artist, adapting to the new socio-economic structure.

In the novel "Ladies' Happiness" there is a clash of two entities - bourgeois and capitalist. A huge capitalist enterprise arises on the bones of bankrupt small shopkeepers - the entire course of the conflict is presented in such a way that “justice” remains on the side of the oppressed. They are defeated in the struggle, virtually destroyed, but morally they triumph. This resolution of the contradiction in the novel “Ladies' Happiness” is very characteristic of Zola. The artist bifurcates here between the past and the present: on the one hand, he is deeply connected with a collapsing existence, on the other, he already thinks of himself in unity with the new way of life, he is already free enough to imagine the world in its real connections, in its fullness content.

Zola’s work is scientific; he is distinguished by his desire to raise literary “production” to the level scientific knowledge of its time. His creative method was substantiated in a special work - “The Experimental Novel” (Le roman expérimental, 1880). Here you can see how consistently the artist pursues the principle of the unity of scientific and artistic thinking. “The ‘experimental novel’ is the logical consequence of the scientific evolution of our century,” says Zola, summing up his theory creative method, which is a transfer of techniques into literature scientific research(in particular, Zola relies on the work of the famous physiologist Claude Bernard). The entire Rougon-Macquart series is carried out in terms of scientific research conducted in accordance with the principles of the “Experimental Novel”. Zola's scholarship is evidence of the artist's close connection with the main trends of his era.

The grandiose series “Rougon-Macquart” is oversaturated with elements of planning; the scheme of scientific organization of this work seemed to Zola to be an essential necessity. The plan of scientific organization, the scientific method of thinking - these are the main provisions that can be considered the starting points for Zola's style.

Moreover, he was a fetishist of the scientific organization of the work. His art constantly violates the boundaries of his theory, but the very nature of Zola's planning and organizational fetishism is quite specific. This is where the characteristic mode of presentation that distinguishes the ideologists of the technical intelligentsia comes into play. They constantly accept the organizational shell of reality as the whole of reality; form replaces content. Zola expressed in his hypertrophies of plan and organization the typical consciousness of an ideologist of the technical intelligentsia. Approaching the era was carried out through a kind of “technization” of the bourgeois, who realized his inability to organize and plan (for this inability he is always castigated by Zola - “The Happiness of Ladies”); Zola's knowledge of the era of capitalist rise is realized through planned, organizational and technical fetishism. The theory of the creative method developed by Zola, the specificity of his style, revealed in moments addressed to the capitalist era, goes back to this fetishism.

The novel “Doctor Pascal” (Docteur Pascal, 1893), which concludes the Rougon-Macquart series, can serve as an example of such fetishism - issues of organization, systematics, and construction of the novel are given first place here. This novel also reveals a new human image. Dr. Pascal is something new in relation to both the falling philistines and the victorious capitalist predators. The engineer Gamelin in “Money”, the capitalist reformer in the novel “Labor” (Travail, 1901) - all these are varieties of the new image. It is not sufficiently developed in Zola, it is just emerging, it is just becoming, but its essence is already quite clear.

The figure of Dr. Pascal is the first schematic sketch of the reformist illusion, which expresses the fact that the petty bourgeoisie, the form of practice of which Zola’s style represents, is “technicalized” and reconciled with the era.

Typical features of the consciousness of the technical intelligentsia, primarily the fetishism of plan, system and organization, are transferred to a number of images of the capitalist world. Such, for example, is Octave Mouret from Ladies' Happiness, not only a great predator, but also a great rationalizer. Reality, which until recently was assessed as a hostile world, is now perceived in terms of some kind of “organizational” illusion. The chaotic world, the brutal cruelty of which was recently proven, is now beginning to appear in pink clothes"plan", planned for scientific basis not only a novel, but also social reality.

Zola, who always gravitated towards turning his work into an instrument of “reform”, “improvement” of reality (this was reflected in the didacticism and rhetoric of his poetic technique), now comes to “organizational” utopias.

The unfinished series “Gospels” (“Fertility” - “Fécondité”, 1899, “Labor”, “Justice” - “Vérité”, 1902) expresses this new stage in Zola’s work. Moments of organizational fetishism, always characteristic of Zola, receive particularly consistent development here. Reformism is becoming an increasingly exciting, dominant element here. In “Fertility,” a utopia about the planned reproduction of humanity is created; this gospel turns into a pathetic demonstration against the falling birth rate in France.

In the interval between the series - "Rougon-Macquart" and "The Gospels" - Zola wrote his anticlerical trilogy "Cities": "Lourdes" (Lourdes, 1894), "Rome" (Rome, 1896), "Paris" (Paris, 1898) . The drama of Abbé Pierre Froment, seeking justice, is presented as a moment of criticism of the capitalist world, opening up the possibility of reconciliation with it. The sons of the restless abbot, who took off his cassock, act as evangelists of reformist renewal.

Zola gained popularity in Russia several years earlier than in France. Already “Contes à Ninon” was noted with a sympathetic review (“Notes of the Fatherland”, 1865, vol. 158, pp. 226-227). With the appearance of translations of the first two volumes of Rougon-Macquart (Bulletin of Europe, 1872, books 7 and 8), its assimilation by a wide readership began. Translations of Zola's works were published with cuts for censorship reasons; the circulation of the novel La curee, published in Karbasnikova (1874) was destroyed.

The novel “Le ventre de Paris”, translated simultaneously by “Delo”, “Bulletin of Europe”, “Notes of the Fatherland”, “Russian Bulletin”, “Iskra” and “Biblical. cheap and public access.” and published in two separate editions, finally established Zola’s reputation in Russia.

In the 1870s. Zola was absorbed mainly by two groups of readers - the radical commoners and the liberal bourgeoisie. The first were attracted by sketches of the predatory morals of the bourgeoisie, which were used in our fight against the enthusiasm for the possibilities of capitalist development in Russia. The latter found in Zola material that clarified their own position. Both groups showed great interest in the theory of the scientific novel, seeing in it a solution to the problem of constructing tendentious fiction (Boborykin P. Real romance in France // Otechestvennye zapiski. 1876. Book 6, 7).

"Russian Messenger" took advantage of the pale portrayal of the Republicans in "La fortune de Rougon" and "Le ventre de Paris" to combat the hostile ideology of the radicals. From March 1875 to December 1880, Zola collaborated with the Vestnik Evropy. The 64 “Paris Letters” published here were composed of social and everyday essays, stories, literary critical correspondence, art and theater criticism and set out for the first time the foundations of “naturalism”. Despite its success, Zola's correspondence caused disillusionment among radical circles with the theory of the experimental novel. This entailed, with little success in Russia of such works of Zola as “L'assomoir”, “Une page d'amour”, and the scandalous fame of “Nana”, a decline in Zola’s authority (Basardin V. Newest Nana-naturalism // Business. 1880 . Books 3 and 5; Temlinsky S. Zolyism in Russia.

Since the early 1880s. Zola’s literary influence became noticeable (in the stories “Varenka Ulmina” by L. Ya. Stechkina, “Stolen Happiness” by Vas. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, “Kennel”, “Training”, “Young” by 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 were circulated mainly in bourgeois reading circles(translations were published regularly in “Book Week” and “Observer”). In the 1890s. Zola again acquired major ideological influence in Russia in connection with the echoes of the Dreyfus affair, when a noisy controversy arose around the name of Zola in Russia (“Emile Zola and Captain Dreyfus. A New Sensational Novel,” issues I-XII, Warsaw, 1898).

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

Born on April 2, 1840 in Paris, into an Italian-French family: his father was an Italian, a civil engineer. Children's and school years Emile spent time in Aix-en-Provence, where one of his closest friends was the artist P. Cezanne. He was less than seven years old when his father died, leaving the family in dire straits. In 1858, counting on the help of friends of her late husband, Madame Zola moved with her son to Paris.

At the beginning of 1862, Emil managed to find a place at the Ashet publishing house. After working for about four years, he quit in the hope of making a living through literary work. In 1865, Zola published his first novel, a harsh, thinly veiled autobiography, La Confession de Claude (1865). The book brought him scandalous fame, which was further increased by the ardent defense of E. Manet’s painting in his review of the art exhibition of 1866.

Around 1868, Zola conceived the idea of a series of novels dedicated to one family (the Rougon-Macquarts), whose fate is explored over four or five generations. The variety of novel plots made it possible to show many aspects of French life during the Second Empire. The first books in the series did not arouse much interest, but the seventh volume, The Trap (L "Assommoir, 1877), gained great success and brought Zola both fame and wealth. He bought a house in Meudon near Paris and gathered young writers around him (among them were J.C. Huysmans and Guy de Maupassant), who formed the short-lived “naturalistic school”.

Subsequent novels in the series were met with enormous interest - they were reviled and praised with equal zeal. The twenty volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series represent Zola's major literary achievement, although it is also worth noting the earlier Thérèse Raquin (Thr se Raquin, 1867), a profound study of the feelings of remorse that befall a murderer and his accomplice. IN last years Zola created two more cycles in his life: Three Cities (Les Trois Villes, 1894–1898) - Lourdes, Rome, Paris; and The Four Gospels (Les Quatre vangiles, 1899–1902), which remained unfinished (the fourth volume was never written).

Zola became the first novelist to create a series of books about members of the same family. Many followed his example, incl. J. Duhamel (Pasquier's chronicles), D. Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga) and D. Masters (books about the Savages). One of the reasons that prompted Zola to choose the structure of the cycle was the desire to show the operation of the laws of heredity. The Rougon-Macquarts are the offspring of a feeble-minded woman who dies in last volume series, having reached the age of one hundred and completely lost his mind. From her children - one legitimate and two illegitimate - three branches of the family originate. The first is represented by the prosperous Rougons, members of this family appear in such novels as His Excellency Eugene Rougon (Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, 1876) - a study of political machinations during the reign of Napoleon III; Extraction (La Cur e, 1871) and Money (L "Argent, 1891), which deals with speculation in land property and securities. The second branch of the genus is the Mouret family. Octave Mouret, an ambitious philanderer in Pot-Bouille (1882), creates one of the first Parisian department stores in the pages of Ladies' Happiness (Au Bonheur des dames, 1883), while other members of the family lead more than modest lives, like the village priest Serge Mouret in the mysterious and poetic novel The Misdemeanor of Abbot Mouret (La Faute de l "Abb Mouret, 1875). Representatives of the third branch, the Macquarts, are distinguished by extreme imbalance, since their ancestor Antoine Macquart was an alcoholic. Members of this family play a prominent role in the most strong novels Zola - such as the Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris, 1873), where the atmosphere of the central market of the capital was recreated; A trap in which the life of Parisian workers in the 1860s is depicted in harsh tones; Nana (1880), whose heroine, a representative of the third generation of Macquarts, becomes a prostitute and her sexual magnetism dismays high society; Germinal (1885), Zola's greatest work, dedicated to the miners' strike in the mines of northern France; Creativity (L"Oeuvre, 1886), which includes characteristics of many famous artists and writers of the era; Earth (La Terre, 1887), a story about peasant life; The Beast Man (La B te humaine, 1890), which describes the life of railway workers, and finally, Rout (La D b cle, 1892), image Franco-Prussian War and the first major war novel in French literature.

By the time the cycle was completed, Zola enjoyed worldwide fame and, by all accounts, was the largest writer in France after V. Hugo. All the more sensational was his intervention in the Dreyfus affair (1897–1898). Zola became convinced that Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of the French general staff and a Jew, had been unfairly convicted in 1894 of selling military secrets to Germany. The exposure of the army elite, who were primarily responsible for an obvious miscarriage of justice, took the form of an open letter to the President of the Republic with the title I Accuse (J"accuse, 1898). Sentenced for libel to a year in prison, Zola fled to England and was able to return to his homeland in 1899. when the tide turned in Dreyfus' favor.

Emile Zola (1840–1902), French writer. Born on April 2, 1840 in Paris, into an Italian-French family: his father was an Italian, a civil engineer. Emil spent his childhood and school years in Aix-en-Provence, where one of his closest friends was the artist P. Cezanne.

He was less than seven years old when his father died, leaving the family in dire straits. In 1858, counting on the help of friends of her late husband, Madame Zola moved with her son to Paris.

The only happiness in life is the constant striving forward.

Zola Emile

At the beginning of 1862, Emil managed to find a place at the Ashet publishing house. After working for about four years, he quit in the hope of making a living through literary work.

In 1865, Zola published his first novel - a tough, thinly veiled autobiography, La Confession de Claude (1865). The book brought him scandalous fame, which was further increased by the ardent defense of E. Manet’s painting in his review of the art exhibition of 1866.

Once upon a time the terrible words were uttered: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” - because of this destructive error, humanity suffered for two thousand years.

Zola Emile

The first books in the series did not arouse much interest, but the seventh volume, The Trap (L'Assommoir, 1877), achieved great success and brought Zola both fame and fortune. He purchased a house in Meudon near Paris and gathered around him young writers (among them were J.C. Huysmans and Guy de Maupassant), who formed the short-lived “naturalistic school.”

In the last years of his life, Zola created two more cycles: Three Cities (Les Trois Villes, 1894–1898) - Lourdes, Rome, Paris; and The Four Gospels (Les Quatre Évangiles, 1899–1902), which remained unfinished (the fourth volume was never written).

The writer is both a researcher and an experimenter.

Zola Emile

Zola became the first novelist to create a series of books about members of the same family. His example was followed by many, including J. Duhamel (Pasquier's chronicles), D. Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga) and D. Masters (books about the Savages). One of the reasons that prompted Zola to choose the structure of the cycle was the desire to show the operation of the laws of heredity.

The Rougon-Macquarts are the offspring of a feeble-minded woman who dies in the last volume of the series, having reached the age of one hundred and completely lost her mind. From her children - one legitimate and two illegitimate - three branches of the clan originate. The first is represented by the prosperous Rougons, members of this family appear in such novels as His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, 1876) - a study of political machinations during the reign of Napoleon III; Extraction (La Curée, 1871) and Money (L’Argent, 1891), which deals with speculation in land and securities.

The second branch of the genus is the Mouret family. Octave Mouret, an ambitious philanderer in Pot-Bouille (1882), creates one of the first Parisian department stores in the pages of Ladies' Happiness (Au Bonheur des dames, 1883), while other members of the family lead more than modest lives, like the village priest Serge Mouret in the mysterious and poetic novel The Misdemeanor of Abbot Mouret (La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret, 1875).

Superstition weakens and makes you stupid.

Zola Emile

Representatives of the third branch, the Macquarts, are extremely unstable, since their ancestor Antoine Macquart was an alcoholic.

Members of this family play a prominent role in Zola's most powerful novels, such as The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris, 1873), which recreates the atmosphere of the capital's central market; A trap in which the life of Parisian workers in the 1860s is depicted in harsh tones; Nana (1880), whose heroine, a representative of the third generation of Macquarts, becomes a prostitute and her sexual magnetism dismays high society; Germinal (1885), Zola's greatest work, dedicated to the miners' strike in the mines of northern France; Creativity (L’Oeuvre, 1886), which includes characteristics of many famous artists and writers of the era; Land (La Terre, 1887), a narrative of peasant life; The Man-Beast (La Bête humaine, 1890), which describes the life of railway workers, and finally, La Débâcle (1892), a depiction of the Franco-Prussian War and the first major war novel in French literature.

By the time the cycle was completed (1903), Zola enjoyed worldwide fame and, by all accounts, was the largest writer in France after V. Hugo. All the more sensational was his intervention in the Dreyfus affair (1897–1898). Zola became convinced that Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of the French general staff and a Jew, had been unfairly convicted in 1894 of selling military secrets to Germany.

A work of art is a piece of nature filtered through the artist's temperament.

Zola Emile

The exposure of the army leadership, which bears the main responsibility for the obvious miscarriage of justice, took the form of an open letter to the President of the Republic with the title I Accuse (J'accuse, 1898). Sentenced to a year in prison for libel, Zola fled to England and was able to return to his homeland in 1899, when the situation had changed in Dreyfus's favor.

Years of life: from 04/02/1840 to 09/28/1902

French writer and public figure. One of the founders and ideologists of naturalism in literature.

Emile Zola, whose works occupy leading place in French naturalism, he himself was half French. Half-Greek, half-Italian, his father was a civil engineer in Provence, where he headed the construction of water networks for the city of Aix. Mother Zola, originally from northern France, was a hardworking and disciplined woman. She could not find a use for herself in cheerful, cheerful Provence. Emil's father died when the boy was six years old, leaving his wife alone with increasing poverty and a lawsuit against the city of Aix. Much of Zola’s work can be explained as a reaction to the views of his strong, domineering mother, to her dissatisfaction with the bourgeoisie, which did not accept this woman, and to the hatred she had for the local poor, fearing to slide to the same level. If the thesis is true that the best critics of society are those whose own position in this society is flawed, then Zola was indeed destined for the role of a social novelist, and his work was a kind of revenge on the city of Aix. The fact that Zola chose sexual themes in order to express his rejection of the society that rejected him can also be considered a result of his mother’s influence. The poor are promiscuous, the middle class is hypocritical, the aristocracy is vicious - these ideas run like a red thread through all of Zola's novels.

From seventeen to twenty-seven years old, Zola led a bohemian life, succeeding in nothing. He studied in Paris and Marseille, but never received a diploma. He wrote articles for newspapers, including on art. At one time, Zola rented a house with his friend from his youth from Aix, the artist Cezanne. He also worked as an employee for the Parisian publisher and bookseller Hachette. At times he financial position it was so heavy that he had to catch sparrows in the attics and fry them. Zola had a mistress, Alexandrina Meley, a serious, prudent girl, with developed maternal instincts and the ambition of a middle-class person. Even Zola's mother approved of their relationship. This relationship gave the writer much-needed emotional peace for his work. In 1870, Alexandrina and Emil got married.

Zola considered his life's work to be a series of twenty novels, conceived in imitation of " Human Comedy"Balzac and tracing the fate of one family during the Second Empire. The ancestor of this family came from the city of Plassans in Provence (apparently Aix). The legitimate descendants, the Rougon family, are very active, smart people, supporting Louis Napoleon during the coup of 1851 and coming to power with him. One of them, Eugene, becomes a minister in the government, where his natural unscrupulousness contributes to his career. The other, illegitimate branch of the family, the Mourets, are middle-class entrepreneurs. One of the representatives of this family opens a huge department store in Paris and builds his fortune on the ruin of small competitors. Another illegal branch is the Makkars. These are proletarians, from among whom come thieves, prostitutes, and alcoholics. Among them, Nana and Etienne are the main characters of the two novels discussed in this book. Zola's task is to explore every corner of French society, to reveal the vices that reign there. His novels are a series of consistent attacks on the officially proclaimed ideals of the time: the honor of the army, the piety of the clergy, the sanctity of the family, the work of the peasant, the glory of the empire.

The planned novels had just begun to be created when the Second Empire unexpectedly collapsed. The flow of events forced Zola to compress the time frame of the novels, and this was done very clumsily. These novels create situations that are more suitable for the seventies and eighties than for the fifties and sixties. The defeat of France at Sedan gave Zola the material to create his great war novel, "Routage." Others important works, standing apart from those already mentioned are "Earth", a dark and violent study of peasant life, and "Trap", a description of the degradation of the human personality under the influence of alcohol. Although the main characters of these works are related, each of the novels has own merits and can be read independently of others.

Zola, who once worked as a journalist, knew very well that books that touch people's feelings generate income. His works, written with this in mind, made their author rich. Over time, he satisfied the ambitions of a man who owes everything only to himself. Zola moved into a “posh” house in a fashionable area and furnished it with luxurious pomp. Despite all his efforts, Zola was never able to achieve his other vain goal - to get into the French Academy, although he remained in history as its “eternal candidate”.

Enemies tried to present the writer as a monster of vice, swimming in garbage. His defenders, on the contrary, saw him as a fierce moralist, denouncing the vices of the era. Zola himself preferred to be an independent and objective scientist, exploring the results of the influence of heredity and environment on human personality. In this way he resembles the French historian Taine, who argued that vice and goodness are the same natural products as sugar and vitriol. Zola was certainly not a scientist. He had to rely on the psychology of the time, which was based on purely materialistic views. Thus, it was recognized that antisocial behavior is the result of degeneration nervous system passed on by inheritance. Zola was so fascinated by the prestige of science that he viewed his novels as laboratories where experiments were carried out with heredity, placed under certain conditions of existence. The writer also described the reaction of heredity to these conditions. Similar theoretical views are reflected in Zola's work "The Experimental Novel". There are probably few authors who could show such a lack of understanding of their own creative process.

Zola's own literary practice is better known as "naturalism." She established a tradition somewhat different from Flaubert's early realism. He was equally interested in the phenomena of things and the truthful reproduction of reality. But he had no inclination to describe vices and disgraces. Moreover, Flaubert's realism represented literary program devoid of any metaphysics. This is why the impact of these two writers was different. Flaubert's followers were sophisticated stylists concerned with perfecting art for its own sake, while Zola's followers were more ponderous social novelists like Frank Norris.

As soon as Rougon-Macquart was written, Zola chose a different, more optimistic direction in literature. He began to sincerely believe that society was capable of correcting itself. Hints of this appear already in the novel Germinal. This is more obvious in the essay “Labor”, which depicts a utopian, socialist society. One of the reasons for this turn of events can be found in the change in Zola's personal life. For many years, his marriage to Alexandrina was marred by infertility. In 1888, he falls in love with a young laundress Jeanne Rosera, buys her a house and, to his great joy, becomes the father of two children. When rumors of this reached Madame Zola, she, in a rage, smashed some of her husband's luxurious furniture. But Zola's new relationship brought relief from self-doubt as a man. Over time, he achieves satisfaction, but his creativity gradually loses its power and becomes almost sentimental.

His famous defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army convicted on trumped-up charges of espionage that shook the Third Republic to its core, however, was far from sentimental. In this case, the writer’s opponents were old enemies - the army, the church, the government, the upper strata of society, anti-Semites, wealthy people, who today would be called the “establishment.” The salvo that Zola sent towards this goal was a letter addressed to President Fauré and published in Aurora - “I Accuse.” Zola deliberately faced charges of defamation and succeeded. The courtroom became the arena he wanted to acquire. The court issued a guilty verdict, against which an appeal was filed. The second trial began, but shortly before the verdict, Zola, reluctantly and on the advice of his lawyers, left for England. Here he bravely endured all the inconveniences of the English climate and cuisine until the honor and dignity of Dreyfus were restored.