ZOLA AS A ROMANTIC WRITER
ZOLA AS A ROMANTIC WRITER
I
curuous to notice how persistently M. Zola is misunderstood. How strangely he is misinterpreted even by
those who conscientiously admire the novels of the "man of
the iron pen." For most people Naturalism has a vague meaning. It is a sort of inner cirde of realism-a kind of diametric
opposite of romanticism, a theory of fiction wherein things
are represented "as they really are," inexorably, with the truthfulness of a camera. This idea can be shown to be far from
right, that Naturalism, as understood by Zola, is but a form
of romanticism after all.
Observe the methods employed by the novelists who profess and call themselves "realists" -Mr. Howells, for instance. Howells's characters live across the street from us ,
they are "on our block." We know all about them, about
their affairs, and the story of their lives. One can go even
further. We ourselves are Mr. Howells's characters, so long
as we are well behaved and ordinary and bour;geois, so long
as we are not adventurous or not rich or not unconvention_al. If w_e are otherwise, if things commence to happen to
~, if we kili a m~ or two, or get mixed up in a tragic affa.tr, or do something on a large scale, such as the amassing
of enormous wealth or power or fame, Mr. Howells cuts
our acquaintance at once. He will none of us if we are out
of the usual.
This is the real Realism. It is the smaller details of everyday life, things that are likely to happen between lunch and
supper, small passions, restricted emotions, dramas of the reception-room, tragedies of an afternoon call, crises involving
cups of tea. Every one will admit there is no romance here.
The novel is interesting-which is after all the main pointbut it is the commonplace tale of commonplace people made
into a novel of far more than commonplace charm. Mr. Howells is not uninteresting; he is simply not romantic. But that
Zola
should be quoted
as a realist, and as a realist of realists,
.
.
1s a strange pervers1on.
Reflect a moment upon his choice of subject and character
and episode. The Rougon-Macquart live in a world of their
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own; they are not of our lives any more than are the Don
Juans, the Jean Valjeans, the Ruy Blases, the Marmions, or
the Ivanhoes. We, the bour;geois, the commonplace, thc ordinary, have no part nor lot in the R.ougon-Macquart, in
Lourdes, or in Rtmze; it is not our world, not because our
social position is different, but because wc are ordinary. To be
noted of M. Zola we must leave the rank and the file, either
run to the forefront of the marching world, or fall by the
roadway; we must separare ourselves; we must become individual, unique. The naturalist takes no note of common people, common in so far as their interests, their lives, and the
things that occur in them are common, are ordinary. Terrible
things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic tale.
They must be twisted from the ordinary, wrenched out from
the quiet, uneventful round of every-day life, and flung into
the throes of a vast and terrible drama that works itself out in
unleashed passions, in blood, and in sudden death. Toe world
of M. Zola is a world of big things; the enormous, thc formidable, the terrible, is what counts; no teacup tragedies
here. Here Nana holds her monstrous orgies, and dies horribly, her face distorted to a frightful mask; Etienne Lantier,
carried away by the strike of coa! miners of Le Voreux, (the
strike that is almost war), is involved in the vast and fearful
catastrophe that comes as a clímax of the great drama; Claude
Lantier, disappointed, disillusioned, acknowledging the futility of his art after a life of effort, hangs himself to his huge
easel; Jacques Lantier, haunted by an hereditary insanity, all
his natural desires hideously distorted, cuts the throat of the
girl he loves, and is ground to pieces under the wheels of his
own locomotive; Jean Macquart, soldier and tiller of the
fields, is drawn into the war of 1870, passes through the terrible scenes of Sedan and the Siege of Paris only to bayonet
to death his truest friend and swom brother-at-arms in the
streets of the buming capital.
Everything is extraordinary, imaginative, grotesque even,
with a vague note of terror quivering throughout like the vibration of an ominous and low-pitched diapason. It is all romantic, at times unmistakably so, as in Le Rhe or Rome,
closely resembling the work of the greatest of all modem romanticists, Hugo. We have the same huge dramas, the same
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enormous scenic effects, the same love of the extraordinary,
the vast, the monstrous, and the tragic.
Naturalism is a form of romanticism, not an inner circle of
realism. Where is the realism in the Rougon-Macquart? Are
such things likely to happen between lunch and supper? That
Zola's work is not purely romantic as was Hugo's, lies chiefly
in the choice of Milieu. These great, terrible dramas no longer
happen among the personnel of a feudal and Renaissance nobility, those who are in the fore-front of the marching world,
but among the lower-almost the lowest-classes; those
who have been thrust or wrenched from the ranks who are
falling by the roadway. This is not romanticism-this drama
of the people, working itself out in blood and ordure. Ir is
not realism. It is a school by itself, unique, somber, powerful
beyond words. It is naturalism.
The Wave, June 27, 1896
Frank Norris. Novels and Essays. New York: Library of America, 1986.