by Émile Zola
Within this scheme of binary opposition human beings are generally divested of that traditional ‘psychological’ intricacy with which the standard nineteenth-century novel had previously tended to endow them. Like blotches on an Impressionist canvas, they lose their individuality and become ciphers, the passive victims of hereditary flaws, physiological needs, and environmental pressures. Ruled by desire (for sex, luxury, fame, artistic creation) they are subject to a natural rhythm of flowering and decay over which they seem to have little, if any, control. Many of Zola’s narratives are organized so that for approximately the first third of the novel the main characters appear to be succeeding in their ambitions and to be achieving happiness, only to see the cup slowly and relentlessly recede from their lips. The Masterpiece is no exception, the riverine idyll of Bennecourt and the first healthy years of young Jacques being followed by a gradual descent into Parisian poverty and the eventual death of Lantier’s and Christine’s now monstrous child, ‘the blemished offspring of genius’ (p. 214).
This vision of human pettiness and frailty against a backdrop of malign fate, which is so powerful in Zola’s novels, is reinforced by the hyperbolic treatment of the inanimate. In other Rougon-Macquart novels, physical objects—a mine, a still, a train—are variously transformed into devouring monsters requiring regular human sacrifice. Here the work of art—be it Mahoudeau’s statue or Claude’s final canvas—assumes this role; while Paris itself dominates the novel like some epic being, with the Seine flowing through it as blood along a vein and the Île de la Cité the seeming repository of its soul. The city takes on an other-worldly aura of impenetrable mystery as Zola, no less than Lantier, tries repeatedly to represent its shifting, manifold aspects; and the long passages devoted to urban landscape, with their careful notation of colour and perspective, demonstrate the novelist’s desire to ‘translate’ Impressionist painting into literature with ‘the palette … of my descriptions’. At such times the character, usually Claude, loses all identity and becomes the seeing eye of the novelist registering the tiniest nuances of light and shape.
Here Zola the Naturalist really is ‘doing something’. Readers may vary in their response to the melodramatic nature of the plot of The Masterpiece, from the opening, apocalyptic thunderstorm to the final tumult of conjugal resentment and desire. They may take a more or less tolerant view of the frankness of certain scenes and of the voyeurism of the central character (and his creator). They may be impressed in differing degrees by the balanced patterning of incident and detail, by the alternating temporal rhythm of climactic moment and monotonous period. Few, however, will fail to find their imagination invaded by images of Paris and the Seine, which have the beauty and atmospheric charm of a Monet or a Sisley. For Zola, also, knew how to make an impression.
Note on the Translation
The Masterpiece (L’Œuvre) was first published in 1886. Thomas Walton’s excellent translation appeared in 1950 and remained for many years the most reliable version available in English. It has here been revised for the modern reader: colloquialisms have been brought discreetly into line with current usage, and bowdlerizations have been replaced by more faithful renderings, especially of oaths. Other instances of inappropriately dated usage have also been adjusted, and some minor errors and infelicities removed.
Select Bibliography
The Masterpiece (L’Œuvre) was serialized in Le Gil Blas from 23 December 1885 to 27 March 1886, and then published in book form by the Librairie Charpentier on 31 March. The authoritative French edition of the novel may be consulted in volume 4 (1966) of Henri Mitterand’s excellent edtion of Les Rougon-Macquart in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1960–7).
Biographies of Zola in English
Brown, Frederick, Zola: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995; London: Macmillan, 1996).
Hemmings, F.W.J., The Life and Times of Émile Zola (London: Elek, 1977).
Schom, Alan, Émile Zola: A Bourgeois Rebel (New York: Henry Holt, 1987; London: Queen Anne Press, 1987).
Philip Walker, Zola (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
Studies of Zola and Naturalism in English
Baguley, David, Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
—— (ed.), Critical Essays on Émile Zola (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1986).
Hemmings, F.W.J., Émile Zola, 2nd edn. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966; reprinted with corrections, 1970).
King, Graham, Garden of Zola: Émile Zola and his Novels for English Readers (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1978) [ends with informative section on English translations of Zola’s novels].
Lethbridge, Robert, and Keefe, Terry (eds.), Zola and the Craft of Fiction: Essays in Honour of F.W.J. Hemmings (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990).
Mitterand, Henri, Zola, Fiction and Modernity, trans. and ed. Monica Lebron and David Baguley (London: The Émile Zola Society, 2000).
Nelson, Brian, Zola and the Bourgeoisie: A Study of Themes and Techniques in ‘Les Rougon-Macquart’ (London: Macmillan, 1983).
Schor, Naomi, Zola’s Crowds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
Thompson, Hannah (ed.), New Approaches to Zola (London: The Émile Zola Society, 2003).
Wilson, Angus, Émile Zola: An Introductory Study of his Novels (London: Secker and Warburg, 1953; rev. edn., 1964).
Books in English on The Masterpiece
Guieu, Jean-Max, and Hilton, Alison, Émile Zola and the Arts: Centennial of the Publication of ‘L’Œuvre’ (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1988).
Niess, Robert J., Zola, Cézanne, and Manet: A Study of ‘L’Œuvre’ (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968).
Background and Context
Baguley, David, Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000).
Clark, T.J., The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984; London: Thames and Hudson, 1985; rev. edn., 1999).
Finke, Ulrike (ed.), French Nineteenth-Century Painting and Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972).
Herbert, Robert L., Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988).
Milner, John, The Studios of Paris: The Capital of Art in the Late Nineteenth Century (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1988).
Olsen, Donald J., The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, Vienna (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986).
Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics
Zola, Émile, L’Assommoir, trans. Margaret Mauldon, ed. Robert Lethbridge.
—— The Attack on the Mill, trans. and ed. Douglas Parmée.
—— La Bête humaine, trans. and ed. Roger Pearson.
—— La Débâcle, trans. Elinor Dorday, ed. Robert Lethbridge.
—— Germinal, trans. Peter Collier, ed. Robert Lethbridge.
—— The Ladies’ Paradise, trans. and ed. Brian Nelson.
—— Nana, trans. and ed. Douglas Parmée.
—— Pot Luck, trans. and ed. Brian Nelson.
—— The Kill, trans. and ed. Brian Nelson.
—— Thérèse Raquin, trans. and ed. Andrew Rothwell.
Chronology
1840 (2 April) Born in Paris, the only child of Francesco Zola (b. 1795), an Italian engineer, and Émilie, née Aubert (b. 1819), the daughter of a glazier. The Naturalist novelist was later proud that ‘zolla’ in Italian means ‘clod of earth’
1843 Family moves to Aix-en-Provence
1847 (27 March) Death of father from pneumonia following a chill caught while supervising work on his scheme to supply Aix-en-Provence with drinking water
1852– Becomes a boarder at the Collège Bourbon at Aix. Friendship with Baptistin Baille and Paul Cézanne. Zola, not Cézanne, wins the school prize for drawing
1858 (February) Leaves Aix to settle in
Paris with his mother (who had preceded him in December). Offered a place and bursary at the Lycée Saint-Louis. (November) Falls ill with ‘brain fever’ (typhoid) and convalescence is slow
1859 Fails his baccalauréat twice
1860 (Spring) Is found employment as a copy-clerk but abandons it after two months, preferring to eke out an existence as an impecunious writer in the Latin Quarter of Paris
1861 Cézanne follows Zola to Paris, where he meets Camille Pissarro, fails the entrance examination to the École des Beaux-Arts, and returns to Aix in September
1862 (February) Taken on by Hachette, the well-known publishing house, at first in the dispatch office and subsequently as head of the publicity department. (31 October) Naturalized as a French citizen. Cézanne returns to Paris and stays with Zola
1863 (31 January) First literary article published. (1 May) Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, which Zola visits with Cézanne
1864 (October) Tales for Ninon
1865 Claude’s Confession. A succès de scandale thanks to its bedroom scenes. Meets future wife Alexandrine-Gabrielle Meley (b. 1839), the illegitimate daughter of teenage parents who soon separated, and whose mother died in September 1849
1866 Forced to resign his position at Hachette (salary: 200 francs a month) and becomes a literary critic on the recently launched daily L’Événement (salary: 500 francs a month). Self-styled ‘humble disciple’ of Hippolyte Taine. Writes a series of provocative articles condemning the official Salon Selection Committee, expressing reservations about Courbet, and praising Manet and Monet. Begins to frequent the Café Guerbois in the Batignolles quarter of Paris, the meeting-place of the future Impressionists. Antoine Guillemet takes Zola to meet Manet. Summer months spent with Cézanne at Bennecourt on the Seine. (15 November) L’Événement suppressed by the authorities
1867 (November) Thérèse Raquin
1868 (April) Preface to second edition of Thérèse Raquin. (May) Manet’s portrait of Zola exhibited at the Salon. (December) Madeleine Férat. Begins to plan for the Rougon-Macquart series of novels
1868–70 Working as journalist for a number of different newspapers
1870 (31 May) Marries Alexandrine in a registry office. (September) Moves temporarily to Marseilles because of the Franco-Prussian War
1871 Political reporter for La Cloche (in Paris) and Le Sémaphore de Marseille. (March) Returns to Paris. (October) Publishes The Fortune of the Rougons, the first of the twenty novels making up the Rougon-Macquart series
1872 The Kill
1873 (April) The Belly of Paris
1874 (May) The Conquest of Plassans. First independent Impressionist exhibition. (November) Further Tales for Ninon
1875 Begins to contribute articles to the Russian newspaper Vestnik Evropy (European Herald). (April) The Sin of the Abbé Mouret
1876 (February) His Excellency Eugène Rougon. Second Impressionist exhibition
1877 (February) L’Assommoir
1878 Buys a house at Médan on the Seine, forty kilometres west of Paris. (June) A Page of Love
1880 (March) Nana. (May) Les Soirées de Médan (an anthology of short stories by Zola and some of his Naturalist ‘disciples’, including Maupassant). (8 May) Death of Flaubert. (September) First of a series of articles for Le Figaro. (17 October) Death of his mother. (December) The Experimental Novel
1882 (April) Pot-Bouille. (3 September) Death of Turgenev
1883 (13 February) Death of Wagner. (March) Au Bonheur des dames. (30 April) Death of Manet
1884 (March) La Joie de vivre. Preface to catalogue of Manet exhibition
1885 (March) Germinal. (12 May) Begins writing The Masterpiece (L’Œuvre). (22 May) Death of Victor Hugo. (23 December) First instalment of The Masterpiece appears in Le Gil Blas
1886 (27 March) Final instalment of The Masterpiece. (31 March) Publication of The Masterpiece in book form by Librairie Charpentier.
1887 (18 August) Denounced as an onanistic pornographer in the Manifesto of the Five in Le Figaro. (November) Earth
1888 (October) The Dream. Jeanne Rozerot becomes his mistress
1889 (20 September) Birth of Denise, daughter of Zola and Jeanne
1890 (March) The Beast in Man
1891 (March) Money. (April) Elected President of the Société des gens de lettres. (25 September) Birth of Jacques, son of Zola and Jeanne
1892 (June) The Débâcle
1893 (July) Doctor Pascal, the last of the Rougon-Macquart novels. Fêted on a visit to London
1894 (August) Lourdes, the first novel of the trilogy Three Cities. (22 December) Dreyfus found guilty by a court martial
1896 (May) Rome
1898 (13 January) ‘J’accuse’, his article in defence of Dreyfus, published in L’Aurore. (21 February) Found guilty of libelling the Minister of War and given the maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs. Appeal for retrial granted on a technicality. (March) Paris. (23 May) Retrial delayed. (18 July) Leaves for England instead of attending court
1899 (4 June) Returns to France. (October) Fecundity, the first of his Four Gospels
1901 (May) Toil, the second ‘Gospel’
1902 (29 September) Dies of fumes from his bedroom fire, the chimney having been capped either by accident or anti-dreyfusard design. Wife survives. (5 October) Public funeral
1903 (March) Truth, the third ‘Gospel’, published posthumously. Justice was to be the fourth
1908 (4 June) Remains transferred to the Panthéon
The Masterpiece
Chapter 1
Claude was passing the Hôtel de Ville and the clock was just striking two when the storm broke. He was an artist and liked to ramble around Paris till the small hours, but wandering about the Halles on that hot July evening he had lost all sense of time. Suddenly the rain began to fall so heavily and in such enormous drops that he took to his heels and careered madly along the Quai de la Grève; but then, at the Pont Louis-Philippe, furious at finding himself out of breath, he stopped. He was a fool, he thought, to be afraid of getting wet, so he made his way through the darkness—the violence of the rain was extinguishing the gas-lamps—and crossed the bridge at a more leisurely pace.
Besides, he had not very far to go. As he turned along the Quai de Bourbon, on the Ile Saint-Louis, a flash of lightning lit up the long straight line of big, old houses and the narrow roadway that runs along the bank of the Seine. It was reflected in the panes of their tall, shutterless windows and revealed for a moment their ancient, melancholy-looking façades, bringing out some of their details—a stone balcony, a balustrade, a festoon carved on a pediment—with amazing clarity. It was there Claude had his studio, in the garret of the old Hôtel du Martoy, on the corner of the Rue de la Femme-sans-Tête. The embankment, illuminated for a second, was plunged again into darkness and a mighty clap of thunder shook the whole neighbourhood from sleep.
When he reached his door, a low, old-fashioned, round-topped door encased in iron, Claude, blinded by the driving rain, groped for the bell-pull, but recoiled in amazement when he felt, huddled up in the corner, against the wood-work, a human body. Then, as the lightning flashed a second time, he caught sight of a tall girl, dressed in black, soaking wet and trembling with fright. The thunder made both of them start, then Claude cried:
‘Well, I must say, I never expected. … Who are you? What do you want?’
He could not see her now, he could only hear her sobbing and stammering an answer to his question.
‘Oh, monsieur! Please, please leave me alone! … It’s the cabman I hired at the station … he left me here, near this doorway … he turned me out of the cab. … You see, there’d been a train derailed, near Nevers, monsieur, and we … we got in four hours late, so I … I didn’t … find the person who … who should have been waiting for me at the station … I don’t know what I’m going to do … I … I’ve never been to Paris before, monsieur. … I don’t know … where I am. …’
/> She stopped as the lightning flashed again and, wide-eyed with terror, caught a momentary glimpse of this unknown place, the purple-white vision of a nightmare city. The rain had ceased. On the far bank of the Seine the irregular roofs of the row of little grey houses on the Quai des Ormes stood out against the sky, while their doors and the shutters of the little shops made their lower half a patchwork of bright colours. On the left a wider horizon opened up as far as the blue slate gables of the Hôtel de Ville, and on the right to the lead-covered dome of Saint Paul’s church. What really took her breath away though, was the Seine, the way it was built-in, and flowed so darkly through its narrow bed, between the solid piers of the Pont-Marie and the lighter arches of the new Pont Louis-Philippe, its surface peopled by a mass of extraordinary shapes—a dormant flotilla of skiffs and dinghies, a laundry-boat and a dredger moored at the wharf and, over against the other bank, barges loaded with coal, lighters full of millstone grit and, towering over them all, the iron jib of a gigantic crane. A flash, and all was gone.
‘Humbug,’ thought Claude. ‘It’s obvious what she is—a trollop, thrown out on to the street and looking for a man.’
He instinctively distrusted women. This story of an accident, of a train being late, of a bullying cabman, sounded to him like a ridiculous fabrication. When it thundered again, the girl had huddled further into the corner, terrified.
‘But you can’t spend the night there,’ said Claude, aloud this time.
The girl started to cry again, and stammered:
‘I beg you, monsieur, take me to Passy. That’s where I’m going … Passy.’