Emile Zola

Emile Zola , writer French (Paris, April 2nd 1840 - Paris, September 29th 1902), is regarded as the leader of the naturalism. He played a great part in the revision of the lawsuit of Alfred Dreyfus.

Biography

- Only sons of Francesco Zola (Venice, August 7th 1796 - Paris, March 27th 1847), Italian engineer which will work with Aix-en-Provence, with the construction of the channel which will bear its name, and from Emilie Aubert (February 6th 1819 - October 17th 1880), originating in the Burgundian Beauce, Emile is born with Paris the April 2nd 1840. The family settles with Aix-en-Provence and knows, with dead of the father, of serious financial problems. - With the college of Aix, he is school-fellow of Paul Cézanne with which he had, later, to meet painters like Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Manet. He returns to the Lycée Saint-Louis to Paris in March 1858 and, in 1859, fails by twice the baccalaureat. - Not wanting more to be the responsibility of his mother, it gives up her studies and seeks work. The April 1860, Zola docks of the customs but leaves its employment later two months. In 1862, it is naturalized French, finds a modest employment as warehouseman, for 100 francs per month with the bookstore Hachette, where it will remain until 1866. It is on this date that it launches out in journalism.

After that, it will give up its journalistic profession to become writer full-time. He dies in 1902 asphyxiated. It proven forever if this death had been accidental or criminal…

Journalistic contribution

In a few months, it becomes at Hachette chief of the publicity and man of secula leila and ties many relationships to great names such as Taine or Littré. Since 1863, Zola collaborates in the literary columns of various newspapers. Its activity of journalist is promised to occupy in its life a choice place. As of 1866, it holds in the Événement the literary chronicle as well as an artistic chronicle. It has then as friends Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro and becomes acquainted with Edmond and Jules de Goncourt. To the Illustration , it gives two tales. He then writes in a newspaper left, the Figaro , in the Globe , the Gaulois and the Freethinking .

The writer

Enthusiastic admiror of Balzac, inspired by the example of the human Comedy Zola draws up into 1868-1869 the plans of a series of novels which will become later 20 volumes of the cycle of the Rougon-Macquart, natural history and social of a family under the Second Empire , and which will constitute its concern first during the 25 following years., and He will finish the project Rougon-Macquart in 1893. That without hiding which it is about a venal objective: to earn money being one of its obsessions with that to return to his/her mother a social dignity. It starts by writing and making appear tales, but its project is romantic and falls under the realism of Balzac and Flaubert, to which it adds an interest shown for the neuroses. With Therese Raquin, the company takes shape, but it will achieve with Rougon-Macquart, vast fresco romantic of twenty novels in which the author undertakes to describe all social environments and to show how is transmitted and in a family the same genetic tare changes. To this colossal work, Zola devotes the essence of its time during more than twenty years (Nulla dies sine linea - Not a day without a line - was its currency). It Marie in 1870 with Alexandrine Méley, but will not have children of her. The same year it is engaged as secretary by the deputy of left Alexandre Glais-Bizoin. In 1871, he is parliamentary correspondent with the Bell and regular collaborator of the Semaphore of Marseilles and the Messenger of Europe, monthly magazine in which will appear in 1878 the contemporary Novelists and, in 1879, the proclamation of the movement naturalist, the experimental Novel .

Starting from 1873, it binds with Gustave Flaubert and Alphonse Daudet. It meets Joris-Karl Huysmans, Paul Alexis, Leon Hennique and Guy of Maupassant which will become faithful evenings of Médan, place, close to Poissy where it has a small house of countryside, acquired in 1878. He becomes the leader of the naturalists. The collective volume of these Soirées will appear two years later. In 1886, Paul Cézanne which was right perhaps to be recognized in the character of Claude Lantier, the painter missed by Work , breaks with Zola. The publication of the Earth raises the polemic: the “Proclamation of the five” mark the criticism of young writers naturalists. Its old age is however illuminated by the two children whom Jeanne Rozerot gives him, its mistress since 1888.

Late vocation?

Rougon-Macquart completed, Zola undertook a new work in three volumes, the Three Cities: Heavy , appeared in 1894 and at once put at the index; Rome , in 1895; Paris , in 1898. This triptych describes the adventure of Pierre Froment, wire of a singular couple composed of an excessively pious woman and a scientist. It is the hearth of the oppositions of the end of the century: science and the return to spiritualism. the Four Gospels will follow: Pierre ended up marrying Marie, with whom it found happiness; they will have four wire, new apostles to which it belongs to carry out on the Earth justice and peace. Mathieu is the hero of Fécondité (1899), Luc that of Travail (1900), Marc that of Vérité (1902). Zola dies, whereas he works with Justice , whose Jean would have been the hero.

Engagement in the Dreyfus business

Death and honors

September 29th 1902, it dies asphyxiated, at his place, because of a blocked chimney. This death would be accidental, but being given the number of enemies whom Zola had been able to be made (in particular in the anti-supporters of Dreyfus) the thesis of the assassination forever be completely isolated. After its death, an investigation is carried out but does not arrive at any convincing conclusion. During her funerals with the Cemetery of Montmartre, a delegation of minors gone down from North ravels in front of her tomb by stressing the word " Germinal ". Pronouncing the funeral oration, Anatole France will say of Zola: " It was one moment of the conscience humaine."

Alfred Dreyfus is rehabilitated in 1906.

Ashes of Zola were transferred to the the Pantheon from Paris on June 4th 1908.

January 13rd, 1998 a ceremony took place with the the Pantheon of Paris, chaired by the Minister for Justice, Elisabeth Guigou, for the centenary of the publication in the Dawn of the open letter to the president of the Republic, I Show.

Two speeches were made, by the Prime Minister, (consultable speech on Wikisource) and by the first honorary president of the Court of appeal, Pierre DRAI, on the topic of the role of the Court of appeal in the outcome of the business Dreyfus .

Today he is regarded the figure headlight of the naturalism and as one of the French great writers of all times.

Since 1985 its house of Médan (Yvelines) became a Museum.

All first Sunday of October a pilgrimage is organized by the literary Company of the friends of Emile Zola.

Cinema

The work of Emile Zola knew a broad film adaptation, with more than sixty films carried out according to its works, in various languages. The first adaptation was that of the Pole-axe , by Ferdinand Zecca, the year even of the death of the author, in 1902.

In addition to the Pole-axe , more half of the titles of the series of Rougon-Macquart were adapted to the screen. Some, like Chick or Germinal were the subject of several adaptations, with a more or less happy fidelity with works of origin.

Out of Rougon-Macquart, the only work of Zola which will be rather largely treated with the screen is Therese Raquin .

Lastly, one can raise the following adaptations:

Series of the Three cities:

Miraklet or Within the Spoils Victor Sjöström - 1913, Sweden, N&B, dumb man. Based on Heavy .

Series of the Four Gospels :

Destruction of Will S. Davis - 1915, the United States, N&B, dumb man. Based on Work .
With Work of Henri Pouctal - 1920, France, N&B, dumb man. Based on Work .
Fruitfulness of Nicolas Evreinoff and Henri Étiévant - 1929, France, N&B, dumb man. Based on Fruitfulness .

Romance

Naïs of Raymond Leboursier - 1945, France, 117 min, N&B. With Fernandel, in the role of Toine, and Jacqueline Pagnol in that of Naïs Micoulin. Based on Naïs Micoulin . To note that Marcel Pagnol took part in the scenarisation of work for its passage to the screen.

Works

Novels and news

Lyric poems

Messidor , Fasquelle, Paris, 1898.
the hurricane , Fasquelle, Paris, 1901.

Critical works

My hatreds, talks literary and artistic , A. Faure, Paris, 1866.
My Living room , central Bookstore, Paris, 1866.
Edouard Manet, biographical and critical study , E. Dentu, Paris, 1867.
In connection with the Pole-axe , in collaboration with Edouard Rod, 1879
the experimental Novel , Carpenter, Paris, 1880; new edition with accompanying notes, GF-Flammarion, 2006.
Our dramatic authors , Carpenter, Paris, 1881.
the Novelists naturalists , Carpenter, Paris, 1881.
Naturalism with the theater, theories and the example, Carpenter, Paris, 1881.
literary Documents , Carpenter, Paris, 1881.
a campaign (1880-1881) , Carpenter, Paris, 1882.
New countryside (1896) , Fasquelle, Paris, 1897.
Humanity, truth, justice. The Dreyfus business. Letter at youth , Fasquelle, Paris, 1897.
the Four Gospels 1899.
the Business Dreyfus, the truth goes from there , Fasquelle, Paris, 1901.
I show ( the Dawn January 13rd, 1898)

See too

Naturalism (literature)

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