A Love Episode

A Love Episode

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Title: A Love Episode
Author: Emile Zola
Release Date: October 11, 2004 [EBook #13695]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LOVE
EPISODE ***

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PREPARER'S NOTE
This eBook was prepared from the edition published by the Societe des
Beaux-Arts in 1905 for the Comedie d'Amour Series. Registered copy
Number 153 of 500.

[Illustration: Comedie d'Amour Series]

A LOVE EPISODE
BY
EMILE ZOLA
ILLUSTRATED BY DANTAN

[Illustration: Emile Zola]

ZOLA AND HIS WRITINGS
Emile Zola was born in Paris, April 2, 1840. His father was Francois
Zola, an Italian engineer, who constructed the Canal Zola in Provence.
Zola passed his early youth in the south of France, continuing his
studies at the Lycee St. Louis, in Paris, and at Marseilles. His sole
patrimony was a lawsuit against the town of Aix. He became a clerk in
the publishing house of Hachette, receiving at first the modest
honorarium of twenty-five francs a week. His journalistic career,
though marked by immense toil, was neither striking nor remunerative.
His essays in criticism, of which he collected and published several
volumes, were not particularly successful. This was evidently not his
field. His first stories, Les Mysteres de Marseilles and _Le Voeu d'Une
Morte_ fell flat, disclosing no indication of remarkable talent. But in
1864 appeared Les Contes a Ninon, which attracted wide attention, the
public finding them charming. _Les Confessions de Claude_ was
published in 1865. In this work Zola had evidently struck his gait, and
when Therese Raquin followed, in 1867, Zola was fully launched on
his great career as a writer of the school which he called "Naturalist."
Therese Raquin was a powerful study of the effects of remorse preying
upon the mind. In this work the naturalism was generally characterized
as "brutal," yet many critics admitted that it was absolutely true to

nature. It had, in fact, all the gruesome accuracy of a clinical lecture. In
1868 came Madeleine Ferat, an exemplification of the doctrine of
heredity, as inexorable as the "Destiny" of the Greek tragedies of old.
And now dawned in Zola's teeming brain the vast conception of a
"Naturalistic Comedy of Life." It was to be Balzac "naturalized," so to
speak. The great cycle should run through the whole gamut of human
passions, foibles, motives and interests. It should consist of human
documents, of painstaking minuteness of detail and incontrovertible
truth.
The idea of destiny or heredity permeates all the works of this
portentously ambitious series. Details may be repellant. One should not
"smell" a picture, as the artists say. If one does, he gets an impression
merely of a small blotch of paint. The vast canvas should be studied as
a whole. Frailties are certainly not the whole of human nature. But they
cannot be excluded from a comprehensive view of it. The
"Rougon-Macquart series" did not carry Zola into the Academy. But
the reputation of Moliere has managed to survive a similar exclusion,
and so will the fame of Zola, who will be bracketed with Balzac in
future classifications of artistic excellence. For twenty-two years, from
La Fortune des Rougon, in 1871, to _Docteur Pascal_ in 1893, the
series continued to focus the attention of the world, and Zola was the
most talked about man in the literature of the epoch. La Fortune des
Rougon was introductory. La Curee discussed society under the second
Empire. Le Ventre de Paris described the great market of Paris. La
Conquete de Plassans spoke of life in the south of France. La Faute de
l'Abbe Mouret treated of the results of celibacy. Son Excellence Eugene
Rougon dealt with official life. L'Assommoir was a tract against the
vice of drunkenness. Some think this the strongest of the naturalist
series. Its success was prodigious. In this the marvellous talent of Zola
for minute description is evinced. Une Page d'Amour (A Love Episode)
appeared in 1878. Of Nana, 1880, three hundred thousand copies were
quickly sold. Pot-Bouille portrayed the lower bourgeoisie and their
servants. Au Bonheur des Dames treated of the great retail shops. La
Joie de Vivre came in 1884. Germinal told of mining and the misery of
the proletariat. L'Oeuvre pictured the life of artists and authors. La

Terre portrayed, with startling realism, the lowest peasant life. Le Reve,
which followed, was a reaction. It was a graceful idyl. Le Reve was
termed "a symphony in white,"