As it is with Zola's short stories so it is with his earlier novels: "La Confession de Claude" is a struggle between poetry and reality, the presentment of a soul longing for the empyrean but forced to surrender to all the horrors of degradation. The fragmentary "Vœu d'une Morte" contains indications of the same battle continuing. "Les Mystères de Marseilles" is a thing apart; but, at last, in "Thérèse Raquin" and "Madeleine Férat" realism triumphs brutally and in its first victorious hour blackens the canvas to excess. Average truth is disregarded—as Zola himself admits—and the agony is piled on to the point of nightmare. This is done, perchance, by the realist in Zola in order that no loophole may be left for the poet, also within him, to rise again.
But take the Rougon-Macquart series, and there, amid all the realism of twenty volumes, a revival of the poetic sense will be found displaying itself repeatedly. Remember the idyll of Silvère and Miette, that of Marjolin and Cadine, that of Angélique and Félicien, that of Serge and Albine, the Paradou, Hélène and Henri, the vistas of Paris from the heights of Passy, the love of Goujet for Gervaise, even that of Georges Hugon for Nana, the epic march of the miners in "Germinal," the epic charge of the cavalry at Sedan, Clotilde's communion with herself while giving suck to her babe, and all the other instances. There may be no trace of poetry and romance in "Thérèse Raquin," but Zola when writing that book must have known full well that he had only scotched, not killed, his poetic tendencies. To understand him aright, let us remember that he made his débuts at a time when science was enlarging her domain daily. For him she exercised a fascination equal to that of art. In his youth he had turned eagerly to certain scientific studies even while he was steeping himself in poetry, and later he devoured Flourens, Zimmermann, translations of the great scientists of England and Germany. He saw that there was often a deep poetry in science; he dreamt of making it manifest,—of going further,—of associating science and art, of establishing their co-relation, welding them together even in instances when to some folk they seemed to be antagonistic. His nature, as one has remarked previously, was a compound, a hybrid one, by no means unique, but such as is not often observed. "Lewis Carroll" supplies a somewhat approximate instance: in him one found the mathematician elbowing the romancer, only he did not dream of importing "Euclid" into "Alice." Zola, in doing so, or rather in doing something similar, was not entirely influenced by his own special nature, but was carried along by the spirit of his age, in which everything tended towards science. Those who remember Darwin and Faraday and Huxley and the others, and the thirst that came on so many young men in those days, will not gainsay it.
The literary critics declared, of course, and many of them declare still, that Zola was altogether wrong. Regarding Art as being so distinct, so different from Science that no amalgam could be effected, they laid down and still lay down certain rules as being necessary to salvation. That attitude was and is preposterous to the open mind which holds that no dogmas are of any account, and that of those who frame them one may say in Dante's words:
"Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa."
It is true that some critics have asserted that if there be no finality in science there is a finality in art. But in fiction, with which alone one is concerned here, the form has changed repeatedly, and on each such occasion the loud protests raised by the representatives of old and recognised schools have proved ineffectual. One rule, one dogma after another, has been set aside, and still and ever the evolution has continued. To say that the artist in fiction must do this and must not do that is to expose oneself to the ridicule, at times, even of one's contemporaries, and certainly of posterity. Take a comparatively recent epoch and think of the dogmas and the protests brought forward by the Classiques in their great contest with the Romantiques in France, and remember who, in the end, were vanquished. Thus men of conservative views may protest, but if there be a good cause for any evolution, which one or another writer may essay, it will end by triumphing in spite of all the opposition offered to it.
The art of the novelist has been often likened to that of the painter, but it does not follow that this is the only possible comparison. A novelist may liken himself to a sculptor, in fact to anybody he chooses. Nothing, moreover, is final. The world, as modern scientists have just rediscovered, and as Heraclitus asserted three and twenty centuries ago, is not a being but a becoming. Change is the universal law, even in matter; and if some minds, imprisoned within narrow ideas and formulas, find it impossible to contemplate the possibility of certain changes, they must yield to the broader minds for which everything is possible. The world's changes are reflected in its literature. Science within our own time has profoundly modified the study and the writing of history. As for the novel, the Romanticists spoke no last word, for it was not in their power to do so. Whether Zola had arisen or not, it was fatal that the novel should at last embrace many things which earlier writers of fiction had never dreamt of including in it, that it should, in a word, follow the trend of the modern mind.
Among writers, moreover, there are always many whose aim is not mere amusement. Some openly declare instruction, enlightenment, to be their purpose. Some are only half conscious of their mission, some not at all, and it happens not unfrequently that a lesson is conveyed in books where it has been never intended. At one time the drama was the form of literature which appealed most successfully to the greater number. The novel at last acquired a similar position, and it followed that the writer who wished to reach the greater number had to approach them as a novelist. That had been done long before the time of Zola, who was both a writer with a purpose and one who wished to reach the majority. Now, if an author desire to bring about some reformation of the community, it is natural that he should begin by portraying it. If he wish to elucidate certain social, scientific, and psychological problems for the common good, it is essential that he should in the first case state them. In that event, say some pedants, he must confine himself to treatises of the accepted form. But the author answers no, for such treatises would not reach the greater number, and his purpose would then remain unfulfilled. To reach them he must approach them in the only literary form for which they care: he must embody his views in novels. "I have, in my estimation," said Zola, "certain contributions to make to the thought of the world on certain subjects, and I have chosen the novel as the best means of communication. To tell me that I must not do so is nonsense. I claim it as my right, and who are you to gainsay it?"
But let us pass to another point. The oft-repeated assertion that Zola confined himself to portraying the ulcers and sores of life is contrary to fact. He undoubtedly found more evil than good in the community, and he insisted on the evil because it was that which needed remedying. But he blamed nobody for extolling the higher side of life. He denounced the writers who cast a deceptive and often poisonous glamour over the imperfections of the world, he railed at many of the people who pretended to be very good, for he was not deceived by hypocrisy and cant; but, at the same time, he never held that mankind was naturally evil. He attributed its blemishes to its social systems, its superstitions, the thousand fallacies amid which it was reared, and his whole life was a battle with those fallacies, those superstitions, and those systems.
As he contended against so many generally accepted opinions it was inevitable that his work and even his purpose should be greatly misjudged. Critics took in turn one and another volume of his Rougon-Macquart series, and pronounced condemnation on it. It was only when, after long years, the series was at last finished that some little justice was shown to the author. It should be remembered that no volume of the series is in itself a really complete work. The series indeed is the book, the volumes are but chapters of it. Besides, they ought not to be taken nowadays in the order in which they were originally published. It occasionally happens that writers are unable to produce their works in proper sequence. There have been instances when the second and fourth volumes of some literary undertaking have been published before the first and the third. So it was with the Rougon-Macquart novels. Zola was no walking encyclopædia. Every now and again it happened that he was not ready for the volume which by rights should have followed the one he had just finished. He lacked, at the moment, sufficient knowledge of the subject which that next volume was to embrace. Or else, as also happened at times, his fancy or his feelings or some combination of circumstances carried him onward, inducing him to skip a volume for a time. But he always reverted to it afterwards, like an author who, writing not twenty volumes, but one, has passed over some troublesome chapter, yet harks back and writes it at last, well knowing that his work will lack completeness and intelligibility if the gap be not filled up.
In the chronicle of Zola's career given in our previous chapters, the Rougon-Macquart volumes have been mentioned in their chronological order; but the example of the critics who, even since the completion of the series, have followed that same order in judging Zola's work is not one to imitate. By adopting that system one may certainly trace the variations in Zola's general style over a term of years; but if the series is to be judged as a whole one must take its sections in the order in which the author himself desired they should be read. This he indicated in "Le Docteur Pascal," and confirmed by word of mouth to the present writer; and it is unfortunate, perhaps, that the French publishers should still "list" the volumes chronologically, thereby leading many readers astray. Some volumes of course—notably the first and the last—occupy their proper places in the lists, but others have to be taken in a very different order.