Chapter 2 Anarchy As Narrative Capital: the Emplotment Of
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Chapter 2 Anarchy as Narrative Capital: The Emplotment of Terrorism in Paris In the last chapter, we analyzed the role of anarchy in Germinal and concluded that, even though the narrative tries to efface Souvarine, his subversive politics remain a viable option throughout the novel. From Montsou to Montmartre, from “province” to Paris, we shift topological spaces as we begin our second chapter, in which we will analyze the element of anarchy in Zola’s next important “socialist” novel, Paris.1 The choice of Paris, as a continuation of Germinal, needs to be examined. The latter books of Les Rougon- Macquart series either evacuate the political altogether (L’Œuvre, Le Rêve, La Bête humaine, Le Docteur Pascal) or use it as a back-drop upon which to graft the narrative (La Terre, L’Argent, La Débâcle). Certainly, La Terre and La Débâcle include many ideological debates, but neither makes these conflicts the central theme of the novel. The first books written after Les Rougon-Macquart, Lourdes and Rome, both have specific ideological underpinnings: the debate between faith and science in the former; the politics of Leon XIII and the shifting alliances of the Church in the latter. Again, although these two novels make references to contemporary social debates, they present only a narrow segment of nineteenth-century political thought. With Paris, Zola returns to the general ideological frescoes he had painted in Germinal. From its initial conception, Zola mentioned that Paris would treat the socialist question: “On trouvera dans Paris ‘une incursion dans l’au-delà,’ ‘de l’idéalisme,’ ‘l’avenir du socialisme,’ 1 Unless otherwise stated, all references to the novel come from Emile Zola’s Œuvres Complètes (Volume VII) of the Cercle du Livre Précieux edition by Henri Mitterand (1966). 66 Explosive Narratives ‘une apothéose’” (Ternois 248). When a journalist asked him what he would specifically say about the socialist movement in his work, Zola responded: “‘Je n’ai aucune idée exacte sur cette question, bien que je me propose de la traiter... Le socialisme aura sa part dans mon livre, mais je ne sais pas ce qu’elle sera’” (Ternois 249). In the Ebauche to Lourdes, Zola makes it explicit that he wants to portray in his novel all the social currents of the time: “‘L’histoire du socialisme... L’état très net de la question sociale. Les différentes écoles..., les solutions proposées... Enfin toute la bataille sociale dans sa violence, la lutte pour la vie. Et à l’horizon, la grande aurore qui se lève’” (Ternois 291). That Germinal reveals itself as the background text that informs this desire, a palimpsest of sorts, becomes evident when he writes: “‘Un grand fond de souffrances, comme dans ‘Germinal’... Un coin de faubourg abominable, l’enfer de Paris... Le cri des misérables aboutis- sant au monde nouveau’” (Ternois 291). Furthermore, and of utmost importance to the present study, anarchy becomes the central political discourse in the novel, thus providing an excellent opportunity to study Zola’s own evolving and shifting thoughts on the matter. As Paris will demonstrate, Souvarine’s disappearance into the enigmatic “là-bas,” at the end of Germinal, does not signal Zola’s last word on anarchy. Paris is the last episode of the trilogy entitled Les Trois Villes, in which the reader follows the adventures of a single character, a priest named Pierre Froment, through his voyages to Lourdes, Rome and the French capital. The physical journey is accompanied by a spiritual one, in which Pierre loses all faith in the Catholic dogma, falling into a nihilist and solipsistic denial of the world, only to be rescued at the end of Paris through his marriage with Marie and the foundation of his own family. The last novel in the series thus weaves together two parallel stories: in the style of “scènes de la vie privée,” we have a sentimental education: the priest’s reunification with his brother Guillaume, his love for his sibling’s fiancée, and his eventual marriage to her; in the style of “scènes de la vie publique,” we have a political plot that confounds a terrorist attack by Guillaume’s friend, Salvat, and the search and chase for the culprit throughout the novel, culminating in his execution. The sentimental education is doubled by two love affairs, a sterile, “symbolist” one between la Princesse de Rosemonde and Hyacinthe Duvillard, and an “incest”-like triangle .