Notes INTRODUCTION I. Emile Zola: An Introductory Study of his Novels, revised edition (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964), pp. 44-5. 2. 'The family whose history I will relate will represent the great democratic revolution of our age; from the people, this family will penetrate into the educated classes and will achieve the highest offices, displaying both infamy and talent. This assault on the heights of society by those who in the last century were regarded as people of no account is one of the great developments of our age. My work will, for this very reason, be a study of the contemporary bourgeoisie.' (Notes de travail, B.N. MS. Nouv. acq.fr. 10303, fol. 76 ['Premier plan remis a Lacroix', 1869].) 3. The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (London: Abacus, 1977), p. 391. 4. Ibid., p. 283. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 286. 7. Ibid., p. 288. 8. F.W.J. Hemmings, The Life and Times of Emile Zola (London: Paul Elek, 1977), p. 9. 9. See Jean Borie, Zola et les mythes ou de la nausee au salut (Paris: Seuil, 1971), pp. 15-40; and.Sandy Petrey, 'Obscenity and Revolution', Diacritics, III (Fall 1973), 22-6. 10. See Ferdinand Brunetiere, Le Roman naturaliste (Paris: Calmann Levy, 1882); and Emile Faguet, Zola (Paris: Eymeoud, 1903). 11. Ira N. Shor, 'The Novel in History: Lukacs and Zola', Clio, 11 (1972), 19-41 (p. 20). PART I THE BOURGEOIS WORLD WASTE AND PARASITISM 1. Notes de travail, B.N. MS. Nouv. acq. fr. 10345, fol. 3 ('Notes generales sur la marche de l'oeuvre'). 2. Michel Butor has shown that, throughout the Rougon-Macquart cycle, the symbol of blood is equated with the themes of common hereditary guilt and usurpation: see 'Emile Zola, roman experimental, et la flamme bleue', Critique, 239 (1967), 407-37. 193 194 Notes to Waste and Parasitism 3. 'With another goodnight kiss, they fell asleep. And, on the ceiling, the blob oflight became round like a terrified eye, wide open and staring fixedly at these pale, sleeping bourgeois, sweating in their dreams with criminal fear and seeing blood raining down in their bedroom, the large drops changing into gold coins on the floor.' 4. 'Thus it was that this grotesque figure, this pale, paunchy, flabby bourgeois became, in a single night, a formidable gentleman whom no one dared to laugh at any more. For he now had blood on his hands.' 5. 'He thought that he saw for an instant, as in the middle of a flash of lightning, the future of the Rougon-Macquart, a pack of unleashed and sated appetites, in a blaze of gold and blood.' 6. 'An unleashing of appetites . .. Aristide's appetite for money; Sidonie's appe­ tite for well-being; Renee's appetite ofluxury and sensual pleasure; Max­ ime's growing appetite without moral restraint.' (Notes de travail, B.N. MS. Nouv. acq.fr. 10282, fol. 221.) 7. 'The greedy throng made its way into surroundings of luxury, light and warmth, like a sensuous bath in which the musky scent of the ladies' gowns mingled with a faint aroma of game picked out with shreds of lemon.' 8. See Philippe Bonnefis, 'Le bestiaire d'Emile Zola', Europe, 468-9 (1968), 97-109. 9. 'According to popular opinion, the tradition of the Rougon-Macquart fam­ ily was to devour each other; and the onlookers, instead of separating them, would rather have incited them to bite each other.' 10. 'I have produced only wolves ... a whole family, a whole litter of wolves ... each of them has taken a bite; their lips are still covered in blood.' 11. 'The smallness of this hand, hovering pitilessly over a gigantic prey, ended by becoming disquieting; and as, without effort, it tore asunder the entrails of the enormous city, it seemed to assume a strange reflex of steel in the blue of the twilight.' 12. 'The coup d'eeat helped them to realise this dream of good things which had been tormenting them for forty years. And what guzzling, what indigestion over it all when the good things came!' 13. '[Le Ventre de Paris] complements La Curee, it is the scramble for the spoils of the middle classes, the sensual erUoyment ofrich food and quiet, undisturbed digestion ... In reality, the same degeneration, the same moral and social decomposition.' (Notes de travail, B.N. MS. Nouv. acq.fr. 10338, fols 49-50.) 14. Notes de travail, B.N. MS. Nouv. acq.fr. 10345, fol. 15 ('Diflerences entre Balzac et moi'). 15. 'Blinded, drowned, his ears ringing, his stomach crushed by everything he had seen, guessing at the presence of new and never-ending mountains of food, he prayed for mercy and was gripped by a terrible desire thus to die of hunger, in the midst of Paris gorged with food, at the moment of this dazzling awakening of the Halles.' 16. 'The giant Halles, strong and overflowing with food, had hastened the crisis. They seemed to him like a satiated and digesting beast, a well­ stuffed Paris nurturing its fatness, passively supporting the Empire. They surrounded him with huge breasts, monstrous hips, round faces, like never-ending arguments against a body as thin as a martyr and a face yellow with discontent. The Halles were the shopkeepers' belly, the belly of the ordinary, respectable people, ballooning with well-being, shining in the Notes to Leadership 195 sun, finding that everything happened for the best and that never before had people of peaceable habit been so wonderfully plump.' 17. 'The shop was filled with a crowd of Lisas, showing off their broad shoul­ ders, the strength of their arms, their rounded breasts so hard and passion­ less that they aroused no more lustful thoughts than a belly would.' 18. 'Lisa's thick-set profile, with its soft curves and swelling bosom, was like the effigy of a fattened queen in the midst of all this bacon and raw meat.' 19. Angus Wilson, Emile Zola: An Introductory Study of his Novels, revised edition (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1964), p. 45. 20. 'I'm grateful to the Government when my business is doing well, when I can eat my meals in peace, and when I can sleep without being woken up by gunfire ... It was a terrible mess, wasn't it, in 1848? Uncle Gradelle - a good man - showed us his books for that period. He lost more than six thousand francs ... And now that we have the Empire, everything's going well, trade is good .. Of course I take advantage of favourable circumstances and of course I support a Government which helps trade. Ifit does criminal things, I don't want to know about it. I do know that I don't commit any crimes .. .' 21. 'total, egoistic enclosure, rejection of the outside world, great heat, great importance offood, digestion and sleep, serenity oflife, absolute respect for the family as a value, complete renunciation of "normal" sexual pleasures.' (Zola et les mythes, ou de la nausee au salut [Paris: Seuil, 1971], p. 149.) 22. 'The bed was especially remarkable, with its four mattresses, its many blankets, its eiderdown, its soft, belly-like shape in the clammy depths of the alcove. It was a bed built for sleep.' 23. The themes of waste, dissipation and parasitism also inform Zola's treat­ ment of the working classes (especially in L 'Assommoir, where Lantier is the wastrel-parasite par excellence, literally eating Gervaise out of house and home), but they are not treated in the context of the themes ofleadership and social responsibility. 24. 'It seemed as if some wind of sensuality had come in from the street and was sweeping a whole vanished epoch out of the proud mansion, carrying away the Muffats' past, a century of honour and religious faith which had fallen asleep beneath the lofty ceilings.' 25. On the house as a symbol of the body, see Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, edited and translated by James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1967), p. 381ff. 26. 'The house seemed to have been built over an abyss in which men - their possessions, their bodies, their very names - were swallowed up without leaving a trace of dust behind them.' 27. 'In the midst of the disintegration of the household and the servants' frenzied orgy of waste, there was still a mass of riches stopping up the holes and overflowing the ruins.' LEADERSHIP 1. For an excellent anatomy of Zola's revolutionaries, see Aime Guedj, 'Les revolutionnaires de Zola', Les Cahiers naturalistes, 36 (1968), 123-37 (p. 135). 196 Notes to Leadership 2. 'When it came to the means of destroying the old order he was vaguer, jumbling up his odd bits of reading, and not hesitating, with such an ignorant audience, to embark on explanations he could not follow himself.' 3. Pluchart is portrayed as a self-serving political careerist: 'Depuis cinq ans, il n'avait plus donne un coup de lime, et il se soignait, se peignait surtout avec correction, vaniteux de ses succes de tribune; mais il gardait des raideurs de membres, les ongles de ses mains larges ne repoussaient pas, manges par le fer. Tres actif, il servait son ambition, en battant la province sans relache, pour le placement de ses idees' ('He had not touched a file for five years now, and he took great care of his appearance, especially his hair, and was very proud of his success as an orator; but he was still awkward in his movements, and the nails on his broad fingers had not grown for they had been eaten away by iron.