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Zola's Apprenticeship to Journalism (1865–70)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Zola's literary career opened in 1864 with the publication of the Contes à Ninon. Between then and 1881 he produced fourteen out of the thirty-one novels he was to write. Concurrently, he was writing almost continuously for the press; it was only after 1881 that, for reasons which I have suggested elsewhere, he gave up this activity, and for a long while desisted from all regular newspaper work. In this considerable journalistic output, attention is usually accorded only to those portions that Zola himself thought worthy to be preserved, and which he accordingly published in what are by custom referred to as his Œuvres critiques. Of the nine volumes grouped under this heading, one only, Mes Haines, contains a selection from his pre-1870 critical writing: it consists almost entirely of essays published originally in the Lyons newspaper Le Salut public in 1865 and 1866; they are interesting enough, one would think, to arouse curiosity concerning the rest of Zola's newspaper contributions during the years when he was making his name as a novelist and before he had emerged as the author of the Rougon-Macquart cycle.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956
References
1 Emile Zola (Oxford, 1953), pp. 135–137.
2 Correspondance, Bernouard ed., pp. 265, 290.
3 Pref. (dated 1 Oct. 1874) to Nouveaux Contes à Ninon.
4 L'Evénement. 29 June, 1 July, 25 Sept. 1866.
5 Journal des Goncourt, iii, 246 (entry dated 14 Dec. 1868).
6 Pref. (dated July 1884) to the Charpentier ed. of Les Mystères de Marseille.
7 Une Campagne, Bernouard ed., p. 265.
8 Cf. R. Dumesnil, L'Epoque réaliste et naturaliste (Paris, 1945), pp. 232–233.
9 F. Doucet, L'Esthétique d'Emile Zola et son application à la critique (The Hague, 1923), pp. 76–78; A. Zévaès, “La Premiére Chronique d'Emile Zola,” Nouvelles littéraires, 14 May 1932. Zévaès prints the letter Zola wrote to the editor, Eugène Paz, to accompany his first article; Zola declares his ambition: “être accepté comme collaborateur régulier, avoir un nombre fixé d'articles par mois, et toucher un traitement fixe,” and ends his letter with the remarkable adjuration: “Vous portez César et sa fortune: conduisez-les à bon port.”
10 Le Petit Journal, 6 Feb, 1 June 1865.
11 Cf. G. Robert, “Une Polémique entre Zola et le Mémorial d'Aix en 1868,” Arts et Livres, No. 6 (1946), 5–23.
12 Bonjour Monsieur Zola (Paris, 1954), p. 67.
13 G. Robert, La Terre d'Emile Zola (Paris, 1952), p. 13 n.
14 Letter, dated 24 Sept. 1878, to Félicien Champsaur, in connection with the biography the latter was preparing in the “Hommes d'aujourd'hui” series; quoted by A. Artinian, “Lettres inédites de Zola,” Présence de Zola (Paris, 1953), pp. 235–239.
15 M. G. Conrad, Emile Zola (Berlin, 1906), p. 77 (“Sie war in ihrer Jugend Verkäuferin gewesen”); R. de Gourmont, Epilogues, 3e série (Paris, 1905), p. 99 (“… fille d'un restaurateur de faubourg et qui servait elle-même Coupeau et Gueule-d'Or”).
16 They were related first by Alexis, Emile Zola, noies d'un ami (Paris, 1882), pp. 66 ff.
17 L. W. Tancock, “Some Early Critical Work of Emile Zola,” MLR, xm (1947), 43–57.
18 Le Figaro, 15 May 1867. On 4 April Zola had written to Valabrègue: “J'ai dû, pour quelque temps, quitter le Figaro” (Correspondance, p. 299).
19 L'Evénement, 2 Feb. 1866: review of Benjamin Pifteau, Deux routes de la vie: “Les deux routes sont celles de l‘égoïsme et du dévouement. Or, il arrive que l‘égoïsme l'emporte. M. Pifteau ignore donc que ces vérités-là ne se disent que lorsqu'on se nomme Stendhal ou Balzac.”
20 See his 2 letters to the brothers, 21 Feb., 14 Apr. 1866(Correspondance, p. 282).
21 L'Evénement, 7 Apr. 1866. Cf. Tancock (see n. 17), p. 51.
22 See Correspondance, p. 353.
23 L'Evénement, 7 Nov. 1866. On 18 Oct. Zola had inserted an article on “Le Dictionnaire de M. Littré.”
24 In another respect this article is portentous, since it contains the first instance of the word “naturaliste” applied by Zola to a writer. For a fuller discussion of this point and its implications, see my “Origin of the terms naturalisme, naturaliste,” French Studies, viii (1954), 109–121.
25 Another possible source of this novel is Ulbach's Le Jardin du chanoine, reviewed by Zola in L'Evénement, 20 March 1866. See Tancock, p. 50.
26 It is curious that the first occasion Zola ever discussed Dumas in print (in the course of a review of L'Affaire Clémenceau, L'Evénement, 29 June 1866) he employed the most adulatory terms, such as he usually reserved for Balzac and Flaubert.
27 See H. Massis, Comment Emile Zola composait ses romans (Paris, 1906), pp. 70–71; and cf. Zola's quasi-prophetic remark in a review of the anonymous Mémoires d'une biche russe (L'Evénement, 29 March 1866;: “J'attends l'histoire vraie du demi-monde, si jamais quelqu'un ose écrire cette histoire.”
28 L'Evénement illustré, 10 May 1868.
29 Emile Zola raconté par sa fille (Paris, 1931), pp. 50–52; F. W. J. Hemmings, “Zola on the Staff of Le Gaulois,” MLR, l (1955), 25–29.
30 E. Lepelletier, Emile Zola, sa vie, son œuvre (Paris, 1908), pp. 150–151.
31 “Zola et Duranty,” Bulletin du bibliophile (1948), pp. 59–60.
32 “Les Vrais Amis de l'armée,” 21 Jan.; “Les Châteaux en Espagne,” 27 Jan.; “A quoi rêvent les pauvres filles,” 3 Feb.; “Lettres d'un député en tournée,” 23 April.
33 Zola's contributions to La Cloche (25 Feb. 1871–8 Nov. 1872) have been reprinted in the final volume (Mélanges, préfaces et discours) of the Bernouard edition of Zola's works. He inaugurated a weekly “Causerie du Dimanche” in Le Corsaire on 3 Dec. 1872, but as the paper fell foul of the censorship soon after, Zola had time to contribute only 3 articles. His column, “Causerie dramatique et littéraire,” in L'Avenir national, ran a little longer, from 23 Feb. to 10 June 1873. From March 1875 until Dec. 1880 he sent articles, etc., every month to the St. Petersburg journal Vestnik Evropy; a list of those that were not subsequently reprinted in the Œuvres critiques, with analyses of the more important of them, is given by J. Triomphe, “Zola collaborateur du Messager de l'Europe,” RLC, xvii (1937), 754–765. The later newspaper collaborations formed the staple of the Œuvres critiques, but several articles of considerable interest were missed out. I have attempted a critical analysis of them in a recently published paper, “Zola, Le Bien public and Le Voltaire,” RR, XLVII (1956) 103–116.