Zola's L'œuvre and Reconquista of Gamboa

Extract

Although Federico Gamboa is often called the leading exponent of literary naturalism in Mexico and as such was inevitably a follower of Zola, it is difficult to demonstrate that he borrowed heavily or continuously from the French master. His work provides only scattered examples of direct appropriation from Zola and the latter's influence on him was rather general than specific, bearing mainly on his choice of subject-matter, method of treatment and overall social outlook. But in at least one novel it is possible to see more than this general influence, to find evidence of an attempt on Gamboa's part not only to imitate Zola but to take a form already developed by his predecessor and to turn it to his own philosophic and artistic ends. That novel is Reconquista. Lacking specific declarations from Gamboa himself, we cannot reach definite conclusions, but certain evidence indicates that the work may have been based on Zola's L'Œuvre, based on it not as an imitation but as an answer to the basic idea that Zola had expressed in that long and turgid novel.