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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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.
1 Reconquista (Mexico City and Barcelona: E. Gómez de la Puente, 1908).
2 Mi Diario (Guadalajara: Imprenta de la Gaceta de Guadalajara, 1908), i, 158 (entry of 4 Oct. 1893).
3 Compare for instance Covarrubias's words on pp. 212-213 of Reconquista with Gamboa's constantly repeated exhortations in Mi Diario to his countrymen to awake from the lethargy that seemed to grip them.
4 L'Œuvre, Œuvres complètes d'Emile Zola, ed. LeBlond (Paris: Bernouard, 1929), xv, 403.
5 Ibid., 412-414.
6 Mi Diario, loc. cit.
7 L'Œuvre, 404 (note of M. LeBlond).
8 Mi Diario. vol. iii (Mexico City: E. Gómez de la Puente, 1920), entries of 11 April 1901 and all entries of March, 1902.
9 Ibid., 61 (entry of 4 May 1901). See also further references to this experience in the entries of 1 July 1901, 7 April 1902 and 4 May 1904.
10 Ibid., 141 (entry of 22 Feb. 1902).
11 Ibid., 205 (entry of 24 Dec. 1902). See also entries of 23 and 24 Jan. and 22 March 1903.
12 Reconquista, 10-11; L'Œuvre, 33.
13 Reconquista, 11; L'Œuvre, loc. cit.
14 Reconquista, 172; see also pp. 12-15.
15 L'Œuvre, 393.
16 Reconquista, 181-182, 191-193; L'Œuvre, passim.
17 Reconquista, 167; L'Œuvre, 279-280.
18 Reconquista, 7-8; L'Œuvre, 50.
19 Reconquista, 61.
20 L'Œuvre, 46.
21 Reconquista, 181; L'Œuvre, 53.
22 Reconquista, 218-220; L'Œuvre, 271, 337.
23 Reconquista, 67-70; L'Œuvre, passim.
24 Reconquista, 58.
25 L'Œuvre, 43.
26 Ibid., 410 (L'Ebauche).
27 Reconquista, 63.