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The Elaboration of Character in the Ébauches of Zola's Rougon-Macquart Novels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

F. W. J. Hemmings
F. W. J. Hemmings*
Affiliation:
University of Leicester, England
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Extract

In a review-article dealing with four recent monographs, all of which were to some extent devoted to problems connected with the genesis of Zola's novels, M. Jean Onimus points out that it is hard to think of another author in whom such problems can be more satisfactorily studied. The survival of the dossiers of each of the novels in the three great cycles makes it possible to elucidate almost the entire process of composition in respect of each component work and hence to generalize about this process with considerably more assurance than is permissible to the student of any other major French novelist. “Ce que nous cherchons avec tant de difficulté chez Balzac, ce que Stendhal nous livre au hasard de ses ‘pilotis’ et des commentaires en marge de ses manuscrits, ce que Gide nous a donné dans le Journal des Faux-Monnayeurs, Zola nous le révèle pour toutes ses œuvres et jusque dans le dernier détail.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , June 1966 , pp. 286 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 “Études récentes sur Émile Zola,” Revue des Sciences Humaines, fase. 110, Apr.-June 1963, 248–253.

2 N. O. Franzén, Zola et “la joie de vivre” (Stockholm, 1958); R. B. Grant, Zola's “Son Excellence Eugène Rougon” (Durham, N.C., 1961); E. M. Grant, Zola's “Germinal” (Leicester, Eng., 1962); M. Kanes, Zola's “La Bête humaine” (Berkeley, Calif., 1962).

3 Comment Emile Zola composait ses romans, p. 84. The metaphor of the forceps was used before Massis by Edmond Toulouse, Enquête médico-psychologique sur … Émile Zola (Paris, 1896), p. 269.

4 In 1952, I applied to the late Dr. Jacques Émile-Zola for permission to bring out such an edition. Permission was, however, witheld.

5 Siegfried Lemm, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Émile Zolas Rougon-Macquart und den Quatre Évangiles (nach unveröffentlichten Manuskripten). Halle a.S., 83 pp.

6 Once by Ph. Van Tieghem, Introduction à l‘étude d‘Émile Zola: “Germinal” (Paris, 1954); and once by E. M. Grant, op. cit., pp. 171–206. Professor Grant's version is considerably more reliable than Professor Van Tieghem's.

7 M. Eichengol'ts, “Romany Lurd, Rim, Pariž E. Zola i ih sud'ba v Rossii,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo, xxxiii–xxxiv, 457–590 (462–551). The mss. on which this translation was based are preserved in the Bibliothèque d'Aix-en-Provence. R. Ternois has included some extracts in his Zola et son temps (Paris, 1961).

8 Émile Zola, notes d'un ami, p. 163.

9 The ébauches of all the Rougon-Macquart novels except Le Docteur Pascal are preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français, nouvelles acquisitions, and are catalogued as follows:

La Fortune des Rougon: 10303, fols. 64–71
La Curée: 10282, fols. 294–305
Le Ventre de Paris: 10338, fols. 46–80
La Conquête de Plassans: 10280, fols. 17–33
La Faute de l'abbé Mouret: 10294, fols. 1–15
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon: 10292, fols. 96–135
L'Assommoir: 10271, fols. 157–173
Une Page d'amour: 10318, fols. 490–510
Nana: 10313, fols. 206–238
Pot-Bouille: 10321, fols. 380–391
Au Bonheur des Dames: 10277, fols. 2–22
La Joie de vivre: 10311, fols. 143–220
Germinal: 10307, fols. 402–499
L'Œuvre: 10316, fols. 261–314
La Terre: 10328, fols. 399–492
Le Rêve: 10323, fols. 216–240
La Bête humaine: 10274, fols. 338–433
L'Argent: 10268, fols. 376–477
La Débâcle: 10286, fols. 1–53.

The ébauche of Le Docteur Pascal is in the Bodmer Library, Geneva. I am greatly indebted to Herr Hans-Jost Frei, of Zürich, who is presently engaged in preparing an edition of this manuscript, for obligingly lending me his photocopy, thus enabling me to complete my documentation at a time when the Bodmer Library was temporarily closed for alterations.

In order to avoid a proliferation of footnotes, quotations from the ébauches will be identified by placing after the quotation the title of the novel (or a self-evident abbreviation of the title) followed by the folio-number.

10 E. M. Grant (op. cit., p. 51) observes that “the death of Alzire … was apparently decided on at the time of composition.” Grant also points out that both Maheu and his wife tended to develop, in the course of the ébauche, into more estimable characters than Zola had first considered making them.

11 See my study of this question, “The Genesis of Zola's Joie de vivre,” French Studies, vi (April 1952), 114–125.

12 “La Terré‘ d‘Émile Zola (Paris, 1952), p. 353.

13 From the very outset, Zola decided against imitating Balzac's device of the “recurrent character”: “Mes personnages n'ont pas besoin de revenir dans les romans particuliers,” he wrote in Différences entre Balzac et moi (MS. 10345, fol. 15). We find Félicité Rougon playing an important part in La Conquête de Plassans and Le Docteur Pascal as well as in La Fortune des Rougon; Eugène is the hero of Son Excellence Eugène Rougon but puts in an occasional appearance in La Curée and L'Argent. Saccard, Nana, Claude Lantier, Octave Mouret, and Jean Macquart are each given important roles in two different novels.