ZOLA, Émile (1840-1902)

ZOLA, Émile (1840-1902)

Autograph letter signed « Emile Zola » to Joseph Canqueteau
Paris, 10th March 1885, 2 p. in-8°
Small tears on folds, some browning (see scans)

An important letter, written juste a week after the release of Germinal and drawing up a panorama of some of the most emblematic works of the Rougon-Macquart saga

From the B. & R. Broca collection

« Merci, cher monsieur, de votre bonne sympathie. C’est en effet pour la jeunesse que j’écris, et c’est par elle que je serai, si je dois être.
L’idée première de “Germinal” est déjà très lointaine. Lorsque j’ai écrit “l’Assommoir”, j’avais réservé cette autre face du peuple, l’ouvrier souffrant des grands centres industriels. Tous les romans de ma série ont été arrêtés à peu près en même temps, et chacun d’eux vient simplement à son heure.
Je vais sans doute, comme vous le supposez, étudier maintenant le monde des artistes, en reprenant mon Claude Lantier [L’Œuvre]. Mais le roman militaire, celui où je compte mettre Sedan [La Débâcle], est loin encore, car il ne viendra guère que dans six ou sept ans : il est l’avant dernier de la série.
Bien cordialement à vous
Emile Zola »

We know that even before writing the first of the twenty novels in his series, Zola had drawn up, as early as 1868, a family tree of his characters, then a chronology of his novels. Initially planned in ten volumes, the writer revised his ambitions upwards. There will be a total of twenty novels written between 1870 and 1893. This letter thus allows us to take the measure of the almost millimetric organization that the writer imposes on himself, to the point of predicting with some precision, “in six or seven years”, the release of La Débacle. The penultimate volume of the series was indeed published in 1892.

A bohemian artist already present in Le Ventre de Paris but whose role is only minor, Claude Lantier (older brother of Etienne, the hero of Germinal) becomes the main protagonist in L’Oeuvre. A cursed painter, whose features recall those of Paul Cézanne, his fate is disastrous, like that of his mother Gervaise Macquart in L’Assommoir. This fourteenth novel in the series was published by Charpentier the following year, in 1886.

We know the letter that Joseph Canqueteau, about to give a lecture on Les Rougon-Macquart, addressed to Zola to ask him for some information (who was right in his predictions): “We are here a meeting of young people, who like you, I assure you, and know how to defend you on occasion. You have youth on your side, dear master, and that is a hard addition. We greatly appreciate the honor you have bestowed upon us by accepting the title of honorary member of our young conference. What a powerful book Germinal is! […] I should be obliged to you, dear master, to tell me exactly at what time you had the idea of this vast social study? Won’t military life and artistic life be the subject of two future works? ».