The Rush for the Spoil (La Curée): A Realistic Novel

The Rush for the Spoil (La Curée): A Realistic Novel

The public and the press have agreed that "L'Assommoir" is M. Zola's chef d'uvre. Against this verdict I have no objection to offer. I believe it will meet with posterity's endorsement. But although "L'Assommoir" may lift its head the highest, there are many other volumes in the Rougon-Macquart series which stand on, and speak from equally lofty platforms of art. In my opinion, these are "La Faute de l'Abb Mouret," "La Conqute de Plassans," and "La Cure." I have spoken before of Zola as an epic poet: he is this more than he is anything, and as he is more epic in "La Cure" than elsewhere ("L'Assommoir" and "La Faute de l'Abb Mouret" always excepted), it follows that it must be one of the best and most characteristic of his works. The qualities that endow a book with immortality exist independent of the artist's will, and the process of penetrating, of animating the whole with life, is accomplished as silently and unconsciously as the seed-grain germinates in the earth, as the child quickens with life in the womb. And, doubtless, Zola intended in the beginning to write merely the passionate love story of a woman who, oppressed and wearied of luxury, is forced to seek, in violent ways and fierce fancies, oblivion of golden idleness, of an aimless and satiated existence. This idea might have been worked out, and adequately worked out, in the analysis of the mind of a duke's daughter, who, after five years of husband hunting in London drawing-rooms, runs away and lives with her groom at Hampstead. And taken out of its setting, M. Zola's story is quite as simple. Rene is a young girl of the upper middle classes; she has been seduced; she is enceinte; it is necessary to find her a husband. Under such circumstances, it would be vain to be too particular, and an adventurer called Saccard is chosen. He is a genius who is waiting for a few pounds to make a million. Rene's fortune enables him to do this; he places her in a magnificent house in the Parc Monceaux; he gives her everything but an interest in life: to gain this she falls in love with her stepson, Maxime Saccard. The story of this incestuous passion becomes the theme of the book; and when Maxime deserts his stepmother to get married, she dies of consumption. That is all; but this slight outline soon began to grow, to take gigantic proportions in Zola's mind; and it was not long before he saw that his story was an allegory of the Second Empire. Rene became Paris; her dressmakerWormsbecame the Emperor; her dresses, the material of which costs sixty, the making-up of which, with the accumulated interest, costs six hundred, are the boulevards and buildings with which the city was adorned at ruinous expense. In the clamour of the ftes in the Parc Monceaux, the demands of the creditors are silenced, and when Rene dies her debts are paid by her fatherthat is to say, by the Republic of M. Thiers. Rene is a Venus, but not the Greek Venusthe white-breasted woman born of the sea foam and heralded by cupids and tritons; she is not even "the obscure Venus of the hollow Hill" that Baudelaire describes as having grown diabolic among ages that would not accept her as divine. Rene is the Venus of the counting house. Her hair is yellow as pale gold, her drawing-room is hung with yellow draperies, and her golden head, seen thereon as she leans back in her richly upholstered chairs, seems like a setting sun that sinks little by little, drowned in a bath of gold. But, unlike her earlier prototypes, she does not find the flesh sufficient; her sensualities are not the dark desire of the animal, but the nervous erethism of a human mind that, satiated with pleasure, longs and hungers for some strange and acute note to break the cloying sweetnessthe monotonous melody of her life. Here there is no touch of pagan or medival thought. Maxime fears no god, he knows not remorse nor even desire; he is the son of the capitalist; he is the weed sprung from, but not the intelligence that has built up, the gold-heap, and he festers and rots like a weed in an overpoweringly rich soil. Saccard is Mammon. Nothing exists for him but gold. Thoughts, dreams, love, have long since disappeared; he is not even vicious: in the lust of speculation all other passions have been submerged, have sunk out of sight for ever. Men and things only suggest to him ideas for the accumulation of wealth; and from the heights of Montmartre he looks down upon Paris like a wolf upon its prey. His eyes flash with fierce light, his lips twitch with a wild mental hunger that manifests itself in physical actions: with his hand he divides Paris into sections, he sees how he will distribute it into boulevards, squares, and streets; and he hears in vision the cries of the huntsmen, and he longs to put himself at the head of the hounds, and to descend with open jaws upon the splendid quarry that even now run to death lies panting and bleeding before him. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56590
Author: Zola, Émile
Release Date: Feb 17, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred, 1853-1922