Sept. 23, 1892. La Débâcle.
To what different issues two men will work the same notion! Imagine
this world to be a flat board accurately parcelled out into squares,
and you have the basis at once of _Alice through the Looking-Glass_
and of _Les Rougon-Macquart_. But for the mere fluke that the
Englishman happened to be whimsical and the Frenchman entirely without
humor (and the chances were perhaps against this), we might have had
the Rougon-Macquart family through the looking-glass, and a natural
and social history of Alice in _parterres_ of existence labelled
_Drink, War, Money_, etc. As it is, in drawing up any comparison of
these two writers we should remember that Mr. Carroll sees the world
in sections because he chooses, M. Zola because he cannot help it.
If life were a museum, M. Zola would stand a reasonable chance of
being a Balzac. But I invite the reader who has just laid down _La
Débâcle_ to pick up _Eugénie Grandet_ again and say if that little
Dutch picture has not more sense of life, even of the storm and stir
and big furies of life, than the detonating _Débâcle_. The older
genius
"Saw life steadily and saw it whole"
--No matter how small the tale, he draws no curtain around it; it
stands in the midst of a real world, set in the white and composite
light of day. M. Zola sees life in sections and by one or another of
those colors into which daylight can be decomposed by the prism. He is
like a man standing at the wings with a limelight apparatus. The rays
fall now here, now there, upon the stage; are luridly red or vividly
green; but neither mix nor pervade.
I am aware that the tone of the above paragraph is pontifical and its
substance a trifle obvious, and am eager to apologize for both.
Speaking as an impressionist, I can only say that _La Débâcle_ stifles
me. And this is the effect produced by all his later books. Each has
the exclusiveness of a dream; its subject--be it drink or war or
money--possesses the reader as a nightmare possesses the dreamer. For
the time this place of wide prospect, the world, puts up its shutters;
and life becomes all drink, all war, all money, while M. Zola
(adaptable Bacchanal!) surrenders his brain to the intoxication of his
latest theme. He will drench himself with ecclesiology, or veterinary
surgery, or railway technicalities--everything by turns and everything
long; but, like the gentleman in the comic opera, he "never mixes." Of
late he almost ceased to add even a dash of human interest.
Mr. George Moore, reviewing _La Débâcle_ in the _Fortnightly_ last
month, laments this. He reminds us of the splendid opportunity M. Zola
has flung away in his latest work.
"Jean and Maurice," says Mr. Moore, "have fought side by side;
they have alternately saved each other's lives; war has united
them in a bond of inseparable friendship; they have grasped each
other's hands, and looked in each other's eyes, overpowered with
a love that exceeds the love that woman ever gave to man; now
they are ranged on different sides, armed one against the other.
The idea is a fine one, and it is to be deeply regretted that M.
Zola did not throw history to the winds and develop the beautiful
human story of the division of friends in civil war. Never would
history have tempted Balzac away from the human passion of such a
subject...."
But it is just fidelity to the human interest of every subject that
gives the novelist his rank; that makes--to take another instance--a
page or two of Balzac, when Balzac is dealing with money, of more
value than the whole of _l'Argent_.
Of Burke it has been said by a critic with whom it is a pleasure for
once in a way to agree, that he knew how the whole world lived.
"It was Burke's peculiarity and his glory to apply the
imagination of a poet of the first order to the facts and
business of life.... Burke's imagination led him to look over the
whole land: the legislator devising new laws, the judge
expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant despatching all
his goods and extending his credit, the banker advancing the
money of his customers upon the credit of the merchant, the
frugal man slowly accumulating the store which is to support him
in old age, the ancient institutions of Church and University
with their seemly provisions for sound learning and true
religion, the parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his
rhymes, the farmer eyeing his crops, the painter covering his
canvases, the player educating the feelings. Burke saw all this
with the fancy of a poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a
lover."
Now all this, which is true of Burke, is true of the very first
literary artists--of Shakespeare and Balzac. All this, and more--for
they not only see all this immense activity of life, but the emotions
that animate each of the myriad actors.
Suppose them to treat of commerce: they see not only the goods and
money changing hands, but the ambitions, dangers, fears, delights, the
fierce adventures by desert and seas, the slow toil at home, upon
which the foundations of commerce are set. Like the Gods,
"They see the ferry
On the broad, clay-laden
Lone Chorasmian stream;--thereon,
With snort and strain,
Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
To either bow
Firm-harness'd by the mane; a chief,
With shout and shaken spear,
Stands at the prow, and guides them; but astern
The cowering merchants, in long robes,
Sit pale beside their wealth...."
Like the Gods, they see all this; but, unlike the Gods, they must feel
also:--
"They see the merchants
On the Oxus stream;--_but care
Must visit first them too, and make them pale_.
Whether, through whirling sand,
A cloud of desert robber-horse have burst
Upon their caravan; or greedy kings,
In the wall'd cities the way passes through,
Crush'd them with tolls; or fever-airs,
On some great river's marge,
Mown them down, far from home."
Mr. Moore speaks of M. Zola's vast imagination. It is vast in the
sense that it sees one thing at a time, and sees it a thousand times
as big as it appears to most men. But can the imagination that sees a
whole world under the influence of one particular fury be compared
with that which surveys this planet and sees its inhabitants busy with
a million diverse occupations? Drink, Money, War--these may be
usefully personified as malignant or beneficent angels, for pulpit
purposes. But the employment of these terrific spirits in the harrying
of the Rougon-Macquart family recalls the announcement that
"The Death-Angel smote Alexander McGlue...."
while the methods of the _Roman Expérimental_ can hardly be better
illustrated than by the rest of the famous stanza--
"--And gave him protracted repose:
He wore a check shirt and a Number 9 shoe,
And he had a pink wart on his nose."