The Soil

Émile Zola

ene 2008 · Mondial

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The Soil (aka The Earth; French original title: La Terre), around which the greatest controversy has raged, is a novel which treats of the conditions of agricultural life in France before the war with Prussia (1870-1871), and the subsequent downfall of the Second Empire. It is, in some respects, the most powerful of all Zola's novels. In parts the book is Shakespearian in its strength. --- Jean Macquart, son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise (see The Fortune of the Rougons), having served his time in the Army, comes to the plain of La Beauce, and becomes an agricultural labourer on the farm of La Borderie, which belonged to Alexandre Hourdequin. He falls in love with a neighbour, Lise Mouche, and later her sister Francoise... --- The interest of the book is largely connected with the history of the Fouans, another family of peasants, the senior member of which, having grown old, divided his land among his three children. The intense and brutish rapacity of these peasants, their utter lack of any feeling of morality or duty, their perfect selfishness, not stopping short of parricide, form a picture of horror unequalled in fiction. --- This English translation of La Terre (in 1888) aroused such an outcry that a prosecution followed, and the translator and publisher, Henry Vizetelly, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment. (J. G. Patterson)

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Zola was the spokesperson for the naturalist novel in France and the leader of a school that championed the infusion of literature with new scientific theories of human development drawn from Charles Darwin (see Vol. 5) and various social philosophers. The theoretical claims for such an approach, which are considered simplistic today, were outlined by Zola in his Le Roman Experimental (The Experimental Novel, 1880). He was the author of the series of 20 novels called The Rougon-Macquart, in which he attempted to trace scientifically the effects of heredity through five generations of the Rougon and Macquart families. Three of the outstanding volumes are L'Assommoir (1877), a study of alcoholism and the working class; Nana (1880), a story of a prostitute who is a femme fatale; and Germinal (1885), a study of a strike at a coal mine. All gave scope to Zola's gift for portraying crowds in turmoil. Today Zola's novels have been appreciated by critics for their epic scope and their visionary and mythical qualities. He continues to be immensely popular with French readers. His newspaper article "J'Accuse," written in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, launched Zola into the public limelight and made him the political conscience of his country. Andrew Moore assisted James McNair on the last 10 of his cookbooks, including recipe development and editing. James and Andrew divide their time between a home in Northern California and their lodge on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.