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A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 


Emile Zola – 13 February 2009
By Mary T. Hoffman

“The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.” Emile Zola (1840–1902)

Emile Zola was one of the best known French novelists of the 1800’s, and a leader of the naturalist movement. In his search for truth, he chose to write about the unpleasant side of life and use the slums and the underworld for the background of his stories. Nana, perhaps one of his best-known novels, is the story of a woman of the streets. In The Dream-Shop, Zola shows the evils of drunkenness, while in Germinal he calls for social reform by portraying the wretched conditions in the coal mines. Critics attacked his novels for the ugliness and brutality that he exposed, but the public bought them as fast as they came off the press.

The son of an Italian engineer, he was born in Paris and was educated in Paris and Marseilles. At twenty-two he became a clerk in a publishing house in Paris. Two years later, in 1864, Zola wrote his first book Tales for Ninon, but it had little success. After quitting his job in 1866, he devoted his entire time to writing. The book he wrote the following year made him famous almost overnight. It was a novel of crime and passion titled Therese Raquin.

In 1898 Zola’s search for truth led him to defend Captain Alfred Dreyfus who was falsely accused of selling military secrets to Germany. He published an open letter, I Accuse, in which he accused the army officials who had brought Dreyfus to trial of being the actual traitors. Zola was charged with libel, and was forced to flee to England. But the letter’s accusations caused such an uproar that Dreyfus was given a new trial and his name was finally cleared. Returning to Paris, Zola continued with his work; but three years later, he died as a result of gas fumes from a broken flue in his bedroom. The French government gave him a public funeral, and in 1908 his body was transferred to the Pantheon.

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