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Emile Zola. Biography and review of creativity. Roman Creativity - artistic analysis. Zola Emil Zola creativity summary

Emile Zola

CREATION

It was the July heat. Claude wandered around the Market until two o'clock in the morning, he could not get enough of the beauty of Paris at night. As he passed the town hall and the clock on the tower struck two, he was overtaken by a thunderstorm. The rain began to fall with such force, the drops were so large, that Claude, bewildered by surprise, almost ran along the Greve Quay. When he reached the Pont Louis Philippe, he felt himself suffocating and stopped; deciding that it was foolish to be afraid of the rain, he slowly walked across the bridge, waving his arms, watching the gas lamps go out in the downpour and everything around him plunged into impenetrable darkness.

Claude was already almost at home. As he turned onto the Quai Bourbon, a flash of lightning illuminated the island of St. Louis, old mansions, stretched out in a straight line along a narrow street along the Seine. Lightning flashes were reflected in the high windows with open shutters, giving a sad look to the facades and snatching out of the darkness now the stone balcony, now the terrace railing, now the sculptural decorations of the pediment. The artist's studio was nearby, on the corner of Rue Fam Sant Tet, under the very roof of the old Martois mansion. The embankment now lit up with lightning, then again plunged into darkness; and suddenly a terrifying clap of thunder shook the sleeping streets.

Approaching the low, iron-studded vaulted door, Claude, who was completely blinded by the rain, began to fumble along the wall, looking for a bell, and shuddered with surprise, stumbling in the darkness on a human body. With another flash of lightning, he saw a tall girl dressed in black; she was completely wet and trembling with fear. Another thunderclap deafened them both. Claude screamed:

Damn it! I did not expect ... Who are you? How did you get here?

Everything was plunged into darkness again. Claude only heard the girl sobbing.

Sir, I beg you, do not offend me ... - she babbled. - The driver whom I hired at the station is to blame for everything; he swore terribly, and he left me here... the train from Nevers derailed. We were four hours late, and at the station I did not find the one who was supposed to meet me ... My God! After all, this is my first time in Paris, sir, I don’t know at all where I found myself ...

A dazzling flash of lightning again illuminated her, and she immediately fell silent, wide-eyed, and began to look around in horror. Shrouded in a lilac haze, an unfamiliar city rose before her, like a ghost. The rain is over. On the other side of the Seine, on the Quai des Ormes, there were small, gray houses, covered with signboards, with uneven roof lines; behind them, the horizon expanded, brightened, it was framed to the left - the blue slate roofs on the towers of the town hall, to the right - the lead dome of the Cathedral of St. Paul. The Seine is very wide in this place, and the girl could not take her eyes off her deep, black, heavy waters, rolling from the massive vaults of the Pont Marie to the airy arches of the new Pont Louis Philippe. The river was littered with some strange shadows—there was a sleeping flotilla of boats and skiffs; and a floating laundry and a dredger were moored to the quay; barges filled with coal, scows loaded with building stone, stood on the opposite shore, and a gigantic crane towered over everything. The light of lightning faded. Everything is gone.

"Lies, - thought Claude, - it's just a slut, wandering the streets in search of a man."

He didn't trust women; the whole story seemed to him a stupid invention: both the late train and the rude cab driver. At another thunderclap, the frightened girl again huddled in a corner.

You can't sleep here! Claude addressed her, raising his voice.

In response, she burst into tears and, sobbing, whispered:

Sir, I beg you, take me to Passy... I have to go to Passy.

He shrugged his shoulders - does she take him for a fool? Mechanically, he turned in the direction of the Celestin embankment, where there was a cab stand. There was not a single luminous lantern to be seen.

To Passy, ​​my dear, why not to Versailles?.. What the hell! Where can you get a cab in this weather, and even so late?

But then lightning flashed again, and the girl screamed piercingly; this time the city seemed tragic to her, as if spattered with blood. The banks of the river bordered a bottomless abyss, illuminated by the reflections of the fire. In the shocked mind of the girl, the smallest details were imprinted, down to the closed shutters on the Quai des Ormes and the streets Masur and Paon Blanc, which cut through the line of houses on the embankment with two narrow cracks: at the Marie bridge, large plane trees loomed so clearly that it seemed one could count leaves in their dense green crowns, and on the other side, under the Louis Philippe bridge, at the pier, barges stretched out in four rows, loaded to the very top with sparkling yellow apples, whirlpools, a tall pipe of a floating laundry, a motionless chain of a dredger, heaps of sand were visible near the pier - all this bizarre combination of things piled up on the night river, an abyss that opened from one edge of the horizon to the other. The sky darkened, the river rolled dark waters under the deafening peals of thunder.

God! It's all over... My God, what will happen to me?

The rain has resumed; whipped by the wind, it rushed along the embankment with the force of a broken dam.

Let me pass, - said Claude, - it is unthinkable to stay here.

Both of them were completely wet. In the dim light of a gas lantern at the corner of the Rue Fam Sant Tet, Claude saw that the wet dress was stuck around the girl and water was flowing down it in a stream; the hurricane shook the door against which she pressed herself. Suddenly, Claude was seized with pity: on such a stormy night, he once picked up a wet dog in the street. But he did not like to give vent to his feelings, besides, he never took girls to him; he treated them like an inexperienced youth who does not know women, hiding behind a rude fanfare a painful shyness. This girl seems to take him for an idiot if she thinks to hook him up with her vaudeville stories in this way. In the end, however, he said:

Enough fooling around, let's go... You'll spend the night at my place... She was even more confused, further and further hiding in a corner.

To you! My God! No, no, that's impossible... Please, sir, take me to Passy! I beg you on my knees!

Claude lost his temper. Why is this breaking, since he agreed to shelter her? He had already pulled the bell twice. Finally the door opened a crack and he pushed the stranger in.

No, no, hit me, I tell you, no...

But the lightning again blinded her, and when the thunder rumbled, she, mad with horror, rushed through the door. The heavy door slammed shut, she found herself under high arches, in total darkness.

Creation
Summary of the novel
Claude Lantier, an artist, hanged himself in his studio in front of an unfinished painting in November 1870. His wife Christine, who posed for this painting and was painfully jealous of it, lost her mind with grief. Claude lived in complete poverty. Nothing remained of him but a few sketches: the last and main picture, a failed masterpiece, was torn off the wall and burned in a fit of rage by a friend of Claude Sandoz. Except for Sandoz and Bongrand, another friend of Claude, an artist-maitre and an academician-rebel, there were no

There was no one from their company.
... All of them were from Plassans and became friends in college: the painter Claude, the novelist Sandoz, the architect Dubuch. In Paris, Dubuch with great difficulty entered the Academy, where he was subjected to merciless ridicule from his friends: both Claude and Sandoz dreamed of a new art, equally despising classical models and Delacroix's gloomy, thoroughly literary romanticism. Claude is not only phenomenally gifted, he is obsessed. Classical education is not for him: he learns to portray life as he sees it - Paris, its central market, the banks of the Seine, cafes, passers-by. Sandoz dreams of a synthesis of literature and science, of a gigantic series of novels that would encompass and explain the entire history of mankind. Claude's obsession is alien to him: he watches with fright how periods of inspiration and hope are replaced by his friend's gloomy impotence. Claude works, forgetting about food and sleep, but does not go beyond sketches - nothing satisfies him. But the whole company of young painters and sculptors - the easy and cynical mocker Fazherol, the ambitious son of the stonemason Magudo, the prudent critic Jory - are sure that Claude will become the head of the new school. Jory called it "the plein air school". The whole company, of course, is occupied not only with disputes about art: Magudo suffers with disgust next to him the druggist whore Matilda, Fazherol is in love with the charming cocotte Irma Beko, who spends time with artists disinterestedly, really out of love for art.
Claude eschewed women until one night, not far from his house on the Bourbon Quay, he met during a thunderstorm a lost young beauty - a tall girl in black, who had come to act as lecturer to the general's rich widow. Claude had no choice but to offer her to spend the night with him, and she had no choice but to agree. Having chastely placed the guest behind a screen and annoyed at the sudden adventure, in the morning Claude looks at the sleeping girl and freezes: this is the nature that he dreamed of for a new picture. Forgetting everything, he begins to rapidly sketch her small breasts with pink nipples, a thin arm, flowing black hair ... Waking up, she tries to hide under the sheet in horror. Claude hardly persuades her to pose further. They belatedly meet: her name is Christina, and she was barely eighteen. She trusts him: he only sees her as a model. And when she leaves, Claude with annoyance admits to himself that most likely he will never see the best of his models again and that this circumstance seriously upsets him.
He made a mistake. She came in a month and a half later with a bouquet of roses - a sign of her gratitude. Claude can work with the same enthusiasm: one sketch, even if it was better than all the previous ones, is not enough for his new work. He conceived the idea of ​​depicting a naked woman against the backdrop of a spring garden, in which couples stroll and wrestlers frolic. There is already a name for the picture - just “Plein Air”. In two sessions, he painted Christina's head, but he does not dare to ask her to pose naked again. Seeing how he suffers, trying to find a model like her, one evening she undresses herself in front of him, and Claude completes his masterpiece in a matter of days. The painting is intended for the Salon of the Les Misérables, conceived as a challenge to the semi-official and unchanged in its predilections Parisian Salon. A crowd gathers around Claude's painting, but this crowd is laughing. And no matter how much Jory assures that this is the best advertisement, Claude is terribly depressed. Why is the woman naked and the man clothed? What kind of sharp, rough strokes? Only artists understand all the originality and power of this painting. In feverish excitement, Claude cries of contempt for the public, that together with his comrades he will conquer Paris, but he returns home in despair. Here a new shock awaits him: the key is stuck in the door, some girl has been waiting for him for two hours already ... This is Christina, she was at the exhibition and saw everything: both the picture, in which she recognizes herself with horror and admiration, and the audience, consisting of stupid and mockers. She came to console and encourage Claude, who, having fallen at her feet, no longer restrains his sobs.
… This is their first night, followed by months of love intoxication. They rediscover each other. Christine leaves her general, Claude finds a house in Bennecourt, a suburb of Paris, for only two hundred and fifty francs a year. Not married to Christina, Claude calls her his wife, and soon his inexperienced lover discovers that she is pregnant. The boy was named Jacques. After his birth, Claude returns to painting, but the Bennecourt landscapes have already bored him: he dreams of Paris. Christina realizes that burying himself in Bennecourt is unbearable for him: the three of them return to the city.
Claude visits old friends: Magudo yields to the tastes of the public, but still retains talent and strength, the apothecary is still with him and has become even uglier; Zhori earns not so much by criticism as by gossip and is quite pleased with himself; Fajerolle, who is stealing Claude's picturesque finds with might and main, and Irma, who changes lovers weekly, from time to time rush to each other, because there is nothing stronger than the attachment of two egoists and cynics. Bon-gran, Claude's older friend, a recognized master who rebelled against the Academy, for several months in a row cannot get out of a deep crisis, does not see new ways, talks about the artist's tormenting fear of the realization of each new idea, and in his depression Claude sees with horror an omen own torment. Sandoz got married, but still sees friends on Thursdays. Having gathered in the same circle - Claude, Dubuch, Fazherol, Sandoz with his wife Henriette - the friends sadly notice that they are arguing without the same vehemence and are talking more and more about themselves. The connection is broken, Claude goes into solitary work: it seems to him that now he is really capable of exhibiting a masterpiece. But the Salon rejected his best, innovative, striking creations for three years in a row: the winter landscape of the city's outskirts, the Batignolles Square in May and the sunny, melting view of the Carousel Square in midsummer. Friends are delighted with these canvases, but the sharp, roughly accented painting scares off the Salon jury. Claude is again afraid of his inferiority, hates himself, his insecurities are transferred to Christine. Only a few months later he has a new idea - a view of the Seine with port workers and bathers. Claude takes on a gigantic sketch, rapidly writes down the canvas, but then, as always, in a fit of uncertainty, he spoils his own work, cannot bring anything to the end, destroys the idea. His hereditary neurosis is expressed not only in genius, but also in the inability to realize himself. Any completed work is a compromise, Claude is obsessed with the mania of perfection, the creation of something more alive than life itself. This struggle drives him to despair: he belongs to the type of genius for whom any concession, any retreat is unbearable. His work becomes more and more convulsive, inspiration passes faster and faster: happy at the moment of the birth of an idea, Claude, like any true artist, understands all the imperfection and half-heartedness of any incarnations. Creativity becomes his torture.
At the same time, she and Christina, tired of neighbor gossip, decide to finally get married, but marriage does not bring joy: Claude is absorbed in work, Christina is jealous: having become husband and wife, they realized that their former passion had died. In addition, the son annoys Claude with his excessively large head and slow development: neither mother nor father yet know that Jacques has dropsy of the brain. Poverty comes, Claude proceeds to his last and most grandiose picture - again a naked woman, the personification of Paris at night, the goddess of beauty and vice against the backdrop of a sparkling city. On the day when, in the twilight evening light, he sees his just finished painting and is again convinced that he has been defeated, twelve-year-old Jacques dies. Claude immediately begins to paint The Dead Child, and Fajerolles, feeling guilty before the tattered older comrade, puts the picture in the Salon with great difficulty. There, hung in the farthest room, high up, almost invisible to the public, she looked terrible and pitiful. Bongrand's new work, "Village Funeral", written as if in a pair to his early "Village Wedding", was also not noticed by anyone. On the other hand, fajerolle is a huge success, softening the findings from Claude's early works and passing them off as his own; Fagerol, who became the star of the Salon. Sandoz looks longingly at the friends gathered in the Salon. During this time, Dubush married profitably and unhappily, Magudo made an ugly apothecary his wife and fell into complete dependence on her, Jory sold out, Claude was awarded the nickname of a madman - does every life come to such an inglorious end?
But Claude's end turned out to be worse than his friends could have imagined. During one of the painful and already meaningless sessions, when Claude painted Christina naked again and again, she could not stand it. Terribly jealous of the woman on the canvas, she rushed to Claude, begging for the first time in many years to look at her again as a woman. She is still beautiful, he is still strong. On this night, they experience such a passion that they did not know even in their youth. But while Christina is sleeping, Claude gets up and slowly walks to the studio, to his painting. In the morning, Christina sees him hanging from a beam that he himself once nailed to reinforce the ladder.
... The air of the era is poisoned, says Bongran Sandoz at the funeral of a genius of whom nothing remains. We are all people who have lost faith, and the end of the century is to blame for everything, with its rottenness, decay, dead ends on all paths. Art is in decline, anarchy is all around, personality is suppressed, and the age that began with clarity and rationalism ends with a new wave of obscurantism. If it were not for the fear of death, every true artist would have to act like Claude. But even here, in the cemetery, among old coffins and dug up earth, Bongrand and Sandoz remember that work awaits them at home - their eternal, only torture.

You are now reading: Summary of Creativity - Zola Emil

21. Zola's work

Zola (Zola) Emile (full name Emile Edouard Charles Antoine) (April 2, 1840, Paris - September 28, 1902, ibid.), French writer. The main work - a 20-volume series of novels "Rougon-Macquarts" (1871-1893) - the history of one family in the era of the Second Empire. In the novels of the series The Belly of Paris (1873), The Trap (1877), Germinal (1885), Money (1891), Defeat (1892), social contradictions are depicted with great realistic force. Zola is a supporter of the principles of naturalism (the book "Experimental Novel", 1880). He protested against the Dreyfus affair (the pamphlet I Accuse, 1898).

Creative way.

Zola was born into a mixed Italian-French family. His father, an engineer who came from an old Venetian family, signed a contract to participate in the construction of a canal that was supposed to provide Aix-en-Provence with water. In this town, which became the prototype of Plassant in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, the writer spent his childhood and received his education. He studied with Paul Cezanne, who later introduced him to the circle of Impressionist painters.

In 1857, Emil's father died suddenly, leaving the family with very modest savings, and a year later the widow decided to go with her son to Paris, hoping to get the support of her late husband's friends. Zola was interrupted by odd jobs, until at the beginning of 1862 he entered the service of the Ashet publishing house, where he worked for about four years. At the same time, he wrote articles for periodicals, and in 1864 published the first collection of short stories, Tales of Ninon. In 1865, his first semi-autobiographical novel, The Confession of Claude, appeared. The book brought him fame, which increased even more thanks to a vivid speech in defense of the paintings of Edouard Manet on the pages of an art exhibition review in 1866.

In the preface to the novel "Thérèse Raquin" (1867), Zola first formulated the essence of the naturalistic method: carried away by the ideas of the literature of the document, he set as his goal the creation of a "scientific novel" that would include data from the natural sciences, medicine and physiology. In the novel Madeleine Ferat (1868), the writer made the first attempt to show the laws of heredity in action. Around the same time, he had the idea to create a series of novels dedicated to one family, whose fate has been explored for five generations.

In 1870, Zola married Gabrielle-Alexandrine Mel, and in 1873 he bought a house in Medan (near Paris), where young writers began to gather, forming a short-lived "naturalistic school". In 1880 they published a collection of short stories, Medan Evenings. Zola himself published collections of articles "Experimental Novel" (1880) and "Natural Novelists" (1881) - theoretical writings designed to explain the essence of the new method: the character, temperament and behavior of a person are determined by the laws of heredity, the environment and the historical moment, and the task of the writer is an objective image of the exact moment under certain conditions.

In the last years of his life, Zola created two more cycles: “Three Cities” (“Lourdes”, 1894; “Rome”, 1896; “Paris”, 1898) and “The Four Gospels” (“Fecundity”, 1899; “Labor”, 1901; "Truth", publ. 1903). The books of the first cycle are united by the ideological quest of the protagonist - Pierre Froment. The second cycle, which remained unfinished (the fourth volume was not written), is a social utopia in which the writer tried to realize his dream of the coming triumph of reason and labor.

The Dreyfus affair.

At the end of his life, Zola enjoyed worldwide fame and was considered - after the death of Victor Hugo - the most prominent figure among all living French writers. His reputation was strengthened by his intervention in the Dreyfus affair: Zola became convinced that this officer of the French General Staff, a Jew by nationality, was unjustly convicted of espionage in 1894. The denunciation of the military leaders who were chiefly responsible for the apparent miscarriage of justice took the form of an open letter to the President of the Republic with the heading "I Accuse" (1898). As a result, Zola was convicted of "libel" and sentenced to a year in prison. He had to hide in England, and he returned to his homeland only in June 1900, when the situation changed in favor of Dreyfus. The writer died suddenly: the cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning, but this "accident" was most likely set up by his political enemies. At the funeral, Anatole France called his brother "the conscience of the nation." In 1908 Zola's remains were transferred to the Panthéon. During his lifetime, he was never elected to the French Academy, although he was nominated no less than nineteen times.

Family saga.

Zola gave the title of Rougon-Macquart to his grandiose epic. Natural and social history of one family in the era of the Second Empire" (1871-1893). The original plan included ten novels, but turbulent historical events (the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune) prompted the writer to expand the scope of the cycle, which in its final form has twenty novels. The Rougon-Macquarts are the offspring of an imbecile woman who dies in the last volume of the series, having reached the age of a century and having completely lost her mind. From her children - one legitimate and two illegitimate - three branches of the family originate. The first of these is represented by the prosperous Rugons. Members of this family appear in such novels as The Career of the Rougons (1871), which takes place in the small town of Plassant in December 1851, on the eve of Louis Bonaparte's coup d'état; His Excellency Eugene Rougon (1876), which examines the political machinations of the reign of Napoleon III; "Money" (1891), dedicated to speculation in landed property and securities. The second branch of the genus is the Mouret family. Octave Mouret, the ambitious red tape in Nakipi (1882), creates one of the first Parisian department stores in The Lady's Happiness (1883), while other members of the family lead a very modest life, like the village priest in the novel The Misdemeanor of the Abbé Mouret ( 1875). Representatives of the third branch are extremely unbalanced, since their progenitor was an alcoholic. Members of this family, the Macquarts and Lantiers, play prominent roles in Zola's most powerful novels. In The Belly of Paris (1873), the central market is depicted, against which the story of the brothers Florent and Quenu unfolds: the first of them was sent to hard labor for participating in the December events of 1851 - when he returned, he saw a giant market place on the site of past battles; During this time, Quenu grew up and married the beautiful Lisa, the daughter of the Macquarts of Plassans. Everyone considers Floran "Red", and he really dreams of a new uprising. On the denunciation of several merchants, including Lisa, he is again sent into exile, from where he will not be destined to return. The novel ends with Florent's friend, the painter Claude Lantier, walking around the market, where Lisa, the triumph of the womb, is laying out tongues and hams on the counter. In the novel "Nana" (1880), the main character is Anna, the daughter of the drunken washerwoman Gervaise Macquart and the crippled worker Coupeau from the novel "The Trap" (1877). Economic circumstances and hereditary inclinations make her an actress and then a courtesan. From her comes a crazy call of the flesh, which drives crazy and enslaves men. In 1870, just before the start of the fatal war with Prussia for France, Nana fell ill with smallpox and died at the age of eighteen: her beautiful face turns into a purulent mask to the joyful cries of patriots: “To Berlin! To Berlin! Germinal (1885) depicts a miners' strike led by a stranger, the mechanic Etienne Lantier. He meets the Russian socialist Souvarine, who, in the name of the triumph of the revolution, saws the supports in the mine. Etienne's beloved perishes in a stream of water, and he himself leaves the village: from under the ground, he hears the muffled blows of a pickle - work is in full swing in all the mines that have recently been on strike. In the novel Creativity (1886), both main characters come to Paris from Plassans. The novelist Sandoz and the painter Claude Lantier (the prototypes of which were considered by contemporaries to be Zola and Cezanne) are champions of the new art. Dreaming of a synthesis of literature and science, Sandoz conceives a giant novel series that would cover and explain the entire history of mankind. Claude is even more obsessed with his ideas, and creativity becomes a real torture for him. In November 1870, he is found hanging in a noose in front of an unfinished painting for which his wife Christina posed for him. Sandoz in a rage burns this failed masterpiece, and at the funeral of a genius from whom nothing remains, he blames the end of the century with its rot and decay for everything: the air of the era is poisoned - a century that began with clarity and rationalism ends with a new wave of obscurantism.

Writer Emile Zola was born April 2, 1840 in Paris and grew up in an Italian-French family. Emil spent his childhood and school period in Aix-en-Provence. When he was not yet 7 years old, his father died and the family found itself in a very difficult financial situation. Madame Zola, counting on the support of the friends of her late husband, moved to Paris with her son in 1858.

At the beginning of 1862, Emil got a job at the Ashet publishing house, for which he earns good money and could spend his free time on literary studies. Zola reads voraciously, keeps track of new publications, writes reviews of the latest novelties for magazines and newspapers, makes acquaintance with popular writers, tries herself in prose and poetry.

Zola worked at the publishing house for about 4 years and quit, hoping that he could live off his literary talent. And in 1864 he published his debut book, Tales of Ninon, which brought together stories from different years. This period of creativity is distinguished by the influence of romanticism.

In November 1865, his first novel, The Confession of Claude, was published, which he dedicated to his friends Paul Cezanne and Baptistin Bayle. Cezanne, who arrived in Paris from Aix, introduces Zola to the circle of painters, together they visit the workshops of Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, meet Edouard Manet and many artists. Emile Zola energetically joined the struggle of talented masters who, with their original work, challenged the traditional academic school.



In the novels Claude's Confession, Testament of the Dead, Secrets of Marseilles, the story of sublime love, the opposition of reality and dreams are shown, the character of the ideal hero is conveyed.

The novel "Confessions of Claude" deserves special attention. This is a tough and thinly veiled autobiography. This controversial book made Emil's personality scandalous and brought long-awaited popularity.

Emile Zola. Portrait by Edouard Manet. 1868



In 1868, Emil had the idea of ​​writing a series of novels that would be dedicated to one family - the Rougon-Macquarts. The fate of these people has been investigated for several generations. The first books in the series were not very interesting to readers, but the 7th volume of The Trap was doomed to great success. He not only increased the glory of Zola, but also his fortune. And all subsequent novels in the series were met with great enthusiasm by fans of the work of this French writer.

Twenty volumes of the great Rougon-Macquart cycle is Zola's most important literary achievement. But earlier he still managed to write "Therese Raquin". After his overwhelming success, Emil published 2 more cycles: "Three Cities" - "Lourdes", "Rome", "Paris"; as well as "Four Gospels" (there were 3 volumes in total). Thus, Zola became the first novelist to create a series of books about members of the same family. The writer himself, naming the reasons for choosing such a structure of the cycle, argued that he wanted to demonstrate the operation of the laws of heredity.

Zola worked on this cycle for more than 20 years. At the origins of the idea of ​​Zola's epic was O. de Balzac's "Human Comedy", however, Zola contrasts the Balzac study of the social and moral springs that control a person with the study of temperament, physiological constitution, heredity, combined with the influence of a social, "environmental" factor - origin, upbringing, living conditions.

Zola introduces into literature data from natural science discoveries: medicine and physiology (the works of physiologists and psychiatrists C. Bernard, C. Letourneau), social Darwinism and the aesthetics of positivism (E. Renan, I. Taine). A truly epic coverage of all aspects of public and private life is noticeable, first of all, in the thematic diversity of the cycle. Here is the Franco-Prussian War (“The Capture of Plassen”, “The Rout”), and the peasantry and village life (“Earth”), and the labor of miners and the socialist movement (“Germinal”), and the life of Bohemia, the first performances of impressionist artists against academicism (“Creativity”), and the stock exchange and finance (“Money”), and trade (“Lady's happiness”, “The womb of Paris”), and courtesans and “ladies of the half world” (“Nana”), and the psychology of religious feeling (“ Dream"), and crimes and pathological tendencies ("Beast Man").



Maupassant called the novel "Creativity" "amazing". Russian critic Stasov wrote “How faithfully the artistic world of present-day France is depicted! How faithfully the diverse characters and personalities of contemporary artists are represented!”

"Creativity" - the fourteenth novel in the series - Zola began writing in May 1885 and finished nine months later. On February 23, 1886, he informs his friend Cear: "My dear Cear, just this morning I finished with Creativity. This is a book in which I captured my memories and poured out my soul ...".

The framework of "Creativity", as Zola defined it in a plan drawn up in 1869, is " artistic world; the hero is Claude Duval (Lantier), the second child of a working couple. The bizarre action of heredity."

The plot of "Creativity" was based on some real events and facts from the life of the writer and his friends - Cezanne and Bayle, as well as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet and many others. The content of the novel is connected with the controversy that the writer led in the 60s in defense of a group of young painters. In 1866, on the eve of the opening of the Salon - a traditional exhibition of fine arts - two sensational articles by the then little-known critic Emile Zola appeared in the press. In these articles, he reproached the jury, which selected the paintings for the exhibition, for not wanting to give the public the opportunity to see " bold, full-blooded paintings and studies taken from reality itself". In the Salon, Zola pointed out, the canvases of talented painters are not presented only because their work denies the ossified traditions of the academic school and thereby undermines the prestige of the influential caste.

There was a lot of controversy about the prototypes of the main characters of "Creativity". It has been argued that Sandoz is a portrait of Zola himself (in handwritten notes to Creativity, Zola indicated that "Sandoz was introduced in order to illuminate my ideas about art"); in Fajerolles they saw Paul Bourget and Guieme at the same time, in Jory's criticism - a portrait of Paul Alexis, in the image of Bongrand they found a lot from Manet, but even more from Flaubert. As for Claude Lantier, in his handwritten notes to the "Creativity" Zola writes: "Claude committing suicide in front of his unfinished creation is Manet, Cezanne, but more Cezanne."
However, one should not consider "Creativity" as a history of impressionism. Zola's novel is first and foremost a novel about the relationship of art to reality, in response to critics' belief that art and real life are incompatible. Zola, on the other hand, spoke out in defense of the art of life's truth. On the tragic example of the fate of Claude Lantier, he showed that "only the creators of life triumph in art, only their genius is fruitful...". This conclusion of the writer confirms the inconsistency of the subjective - idealistic view of art.
Emile Zola's novel opens the veil to the world of people devoted to art with all their hearts, people who experience both hell and heaven every day, who are not afraid to challenge the world frozen in monotony.

An excerpt from the novel "Creativity"

“A dazzling flash of lightning again illuminated her, and she, immediately silent, wide-eyed, began to look around in horror. Shrouded in a lilac haze, an unfamiliar city rose before her, like a ghost. The rain is over. On the other side of the Seine, on the Quai des Ormes, there were small, gray houses, covered with signboards, with uneven roof lines; behind them the horizon expanded, brightened, it was framed to the left - the blue slate roofs on the towers of the town hall, to the right - the lead dome of the Cathedral of St. Paul. The Seine is very wide in this place, and the girl could not take her eyes off her deep, black, heavy waters, rolling from the massive vaults of the Pont Marie to the airy arches of the new Pont Louis Philippe. The river was littered with some strange shadows—there was a sleeping flotilla of boats and skiffs; and a floating laundry and a dredger were moored to the quay; barges filled with coal, scows loaded with building stone, stood on the opposite shore, and a gigantic crane towered over everything. The light of lightning faded. Everything is gone."

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Republican and DemocratZolacollaborated with the opposition press, wrote and distributed articles exposing the French military and the reactionary regime of Napoleon.

When Zola intervened in the scandalous Dreyfus affair, it became a sensation. Émile was convinced that Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of the French General Staff, who was Jewish by nationality, was unfairly convicted in 1894 for selling military secrets to Germany. So the writer exposed the army leadership, pointing out their responsibility for the miscarriage of justice. Zola formalized his position in the form of an open letter and sent it to the president of the republic with the heading "I accuse". For libel, the writer was sentenced to a year in prison. But Emil fled to England and returned to his homeland in 1899, when Dreyfus was finally acquitted.

Zola was second only to Victor Hugo in the popularity rating of French writers. But on September 28, 1902, the writer died suddenly due to an accident in his own Paris apartment. He got poisoned by carbon monoxide. But, most likely, this was set up by his political enemies. Emile Zola was a passionate defender of humanism and democracy, for which he paid with his life.

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Zola, Emile (1840-1902), French writer. Born April 2, 1840 in Paris, in an Italian-French family: an Italian was his father, a civil engineer. Emil spent his childhood and school years in Aix-en-Provence, where one of his closest friends was the artist P. Cezanne. He was less than seven years old when his father died, leaving the family in distress. In 1858, counting on the help of her late husband's friends, Madame Zola moved with her son to Paris. In early 1862, Emil managed to find a job at the Ashet publishing house. After working for about four years, he quit in the hope of securing his existence by literary work. In 1865 Zola published his first novel - a tough, thinly veiled autobiography Claude's Confession (La Confession de Claude, 1865). The book brought him scandalous fame, which was further increased by the ardent defense of E. Manet's painting in his review of an art exhibition in 1866. Around 1868, Zola had the idea of ​​a series of novels dedicated to one family (Rougon-Maquart), whose fate is being investigated for four to five years. generations. The variety of novel plots made it possible to show many aspects of French life during the Second Empire. The first books in the series did not arouse much interest, but the seventh volume, The Trap (L "Assommoir, 1877), was a great success and brought Zola both fame and fortune. He bought a house in Meudon near Paris and gathered young writers around him (among them were J.C. Huysmans and Guy de Maupassant), who formed a short-lived "naturalistic school". The subsequent novels of the series were met with great interest - they were vilified and extolled with equal zeal. The twenty volumes of the Rougon-Maquart cycle represent the main literary achievement of Zola, although It should be noted that Teresa Raquin (1867) written earlier is a deep study of the feeling of remorse that comprehends the murderer and his accomplice.In the last years of his life, Zola created two more cycles: Three cities (Les Trois Villes, 1894-1898) - Lourdes (Lourdes ), Rome (Rome), Paris (Paris); and the Four Gospels (Les Quatre Evangiles, 1899-1902), which remained unfinished (the fourth volume was not written). Zola became the first novelist to create a series of books about members of the same family. Many followed his example, incl. J. Duhamel (Chronicles of Pasquier), D. Galsworthy (The Forsyte Saga) and D. Masters (books about the Savages). One of the reasons that prompted Zola to choose the structure of the cycle was the desire to show the operation of the laws of heredity. The Rougon-Macquarts are the offspring of an imbecile woman who dies in the last volume of the series, having reached the age of a century and having completely lost her mind. From her children - one legitimate and two illegitimate - three branches of the family originate. The first is represented by the prosperous Rougons, members of this family appear in such novels as His Excellency Eugene Rougon (Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, 1876) - a study of political machinations in the reign of Napoleon III; Mining (La Curee, 1871) and Money (L "Argent, 1891), which deals with speculation in landed property and securities. The second branch of the family is the Mouret family. Octave Mouret, an ambitious red tape in Nakipi (Pot-Bouille, 1882), creates one of the first Parisian department stores on the pages of Ladies' happiness (Au Bonheur des dames, 1883), while other family members lead a more than modest life, like the village priest Serge Mouret in the mysterious and poetic novel La Faute de l "Abbe Mouret, 1875). Representatives of the third branch, the Macquarts, are extremely unbalanced, since their ancestor Antoine Macquart was an alcoholic. Members of this family play a prominent role in Zola's most powerful novels - such as The Womb of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris, 1873), which recreates the atmosphere of the capital's central market; A trap that depicts in harsh tones the life of Parisian workers in the 1860s; Nana (Nana, 1880), whose heroine, a representative of the third generation of Makkarov, becomes a prostitute and her sexual magnetism confuses the high society; Germinal (Germinal, 1885), the greatest creation of Zola, dedicated to the miners' strike in the mines of northern France; Creativity (L "Oeuvre, 1886), which includes the characteristics of many famous artists and writers of the era; Earth (La Terre, 1887), a story about peasant life; Beast Man (La Bete humaine, 1890), which describes the life of railway workers, and finally, Defeat (La Debacle, 1892), a depiction of the Franco-Prussian war and the first major military novel in French literature.By the time the cycle was completed (1903), Zola enjoyed worldwide fame and, by all accounts, was the largest writer of France after V. Hugo All the more sensational was his intervention in the Dreyfus affair (1897-1898).Zola became convinced that Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of the French General Staff, a Jew by nationality, was unjustly convicted in 1894 for selling military secrets to Germany. the main responsibility for an obvious miscarriage of justice took the form of an open letter to the President of the Republic with the heading I accuse (J "accuse, 1898). Sentenced for slander to a year in prison, Zola fled to England and was able to return to his homeland in 1899, when the situation changed in favor of Dreyfus. On September 28, 1902, Zola died suddenly in his Paris apartment. The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning, an "accident" most likely staged by his political enemies.

Mechanic Etienne Lantier, expelled from the railway for slapping his boss, is trying to get a job in the mine of the Monsou company, which is near the town of Vore, in the village of Dvuhsot Soroka. There are no jobs anywhere, the miners are starving. A place for him in the mine was found only because on the eve of his arrival in Vora, one of the haulers died. The old slaughterer Mahe, whose daughter Katrina works with him in the mine as a second hauler, takes Lantier into his artel.

The work is unbearably difficult, and fifteen-year-old Katrina looks perpetually haggard. Mahe, his son Zakharia, artel workers Levak and Chaval work, lying either on their backs or on their sides, squeezing through a shaft barely half a meter wide: the coal seam is thin. In the slaughter unbearable stuffiness. Katrina and Etienne are pushing the carts. On the very first day, Etienne decides to leave Vore: this daily hell is not for him. In front of his eyes, the company's management smashes the miners for not caring about their own safety. The silent slavery of the miners amazes him. Only the look of Katrina, the memory of her make him stay in the village for some more time. The Mahe live in unimaginable poverty. They are always indebted to the shopkeeper, they do not have enough for bread, and Maheu's wife has no choice but to go with the children to the Piolena estate, owned by the landowners Gregoires. Gregoires, co-owners of the mines, sometimes help the poor. The owners of the estate discover all signs of degeneration in Mahe and her children and, having handed her a pair of old children's dresses, they teach a lesson in frugality. When a woman asks for a hundred sous, she is refused: serving is not in the Gregoire rules. Children, however, are given a piece of bread. In the end, Mahe manages to soften the shopkeeper Megr - in response to a promise to send Katrina to him. While the men work in the mine, the women prepare dinner, a stew of sorrel, potatoes, and leeks; the Parisians, who came to inspect the mines and get acquainted with the life of the miners, are touched by the generosity of the mine owners, who give the workers such cheap housing and supply all the mining families with coal.

Washing becomes one of the holidays in a mining family: once a week, the whole Mahe family, without hesitation, takes turns dipping into a barrel of warm water and changing into clean clothes. Mahe then indulges with his wife, calling his only entertainment "free dessert". Meanwhile, Katrina is harassed by the young Chaval: remembering her love for Etienne, she resists him, but not for long. In addition, Chaval bought her a ribbon. He possessed Katrina in a barn outside the village.

Etienne gradually gets used to work, to comrades, even to the rough simplicity of local customs: he now and then comes across lovers walking behind the dump, but Etienne believes that young people are free. Only the love of Katrina and Chaval revolts him - he is unconsciously jealous. Soon he meets the Russian machinist Suvarin, who lives next door to him. Souvarine avoids talking about himself, and Étienne does not soon find out that he is dealing with a populist socialist. After fleeing Russia, Souvarine got a job at the company. Etienne decides to tell him about his friendship and correspondence with Plushard, one of the leaders of the labor movement, the secretary of the northern federation of the newly created International in London. Souvarine is skeptical about the International and Marxism: he believes only in terror, in revolution, in anarchy, and calls for burning cities, destroying the old world by all means. Etienne, on the contrary, dreams of organizing a strike, but it needs money - a mutual benefit fund that would allow him to hold out at least for the first time.

In August, Etienne moves to live with Mahe. He tries to captivate the head of the family with his ideas, and Maheu seems to begin to believe in the possibility of justice, but his wife immediately reasonably objects that the bourgeois will never agree to work like miners, and all talk of equality will forever remain nonsense. Mahe's ideas about a just society come down to the desire to live properly, and this is not surprising - the company is fineing workers with might and main for non-compliance with safety regulations and is looking for any excuse to cut wages. Another pay cut is the perfect excuse to strike. The head of the Mahe family, receiving a godlessly reduced salary, is also reprimanded for talking about politics with his tenant - rumors have already spread about this. Toussaint Maheu, an old miner, is only enough to nod fearfully. He himself is ashamed of his own stupid obedience. A cry of poverty spreads throughout the village. At the new site where the Mahe family works, it becomes more and more dangerous - either an underground source will hit in the face, or the layer of coal will be so thin that you can move in the mine only by peeling off your elbows. Soon, the first collapse in Etienne's memory occurs, in which the youngest son of Mahe, Jeanlin, broke both legs. Etienne and Mahe understand that there is nothing more to lose: only the worst lies ahead. It's time to strike.

The director of the Enbo mines is informed that no one has come to work. Etienne and several of his comrades made up a delegation to negotiate with the hosts. Mahe also entered. Along with him went Pierron, Levak and delegates from other villages. The demands of the miners are insignificant: they insist that they be given an increase in the wage for the trolley by only five sous. Enbo tries to cause a split in the deputation and speaks of someone's vile suggestion, but not a single miner from Monsou is yet a member of the International. On behalf of the miners, Etienne begins to speak - he alone is able to argue with Enbo. Étienne finally directly threatens that sooner or later the workers will be forced to resort to other measures in order to defend their lives. The board of mines refuses to make concessions, which finally hardens the miners. The whole village is running out of money, but Etienne is convinced that the strike must be held to the last. Plushard promises to come to Vora and help with money, but hesitates. At last Étienne waited for him. The miners gather for a meeting with the widow Desir. The owner of the tavern, Rasner, is in favor of ending the strike, but the miners tend to trust Étienne more. Plushard, considering strikes to be too slow a means of struggle, takes the floor and urges all the same to continue the strike. The police commissioner with four gendarmes appears to forbid the meeting, but, warned by the widow, the workers manage to disperse in time. Plushard promised to send the allowance. The company's board, meanwhile, decided to fire the most stubborn strikers and those who were considered instigators.

Etienne is gaining more and more influence over the workers. Soon he completely supplants their former leader - the moderate and cunning Rasner, and he predicts the same fate for him over time. An old man named Immortal at the next meeting of miners in the forest recalls how fruitlessly his comrades protested and died half a century ago. Étienne speaks passionately like never before. The assembly decides to continue the strike. Only the mine in Jean-Bart works for the entire company. The local miners are declared traitors and decide to teach them a lesson. Arriving in Jean-Barts, the workers from Monsou begin to cut the ropes - by this they force the miners to leave the mines. Katrina and Chaval, who live and work in Jean-Bart, also go upstairs. A fight breaks out between strikers and strikebreakers. The management of the company calls the police and the army - dragoons and gendarmes. In response, the workers begin to destroy the mines. The uprising is gaining momentum, spreading like fire through the mines. With the singing of the Marseillaise, the crowd goes to Mons, to the board. Enbo is lost. The miners rob Megr's shop, who died while trying to save his property. Chaval brings the gendarmes, and Katrina barely has time to warn Étienne so that he does not get caught by them. This winter, police and soldiers are deployed in all the mines, but work is not resumed anywhere. The strike covers more and more mines. Etienne finally waited for a direct clash with the traitor Chaval, for whom Katrina had long been jealous, and won: Chaval was forced to give her up and flee.

Meanwhile, Jeanlin, the youngest of Mahe, although limping on both legs, learned to run quite quickly, rob and shoot with a sling. He was seized by the desire to kill the soldier - and he killed him with a knife, jumping like a cat from behind, unable to explain his hatred. Collision of miners with soldiers becomes inevitable. The miners themselves went to bayonets, and although the soldiers were ordered to use weapons only as a last resort, shots were soon heard. The miners throw mud and bricks at the officers, the soldiers respond with firing and with the very first shots they kill two children: Lydia and Beber. Killed Mouquette, in love with Etienne, killed Toussaint Mahe. The workers are terribly frightened and depressed. Soon representatives of the authorities from Paris come to Mons. Etienne begins to feel himself the culprit of all these deaths, ruin, violence, and at this moment Rasner again becomes the leader of the miners, demanding reconciliation. Etienne decides to leave the village and meets with Souvarine, who tells him the story of the death of his wife, who was hanged in Moscow. Since then, Souvarine has neither affection nor fear. After listening to this terrible story, Etienne returns home to spend his last night in the village with the Mahe family. Souvarine goes to the mine, where the workers are going to return, and saws off one of the fasteners of the sheathing that protects the mine from the underground sea - "Flow". In the morning, Étienne finds out that Katrina is also going to go to the mine. Yielding to a sudden impulse, Etienne goes there with her: love makes him stay one more day in the village. By evening, the current broke through the skin. Soon the water broke through to the surface, exploding everything with its powerful movement. At the bottom of the mine, old Muc, Chaval, Etienne and Katrina remained abandoned. Chest-deep in water, they try to get out into a dry mine, wander in underground labyrinths. This is where the last skirmish between Etienne and Chaval takes place: Etienne cracked the skull of his eternal rival. Together with Katrina, Etienne manages to scrape out a kind of bench in the wall, on which they sit above the stream rushing along the bottom of the mine. They spend three days underground, waiting for death and not hoping for salvation, but suddenly someone's blows are heard through the thickness of the earth: they make their way to them, they are saved! Here, in the dark, in the mine, on a tiny strip of firmament, Etienne and Katrina merge in love for the first and last time. After that, Katrina is forgotten, and Etienne listens to the approaching tremors: the rescuers have reached them. When they were brought to the surface, Katrina was already dead.

Having recovered, Etienne leaves the village. He says goodbye to the widow Mahe, who, having lost her husband and daughter, goes to work in the mine - a hauler. In all the mines that have recently been on strike, work is in full swing. And the dull blows of the kyle, it seems to Etienne, come from under the blossoming spring earth and accompany his every step.