So Runs the World Part 2

Will humanity remember him in literature? Will his fame pa.s.s? We cannot affirm, but we can doubt! In the cycle of Rougon-Macquart there are powerful volumes, as "Germinal" or "La Debacle." But in general, that which Zola's natural talent made for his immortality was spoiled by a liking for dirty realism and his filthy language. Literature cannot use such expressions of which even peasants are ashamed. The real truth, if the question is about vicious people, can be attained by other means, by probable reproduction of the state of their souls, thoughts, deeds, finally by the run of their conversation, but not by verbal quotation of their swearings and most horrid words. As in the choice of pictures, so in the choice of expression, exist certain measures, pointed at by reason and good taste. Zola overstepped it to such a degree ("La Terre") to which n.o.body yet dared to approach.

Monsters are killed because they are monsters. A book which is the cause of disgust must be abandoned. It is the natural order of things. From old production as of universal literature survive the forgetfulness of the rough productions, destined to excite laughter (Aristophanes, Rabelais, etc.), or lascivious things, but written with an elegance (Boccaccio). Not one book written in order to excite nausea outlived. Zola, for the sake of the renown caused by his works, for the sake of the scandal produced by every one of his volumes, killed his future. On account of that happened a strange thing: it happened that he, a man writing according to a conceived plan, writing with deliberation, cold and possessing his subjects as very few writers are, created good things only when he had the least opportunity to realize his plans, doctrines, means,--in a word, when he dominated the subject the least and was dominated by the subject most.

Such was the case in "Germinal" and "La Debacle." The immensity of socialism and the immensity of the war simply crushed Zola with all his mental apparatus. His doctrines became very small in the presence of such dimensions, and hardly any one hears of them in the noise of the deluge, overflowing the mine and in the thundering of Prussian cannons; only talent remained. Therefore in both those books there are pages worthy of Dante. Quite a different thing happened with "Docteur Pascal." Being the last volume of the cycle, it was bound to be the last deduction, from the whole work the synthesis of the doctrine, the belfry of the whole building. Consequently in this volume Zola speaks more about doctrine than in any other previous volume; as the doctrine is bad, wicked, and false, therefore "Docteur Pascal" is the worst and most tedious book of all the cycle of Rougon-Macquart. It is a series of empty leaves on which tediousness is hand in hand with lack of moral sense, it is a pale picture full of falsehood--such is "Le Docteur Pascal." Zola wishes to have him an honest man. He is the outcast of the family Rougon-Macquart. In heredity there happens such lucky degenerations; the doctor knows about it, he considers himself as a happy exception, and it is for him a source of continuous inward pleasure. In the mean while, he loves people, serves them and sells them his medicine, which cures all possible disease. He is a sweet sage, who studies life, therefore he gathers "human doc.u.ments," builds laboriously the genealogical tree of the family of Rougon-Macquart, whose descendant he is himself, and on the strength of his observations he comes to the same conclusion as Zola. To which? It is difficult to answer the question; but here it is more or less: if any one is not well, usually he is sick and that heredity exists, but mothers and fathers who come from other families can bring into the blood of children new elements; in that way heredity can be modified to such a degree that strictly speaking it does not exist.

To all that Doctor Pascal is a positivist. He does not wish to affirm anything, but he does affirm that actual state of science does not permit of any further deductions than those which on the strength of the observation of known facts can be deducted, therefore one must hold them, and neglect the others. In that respect his prejudices do not tell us anything more than newspaper articles, written by young positivists. For the people, who are rushing forward, for those spiritual needs, as strong as thirst and hunger, by which the man felt such ideas as G.o.d, faith, immortality, the doctor has only a smile of commiseration. And one might wonder at him a little bit. One could understand him better if he did not acknowledge the possibility of the disentangling of different abstract questions, but he affirms that the necessity does not exist--by which he sins against evidence, because such a necessity exists, not further than under his own roof, in the person of his niece. This young person, brought up in his principles, at once loses the ground under her feet. In her soul arose more questions than the doctor was able to answer. And from this moment began a drama for both of them.

"I cannot be satisfied with that," cries the niece, "I am choking; I must know something, and if your science cannot satisfy my necessity, I am going there where they will not only tranquillize me, not only explain everything to me, but also will make me happy--I am going to church."

And she went. The roads of master and pupil diverge more and more.

The pupil comes to the conclusion that the science which is only a slipknot on the human neck is positively bad and that it would be a great merit before G.o.d to burn those old papers in which the doctor writes his observations. And the drama becomes stronger, because notwithstanding the doctor being sixty years old, and Clotilde is only twenty years old, these two people are in love, not only as relations are in love, but as a man and woman love each other. This love adds more bitterness to the fight and prompts the catastrophe.

On a certain night the doctor detected the niece in a criminal deed.

She opened his desk, took out his papers, and she was ready to burn them up! They began to fight! Beautiful picture! Both are in nightgowns--they pull each other's hair, they scratch each other. He is stronger than she; although he has bitten her, she feels a certain pleasure in that experiment on her maiden skin of the strength of a man. In that is the whole of Zola. But let us listen, because the decisive moment approaches. The doctor himself, after having rested a while, announces it solemnly. The reader shivers. Will the doctor by the strength of his genius tear the sky and show to her emptiness beyond the stars? Or will he by the strength of his eloquence ruin her church, her creed, her ecstasies, her hopes?

In the quietness the doctor's low voice is heard:

"I did not wish to show you that, but it cannot last any longer--the time has come. Give me the genealogical tree of Rougon-Macquart."

Yes! The genealogical tree of Rougon-Macquart! The reading of it begins: There was one Adelade Fouque, who married Rougon-Macquart's friend. Rougon had Eugene Rougon, also Pascal Rougon, also Aristides, also Sidonie, also Martha. Aristides had Maxyme, Clotilde, Victor, and Maxyme had Charles, and so on to the end; but Sidonie had a daughter Angelle, and Martha, who married Mouret, who was from Macquart's family, had three children, etc.

The night pa.s.ses, pales, but the reading continues. After Rougons come Macquarts, then the generations of both families. One name follows another. They appear bad, good, indifferent, all cla.s.ses, from ministers, bankers, great merchants, to simple soldiers or rascals without any professions--finally the doctor stops reading--and looking with his eyes of savant at his niece, asks: "Well, what now?"

And beautiful Clotilde throws herself into his arms, crying: "_Vicisti! Vicisti!_"

And her G.o.d, her church, her flight toward ideals, her spiritual needs disappeared, turned into ashes.

Why? On the ground of what final conclusion? For what good reason?

What could there be in the tree that convinced her? How could it produce any other impression than that of tediousness? Why did she not ask the question, which surely must have come to the lips of the reader: "And what then?"--it is unknown! I never noticed that any other author could deduct from such a trifling and insignificant cause such great and immediate consequences. It is as much of an astonishment as if Zola should order Clotilde's faith and principles to be turned into ashes after the doctor has read to her an almanac, time-table, bill of fare, or catalogue of some museum. The freedom surpa.s.ses here all possible limits and becomes absolutely incomprehensible. The reader asks whether the author deceives himself or if he wishes to throw some dust into the eyes of the public? And this climax of the novel is at the same time the downfall of all doctrine. Clotilde ought to have answered as follows:

"Your theory has no connection with my faith in G.o.d and the Church.

Your heredity is so _loose_ and on the strength of it one can be so much, _everything_, that it becomes _nothing_--therefore the consequences which you deduct from it also are based upon nothing.

Nana, according to you, is a street-walker, and Angelle is a saint; the priest Mouret is an ascetic, Jacques Lantier a murderer, and all that on account of great-grandmother Adelade! But I tell you with more real probability, that the good are good because they have my faith, because they believe in responsibility and immortality of the soul, and the bad are bad because they do not believe in anything. How can you prove that the cause of good and bad is in great-grandmother Adelade Fouque? Perhaps you will tell me that it is so because it is so; but I can tell you that the faith and responsibility were for centuries a stopper for evil, and you cannot deny it, if you wish to be a positivist, because those are material facts. In a word, I have objective proofs where you have your personal views, and if it is so, then leave my faith and throw your fancy into the fire."

But Clotilde does not answer anything like this. On the contrary, she eats at once the apple from this tree--pa.s.ses soul and body into the doctor's camp, and she does it because Zola wishes to have it that way. There is no other reason for it and cannot be.

Had she done that on account of love for the doctor, had this reason, which in a woman can play such an important part, acted on her, everything would be easy to understand. But there is no such thing!

In that case what would become of all of Zola's doctrine? It acts exclusively upon Clotilde, the author wishes to have only such a reason. And it happens as he wishes, but at the cost of logic and common sense. Since that time everything would be permitted: one will be allowed to persuade the reader that the man who is not loved makes a woman fall in love with him by means of showing her a price list of b.u.t.ter or candies. To such results a great and true talent is conducted by a doctrine.

This doctrine conducts also to perfect atrophy of moral sense. This heredity is a wall in which one can make as many windows as one pleases. The doctor is such a window. He considers himself as being degenerated from the nervousness of the family; it means that he is a normal man, and as such he would transmit his health to his descendants. Clotilde thinks also that it would be quite a good idea, and as they are in love, consequently they take possession of each other, and they do it as did people in the epoch of caverns. Zola considered it a perfectly natural thing, Doctor Pascal thinks the same, and as Clotilde pa.s.sed into his camp, she did not make any opposition. This appears a little strange. Clotilde was religious only a little while ago! Her youth and lack of experience do not justify her either. Even at eight years, girls have some sentiment of modesty.

At twenty years a young girl always knows what she is doing, and she cannot be called a sacrifice, and if she departs from the sentiment of modesty she does it either by love, which makes n.o.ble the raptures, or because she does it by the act of duty, but at the same time she wishes to be herself a legitimated duty. Even if a woman is an irreligious being and she refuses to be blessed by religion, she can desire that her sentiment were legitimated. The priest or _monsieur le maire_? Clotilde, who loves Doctor Pascal, does not ask for anything.

Marriage, accomplished by a _maire_, seems to her to be a secondary thing. Here also one cannot understand her, because a true love would wish to make the knot lasting. That which really happens is quite different, in the novel, that first separation is the end of the relation between them. Were they married at least by a _maire_, they would have remained even in the separation husband and wife, they would not cease to belong to each other; but as they were not married, therefore at the moment of her departure he became unmarried, as formerly, Doctor Pascal, she--seduced Clotilde. Even during their life in common there happened a thousand disagreeable incidents for both of them. One time, for instance, Clotilde rushes crying and red, and when the frightened doctor asks her what is the matter, she answers:

"Ah, those women! Walking in the shade, I closed my parasol and I hurt a child. In that moment all of the women fell on me and began to shout such things! Ah, it was so dreadful! that I shall never have any children, that such things are not for such a dishcloth as I! and many other things which I cannot repeat; I do not wish to repeat them; I do not even understand them."

Her breast was moved by sobbings; he became pale, and seizing her by the shoulders, commenced to cover her face with kisses, saying:

"It's my fault, you suffer through me! Listen, we will go very far from here, where no one knows us, where everybody will greet you and you shall be happy."

Only one thing does not come to their minds: to be married. When Pascal's mother speaks to him about it, they do not listen to it. It is not dictated to her by woman's modesty, to him by the care for her and the desire to shelter her from insults. Why? Because Zola likes it that way.

But perhaps he cares to show what tragical results are produced by illegitimate marriages? Not at all. He shares the doctor's and Clotilde's opinion. Were they married, there would be no drama, and the author wishes to have it. That is the reason.

Then comes the doctor's insolvency. One must separate. This separation becomes the misfortune of their lives: the doctor will die of it. Both feel that it will not be the end, they do not wish it--and they do not think of any means which would forever affirm their mutual dependence and change the departure for only a momentary separation, but not for eternal farewells: and they do not marry.

They did not have any religion, therefore they did not wish for any priest; it is logical, but why did they not wish for a _maire_? The question remains without an answer.

Here, besides lack of moral sense, there is something more, the lack of common sense. The novel is not only immoral, but at the same time it is a bad shanty, built of rotten pieces of wood, not holding together, unable to suffer any contact with logic and common sense. In such mud of nonsense even the talent was drowned.

One thing remains: the poison flows as usual in the soul of the reader, the mind became familiar with the evil and ceased to despise it. The poison licks, spoils the simplicity of the soul, moral impressions and that sense of conscience which distinguishes the bad from the good.

The doctor dies from languishing after Clotilde. She comes back under the old roof and takes care of the child. Nothing of that which the doctor sowed in her soul had perished. On the contrary, everything grows very well. She loved the life, she also loves it now, she is resigned to it entirely; not through resignation but because she acknowledges it--and the more she thinks of it, rocking in her lap the child without a name, she acknowledges more. Such is the end of Rougon-Macquarts.

But such an end is a new surprise. Here we have before us nineteen volumes, and in those volumes, as Zola himself says, _tant de boue, tant de larmes. C'etait a se demander si d'un coup de foudre, il n'aurait pas mieux valu balayer cette fourmiliere gatee et miserable_.

And it is true! Any one who will read those volumes comes to the conclusion that life is a blindly mechanical and exasperating process, in which one must take part because one cannot avoid it. There is more mud in it than green gra.s.s, more corruption than wholesomeness, more odor of corpses than perfume of flowers, more illness, more madness, and more crime than health and virtue. It is a Gehenna not only dreadful but also abominable. The hair rises on the head, and in the mean while the mouth is wet and the question comes, will it not be better that a thunderbolt destroyed _cette fourmiliere gatee et miserable_?

There cannot be any other conclusion, because any other would be a madman's mental aberration, the breaking of the rules of sense and logic. And now do you know how the cycle of these novels really ended?

By a hymn in the worship of life.

Here one's hands drop! It will be useless work to show again that the author comes to a conclusion which is illogical with his whole work.

G.o.d bless him! But he must not be astonished if he is abandoned by his pupils. The people must think according to rules of logic. And as in the mean while they must live, consequently they wish to get some consolation in this life. Masters of Zola's kind gave them only corruption, chaos, disgust for life, and despair. Their rationalism cannot prove anything else, and if it did, it would be with too much zeal, it would overstep the limits. To-day the suffocated need some pure air, the doubting ones some hope, tormented by uneasiness, some quietude, therefore they are doing well when they turn therefrom where the hope and peace flow, there where they bless them and where they say to them as to Lazarus: _Tolle grabatum tuum et ambula_.

By this one can explain to-day's evolutions, whose waves flow to all parts of the world.

According to my opinion, poetry as well as novels must pa.s.s through it--even more: they must quicken it and make it more powerful. One cannot continue any longer that way! On an exhausted field, only weeds grow. The novel must strengthen the life, not shake it; make it n.o.bler, not soil it; carry good "news," and not bad. It does not matter whether this which I say here please any one or not, because I believe that I feel the great and urgent need of the human soul, which cries for a change.

PART THIRD

WHOSE FAULT?

_A Dramatic Picture in One Act_.

CHARACTERS:

Jadwiga Karlowiecka.

Leon--A Painter.

A Servant.

In the House of Jadwiga Karlowiecka.

SCENE I.

Servant.--The lady will be here in a minute.