September 2024 The Fortune of the Rougons Preface/Translation Notes/Chapters I/II

Please comment regularly as you can. We are interested in what you have to say!

I started this last night. I'm reading the Oxford University Press edition, translated to English by Brian Nelson. I skipped the introduction - I was happy that the OUP said in the first paragraph of the intro to use it as an afterward if you don't want spoilers!
My edition also has a detailed family tree, which I'm sure will come in very handy.

Excited to begin!

I re-read The Fortune of the Rougons in June 2023. When I first read this almost exactly ten years before that, I wasn't too impressed and had found it dull and slow moving. I had a more positive opinion on the re-read, and quite enjoyed most of the interplay between the generations of the two branches of the family, especially the opportunism and desire for fame and fortune of Pierre Rougon, dominated by his wife Felicite, the tragic backstory of his mother "Aunt" Dide, and the youthful romanticism, both political and emotional, of Silvere and Miette.

While some of the manoeuvrings around the fictional town of Plassans dragged a bit, for the most part I enjoyed the story and felt an appetite to tackle the following books in the series, which I had not felt ten years previously. At one point, the families are described colourfully as "a pack of unbridled, insatiate appetites amidst a blaze of gold and blood". Once the Coup d'Etat has brought the Emperor to power and buried the second French Republic, it is the Rougons' time to prosper: "Their appetites, sharpened by thirty years of restrained desire, now fell to with wolfish teeth. These fierce, insatiate wild beasts, scarcely entering upon indulgence, exulted at the birth of the Empire — the dawn of the Rush for the Spoils. The Coup d’Etat, which retrieved the fortune of the Bonapartes, also laid the foundation for that of the Rougons."

PS - I just realised this is a thread only for the intro sections and early chapters but I doubt I will have sufficiently detailed views on each section or chapter to contribute to each thread to be honest.

I read this book in July of this year, so too soon to read over, although perhaps I should. Not knowing anything about translations, I bought the entire series on Amazon (Kindle) for $1.99! In parentheses (The Greatest Writers of All Time), 2015. When I reviewed the book I commented that it was a bit confusing and mediocre because 1) I knew nothing about the second French empire, nothing about Napoleon III 2) there was a plethora of characters introduced and no family tree was provided. Sassy Lassy, from another group suggested that I invest in the Oxford World Classics with prefaces and footnotes. I did that for book two, and it certainly made all the difference. I am about 20% through the second book, but will hold off reading until this group gets there. ETA--after doing more research, I discovered that this complete collection was translated by Vizetelly . No foot notes or endnotes in this Kindle version.

That being said, I checked out the Oxford classic of this one just to read the preface and chapters one and two again. I will report back when there is more discussion posted!

I am probably going to fall behind a bit with this first book as I have library books that need to be returned, and I want to finish reading them before that. I’m also taking part in the Ray Bradbury group read through September and October, though that shouldn’t “interfere” much.

Free on Amazon US (for e-readers) A Zola Dictionary; the Characters of the Rougon-Macquart Novels of Emile Zola Could be useful!

PREFACE--what has struck me most from the preface is that Zola is making the nature vs. nurture argument. He wants to analyze the families in terms of heredity and environment (social conditions). From the "tone", I would think Zola believes heredity has more influence than social conditions.

Have read chapter 1; a leisurely start although I am sure that many of the images—-the former cemetery, walking about under “grandes mantes” —-will resonate throughout the story. I was a little alarmed that Zola devoted so many paragraphs of sensuous appreciation to the charms of a girl of—-13. But her embodiment of “Liberty Leading the People” was a striking close to the chapter.

I've reread Chapters 1 & 2 (not going to reread entire books as I just read in July 2024) and I do appreciate it more the second time. When I read it the first time, I was primarily focused on understanding the relationships between characters, their political affiliations, and keeping track of who was who. On this second read, I concentrated more on identifying the themes. I believe ambition and power are two of the central themes which got my attention.

>10 Tess_W: Yes, I think ambition and power will be central to all the books. Also money - who has it, who wants it, and how they use it. And social class as well - can the characters move out of the social stratus they are born into? Are they actually improved by it if they "move up"?

I think it will be very interesting to think about these things as we read the whole series of books.

My copy of Son Excellence Eugène Rougon arrived today, with a great portrait of Napoleon III on the cover. There’s actually an organisation called Les Amis de Napoleon III https://lesamisdenapoleontrois.fr/ which strikes me as pretty niche, but chacun à son gout!

I knew that the series as a whole concerned the legitimate and illegitimate branches of the same family but I did not expect the common parent to be the mother. One would have assumed that a middle-class woman like Adélaïde would have farmed out an illegitimate child, à la Dorothy Sayers and her son. Clearly Zola had to make her an eccentric, to publicly raise two illegitimate children. Did Zola do this for some reason related to “scientific” ideas specific to maternal inheritance?

>13 booksaplenty1949: Here is a good article about the abandonment of illegitimate children in France post 1811. It may answer your comment/question.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3787050

>14 Tess_W: I didn’t mean to suggest that a woman of means would abandon an illegitimate child, just that she would arrange to have him or her raised by some relative or dependant.

>15 booksaplenty1949: Yep!

I've only read the first chapter so far, but I wanted to pop in to say that I am reading along and following the thread. I found myself doing a fair amount of background reading yesterday to acquaint myself with the period. I am woefully ignorant of the Second Empire.

Finished ch 2. After reading a chapter in French I follow up with the corresponding chapter in the Vizetelly translation https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5135/5135-h/5135-h.htm#pref01
available on Project Gutenberg. Apparently it’s bowdlerized but that isn’t obvious to me so far.
Chapter 2 is dedicated to elaborating Zola’s views on heredity as it affects the personalities of his characters, sounding very scientific but of course completely speculative. This pseudo-science was behind the racial theories which justified slavery and modern anti-Semitism, so I found it rather hard to take, not to mention that, after the charming encounter with Silvère and Miette in ch 1, ch 2 has a cast of uniformly unattractive characters until the belated arrival of Dr Pascal in the last few paragraphs.

>7 Tess_W: good call, will be handy to have for reference.

>7 Tess_W: Yes, I downloaded it this morning.

>17 labfs39: I had to do that, also! I felt part of the reason I had a less than stellar experience with this book is because I was so ignorant of time and place. However, once I started using the Oxford Translations, the preface and footnotes really took care of a lot of that. But I did read up on the Dreyfus Affair and a very short YA biography of Louis Napoleon circa 50 pages.

>21 Tess_W: The Oxford introduction warns of spoilers, so I had initially skipped it, but Jerry/rocketj recommended it, so I read at least the history overview, which is super helpful.

A professor specialising in the history of science was able to confirm for me that the theory of Eugenics which underlies Zola’s project in this series of novels holds that maternal inheritance is the key factor. This explains why Zola had to go to some lengths to have his legitimate and illegitimate lines be related through the mother, despite the plot difficulties that resulted from having to have a respectable middle class married woman openly acknowledge two illegitimate sons.

>23 booksaplenty1949: That's interesting. Thanks!

I've had had more time on my hands than I bargained for (I'm stuck at home with Covid), and decided to re-read the detailed dossier Henri Mitterrand provides on the sources and planning for the cycle. I had forgotten quite a few salient points, such as the choice of Aix-en-Provence as the model for Plassans because he had an axe to grind with the town. Or that the Franco-Prussian War interrupted the serial publication of the novel and that it may have lost readers because of that. Or that he made quite a lot of revisions to the text in a third edition. Or that the Sylvère-Miette chapter draws heavily on his own childhood in Aix. And so on. I feel a strong urge to re-read the entire thing.

>25 MissWatson: Sorry to hear about Covid. I guess the upside of it (if there is an upside), you are home-bound with your books! Thanks for the info above, I did not get that in my volume.

>26 Tess_W: Thankfully, it's a mild attack and more annoying than debilitating.

I did start on the first chapters and the storyline returned to me, but it didn't really grab my attention, so I am postponing a full read to a later date. Could be interesting to read them in publication order then, to see how the family evolved.