May 2026 Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris) Ch 1-2

Preliminarily looking over my ebook edition, (Oxford) (which sometimes differs from the paper versions) I notice it has 319 pages and is divided into 6 rather large chapters. If you find yours different, please advise!

The French original in the folio edition also has six chapters.

>3 MissWatson: TY!

Not going to begin this for a week or two, but I already love the name. From the name I conjure up seediness and grit, perhaps akin to Dickens' London.

ETA: 5/5 Getting ready to start. I think my enthusiasm is dwindling!

Not off to a good start! I had to restart twice because after reading 10-20 pages and setting aside, I didn't remember a thing! FOCUS!

The description of food is both titillating and grotesque in its excess. The contrasts of smells: blood, food, body smells! I can almost smell the stench in the heat.

Personally I don’t have any sense of “stench.” Everything is fresh from the farm; an “army” of sweepers regularly go over the streets. The starving Florent is tortured by delicious smells everywhere he goes in the market. Thank heaven he winds up in time for breakfast in his brother’s fabulous delicatessen. I’m drooling.

I too am finding the overwhelming foods, especially the meats, to be nauseating. There is something grotesque about the overabundance of food, the fat, lard and grease that coats everything, the comparison of Lisa to the sides of pork hanging to either side of her that seems rancid. The contrast with Florent's story is horrifying. BTW, was anyone else disturbed by Pauline's fascination and enjoyment of the story of the man who was eaten alive?

Wow, didn’t know I would be reading this book along with anorexics. My perception of the market is quite different.
Although we are reading this as #11 it was the third book Zola wrote in the series and the Rougon-Macquart heredity issues seem more top of his mind here compared to, say Une page d’amour.

>8 labfs39: I did think that was rather odd. She seemed like an innocent but delighted in that story. Maybe desensitized by all the blood and the slaughtering of animals? Or maybe it's symbolic and I just don't get it yet!

>10 Tess_W: I gather that Pauline is the heroine of La joie de vivre—-the person who manages to display optimism and agency in the face of difficulty. So perhaps Zola doesn’t share your concern with her interest in the story. Apparently scientists would find it normal at her age https://www.romper.com/parenting/kids-obsession-death-gore

>9 booksaplenty1949: LOL to anorexic. I think the market is no different than all the other excesses we have read about: stitchery, religion, stock market, etc.

I finished chapter 2 and feel that the story's symbols are now in place: the market is society, the food is power (which is control), and Florent is an outsider, both morally and socially. It's the thin vs. the fat. (haves vs the have nots)

>12 Tess_W: Excellent points.
Just to reiterate that the food described, while perhaps overwhelming in quantity, is by no means giving off a “stench.” I am on chapter 3, where Florent is employed as a seafood inspector, and even this part of the market is full of delicious smells which Zola describes in detail.

"For the first few months he {Florent} was not particularly worried by this penetrating smell. The winter was harsh {so it didn't smell}... then the thaw came and milder weather, the fog and rain of March. The fish became soft again, and the stench of rotting flesh mingled with the smell of mud in the neighboring streets. The smells were as yet a vague presence in the air, a sweet, nauseous clamminess dragging low along the ground. At last the blazing afternoons of June arrived, and then the stench rose and the air grew heavy with the hot air of plague. Upper windows were opened and large blinds of grey canvas were hung under the burning sky. A rain of fire poured down over the markets, heating them as it they were a great boiler, and not a breath of air came to waft away the stench of rotten fish. Steam rose from the stalls.

The masses of food amongst which Florent lived now began to cause him the greatest discomfort. The disgust he had felt in the charcuterie came back even more strongly. He had experienced smells as terrible as these, but they had never come from the belly. His own small stomach, the stomach of a thin man, was sickened as he passed by the displays of fish, which, despite all the water lavished upon them, turned bad at the first sign of warm weather. They assailed him with their powerful smells and took his breath away, as though they had given him indigestion. Even when he shut himself in his office, the loathsome smell followed him and crept in through the badly joined woodwork of the door and the window. On days when the skies were grey the little room remained in darkness; it was like a long twilight in the depths of some evil-smelling bog... " p. 121

Florent is not attracted to La Normande, in part because of her "fishy smells; she walked as through an evaporation of slimy seaweed." She was "too intense in her smell." p. 130

Madame Francois, however, not being a part of Les Halles, delights him with "the healthy scent of the fields she brought with her into the foul atmosphere of Les Halles. She smelt of earth and hay, fresh air and open skies." p. 123

>14 labfs39: I am reading the book in French and the descriptions of the smells are much less negative.

>14 labfs39:, >15 booksaplenty1949:
For comparison's sake, the French original of the passages pull in >14 labfs39:.

French original of English translation p. 121
Les premiers mois, il ne souffrit pas trop de cette odeur pénétrante. L'hiver était rude; le verglas changeait les allées en miroirs, les glaçons mettaient des guipures blanches aux tables de marbre et aux fontaines. Le matin, il fallait allumer de petits réchauds sous les robinets pour obtenir un filet d'eau. Les poissons, gelés, la queue tordue, ternes et rudes comme des métaux dépolis, sonnaient avec un bruit cassant de fonte pâle. Jusqu'en février, le pavillon resta lamentable, hérissé, désolé, dans son linceul de glace. Mais vinrent les dégels, les temps mous, les brouillards et les pluies de mars. Alors, les poissons s'amollirent, se noyèrent; des senteurs de chairs tournées se mêlèrent aux souffles fades de boue qui venaient des rues voisines. Puanteur vague encore, douceur écoeurante d'humidité, traînant au ras du sol. Puis, dans les après-midi ardentes de juin, la puanteur monta, alourdit l'air d'une buée pestilentielle. On ouvrait les fenêtres supérieures, de grands stores de toile grise pendaient sous le ciel brûlant, une pluie de feu tombait sur les Halles, les chauffait comme un four de tôle; et pas un vent ne balayait cette vapeur de marée pourrie. Les lianes de vent fumaient.

Florent souffrit alors de cet entassement de nourriture, au milieu duquel il vivait. Les dégoûts de la charcuterie lui revinrent, plus intolérables. Il avait supporté des puanteurs aussi terribles; mais elles ne venaient pas du ventre. Son estomac étroit d'homme maigre se révoltait, en passant devant ces étalages de poissons mouillés à grande eau, qu'un coup de chaleur gâtait. Ils le nourrissaient de leurs senteurs fortes, le suffoquaient, comme s'il avait eu une indigestion d'odeurs. Lorsqu'il s'enfermait dans son bureau, l'écoeurement le suivait, pénétrant par les boiseries mal jointes de la porte et de la fenêtre. Les jours de ciel gris, la petite pièce restait toute noire; c'était comme un long crépuscule, au fond d'un marais nauséabond.

---
French original of English translation p. 130
Alors, le balancement de ses jupes dégageait une buée; elle marchai au milieu d'une évaporation d'algues vaseuses; elle était, avec son grand corps de déesse, sa pureté et sa pâleur admirables, comme un beau marbre ancien roulé par la mer et ramené à la côte dans le coup de filet d'un pêcheur de sardines. Florent souffrait; il ne la désirait point, les sens révoltés par les après-midi de la poissonnerie; il la trouvait irritante, trop salée, trop amère, d'une beauté trop large et d'un relent trop fort.

I'm really interested in this, but my high school French is too basic to make real comparisons. For those who read both languages, I'm curious about more detail about your impressions of the translation.

What I'm getting out of this book is that food - the richness and the indulgence and, yes, the smells - are a metaphor for the way the bourgeouis have been satiated. They are full and fed to excess themselves, so they don't care about the government excesses and misbehavior. And they don't see or care about the people who aren't fed - they don't even seem to see them in this book. Lisa is the epitome of this. Florent, who is skinny and doesn't seem to eat or enjoy food, is the opposite.

>17 japaul22: I agree; Florent’s reactions are the result of his rejection of the values of the Second Empire. Glad I’m not reading this English translation, BTW. Seems to have been the work of a vegan.

>18 booksaplenty1949: Vegan? I have had deer slaughtered and dressed in my garage--and the stench is awful just from one deer. Blood does stink, regardless. From my experiences with slaughtered animals, I can say it does smell! I can almost "smell" the blood sausages as they are being made.

I have finally started the book, and in Chapter One what strikes me most is the enthusiam the painter Claude Lantier exudes for the colours of the vegetables without any intention of eating them, while poor Florent is almost fainting on his feet from hunger.