I run the risk, with Zola, of being biased and excessively rapturous. Well, you know what? I try to do it so rarely that you can just put up with it, in this instance!

L'Assomoir, translated roughly as The Drinking Den or sometimes The Dram Shop is the seventh in Zola's 20-volume Rougon-Macquart series and, famously, it's the one that made him a household name in Third Republic France. Zola should be required reading for all people of a left-wing persuasion: he's fiercely angry about the state of society, the ways in which individuals vote against their own interests due to ill education or a quick buck, the destructive forces of poverty and inequality upon people's ability to make smart decisions, and - especially - to the short-sighted hypocrisy of moral reformers and snobs, who proliferated throughout France during its last period of Empire, between 1851 and 1870, which this series chronicles. He is a core text in 19th century class-conscious critiques, with the eye of a 20th century sociologist, always seeking a dozen root causes for a problem when lesser minds - sometimes minds in power - would settle for one. "People wouldn't be poor if they didn't waste their lives on drink and sex!" said the wealthy (who - as the author has chronicled in earlier instalments - waste much of their life on same). "Perhaps", Zola retorts, "we should ask why they drink and have sex, and whether they really had any chance of escaping poverty to begin with."

In the character of Gervaise, a washerwoman torn between three men, various children from different fathers, and a monotonous life broken up only by bouts of injury, brutality, or drunken joy, Zola found a character to enrage and enrapture the literati of Paris in equal measure. As the novel was serialised, readers couldn't tell whether the author was creating a story of a sinner's moral downfall, or just enjoying creating a scandal ("being a pornographer", as his critics called him until his dying day).

But, really, he is doing neither. And this is the point. Zola should also be read by those of a right-wing persuasion. Gervaise's downfall is upsetting. (It's a cakewalk compared to some of the truly brutal, exhausting lives of others, notably an 8-year-old girl acting as mother to her two baby siblings, and as a lighting rod for the graphically-written beatings of her father, widowed by his own hand.) But the lives of Gervaise and all of her compatriots in the working-class neighbourhood near the outer wall of Paris are logical extensions of the society in which they live. It is here that the great overall structure of the Rougon-Macquart comes into play. The opulent "elegant decay" of [b:The Kill|3888856|The Kill|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475574769l/3888856._SY75_.jpg|839934]. The dog-eat-dog world of food market Les Halles in [b:The Belly of Paris|6662310|The Belly of Paris|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348413678l/6662310._SY75_.jpg|10242] (centering around Gervaise's sister Lisa, who perhaps unreasonably does not appear in this book). And most notably [b:His Excellency Eugène Rougon|36794160|His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Les Rougon-Macquart, #6)|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1518919256l/36794160._SY75_.jpg|1356899], in which Gervaise's cousin Eugene rises in politics by treating Paris and all of her complex social issues as mere means to an end. If L'Assomoir scandalised France, Zola wanted to say, they should take a long, hard look at themselves.

While the novel is lengthy and often grim, it is also very funny. Zola and Dickens are incredibly different in their structure and approach, although they played similar roles in their respective cultures. But whereas Dickens was a social reformer in the classical sense, with his one-dimensional, honest-but-down-on-their-luck poor, Zola doesn't let his characters off lightly. There are dozens of characters populating Gervaise's world, and they're filled with delightful contradictions, peccadilloes that others excuse on dubious moral grounds, and a constant need to judge others behind their back, all the while assuring everyone that they're not being judgmental, no, of course not. Zola is at his best (as always) in his grand set-pieces, most notably the day of Gervaise's wedding, which commences with a ceremony that no-one wishes to attend, a backlogged Town Hall more interested in bureaucracy than romance, a tipsy tour of the Louvre by a group of people who wouldn't know art if it bit them on the behind, and a messy all-night banquet which leaves the wait staff regretting that they ever agreed to hire the place out to a bunch of white trash.

Even Gervaise, whose tragedy this is, receives countless opportunities to make good decisions, and almost never does so. Zola is showcasing the complexity of poverty, the inevitable human need to prioritise short-term gain over long-term reward when one is in dire straits, but he never (well, rarely) forgets that his characters are also characters. No-one acts the way they do just because of their social tribe; we are all individuals, and he knows this.

As in every one of his novels, Zola chooses an overarching style. Here, his narrative voice is the town gossip. It's an incredible challenge for a translator, as even the omniscient narration is always in character, bursting with slang and catty tangents. Margaret Mauldon's translation seems to be up to the task.

There's always one caveat in a Zola novel, and here it's his lifelong belief (bear in mind he was born in 1840!) that, on a scientific, even genetic level, a woman's first lover "imprints" himself upon her. This was the subject of Zola's early novel [b:Madeleine Férat|312176|Madeleine Férat|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1173657843l/312176._SY75_.jpg|2920502] and resurfaces here, although not in such a way that makes the novel feel outdated. Gervaise's actions (unlike Madeleine's) still feel like their own.

So, in closing, this is quite a book. Every instalment of the Rougon-Macquart is also a history lesson. Zola was chronicling a twenty-year period in France's history, and has left us with a remarkable multifaceted view of a city - a world - in all its iridescent, hypocritical, vibrant, noisy, depressing glory. When L'Assommoir was published in book form in 1877, it was an instant bestseller and, instantly, the previous six books in the series was back in print and selling like gold. While he had been a recognisable figure to Parisians since he began publishing books in the mid-1860s, Zola at last had financial stability, and could convincingly present himself as the leading author of his generation. (Luminaries Flaubert and Hugo - both of whom were reaching the end of their life - seem to have looked upon him with a mix of respect and dismay!) Now he could sit back and write the remaining 13 volumes of his series encompassing an entire era of French history. No big deal. ( )

Piu’ che l’Ammazzatoio l’avrei intitolato il Dimenticatoio: luogo ove si trova rifugio dall’orribile e pesante fuori. Oppure il Buco ove mandare tutti a…

Ah! Che voglia di mandare a quel paese il mondo intero! La vita le offriva cosi’ pochi piaceri, che le sembrava gia’ una consolazione poter partecipare a meta’ nel far fuori in quel modo il loro denaro. Ci si trovava bene; perche’ mai avrebbe dovuto andarsene? (391)

Mio Dio! Era mai possibile che degli uomini lasciassero le loro donne e le loro case per rintanarsi in un buco dove soffocavano? (386)

Facevano la fila davanti all’Assommoir di papa’ Colombe, illuminato come una cattedrale per una messa solenne; e in nome di Dio! la si sarebbe detta davvero una funzione, perche’ quei bravi figlioli cantavano la’ dentro con certe facce da cantori al leggio, con le guance gonfie, la pancia tonda e sospinta in avanti. (461)

Un sabato, tornando a casa, Nana’ trovo’ il padre e la madre in condizioni vergognose. …
Nana’ non rispondeva; guardava tutta pallida la stufa fredda, la tavola senza piatti, quella lugubre stanza in cui i due ubriaconi esalavano l’ignobile orrore del loro sfacelo. Non si levo’ il cappello; fece il giro della camera; poi a denti stretti riapri’ la porta e ando’ via. (414)

Incapace d’ogni riflessione metafisica, appagato di conclusioni rudimentali (che confermano il “programma” e l’ideologia), Zola, nell’Assommoir come altrove, nonostante la sua pretesa di fare un ‘opera scientifica, riesce (consapevolmente o no) a intrecciare la solitudine essenziale dell’uomo (impossibile ogni redenzione o riscatto: l’unico “peccato” e’ l’illusione…)... (LIV)

Se pensava all’avvenire, le venivano i sudori freddi, e si paragonava a un soldo lanciato in aria e che ricade testa o croce, a seconda degli accidenti del suolo. (51)

“Ma dite un po’, cameriere, sono forse conigli da grondaia, questi? Sta ancora miagolando!” (93)

Oh! Erano davvero dei vagabondaggi senza fine, una rassegna generale di tutte le osterie del quartiere, la sbornia del mattino smaltita a mezzogiorno e riacchiappata la sera; i giri d’acquavite si moltiplicavano, si perdevano nella notte, come i lampioni di una festa, finche’ l’ultima candela non si spegne insieme all’ultimo bicchiere! (291)

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It is a shame to have to read this in translation and miss out on the argot but the Tancock version is enjoyably game in its verbal inventiveness. The relationships and dialogue feel minutely true to life, rendered in utterly lucid prose, and the circumstances almost as relevant now as then: there are many points of plot and colour startlingly in common with recent films set amid poverty like 'The Florida Project'. The plain realism of the portrayal makes the tragedy all the sadder for its complete ordinariness: a well-intentioned young woman tries to work her way out of poverty into a level of simple creature comfort, but is pulled back into squalor by the envy, laziness and parasitism of her friends and family. So old, yet it still feels like an insight into modern life at the bottom. Pair with 'This is London' by Ben Judah. ( )

The 7th edition of the Les Rougon-Macquart series. The book is about a family living in Paris during the time Napoleon III trying to survive as middle class. Zola gives us a picture of this family using naturalism. You will experience Paris with all your senses from the perspective of this man and woman and how the tavern contributed to their experience. The book might appeal to those that like historical significance and epic books about family. ( )

Weeks before I listened to this very interesting webinar about 'The Art of Reviewing Literature in Translation', I had referred — in this #6Degrees of Separation — to Brian Nelson's new translation of Zola's The Assommoir (L'Assommoir) and specifically mentioned reading the Translator's Note:

I have just received a brand new translation of it by my favourite translator, Brian Nelson, Emeritus Professor of French at Monash University. Published by Oxford World’s Classics, it has the same Introduction by Robert Lethbridge as the 1995 Margaret Mauldon translation, but (of course) the Notes on the Translation are new, referring to the difficulty of translating C19th French slang and to a change of approach. Where Mauldon writes that she aimed for an English equivalent not of recent vintage to convey the vigour of the original, Nelson asserts the importance of writing for a contemporary audience, aiming to use vigorously colloquial contemporary language. So I am looking forward to see how these differences are manifested in the new translation.

So, listening to the webinar, I was interested to hear that at least one prominent (i.e. paid) reviewer had complained about an aspect of translation that had been specifically explained in a Translator's Note. Quite rightly, this not bothering to read the Translator's Note was judged by the panel to be shabby behaviour, but that behaviour made me realise how far I have come in thinking about translated literature since the early days when I began reading it via the home of translated fiction, Stu's blog Winston's Dad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrrDTyJ-W08
 
First up, yes, translators feel strongly that reviewers should acknowledge that a book is translated and has translator. So that's a tick for me, because I've been doing that for years. But then it's a question of how it's acknowledged. It's not just a matter of #NamingTheTranslator, it's a matter of acknowledging that the work is a co-creation which emerges when a translator reworks the original text and recreates it. That's not something I've always acknowledged, and what's more, I don't agree entirely that a translator can or should, to use an example from the webinar, change culturally specific Israeli jokes into something else more accessible. Firstly, there is always Google; secondly, there can be explanatory notes; and thirdly, whose alternatives do we get that aren't culturally specific to somewhere else anyway? Those of us who live in The Rest of the World all know how often there are tiresome assumptions that we are familiar with US culture. (Anyone learning languages with Duolingo has to put up with this all the time).
Whatever about that, if you — whether reader or reviewer — are at all interested in the reviewing of translation, this webinar is a helpful guide to doing it well, though the speakers were all at pains to say that all reviews of translated fiction are welcome, because it isn't reviewed enough and nobody wants to discourage potential reviewers with exacting standards...
So in the spirit of the suggestion that reviewers of TL should be 'daring' I'm going to assert that Brian Nelson's translation of The Assommoir is a 'new book' in the sense that the panel explained it. It is a co-creation with Zola, reworked for contemporary readers. The most obvious aspect of this is the use of contemporary language as an interpretation of Zola's use of 19th century French slang. It is, as we often tag it, 'robust'!
Reading a new translation for review has been a different kind of reading for me. I already know this powerful story of a woman from the French underclass who starts out well but lapses into moral and financial decline, and you can read my review of the Margaret Mauldon translation here. So I was reading partly for the pleasure of re-reading, but also to note differences in the translation. This is a kind of reading that scholars and editors do, but I don't pretend to have that kind of expertise. For me, comparing the text line-by-line would have killed the pleasure of reading it, but when I came across sections that seemed to me to be new or different or more modern, I compared the two texts.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/02/25/the-assommoir-by-emile-zola-a-new-translatio... ( )