Nana (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Emile Zola [2]
In 1902 Emile Zola died from carbon monoxide poisoning that some said was planned by fanatics offended by his role in the Dreyfus Affair. At Zola’s funeral, which was attended by some 50,000 people, Anatole France eulogized him as “a moment in the history of human conscience.” Zola was buried at Montmartre Cemetery, but in 1908 his remains were moved to a place of honor in the Panthéon in Paris.
The World of Émile Zola
and Nana
1840 Émile Zola is born on April 2 in Paris, to Francesco Zola, an Italian civil engineer, and Émilie Zola, née Aubert.
1843 The Zolas move to Aix-en-Provence, where Francesco engineers and executes a plan to supply drinking water to the town.
1844 Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), by Alexandre Dumas (père ), is published.
1847 Francesco dies of illness brought on by work-related exposure- to bad weather, leaving his wife and son in dire financial straits.
1848 The Revolution of February 24 leads to the fall of the July Monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic . Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president.
1852 Émile enrolls at the College Bourbon in Aix, where he wins prizes in several subjects. He and fellow student and future painter Paul Cézanne form what will be a longstanding friendship. A love of the work of Alfred de Musset and Victor Hugo reflects Émile’s early affinity for Romanticism. Louis-Napoleon becomes emperor as Napoleon III.
1853 Baron Georges Haussmann begins his large-scale redesign of Paris. The Crimean War begins.
1856 Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary is published.
1857 Charles Baudelaire’s poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) is published.
1858 When they can no longer afford to live independently in Aix, Émilie and Émile move to Paris, hoping for assistance from friends. Émile receives a bursary (scholarship) that allows him to begin school at the prestigious Lycée Saint-Louis.
1862 Zola is hired as a clerk by the publisher Hachette and advances in the advertising department. In his free time, he reads contemporary fiction and writes journalistic pieces and fiction. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (The Miserable Ones) is published.
1863 Édouard Manet’s painting Déjeuner sur l‘herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), which depicts a nude woman and a partially nude woman picnicking with two dressed men, is exhibited in the Salon des Refusés and creates a scandal.
1864 A book of Zola’s short stories, Les Contes à Ninon (Tales for Ninon) , is published. The author corresponds with the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who publish the naturalistic novel Germinie Lacerteux (Germinie ). The International Workingmen’s Association is founded.
1865 Zola meets and sets up a household with his future wife, Gabrielle Alexandrine Meley, a working-class seamstress . He publishes a sexually explicit fictional memoir, La Confession de Claude (Claude’s Confession), to considerable scandal and a great deal of publicity. A book that will substantially influence Zola’s thinking, Claude Bernard’s Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale (An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine) is published. Zola later argues that the novelist, like the scientist, can bring the scientific method to his work, and that the novelist can experiment with as well as observe his characters.
1866 Zola meets Édouard Manet, whose portrait of Zola will eventually hang in the Musée d‘Orsay in Paris. Zola resigns from Hachette and writes highly opinionated art and literary criticism for the newspaper L’Événement. Mes Haines (My Hates) and Mon Salon, two volumes of essays on art and literature, are published.
1868 Paris opens. In the novel Madeleine Férat, published this year, Zola explores the concept of heredity.
1869 Gustave Flaubert’s L‘Éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education) is published.