Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [13]
NOTES
1 A. Judge and F. G. Headley, A Reference Grammar of Modern French (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), p. 107.
2 Maurice Grévisse, Le Bon Usage, revised by André Goosse (Paris: Duculot, 1986), p. 1291.
THERESE RAQUIN
Preface to the Second Edition (1868)
I naïvely thought that this novel could do without a Preface. Being accustomed to speak my mind out loud and to stress the least detail in what I write, I hoped that I might be understood and judged without having to explain myself further. It seems that I was wrong.
The critics greeted this book with anger and indignation. Some virtuous folk, in no less virtuous newspapers, puckered their faces in disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it on the fire. Even the little literary papers — those same literary papers that every evening report the gossip from bedrooms and private dining rooms — held their noses and spoke of stinking filth. I have no complaint to make about this reception; on the contrary, I am charmed to discover that my colleagues have the sensitive feelings of young ladies. It is quite evident that my book belongs to my critics and that they may find it repulsive without giving me any cause for protest. What I do mind, however, is that not one of the prudish journalists who have blushed as they read Thérèse Raquin seems to me to have understood the novel. If they had understood it, perhaps they would have blushed even more, but at least I should now be enjoying the private satisfaction of seeing that they were disgusted for the right reason. Nothing is more irritating than to hear honest writers protest about depravity when one is quite certain that they make these noises without knowing what they are protesting about.
It is necessary, therefore, for me to present my work to these critics myself. I shall do so in a few lines, simply in order to avoid any misunderstanding in the future.
In Thérèse Raquin I set out to study temperament, not character. 1 That sums up the whole book. I chose protagonists who were supremely dominated by their nerves and their blood, deprived of free will and drawn into every action of their lives by the predetermined lot of their flesh. Thérèse and Laurent are human animals, nothing more. In these animals, I have tried to follow step by step the silent operation of desires, the urgings of instinct and the cerebral disorders consequent on a nervous crisis. The love between my two heroes is the satisfaction of a need; the murder that they commit is the outcome of their adultery, an outcome that they accept as wolves accept the killing of a sheep; and finally what I have been compelled to call their ‘remorse’,2 consists in a simple organic disruption, a revolt of the nervous system when it has been stretched to breaking-point. I freely admit that the soul is entirely absent, which is as I wanted it.
The reader will have started, I hope, to understand that my aim has been above all scientific. When I created my two protagonists, Thérèse and Laurent, I chose to set myself certain problems and to solve them. Thus I tried to explain the strange union that can take place between two different temperaments, showing the profound disturbance of a sanguine nature when it comes into contact with a nervous one. Those who read the novel carefully will see that each chapter is the study of a curious case of physiology. In a word, I wanted only one thing: given a powerful man and a dissatisfied woman, to search out the beast in them, and nothing but the beast, plunge them into a violent drama and meticulously note the feelings and actions of these two beings. I have merely performed on two living bodies the analytical work that surgeons carry out on dead ones.
One must admit that it is hard, having completed such a task and still entirely devoted to the serious pleasures of the search