L'OEUVRE
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Zola had mentioned in his last letter, when we were discussing the will, that he had finished his most important project in the Rougon-Macquart series, "L'Oeuvre," and that he felt optimistic about its success on the market because it touched on subjects which were currently being debated pro and con in the press. "It is," he wrote, "semi-autobiographical in origin, most of it taken from real life, a description of the trials of a revolutionary artist who struggles for recognition in an established system which is hostile to his art." This is all I knew about it until Renoir, who was just finishing his painting of Madame Charpentier, told me that Monsieur Charpentier, Zola's publisher, had informed him that the novel was not just the exclusive story of one painter's battle against an entrenched academic bureaucracy, but was, additionally, an exposure, as Zola viewed it, of the whole Impressionist movement.
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"The story," Renoir related,"concerns a man named Claude Lantier who is developed, in a broad sense, as the central character: an eccentric artist condemned by his inadequacies of personality to a life of defeat, of failure. As Zola writes of the adventures of this unfortunate protagonist," Renoir continued, "he repeats over and over again the criticism he made in 'La Bien Public' that Impressionism was the product of an incomplete idea, tied to a shallow theory, and had been doomed from the very beginning. Lantier, " he said, "is depicted as a tragic figure in a Greek drama; slowly inexorably moving toward his predestined and terrible fate; condemned by his ineptitude and uncontrollable mental aberrations." Shortly after hearing what Renoir had to say about "L'Oeuvre," Zola sent me a copy which he had forwarded from his publisher. The advance knowledge of its contents, as spelled out by Renoir, made me dread what I'd find in the neatly wrapped package delivered by a special messenger to the flat; I instinctively believed that the moment I had feared for many years was at hand and the final wedge was about to be driven between us: that this particular package contained the confirmation of my old friend's break with his past associations; and I was thinking of this in a personal sense. My anticipation of what I would read was not far off target: ignorance ran through "L'Oeuvre," a repetitious and sometimes malacious distortion of fact. It was replete with long-winded conversation, over-melodramatic invention, and pretentious philosophical insight. To Zola, it was clear to me, confidence was more important than understanding, and controversy was more important than the truth.... The public, for the time being, didn't know who Claude Lantier was, but my friends in the radical group, and my enemies at the Academie would quickly recognize the story as a reflection of my life. In the writing, Zola spoke of the early days in Aix-en-Provence, the romantic dreams of youth, the happy excursions into the countryside, and the slowly developing concepts of professional careers. The personalities were carefully drawn from real life: I recognized Baille as the architect Dubuche, Solari as the sculpture Mahoudeau, Alexis as the impoverished poet, Portos, Guillemet as the turncoat Fagerolles, and Chaillan as the light-hearted Cahine, a libertine, who lived a merry-go-round of self-indulgence. They were all there under fictitious names, playing out their roles peripherally to the novel's main character, Claude Lantier. At times, I heard my voice in the words Zola had written; they were too true to be mistaken: "Claude Lantier," Zola wrote, "was a stranger to his own genius; he was incompetent, unable to adjust to the forces about him; a lost soul whose eventual madness and suicide was inevitable." It hurt terribly that Zola saw me only as a misfit, as an eccentric, a buffoon, a man totally alienated from a society that respected practical accomplishment over everything else. The fabrication he had created of our lives became even worse as he camouflaged it in the name of aesthetic idealism; I wept openly when I read the passages which damned the radical movement: he had, by humiliating us publically, demeaned the lifetime of struggle we had put into our art. "In essence," Renoir had said, "he has used his talent to profit from the destruction of other people's reputations!" When Monet characterized the brutality of "L'Oeuvre" as unforgivable, I agreed, saying that, "In my mind I know Zola's defection from our cause was inevitable, but I cannot believe his arrogance in turning on his former allies in the struggle for justice with the Academie can be justified by pious apologies." Then I added: "What can he possibly get from such gross deceit? He has, in one stroke, multiplied his enemies, demonstrated that his ideals are a phony pretense, and revealed his greed for material gain at any price." The experience of talking things over with Renoir and Monet, sharing their unhappiness over "L'Oeuvre," the humiliating position I found myself in, left me dead inside. The end of a lifetime of friendship had concluded on a sour note; it had been brought to its climax by an unequivocal denunciation of my character, intellect, and my ability to succeed as a painter. I did not dispute his right to make such allegations, but I disputed the logic which justified his parading these accusations before the public; his assumption that his genius as a writer allowed him to take these liberties. I resolved, in a note of thanks I wrote for his sending "L'Oeuvre," not to disclose my true feelings: "Dear Emile," I said. "I send compliments to you on the publication of your latest work, "L'Oeuvre," which you were kind enough to send me. I extend my appreciation to the author of the Rougon-Macquart series for this token of past friendship ...." Then after writing the message, I sat at the small table by the window in the front room looking out on the Rue de L'Ouest, terribly depressed, eyes moist, pen in hand, until eventually, I wet the envelope seal across my tongue, and with thumb and forefinger, sealed it firmly. The sealing of the envelope seemed, in a symbolic way, the last act in the ending of a friendship which had been such a powerful force in shaping the direction and nature of my life. The effects of "L'Oeuvre" remained with me for a long time; I painted more, walked around corridors of the Louvre to get bad thoughts out of my head, but the words of "L'Oeuvre" would not go away. The effort to lose myself in work failed because the harder I tried to escape the brooding over it, the more it came back on me. I was subject to crying spells which came on unexpectedly; I was sick with remorse at the hopelessness of my condition. Zola's cruel words echoed in my mind: "Claude Lantier fails in everything he attempts; he struggles futilely to master the rudiments of being an artist; and he is isolated as he works in desperation, alienated, without human contact. Each day is painful; ideas elude him; but still he goes on, like a robot, to the future which is so dark. The doomed painter does this because he knows nothing but the pathetic routines that circle around--going nowhere. For him, the dreams of youth are gone, replaced by a premonition of death; the idea of escape by suicide from the horror of his existence is always in the back of his head. He is stopped from this drastic move by some vague fear of the unknown which, to his disorganized intellect, held even more dire prospects...." Was this true? Was Zola correct in what he said? Was I wrong in taking a work of fiction so seriously? Was the chronic paranoia I brought to everything in my life in back of it all? Why, I asked myself, didn't Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro, as well as the dissident group, react in the same way? It is accurate to say that they were angry at what Zola had written, but I didn't hear a single word about rejecting him as an acquaintance: they would speak to him; they would respect his literary freedom to write anything he wished; to stretch his imagination to the limit as a creative artist. For me, his closest friend, however, it was not quite that simple: I couldn't view "L'Oeuvre" as an example of professional privilege; our relationship over the years had been too intimate, in a professional as well as a philosophical sense, to casually dismiss such a callous depiction of my life. Even with the dissolution of the friendship, already well under way, I considered the breaking of all ties with Zola because of "L'Oeuvre," as a serious crisis for me. The publishing of the book was the fatal blow that broke the slender threads holding us together; my agonizing over it made no sense because I already knew that he believed I was a flawed person in character and in my creative struggles. Knowing this did not have the same effect as seeing it in black and white; and to have it thrown in my face for my enemies at the Academie to gloat over. In personal matters, I am not a forgiving man, lacking, almost completely, the ability to turn the other cheek; to absolve others who in a real or imagined way might have injured me. My sense of hurt over "L'Oeuvre" immediately became a powerful force which drove me further into isolation. The depression I suffered was the worst in memory; nothing seemed important now; the small gains I had made, became unimportant, trivial, and life itself was insignificant. Whatever I did; wherever I looked; the nature of things appeared superior to my own. The painting went on, a discipline, but the effort was laborious and the results indecisive. I wondered why I did it; the verdict, indicated by a long record of failure, had already been made. I was apathetic and flat; I took the setback of flawed canvasses without anger; I expected failure; there was no resistance to the idea; it seemed easy to accept defeat, to flow with life as it materialized; to strive for nothing, to give in to the forces around me that were so overwhelming, so powerful; the caving in to my depressed mood, strangely, provided a meagre sense of peace. Hortense, knowing what I was going through, offered sympathy; I didn't answer, bending closer to the tiny still life of a bugle and apples I had set up in the back room of the flat, I pretended not to have heard her; talk compounded my misery; I wanted to forget; I tried to forget; but nothing diverted me; I always came back to the knowledge that the man with whom I had shared the most profound philosophical experiences, would no longer, could no longer, be part of my life .... |