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First published September 19, 2017
On the evening of Monday, 18 July 1898, Émile Zola disappeared.Zola had been convicted for criminal libel following the publication in January 1898 of his explosive article J'accuse. In this article Zola claimed that Dreyfus had been falsely convicted of espionage by the army, that evidence had been fabricated and kept secret from the defence, that the guilty person, Major Esterhazy, was protected by the army and that Dreyfus was convicted because of anti-Semitism in the army. All of this was true but that did not stop Zola from being prosecuted. Zola had hoped that his trial would result in a re-trial of Dreyfus but this failed as the military and judiciary closed ranks. Zola faced a year in prison but was persuaded by his lawyer to flee to England instead.
Ah! how this crisis has done me good! How it's made me forget the self-glorifying vanity to which I—like many others—become attached! And how it's opened up my life, along with problems and profundities that I didn't ever suspect! I want to devote all my efforts to the liberation of man. I wish that we could all put ourselves up for the test that our group of humanity might come out of this being braver and more fraternal...Once he'd moved out of London both Alexandrine and Jeanne were able to visit Zola during this period, albeit at separate times. As he became more settled he was able to enjoy his new passions of cycling and photography and included in this book are several of Zola's photographs of England and of his visiting family. Rosen's book also includes many extracts from Zola's correspondence with Alexandrine, Jeanne and his children. These letters help us to understand his unorthodox homelife and how he tried to please everyone. Alexandrine must have found the situation very difficult but she and Zola were still in love and she continued to adminster his affairs in Paris. Zola's letters to Alexandrine and Jeanne show that he cared for them both.
“We have to imagine many afternoons of Zola’s stay in Norwood with him loading his camera into the front basket of a bike and cycling out of the Queens hotel to seek scenes to snap. His attention was drawn to the busy streets around Church Street, catching shoppers, horses-and-carts, shop displays, and workers laying electricity cables along the street.” p.88
“In the summer of 1898 from Weybridge, Zola was planning on giving the fiction-reading public graphic depictions of abortion, sterilisation, contraception, baby-abandonment, baby-farming, wet-nursing and infanticide, the like of which, outside of academic circles, had never been read before.” p.59
“Zola's 1898 article is widely marked in France as the most prominent manifestation of the new power of the intellectuals (writers, artists, academicians) in shaping public opinion, the media and the state” Wikipedia entry on Emile Zola.
“It was a moment when the idea that a novelist could write about contemporary life and politics and could try to grasp the essence of an Epoque started to be appreciated.” p. 108/9
“The point here is that the campaign against the imprisonment of Dreyfus, and Zola’s part in it, were helping to create a new kind of politics. This new politics was combining ideas that were internationalist, against poverty, against injustice and against what we now call racial discrimination – four ideas that hadn't always sat together in one worldview.” p.168
“The editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, W.T. Stead, founded an organisation called the National Vigilance Association (NVA), which set up a Literary Sub-committee to keep an eye on immoral writing. The NVA brought prosecutions against Henry Vizetelly for publishing Zola’s novels, some of which had prefaces written by George Moore.” p.175
“None of these issues stand on their own, they were linked to the question of the social order. Those who were opposed to Zola’s fiction felt that he undermined the order, the implication being that Fiction has or should have a role in sustaining the status quo and he was betraying that role.” p.194
“Above the secular hatreds of races, the accidental misunderstandings of peoples, the interests and jealousies which trouble Empires and Republics, there is a kingdom serene and calm, vaster than any, immense, containing them all – the kingdom of human intelligence, of letters, and of universal humanity.” Emile Zola address to the institute of Journalists 1893 Crystal Palace great dining hall. p.94.
“Finding himself in conflict with left and right over the matter of anti-Semitism, he established a line of argument from outside Judaism, outside the Jewish communities, as to why prejudice, discrimination and persecution were wrong. I don't think that the importance of this can be overestimated.” p.239
“No matter how odd or imperfect Zola’s arguments against racism towards Jews were, they remain one of the few examples at this time of a non-Jew taking a stance against anti-Semitism.” p.219
“It is a crime to poison the minds of the meek and humble, to stoke the passions of reactionism and intolerance, by appealing to the odious anti-Semitism that, unchecked, will destroy the freedom loving France of the Rights of Man. It is a crime to exploit patriotism in the service of hatred, and it is, finally, a crime to ensconce the sword as the modern God, whereas all science is toiling to achieve the coming era of truth and justice.” 1898. Zola’s own words from J’Accuse.