ZOLA, EMILE. – French writer, born in Parigi on 2 Apr. 1840 to a French mother and an Italian father, died there on 29 Sept. 1902.
He came to the attention of the general public in 1877 with the novel L'Assommoir, and from then on his renown as a theorist and leading exponent of naturalism grew. During the Dreyfus affair he took an active part in the proceedings, in defence of the accused, adding political and social controversies to the literary ones. Z. is essentially a polemical writer, for whom art is directed toward bringing scientific and social theories to life. He began his activity with a moderate realism (Contes d'Nino, 1864; Les mystères de Marseille, 1867); then, under the influence of Taine, Claude Bernard, and Lucas, he conceived the novel as a demonstration of scientific laws explaining the relations of man with his environment and his biological antecedents. This premise, still vague in Thérèse Raquin and Madeleine Férat, became programmatic in the long series Rou-gan-Macquart, histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le second Empire, twenty novels that appeared between 1871 and 1888. It was rightly defined by J. Lemaitre as «a pessimistic epic of human animality». This exhausting search for so-called «positive» ideals constructed upon sensible reality remains a futile and inhuman demonstration of distrust in humanity, which cannot be deprived of the action of Providence, any more than of all effective spirituality and religiosity. The entire perspective from which Z. approaches the subject is immoral, independently of the art he employs, which is often rich in fantasy and imagination. At the centre of the action there is always something inanimate that begins to live a superhuman and terrible life, personifying natural and social force, outside every influence not only divine, but also moral and spiritual. Z.’s Opera omnia are on the Index (decr. 19 Sept. 1894; 25 Jan. 1895; 21 Aug. 1896; 1st Sept. 1898).