M. ZOLA AT HOME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9253, 5 January 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

M. ZOLA AT HOME.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE NOVEL--IST ON THE PROSECUTION. In view of tho prosecution of M. Vizetelly for selling an uncxpurgated translation of M. Zola's novels, the following account by Mr. G. E. Crawford, 8.A., of an interview with the French novelist will be read with special interest. Mr. Crawford found M. Zola at his country house at Mt'dan, about twenty miles from Paris on the Dieppe line. The residence consists, says Mr. Crawford, of a low central portion, two storeys high, buried between two tall wings, or, as the French would call them, " pavilions." The garden is prettily arranged, but one looks in vain for any touch of poetry or romance. In fact, it is tho model of the small, formal French garden, but with even less grass. The interior of the house is magnificent. Tho richest tissues line tho walls and drape the sofas and ottomans. A profusion of choice bric-a-brac stands on the floor, lies on brackets and pedestals, hangs from the walls, and swings from the ceiling. M. Zola himself is short and spare in person, with thin hands, raven black hair, and a sallow, shrunken face. It is a strangely interesting face, but that of a man who is tired, and suffers permanent discomfort, without knowing from what it arises. There is an inner discontent, as I read the countenance, which I doubt if ho acknowledges to himself, or even suspects. This seems a paradox, but it is so. What supports him, and drives him on, is his immenso power of work, inherited from a French mother, a native of tho Beauco plain. The noso is broad at tho base, narrow at tho bridge, and pointed and turned up at tho end/ This feature compels attention by a singular cleft down the middle One might fancy that when tho organ was in its plastic state a potter had drawn his forefinger along it, and so traced a furrow, and flattened out the sides. The hair is lanky, and surrounds tho head like a crown. It is brushed back from tho front to cover a bald place, and after he has run his fingers through it, it gives him a sort of wild, hunted look, enhanced by a nervous habit lie has of raising his eyebrows, and wrinkling horizontally tho skin of his forehead. As wo talked he sat crouched in an armchair with his logs crossed. His nervous fingers nover stopped twining round each other, or unravelling the fringe of his chair, except when he folded his arms, and pressed them to his chest as if afraid of cold. He wore no linen collar, but the neck was protected by the collar of his rough brown flannel coat, tightly buttoned. In conversation Zola speaks rapidly, and questions frequently. His voice, when expressing surprise or any strong feeling, rises into a thin, reed-liko pitch. Ono cannot help being interested in what ho says. And yet, though his manner is anything but unkind, he has not that kindling and communicative fire which burns in groat leaders of men. THE PROFITS OF AUTHORSHIP. We begun by talking about the Vizetelly prosecution. " Oli ! it doesn't rufllo my happiness and contentment," ho said, " one particle. Oh! not so much as a feather grazing the surface of a lake. I rend in the i'all Mall Budget that thousands of translations of my books have been sold in England. I am astounded to hear it. Do you know what profit these great sales have brought me? Well, 'Nana' and ' Pot-Bouillo' brought mo nothing, not a sou. I neither gnvo leave r.or got thanks. With 'La Torres this is what happened. My publisher offered 3000f. for the right of translation in England for ever. 1 accepted. At tho moment of publishing he wrote to say that the risks were great, and enclosed only '2000 L I understood that in England there was risk (and this prosecution proves it), and wrote back to accept. But I told Mr. Vizetelly that if this was tho English way of doing business I thought it a very queer one." " But do you not feel these prosecutions injure your name as an author?"

"As to what injury it may do me in England I don't care. As you see, it can't hurt my pocket, and as to the effect on my reputation in England, I frankly assure 3'ou, I care even less. You know wo French are—not exactly vain"—M. Zola paused for a word—"but sufficing. that's it, ' suinsants.' We are sufficient for ourselves. We care no more than the man in the moon for what goes on elsewhere. I am not speaking to boast, but state a fact. It is a fault, a great fault, I admit, but so it is. I hove an Italian name, from an Italian father, and yet I know not a'werd of Italian, and was never in Italy. I don't speak of scientists and engineers and their kind, but authors and artists. Which of the masters of French literature, of yesterday or to-day, knew a language besides their own ? Neither Hugo, Lamartine, though married to an Englishwoman, Thiers, Dumas, nor Daudet, nor, coming to contemporaries, Guy de Maupassant, the younger Dumas, nor Coppec. In fact, of this century almost the only exceptions were Edmund About (who knew English badly), Montalcmbert (who was born in England, and had a Scotch mother), and Guizot (who owed his English to his Protestant bringing up at Geneva),, and Taine. YOUNG FRANCE AND YOUNG ENGLAND. " But tell me," he broke out, " who in the world started these prosecutions—can you tell me that? It doesn't vex me, but I can't account for it; it seems so absurd." I suggested that there were societies in England who would make this sort of vigilance work their business. " I don't understand you," said Zola ; *' I am really puzzled. What can there be corrupting in a book ?" I replied that the English youth of both sexes were brought up with such freedom that some reserve had to be exercised by novel writers. Boys and girls could read almost what they liked, and the time was past for keeping one set of books on the drawing-room table, and the other out of reach on the topmost shelves of the bookcase.

" I am more puzzled than ever," exclaimed Zola, screwing up his face as if anxious to grapple with a hard problem. " You speak of the freedom of your English boys and girls. I suppose you mean that they aro not confined under lock and key as in France, and obliged to give an exact account of every moment of their timo." "Precisely. I knew an English boy who, at ten years old, began crossing from London to Paris twice a year by himself. Again, a young man may escort a young girl from a tennis party without harm or impropriety."

"And that is your English prescription for keeping your youth pure—to let them wander freely through the streets! But, good heavens ! is it not the street that infects, and not a book ? It must be the same in London as in Paris, I imagine. Vice flaunts itself in the streets, and is scon and touched. Its contact is corruption. Place a basket of apples in a cellar ; tho first one that rota spreads the rot to tho whole basket. Just so; tho school, tho convent, the barrack, the factory, tho ship in motion, are all centres of human putrefaction. I only tell you what I know in France — lien entendu. Is it different elsewhere ?"

We spoke a good deal more in this strain, and then a good deal about common friends —Torgnieff, Flaubert, Camillo Pelletan, Theodore Duret—some living, some dead. Zola also talked about the realism of Russian novels, but said he unfort nately could only judge of them through translations. Before wo parted I was convinced above all things.of M. Zola's extreme sincerity. His groat sensitiveness makes him see in everything nothing but what is disagreeable. Pope has described this morbid impressionability in some well-known lines, where he thanks Providence that mankind has not nuch a " fatal gift." M. Zola—

Is trembling alive all o'er, To smart and agonise at every poro. Upon vice M. Zola looks neither -with pleasure nor aversion, bub with passive indifference. It is the only thing his analysis reveals at the bottom of human nature. With his wonderful Italian faculty for imitative reproduction, he is driven to paint what he sees—and he has the skill of the great artist, without the soul of the greatest. The realistic note he strikes, one should never forget, is not French, but Italian. The essential characteristics of French literature are sobriety, balance, and delicacy ; and all these are wanting in M. Zol ,'s works.