“The Three Cities” in Pléiade: Lourdes, Paris and Rome by Emile Zola
By Anne Crignon
Published on
Emile Zola (1840-1902) in May 1900. MARY EVANS/SIPA
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Review After completing the twenty volumes of Rougon-Macquart, the great author of the Second Empire embarked on a timeless trilogy on his “Three Cities”, now published by Gallimard in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade and prefaced by Jacques Noiray ★★★★★
Today, we would say that Emile Zola was a workaholic , always at work, even on Sundays, even on vacation, as the great anxious often are, which the sleeper of the Pantheon was so much. Every morning he found himself at his table, near Saint-Georges in Paris, then at Médan, by the water, when "L'Assommoir" (1878), suddenly brought him fame and wealth. A few words engraved above the fireplace, "Nulla dies sine linea" ("Not a day without a line"), have entered into legend because he made good use of this maxim: in the year he turned 53, the twenty Rougon-Macquarts were written. And, he, calm, launched into a trilogy, a word he loved for its scent of ancient drama and its Wagnerian tone, as Jacques Noiray, author of a generous and spirited preface, recounts. And it would be "the Three Cities", which enter the Pléiade today.
What Emile Zola wanted then, after having surveyed the Second Empire, was to tell the soul of modern society with feeling, something that naturalistic objectivity did not allow (in principle: he deviated from it a hundred times). "Lourdes" (1894) is a gripping, ardent, and stunning report. We are there, in the train loaded with the seriously ill, their hope rushing with them towards the Grotto. "Rome" (1896) is the story of the entire city. In "Paris…
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