Ostium (Jun 2018)
LES MYSTÈRES DE LA BÊTE ZOLIENNE (The Mysteries of the Zolian Beast)
Abstract
Few French writers have pushed the love of animals as far as Emile Zola. To the somewhat Rousseauist eyes of the French writer, the animal is always good and man, animated by a “fraternal tenderness” towards him, has a sacred duty to defend this mute and fragile companion against hunger and cruelty. But where does the human bestiality come from, since we do not keep it from animals? In theory, Zola begins by imputing it to the incompatible “shock of temperaments” (Thérèse Raquin), then he explains it by misery (Germinal) or analysis it as degeneration, a “hereditary crack” (The Human Beast). The article examines in detail how the “bad Beast” works in practice, in Germinal’s text. It proves that the way Zola uses this notion corresponds in fact very vaguely to his own naturalist theories. The Beast is a curious relative of the Christian devil, on the one hand, and of the evil deities of paganism, on the other. Omnipresent and polymorphic, absolutely not “scientific”, contrary to what Zola claims, but very suggestive on the poetic level, the Beast remains one of the most striking metaphors of evil that the ending nineteenth century have invented.
