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Fate in the novels of Zola and Couperus; a comparison with the Greek concept of fate

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Fate in the novels of Zola and Couperus; a comparison with the Greek concept of fate

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Content FATE IN THE NOVELS OF ZOLA AND COUPERUS; A
COMPARISON WITH THE GREEK CONCEPT OF FATE
by
Eldad Cornells Vanderlip
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
June 1959
UMI Number: DP71405
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y PARK
LO S A N G E L E S 7 , C A L IF O R N IA
This dissertation, written by
ELDAD CQRNELIS VANDERLIP
\
under the direction of hls^...Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fu lfillm e n t of requirements
fo r the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H IL O S O P H Y
Dean
Date........
ONp COMMITTEE
Chairman
.....................
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION ..... ................ 1
Fate and fatalism.................. 2
The subjective approach to fate in
Zola and Couperus . ............ k
The purpose of the study . ....... 8
II. SOME ASPECTS OF FATE IN HOMER AND THE
GREEK TRAGEDIANS................ 11
The meaning of the Greek word moira . 12
Fate in the Homeric epics...... 12
Fate in the tragedies of Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides ...... l8
The use of myth by Homer and the
tragedians..................... 25
Parallelism between ancient and
modern myth, symbolism ............ 29
Symbolic meanings in the Greek por
trayal of fate . . -............ 3 * 4 "
Summary......................... h2
III. FATE IN THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE
CHARACTERS IN THE NOVELS OF ZOLA AND
COUPERUS ..................... Î+5
Reasons for Zola's interest in dark
aspects of life .......... ^6
Fate in the life of Gervaise in
L'Assommoir................... 52
11
Chapter Page
Fate in the life of Josserand in
Pot-B ouille....................... 57
Fate in the life of Florent in Le
Ventre de Paris.............. 66
Salient motifs in the Small Souls
series........................ .. 71
Fate in the lives of the "small
souls" ............ 7^
Summary........................ .. , 86
IV. MYTHICAL ELEMENTS IN THE PORTRAYAL OF
F A T E .............. 88
Zola's use of symbol in Germinal . . 89
The myth of the world strike .... 93
Symbolism in L'Argent................ 98
The metaphorical significance of
Nana; Zola's use of classical
m y t h ........................ 101
Use of the non-natural in Germinal
and La Curee .................. 108
Myth in Couperus.............. 112
Summary...................... 122
V. FUNCTIONAL ELEMENTS IN THE PORTRAYAL OF
F A T E .......................... 125
The functional nature of primitive
m y t h ........................ 125
The relationship of inner experience
to environment in Zola; the
"correspondence theory" .......... 127
Zola's animation of environment . . . 13I
Zola's moralistic use of facts . . . 137
iii
Chapter
VI.
The relationship of inner experience
to environment in Couperus . . .
Couperus* moralistic use of facts
Couperus* animation of environment
Summary .............. ........
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS..........
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Page
1^3
Ik ?
1L8
IW
150
168
IV
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The object of this study is to determine the role
✓
played by fate in the family novels of Emile Zola (l840-
1902), and Louis Marie Anne Couperus (1863-1923). The
concept of fate found in the writings of certain Greek
authors will be used as a basis for comparison.
Zola and Couperus each wrote a series of novels
which dealt with the disintegration of a family. The
Rougon^-Macquart series of Zola, which comprises twenty
novels, was intended to convey a picture of French life !
during the Second Empire. The members of the Rougon- ,
I
Macquart family were placed on a genealogical chart accor- I
ding to the latest scientific theories and they became the |
connecting links for the series. The Book of the Small ;
I
Souls. the series by Couperus, comprises four novels. It i
was written to give a picture of high-class society in The !
Hague at the close of the nineteenth century. Couperus,
who was born in Holland and received part of his education
in the East Indies, invented as a unifying device for his
series the Van Lowe family. He has described in his novels
the desperate struggle of this family to maintain the
1
! 2
I social status earned by an ancestor employed in govern-
, ment service in the East Indies. In both series the
I
: struggle to maintain social prestige or to gain a higher
I social position is set against the background of limiting
and atavistic forces, and both novelists produce an acute
and intense portrayal of the manner in which some people
face death and limitation. These series rise above
national boundaries to deal with the universal problem
of the struggle of man with fate or destiny.
It should be noted at the outset, that the word
"fate" has taken to itself a variety of connotations
involving the meaning of existence and questions of good
and evil. In Greek thought, fate eventually came to re
present generally, it will be shown, the restrictive
aspect of existence, and it is in this sense that Zola
and Couperus are also concerned with fate. The concern
of these novelists with the limitation in life is some
thing different from that of the fatalist, who believes
that nothing can be done to ameliorate man's condition.
Couperus and Zola both suggest ways in which suffering
can be alleviated. Zola called himself a "determinist
a term which suggested to him the role of heredity and
environment in shaping man's character. In his The
Experimental Novel, first published in France in I88O,
he stated that he was a "determinist," rather than a
I 3
; "fatalist.He meant that his depiction of unpleasant
j aspects of experience did not have the purpose of showing
!
that man could do nothing about his lot in life, and that,
i
in fact, the experimental method, which he studied in
Claude Bernard's An Introduction to the Study of Exper
imental Medicine (1865), would bring about a happier day.
The preoccupation of Zola and Couperus with ques
tions of fate was obscured by the reaction against the
naturalistic movement. It is only in recent years that
the clouds which hung over the reputations of Zola and
Couperus were, to some extent, dispersed. Couperus was
honored nationally just before his death in 1923, but
was not acclaimed during his lifetime as he is today. F.
Bordewijk, in a symposium published in 1952^ described
him as the greatest story-teller Holland has had. Zola's
reputation, even more than that of Couperus perhaps, has
benefited by recent criticism. The name "Zola" and the
term "naturalism" were associated by critics of his own
times with a deliberate effort to seek out the more sordid
aspects of life. As a result, Zola's critical writings.
tr. Belle M. Sherman (New York, 1893), p. 29. "We
never act upon the essence of phenomena in nature, but
only on their determinism, and by this very fact, that
we act upon it, determinism differs from fatalism, upon
which we could not act at all."
2
About Louis Couperus (Amsterdam, 1952), p. 10.
as represented in The Experimental Novel, find him largely
on the defensive. As a result, too, there has been until
recent years little attempt to evaluate the structural
aspects of his work. There have been lives of Zola by
Josephson (I928), by his daughter, Denise, (1931), and by
Barbusse (1932), but the critical works by Angus Wilson
I j .
and by Frederick Hemmings are comparatively recent.
These critical studies of Zola point to the fact that he
was much more the artist than the pseudo-scientific author
of a study on heredity.
Both Wilson and Hemmings present as almost a new
discovery the fact that the subjective element has a large
place in the novels of Zola. Criticism had placed the
main thrust of Zola's novels in the area of the objective
depiction of material forces; the fact that Zola was con
cerned with the emotional experiences of his characters
was overlooked. Angus Wilson finds that, in opposition
to the idea that Zola was preoccupied with documentary
material, he develops his "detailed realistic canvas into
a statement of a mood" (p. 62). At the core of this mood
he finds such things as social pessimism and sexual
^Emile Zola. An Introductory Study of His Novels.
New York, 1952.
^Frederick William John Hammings, Emile Zola.
Oxford, 1953,
5
I
despair (p. 49) and the fear of death (p. 55). He stresses
that it is with aspects of experience, not with family
heredity or class analysis, that Zola is chiefly concerned
(p. 37). Wilson speaks of his "sens© of atmosphere," and
of the complexity of his work (p. 199). Hemmings, in his
critical study, stresses the subjective element in Zola
(p. 32); he calls him a myth-maker (p. 8l) and reveals
Zola's use of symbolism (p. 83). In Zola's novel Nana
he finds a tendency to simplify in order to intensify the
epic sweep of the work (p. 199). He believes that there
is a parallel between the animated pezsonal-f-or^ee^-in—
Z^laJLs_ novels _and—the—god s™of—the—Greek-epics ( p. 199 ).
He compares Zola's philosophy with that of Homer. These
recent critics find that the attitude of the characters
toward life and its problems is an important part of the
total meaning of the Rougon-Macquart series.
Criticism of the last few years also finds that the
emotional element is prominent in Couperus. In the sym
posium About Louis Couperus Anton van Duinkerken enumer
ates as salient elements in the work of Couperus: the
idea of fate (noodlotsgedachte); the guilt motif
(schuldmotief); tragic premonition (tragische voorgevoel);
p. 199. "In Zola as in Homer there may be found
a rudimentary philosophy; though Homer's is optimistic
founded on the nobility of man, Zola's is pessimistic and
inclines to view him as debased."
6
and the urge to make restitution (boetehedrang) (pp. 46-
48).
This study is chiefly concerned with the subjective
aspect of fate as it is found in the family novels of
Zola and Couperus. Fate is that which limits man— poverty,
old age, death, all that opposes his ideals. This study
will deal with the effect of fate and the manner in which
limitation is faced by the protagonists in these family
novel series. The subjective approach to fate in the
novels of Zola and Couperus is part of a reaction to the
Philistinism and materialism of their times. They rose
above mere representation of the tangible to present
aspects of experience which, it will be shown, included
visionary or idealistic elements. It has become customary
to say that Zola and the naturalists were influenced by
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-93), who wrote a History
of English Literature published in 1864, and there is no
doubt that Taine was in many ways the theorist of natural
ism. He represents the scientific spirit in which Zola
believed. In the History Taine stated,
. . . though the means of notation are not the same in
the moral and physical sciences, yet in both the matter
is the same, equally made up of forces and magnitudes,
and directions, we may say that in both the final result
is produced after the same method, (p. l4)
Zola praised him for his scientific approach to criticism,
for his formulation of laws, in the following words.
M. Taine came and made a science of criticism. He re
duced to rules the method which Sainte-Beuve employed
as a virtuoso. This gave a certain harshness to the
new instrument employed by the critic; but this instru
ment acquired an indisputable power. There is no
necessity for me to recall M, Taine's admirable works.
Everyone knows his theory of surroundings and of histor
ical incidents applied to the literary movement of
nations. M..Taine is really the foremost critic we
have . . . .°
There is in Zola, however, paradoxical as it may seem,
an element which opposes the ultra-materialist one rep
resented by Taine. It is the tendency to give a large
place to the emotional life of his characters. We shall
use the term "subjective" to describe the novelist's
concern with the thoughts and feelings of the characters,
rather than with his own, although it is conceivable that
the novelist projects much of his own emotional life in
his characters.
Subjective writing reached a high point in Maurice
Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck, who was born in I869, came
too late to influence Zola's critical ideas as set down
in Le Roman Experimental (I88O). He represents the move
ment in literature which placed more and more stress on
the subjective life of the protagonist as evidenced in
impressionism, symbolism and neo-romanticism. Maeterlinck
finds the source of stability and strength in man in
^The Experimental Novel, p. 225.
' 8
I rj
! inner wisdom.' Zola and Couperus both reveal affinity
j for this movement. They too suggest, it will be shown,
ways in which man may rise above the limiting forces of
the material world.
The purpose of this study is to examine the artistic,
not the philosophic aspects of fate in the writings of
Zola and Couperus. The portrayal of fate in Homer and
the tragedians, we expect to show, is largely an emotional
one, complex, humanistic, subjective, gloomy. Implicit
in it is the experience of restriction. Because it is
difficult to define that which gives life its buoyancy,
it is likewise difficult to define fate. The Greeks,
we shall see, do not clearly or consistently delineate
fate. Fate appears to derive from the feeling that
something is throttling the life-urge. Sometimes, as
man proceeds with his plans and ideals, he is brought
up short by circumstance which brings reflection about
the shortness of life, the mutability of things, the
suffering in life. Out of such circumstance arises the
realization of the inescapability of death. This reali
zation appears to be central in the experience of fate.
Sometimes, under emotional stress, a person may, as we
shall see, objectify fate and say that something causes
"^Wisdom and Destiny, tr. Alfred Sutro. New York.
1898.
9
the mortality and suffering he feels. But at the heart
of the conception, we shall show with examples, is the
realization that the natural forces which shape man also
destroy him.
Neither the treatment of fate by Homer and the
tragedians nor that by Zola and Couperus will be used
as a standard by which to judge the other. We propose
in this study to set some aspects of fate in Greek lit
erature beside related aspects in the novelists. We do
not propose to show that the Greeks and the novelists
treated fate in a consistent or similar manner.
This study will concentrate on aspects of the por
trayal of fate; it will not attempt to show how genres
may overlap in their treatment of a theme. Further, it
falls outside the scope of this study to trace dramatic
or epic qualities in Zola and Couperus. Thus we do not
intend to imply that there is any similarity between
Greek tragedy and the modern novel because we find
tragedy, i.e., death, suffering, terror, in one part or
another of the novels we consider. Classical tragedy
has its own structure and intention and embraces much
more than does the adjective "tragic" in the general
sense of calamity, as we have used it above.
The aspects of fate with which we shall deal are
those which transcend national and genre boundaries. We
10
' shall determine first the shades of meaning which fate
acquired in the writings of certain Greek authors. Then
I
using these meanings for comparison, we shall examine the
I rn]A of fate in the novels of Zola and Couperus under the
following headings: (1) fate in the subjective experience
of the characters; (2) mythical elements in the portrayal
of fate ; (3) functional elements in the portrayal of fate.
CHAPTER II
SOME ASPECTS OF FATE
IN HOMER AND THE GREEK TRAGEDIANS
This study of fate in Homer and the tragedians
will concentrate first on the meaning of the Greek word
yCLOipCL (moira). which is translated by the English word
"fate." Then questions concerning the function of fate
in the Greek mythological system will be considered.
Scholars have not always agreed upon the role played
by fate in Greek literature. The questions of the rela
tion of fate to the gods and the extent to which man has
freedom of choice have been matters of controversy.
There is general agreement, however, among scholars such
as Duffy^, Leach^, Otto^ and Agard^, that the idea of a
gloomy power or personage which drives men to destruction
^J. Duffy, "Homer's Conception of Fate," Classical
Journal. 42:477-485,‘May, 1947.
^Abby Leach, "Fate and Free Will in Greek Liter
ature," American Journal of Philology. 36:373-401,
October, 19l5.
^Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods; The Spiritual
Significance of Greek Religion, tr. Moses Hadas, New York,
1 9 ^
R. Agard, "Fate and Freedom in Greek Tragedy,"
Classical Journal. 29:117-126, November, 1933.
11
: 12
Is absent in Homer and the tragedians.
In the ancient earth-religion of the Greeks the
' MoipCLL (Moiral) were dark powers which determined death
i (Otto, p. 268). This early Greek concept of fate as
j
three sisters is found in Hesiod. He writes that
Night bare . . . ruthless avenging Fates, Clotho and
Lachesis and Atropos, who give men at their birth both
evil and good to have, and they pursue the transgres
sions of men and of gods : and these goddesses never
cease from their dread anger until they punish the
sinner with a sore penalty.^ ,
In Homer and the tragedians the fatal sisters are replaced |
by an impersonal concept. I
The Greek w o r d ( moira), translated by the j
English words "share," "fate," "doom," etc., means basi- j
cally an allotment or share. This is the meaning of the j
word in the Odvssev. for example, when it is stated that
^ A
"portions of meat" are given to Telemachus
and Athene by their host, Nestor, and that a "share
^pmotpav) of spoil" (11:533-34) was taken on board ship
by Neoptolemus after the sack of Troy. In these passages
JjiOcp(LhQ.s a neutral meaning.
Moipd takes on a gloomy sense in passages where it
^The Theogony. tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White, (Cambridge,
Mass., 1936) 217-222. All references to Greek classical
literature are to the Loeb classical series.
6
Odyssey, tr. A. T. Murray (Cambridge, Mass., 1939)
3:40.
13
'means an evil allotment, or an evil share, as in the
I Odyssey when Nestor tells Telemachus how the "doom
^ O L p a ) of the gods" (3:269) binds Clytemnestra, and
in the Iliad when Ilelenus reminds Hector "not yet Is it
thy fate (yUOtpOu) to die and meet thy doom; for thus have
I heard the voice of the gods that are forever.The
sense of allotment is still there but it is associated
with death, and thereforetakes to itself the
connotation of limitation and gloom. The sense of the
limitation of life by allotment is strong also in the
passage in which Menelaus replies to the challenge that
he fight a duel with Paris. ‘ He says, "And for whichsoever
of us twain death and fate ^ O L p (L ) are appointed, let
him lie dead; but be ye others parted with all speed?
(Iliad, 3:101).
Some aspects of the older concept— the personifica
tion of fate— are present in the Iliad. An illustration
is the passage in which Achilles* horse, Xanthus, is
given speech by Hera. The horse says.
Aye verily, yet for this time will we save thee,
mighty Achilles, albeit the day of doom is nigh
thee, nor shall we be the cause thereof, but a
mighty god and overpowering Fate ( MoLpO/). (19:409-11)
Then the Erinyes, the goddesses of vengeance, stop him
" ^Iliad. tr. A. T. Murray (Cambridge, Mass., 1942)
7:52-3.
Ik
from speaking. The Erinyes belong to the ancient forces
of order (Otto, p. 267), and because fate is associated
with them here, the older personification is suggested.
Another instance in which fate seems to take on char
acteristics of an unseen malevolent power is the reply
by Patroclus, as he lies dying, to gloating Hector, "it
was baneful Fate (ÿUOLpûi and the son of Leto that slew
me"(16:849), and "verily, thou shalt not thyself be
long in life, but even now doth death stand hard by thee,
and mighty fate"(16:852-53)• Again, Agamemnon names
Zeus and Fate and Erinys as having caused his blindness
(19:88). Here too fate appears to take on the char
acteristics of a personality.
The personification of fate in Homer, however, is
incomplete. Homer never mentionSyLCO^yOtt as a goddess,
and he does not, like Hesiod, make mention of the parent
age of fate. Fate does not come to life as does Ate in
the following passage.
Eldest daughter of Zeus is Ate that blindeth all— a
power fraught with bane; delicate are her feet, for
it is not upon the ground that she fareth, but she
walketh over the heads of men, bringing men to harm,
and this one or that she ensnareth. (Iliad, 19:91-4;
Not only is no personal description of fate given
in Homer, but no one prays to a person or power by the
name of Fate. The prayers of the Homeric heroes are
addressed to Zeus, for the most part.
15
Sometimes fate appears to be identified with the
•will of Zeus. In the following passage, for example,
Zeus possesses powers which are ascribed by Hesiod to
the Fates,
For on this wise have the gods spun the thread for
wretched mortals, that they should live in pain; and
themselves are sorrowless. For two urns are set upon
the floor of Zeus of gifts that he giveth, the one of
ills, the other of blessings. To whomsoever Zeus,
that hurleth the thunderbolt, giveth a mingled lot,
that man meeteth now with evil, now with good; but
to whomsoever he giveth but of the baneful, him he
maketh to be reviled of man, and direful madness driv-
eth him over the face of the sacred earth, and he
wandereth honoured neither of gods nor mortals. (Iliad.
24:527-33),
In this passage Zeus gives both good and evil, and the
gloomy portion usually termed "fate" is represented as
originating with the deity.
The will of Zeus is differentiated from fate,
however, in another passage. On one occasion Zeus de
bates whether or not he shall intervene in the order of
events which fate has arranged. He ponders whether he
should snatch up Sarpedon while he is yet alive or
"slay him now beneath the hands of the son of Menoetius"
(Iliad, 16:435-8).
Ah, woe is me, for that it is fated that Sarpedon,
dearest of men to me, be slain by Patrocles, son of
Menoetius. (16:433-4;
But Hera urges him not to interfere.
Most dread son of Cronus, what a word hast thou said I
A man that is mortal, doomed long since by fate, art
thou minded to deliver again from dolorous death? Do
16
as thou wilt, but be sure that we other gods assent
not all thereto. (16:439-43)
The consequences, she reminds him, would be to "send
dread wrath" (16:449) among the gods. Therefore Sarpedon
is slain. In this passage fate takes on the character
of natural law and order. When Hera reminds Zeus that
mortals are doomed to die she is affirming that the laws
of nature must prevail.
Another passage in which there is a differentiation
between the will of Zeus and fate is the one in which
Zeus holds a pair of balances which indicate the outcome
of events. The golden scales (Iliad. 8:69-72; 22:209-
13) of Zeus do not picture the deity as being in doubt
of the issue. The scales, as Greene has stated, drama
tize the turn of the tide in battle.^ They suggest, as
do the urns and the spinning of fate, "the necessary
evil that the gods send or at least permit" (Greene,
p. l6).
The limitations of deity are clearly evident in the
fact that Zeus is unable to save his son, Sarpedon. The
gods cannot keep the fate of death from man. Athena says
on one occasion.
But of a truth death that is common to all the gods
themselves cannot ward from a man they love, when the
^William Chase Greene Moira. Fate. Good and Evil in
Greek Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1944) p. 16.
17
I
i fell fate of grievous death shall strike him down.
(Odyssey. 3:236-8)
Thus a sharp contrast is evident between the gods, on
the one hand, and fate, on the other.
The function of the gods in the Iliad is an essen
tially beneficent one. If they appear to a man in the
moment of death to be demonic it is because they are
powerless against fate, or because they act in a tutelary
capacity to protect a man's life from being taken by
another before it is fated. When Hector and Achilles
fight outside the walls of Troy, Athena catches the
spear of Achilles after it misses Hector and gives it
back to him (Iliad. 22:276-7). Athena also appears to
Hector as his brother, Deiphobus, and urges him to stop
fleeing and to face Achilles; then she vanishes (22:226).
Thus she aids Achilles against Hector because it is her
function as tutelary deity. There is a sense, however,
in which she also aids Hector. It is clear to her, as
Zeus holds up the scales, that Hector must die. Athena
does not cause the death of Hector; she enables him to
die in a glorious manner.^
In the Homeric poems, then, fate at times takes on
^Iliad. 22:302. Otto's thorough study of fate in
The Homeric Gods cites numerous other examples to show
that the gods represent "burgeoning life" but are help
less before fate, i.e., death and all that leads to
death (p. 219ff.;.
I 18
■ some characteristics of a malevolent personality, but
■ is predominantly an impersonal idea. It represents the
I
limitation and mortality in man's life which even super-
!
i human power cannot overcome, and it is associated with
the dread descent into the unknown darkness of death.
In the Greek tragedies the concept of unchanging
natural law, which limits man, is implicit throughout.
The drama hinges on the interplay between fate and free
character, between what man cannot change and what
remains within his power. Aeschylus is concerned not
so much with an accurate portrayal of an entity which
is termed "fate" as he is with dramatizing the reaction
of the protagonists to human limitation and mortality.
The focus, as it is in Homer, is on men as they grapple
with the problem of human limitation, rather than on an
explanation of the religious or supernatural world. Some
times in Aeschylus natural law seems to be overshadowed
by the power of Zeus; at other times Zeus, himself, must
bow to the natural order of things. A consistent treat
ment of fate is not discernible, but natural law is at
the center of the concept.
Examples of this flexibility in the description of
the workings of fate abound. Zeus appears to be com
pletely in control when he is said to achieve the downfall
19
10
of Troy, or when the Chorus asserts, "as he determines,
so he acts" (Agamemnon. 369)• Again, the Chorus says of
Zeus in Prometheus Bound that he rules "by self-appointed
laws."^^ And in the Persians it Is by the "will of the
gods" that Fate ( Mocpd) has held sway since ancient
times.12 ^.t other times Fate seems something apart
from Zeus, as in the Eumenides when the Chorus of Furies
states,
For this is the office that ever-determining Fate,
when it span the thread of our life, assigned unto
us to hold unalterably: that upon those of mortals
on whom have come wanton murdering of kinsfolk, upon
them we should attend until such time as they pass
beneath the earth; and after death they have no large
liberty.13
Sometimes fate appears to be subject to circumstances,
as in the instance when the Chorus in Agamemnon says,
"were it not that one fate ordained of the gods doth
restrain another from winning the advantage, my heart
would outstrip my tongue and pour forth its bodings"
(1025-1029). Sometimes, again, fate in Aeschylus is
l^Agamemnon. tr. Herbert Weir Smyth (Cambridge,
Mass.,), 361.
lltr. Herbert Weir Smyth (Cambridge, Mass., 1938),
4o4.
^^tr.'Herbert Weir Smyth (Cambridge, Mass., 1938),
93-95.
l^tr. Herbert Weir Smyth (Cambridge, Mass., 1936),
334-340.
20
personalized to an extent, as in the statement that
"cattle are ravaged by fate" (Agamemnon. 130), or, as
in prayer to the Fates.Thus no consistent representa
tion of fate is discernible in Aeschylus,
In the tragedies of Aeschylus free will is not sub
verted and the law of cause and effect is written large
in the action. It is true that Clytemnestra, in an
attempt to avoid the blame for her action, charges the
murder of Agamemnon to fate. She says to Orestes, as
he confronts her with her heinous action, "Fate, my child,
must share the blame for this" (The Libation Bearers.
910). In this manner she seeks to disassociate herself
from complicity in the murder of her husband. She posits
a malevolent force or being as the source of evil. Her
argument, however, does not deter Orestes, who retorts,
"it is Fate that hath worked this thy death likewise"
(The Libation Bearers. 911), The dualism implicit in the
statement of Clytemnestra, who would have Orestes believe
that an evil power is responsible for the darkness in
life as Zeus is responsible for the light, is contra
dicted by her son, who associates fate with cause and
effect and with human determination. In this sense,
fate is present in the experience of all mortals and is
^^he Libation Bearers, tr. Herbert Weir Smyth
(Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 306,
21
not the occasional malevolent action of a superhuman
being. It is the limitation and mortality which is the
inescapable lot of every man.
In Sophocles and Euripides also, fate is associated
with mortality and with the results of limited free
choice. In Hippolvtus the characters of Hippolytus and
Phaedra, as portrayed by Euripides, stand apart from
anything the gods can do. Hippolytus chooses the way
of the ascetic and his scathing denunciation of Phaedra's
desire sets in motion her plans for revenge. It is the
immoderation of Hippolytus that leads to tragedy. There
may be difference of opinion as to just where the moral
lies and to what extent the gods are to be taken seriously,
but there can be no doubt that human problems are central.
There is a respect for laws of motivation and proper
sequence, and the gods do not interfere with the natural
order of cause and effect. Hippolytus describes his
mother as "evil-starred"^^ and Theseus complains of the
"foot of fate" (Hippolytus. 8l8), but these are graphic
ways of objectifying emotion and the characters them
selves (within limits) work out their destiny.
In Oedipus the King the discovery by .Oedipus, King
1935)
^^Hippolytus. tr. Arthur S. Way (Cambridge, Mass.,
, 114. 3.
22
I
: of Thebes, that he murdered his father, Laius, and
1 married his mother, Jocasta, leads him to blind himself.
!
Sophocles portrays the emotions of fear and hope in
I Oedipus as he gradually approaches certain knowledge of
his parentage. The feelings evoked in the audience
would include sympathy for the victim as he approaches
the moment when he will put out his eyes; awareness of
the irony in the feelings of hope awakened in Oedipus;
/
and horror as the approaching denouement is anticipated.
The play seems fatalistic in the inevitability with
which the oracular pronouncement of parricide and incest
is fulfilled by Oedipus, and also in the revelation by
the oracle of the unavenged murder of Laius. But Oedipus
decides the action within the limits of these inevitable
forces. It is he who reveals resolution and good in
tention in trying to ascertain the identity of the mur
derer of Laius. It is he who resents any reflections
cast on his own integrity, and who suspects Creon, his
brother-in-law, of plotting to overthrow him. Within
the limits imposed by superior forces, Oedipus acts in
a manner consistent with his royal lineage, and reveals,
in time, his true nature, and, as the Chorus points out,
is judged in time. The words of the Chorus are.
All-seeing Time hath caught
Guilt, and to justice brought
I
I The son and sire commingled in one bed.^&
, Oedipus is basically a character of violence, and time
I
I
reveals that he can be caused to act blindly and impul
sively against Laius, Creon and Tcircsias.
The Chorus asks Oedipus who caused him to blind
himself and Oedipus answers (in an obvious attempt to
shift blame),
Apollo, friends, Apollo, he it w#s
That brought these ills to pass;
But the right hand that dealt the blow
Was mine, none other. (Oedipus the King.
(1329-1331)
Oedipus blames Apollo for his woes, but himself for the
blinding of his eyes. The messenger, however, points
out that the evils wrought by the house were "ills
wrought of malice, not unwittingly" (Oedipus the King.
1230). The guilt of Oedipus is traced back, as in
Semitic lore, to the sins of his ancestors.
Not Ister nor all Phasis* flood, I ween.
Could wash away the blood-stains from this house,
The ills it shrouds . • . (Oedipus the King.
1227-1229)
The guilt of Oedipus is traced back, as it were,
Sophocles, Oedipus the King, tr. F. Storr (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1939), 1211-1213.
24-
to his hereditary past. The basic thought seems to be
that violence begets violence. The violence within
Oedipus is the primary cause of his disaster. Sooner
or later this violence would have revealed itself. But
this does not prevent Oedipus from saying under the
stress of emotion, "On, on the demon goads" (Oedipus
the King. 1311). ^ A vague dark power seems, in his
feeling of dejection, to be bearing him onward. He
states,
Dark, darki The horror of darkness, like a shroud,
Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.
(Oedipus the King. 1313-1316)
Greene believes that it is Apollo who must bear the
responsibility for the good or evil in the experience of
Oedipus (p. 160). But this is an over-simplification
and contradicts the impression one derives from the play
of the self-determination of the acts of the hero. It
is really a question of how seriously we are to accept
the data of the legend used by Sophocles.
It is not implausible to consider that in the
light of the analytical and rational bent of the drama
tists, they used, in many cases, the machinery of the
gods to portray something inherent in the human situ
ation. Sophocles* Oedipus appears, when blaming Apollo,
to be shifting to the gods the blame for his own
25
impulsiveness. An internal compulsion is identified
with a supernatural being. This amounts to saying, in
effect, that man's destiny is shaped, in part, by his
own passions* Cornford has suggested that Euripides
saw as clearly as Dostoevsky "how an unacknowledged
passion is projected or objectified as fate, or as the
will of divinity, just because it is disowned and re-
17
sisted by the conscious self."
The sense of mortality which was seen in Homer
underlies the tragedies as well. Prometheus, for ex
ample, states that he helped men to forget their doom
/ n p
iyiLOpQ\/) And the Chorus in Oedipus the King urges
that the audience wait until the end of a man's life
before it considers him happy (1529). The focus is on
the human situation. The myths help to describe this
situation, they dramatize human impulses and feelings.
The use of myth by Homer and the tragedians, it is
clear, is artistic and creative. Kitto is of the
opinion that in the tragedies myth is not an explanation
of the origins of things, but of human life,^^ He
states
17
F. M. Cornford, Greek Religious Thought from Homer
to the Age of Alexander (London. 1923). p. xix. '
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound. 250.
D. F. Kitto, The Greeks (London, 1951), pp. 199-
202. _____________________
26
Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides were philoso
phical poets if ever there were such, and myth, even
"immoral" myth, was their natural medium. It is impor
tant to understand how they used it. Superficially,'
the dramatic poets wrote plays "about" mythological
personages; actually they did nothing of the sort . •
. . They made their plays out of their own strivings
with the religious, moral, philosophical problems of
their time, and they used myth much as Shakespeare
used Holinshed .... In all the dramatists, and in
Pindar too in a rather different way, myth remained
vital, filled now with deep religious or philosophic
meaning. It was still in essence what it always had
been, an explanation; but now, in the hands of these
grave and powerful poets, it became an explanation
of human life and of the human soul. (Kitto, pp. 201-
202)
Kitto*s view is an example of present-day theories
which are based on an awareness of the fact that there
is a good deal of stratification in myth. Myth is now
considered to be the product of a selective and trans
forming process in which folk-lore has been modified
to conform to the ethos or national character, and to
the needs of the culture in which the myth appears.
Both Malinowski^^ and Nilsson^^ believe that the social
and political importance of myths was great, that they
were factors in maintaining the social, political and
economic status quo of the community. Their theories
merge in the concept that myth is basically functional.
^^Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic. Science and Religion
and Other Essays. Boston, 194-S7
^^Martin P. Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion,
tr. F. J. Fielden, Oxford, 1949.
27
Nilsson states,
It has been said that the folk-tale has no connexion
with morals. This may be true today of the folk-tale
which has remained a residuum of primitive times,
but not of the folk-tale in a stage of living develop
ment. Primitive people tell stories about the origin
of their customs and institutions and the punishments
incurred by any neglect or breach of them. These
motifs, which may be called ethical provided that no
philosophical meaning be attached to the term, are
more closely connected than others with social condi
tions. In a people with a markedly patriarchal system
such as the Greeks originally possessed, these motifs
naturally centre in the family and its laws. (pp. 59-
60)
The functional nature of myth in the Homeric epics
is brought out clearly in George F. Moore's History of
pp
Religions. in which he minimizes the religious content
of the poems. He maintains that while the gods play a
large part in the epics, it is not the part that religion
assigns to them. He states,
The fact that the Homeric poems were meant for the
ears of the cultivated upper classes, together with
the detachment from the soil, explains the small
place which ghosts and spectres, bogeys and demons,
occupy in the poems, compared with that which they
had in the popular religion and superstition of classi
cal times. The allusions suffice, however, to show
that these uncanny beliefs existed, though they are
for the most part ignored, . . . the gods as well
as the human heroes of the epic are drawn from widely
separated regions and branches of the race; whatever
may be true of the literary unity of the Iliad. its
material is highly composite. The gods are not the
religious pantheon of the Greeks, but a collection
of the principal deities, brought together not by
religion, but by war against Troy, exactly like the
chiefs of the people. The gods are away from their
pp
(New York, 19140, pp. 428-31.
28
homes and the seats of their worship: Apollo's shrine,
at which the Greeks make expiation in the first book
of the Iliad, is not a Greek but a Trojan sanctuary.
Consequently worship is reduced to prayers and occasional
sacrifices, chiefly for divination or expiation; the
ordinary cultus, with its offerings and festivals,
and the innumerable observances by which religion is
interwoven with the whole life of man, are necessarily
absent; it was impossible to imagine them detached
from the localities where they belonged and the occa
sions in the lives of the people— the seasons and
operations of agriculture, for example— with which
they were associated, (pp. 428-4-29)
Moore prefers to see the myths as influencing
religion, rather than to view them as counterparts of
ritual or worship. Their function, he believes, was to
make the gods completely human. He writes concerning
the nature of the gods.
They are, indeed, superior to men in beauty and
strength, in knowledge and in magical arts, they
have a different fluid in their veins and subsist on
other food, but they are, after all, beings of the
same kind and of like character. . . . In becoming
entirely human the gods become morally responsible.
(p. 4-31)
The conclusion of modern literary critics, classical
students and anthropologists is that myth is more complex
than was previously surmised. More particularly, tradi
tional representations of divine powers were humanized,
rationalized and ultimately designed to represent the
poet's idea of destiny or the meaning of life. Perhaps
the idea of fate lent itself more than any other aspect
of the tradition to this transformation. Conclusions
by the poets as to what was valuable or right in any
29
! area of life could be shored up by the suggestion of
, forces divorced from the older religious beliefs, but
nevertheless given rational validity. As such, fate,
impersonal but unswerving, and part of an ordered system,
apparently’supplied a needed medium of expression.
If the myths are not stories of divine intervention
in human affairs, but are embodiments, rather, of human
purposes in conflict, what are the essential elements
for which a parallel may be sought in modern literature?
Myth is obviously more than a story or tale, although
the root meaning of the word "myth" is "story." Moulton
has suggested that myth be considered "story as a mode
of thinking."^3 This places myth at the heart of lit
erature which deals with unsolved problems. Moulton
feels that mythology "points faintly in the direction
of a philosophy yet to come" (p. 342). Such a definition
opens the way for modern parallels to ancient myth. It
corresponds with the creative, rational use of story by
Homer and the tragedians, and makes possible the con
sideration of the stories in a family novel series as
mythical, provided that they are "story as a mode of
thinking."
The case for parallelism between ancient myth and
Richard G. Moulton, The Modern Study of Literature
(Chicago, 1915), p. 342.
30
I certain modern literature will obviously be strengthened
I if some of the motifs traditionally associated with myth
I
, are used by the modern author. It is the likeness of
some of the motifs in Zola to those of the Greeks Lhab
has caused critics to note at least a superficial re
semblance between his work and that of the classical
age. The important motifs in myth, as far as literature
is concerned, have been suggested as
. . . image or picture, the social, the supernatural
(or non-naturalist or irrational), the narrative or
story, the archetypal or universal, the symbolic re
presentation as events in time of our timeless ideals,
the programmatic or eschatological, the mystic.24
It is Zola's use of symbol which prompted Hemraings to
call him a mythmaker (p. 8l).
There is a sense in which the use of symbol can
extend into the area of myth, when it becomes something
more than an associative link with something else. In
the estimation of H. Flanders Dunbar, symbol can have
suggestive quality.This is the quality which Moulton
feels is central in myth. Dunbar points out that sym
bolism (after Wundt) has been restricted to the extrinsic
or arbitrary and the intrinsic or descriptive (p. 17).
^^ene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature
(New York, 194-9), p. 196.
^^Symbolism in Medieval Thought and Its Consummation
in the Divine Comedy (New Haven. 1Q2Q). n. 17.
31
That is to say, association through contiguity is made
the basis of the first category and association through
resemblance, of the second. This is not adequate,
Dunbar feels* In addition to these, she would suggest
a third category, namely, insight or interpretative
symbolism. "Relationship between insight or inter
pretative symbols and reality is rooted in the Weltan
schauung itself" (p. 17). She urges that "symbols are
the chief means by which the human mind expresses . . .
ideas • . . which it has not yet mastered" (p. 13).
This use of symbol would correspond to "the symbolic
representation as events in time of our timeless ideals,"
or to the symbolic representation of atavistic forces
comprehended in the word "fate."
The term "myth!' suggests the graphic embodiment of
life forces in imaginatively created personages. Myth
ology is a kind of extended symbolism. Images often
repeated in association with thought and emotion become
embodiments of thought and emotion. They become associ
ated with patterns of behavior. On the one hand, they
represent the immediately pictorial; on the other hand,
they represent the meaning of the contexts in which they
have appeared. Winged sandals, for example, have pic
torial value in themselves. They also suggest Mercury,
the messenger, and the activities in which he engages.
: 32
' The sandals came to represent superhuman speed, incredible
swiftness. The spinning women or the word "fate" through
I
continued association with death and gloom and frus-
j tration came to represent the undesirable aspect of
existence. The continued attribution of personal qua
lities to fate suggests that the mind of the spectator
in a Greek theater in the fifth century B.C. was able
to imagine, to some extent, a personified counterpart
for the sense of limitation and mortality.
The capturing of thought and emotion in symbols is
a poetic process. Most critics agree that scientific
or philosophic processes do not lie at the heart of myth.
Myth is lyrical, rather than logical. Vida Scudder has
stated that myth is largely the product of intuition.
Where an allegory is reasoned and labored, a myth is
instinctive and spontaneous. The systematic formality
of the allegory is replaced in the myth by something
of the large, divinely simple significance of the very
symbolism of nature. An allegory.is the result of
experience, a myth of intuition.26
The relation of symbol to the thing symbolized is
for Yeats somewhat indefinable. He gives the following
example,
If I say "white" or "purple" in an ordinary line of
poetry, they evoke emotions so exclusively that I
cannot say why;, they move me; but if I say them in
the same mood. In the same breath with such obvious
^^Promethèus Unbound (Boston, I892), pp. xi-xii.
33
intellectual symbols as a cross or a crown of thorns,
I think of purity and sovereignty; while innumerable
other meanings, which are held to one another by the
bondage of subtle suggestion, and alike in the emo
tions and in the intellect, move visibly through my
mind, and move invisibly beyond the threshold of
sleep, casting lights and shadows of an indefinable
wisdom on what had seemed before, it may be, but
sterility and noisy violence.
If myth-making is basically a poetic and suggestive
process, the creative use of an extended symbolism, then
it may be looked for in any writer. While there are
theories which differ from this one, for purposes of
this study we shall use this literary approach as a
means of bringing together the portrayal of fate in
different genres at different times. The Greeks had
many symbols ready-to-hand in the traditional deities,
but they filled them with new meaning. The modern writer
does not have the advantage of universally accepted myth.
This is a real difference. Zola and Couperus, however,
as we shall see, are able to overcome this lack of tra
ditionally accepted symbol by making use of the suggestive
qualities of milieu, and by enlarging characters so that
they embody more experience and significance than they
do normally. Zola and Couperus use symbol to suggest
forces and emotions in human experience and in this
manner provide a parallel with the use of myth by Homer
^*^W. B. Yeats, Ideas of Good and Evil (London,
1907), p. 251.
34
and the tragedians.
The manner in which the Greeks used symbolic per
sonages and objects to convey the emotional experience
of fate may be illustrated from the experience of Oedipus,
referred to above. When Oedipus realizes the full import
of the tidings brought by the messenger from Corinth and
blinds himself, he experiences more than blindness. The
darkness which envelops him is interpreted by Oedipus in
terms of a "horror of darkness" which wraps him like a
shroud and bears him on. The overwhelming sense of fate
felt by Oedipus is conveyed through a combination of
images. In conjunction with his physical blindness,
reference to the demonic and to death produces an im
pression of intense anguish.
An example of a courageous and positive acceptance
of fate is found in the Iliad. The poet gives a graphic
presentation of the struggle in the mind of Achilles,
of the tension between ambition and human limitation.
The goddess, Thetis, mother of Achilles, has told him
that if he slays Hector, fate will lay him low. Achilles
must choose between a long, undistinguished life, and
a brief, honored one. Thetis weeps and seeks to restrain
the warrior from going into battle, thus making the
decision all the more difficult. Achilles finally
decides to face fate. His decision is expressed as
35
follows,
But now will I go forth that I may light on the slayer
of the man I loved, even on Hector; for my fate, I
will accept it whenso Zeus willeth to bring it to pass,
and the other immortal gods. For not even the mighty
Heracles escaped death, albelL he was most dear to
Zeus, son of Cronos, the king, but fate overcame him,
and the dread wrath of Hera. So also shall I, if a
like fate hath been fashioned for me, lie low when I
am dead. But now let me win glorious renown, and set
many a one among the deep-bosomed Trojan or Dardanian
dames to wipe with both hands the tears from her tender
cheeks, amid ceaseless moaning; and let them know that
long in good sooth have I kept apart from the war. Seek
not then to hold me back from battle, for all thou
lovest me; thou shalt not persuade me. (Iliad. 18:
114-126) -----
Achilles becomes neither contemplative, pessimistic, nor
stoical. He accepts, as it were, the rules of the game.
In this case no deity or malevolent power is charged
with bringing about fate. The gods acquiesce in some
thing that is necessary. There is a concern on the part
of Achilles that he be given credit for right motives.
Hence his statement, "let them know that long in good
sooth have I kept apart from the war." There is a delight
in playing the game according to the rules which is
evidenced by the replyi There is^ a poignancy, too,
which derives from "'the awareness of the briefness of
the game, the shortness of life. Magnificent achievement
with the help of the gods must eventually give way to a
shadowy existence where striving and achieving come to
an end.
There is a sense in which fate is here depicted as
36
(
' actively encountering Achilles, It is not a matter of
; fate eventually overtaking Achilles as it overtakes all
!
men. The encounter with fate is contingent on Achilles'
decision to slay Hector. This is a poetic means of
heightening the emotional tension, as is also the myster
ious manner in which Thetis relates the consequences of
slaying Hector. There is no specification of the means
or the exact time when fate will strike the blow. It
follows that the courage of Achilles appears all the
greater because his decision is made in the face of
the possibility of immediate death and definite assurance
in the words of a goddess that his life will be for
feited should he choose to enter the battle. The obvious
implication is that no honor can be attained without
cost. It is a moral that we find elsewhere repeated in
Homer.
The idea that worthwhile things in life must be paid
for and that bitter necessarily accompanies sweet is
contained in an interesting discussion by the elders of
Troy, as they sit on the walls of the city surveying the
conflict below. Helen has just come upon the walls and
prompts the following reflection.
Small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans
should for such a woman long time suffer woes; won-
drously like is she to the immortal goddesses to
look upon. But even so, for all that she is such
an one, let her depart upon the ships, neither be
37
i
! left here to be a bane to us and to our children
after us. (Iliad. 3sl56-l60)
! Priam, who happens also tobe on the wall at the time,
then says to Helen,
Come hither, dear child, and sit before me, that thou
mayest see thy former lord and thy kinsfolk and thy
people— thou art nowise to blame in my eyes; it is the
gods, methinks, that are to blame, who roused against
me the tearful war of the Achaeans— and that thou
mayest tell me who is this huge warrior, this man of
Achaea so valiant and so tall. (Iliad. 32162-167)
There is a decided unwillingness on the part of the
elders and of Priam to affix blame. The elders are of
the opinion that whatever they have suffered is somehow
counterbalanced by the beauty of Helen. Moreover, the
war is easily explained in terms of the quest for beauty,
as far as they are concerned. Perhaps Priam detects in
this opinion a tendency to place the blame upon Helen.
Priam says that it is the gods who are to blame and in
so doing appears to recognize that, as in the choice
which lay before Achilles, the search for attainment in
this life is fraught with dire consequences. It is
actually a recognition of the law of cause and effect.
The pursuit of that which is worthwhile is costly and
always will be. It is a law of nature and part of the
business of living. This is not pessimism or stoicism,
but a realistic analysis of life in terms of joy and
pain. There is a recognition that in life joy and pain
are inextricably mingled.
I 38
The sense of exuberance which accompanies the ex-
I ploits of the heroes in the Iliad is always tempered by
' the realization that renown won on the battlefield brings
I
I sorrow to some family. Whenever the spear enters the
soft flesh of a man, or a stone crushes or mutilates a
warrior, Homer describes in realistic fashion the pain
and the physiological details which underline the horror
of war. Poetic symbolism adds to the sense of helpless
ness of the fallen warrior when his misfortune is de
scribed as a result of "the snare of fate," as in the
following passage.
Then was Amarynceus* son, Diores, caught in the snare
of fate; for with a jagged stone was he smitten on the
right leg by the ankle, and it was the leader of the
Thracians that made the cast, even Peiros, son of
Imbrasus, that had come from Aenus. The sinews twain
and the bones did the ruthless stone utterly crush;
and he fell backward in the dust and stretched out
both his hands to his dear comrades, gasping out his
life; and there ran up he that smote him, Peiros, and
dealt him a wound with a thrust of his spear beside
the navel; and forth upon the ground gushed all his
bowels, and darkness enfolded his eyes. (Iliad. 4:
517-526)
The tension between joy and pain in the passages
quoted from Homer is present also in the tragedies. The
depiction of suffering is not used to reinforce the idea
that life is sordid or melancholy but to point up human
grandeur. Prometheus, though suffering greatly, is
unconquerable and defies Zeus in the following words,
spoken to Hermes,
39
And art thou not a child and even more witless than
a child if thou expectest to learn aught from me?
There is no torment or device by which Zeus shall
indûce me to utter this until these injurious fetters
be loosed. So then, let his blazing levin be hurled,
and with the white wings of the snow and thunders of
earthquake let him confound the reeling world. For
naught of this shall bend my will even to tell at
whose hands he is fated to be hurled from his sov
ereignty.2o
He becomes greater in his suffering and superior to his
woes. He is reminded that "wise are they who do homage
to Necessity" (Prometheus Bound. 936). Prometheus, how
ever, knows that even Zeus will be subject to fate and
he despises the "servitude" of Hermes. Although fate
has placed him in this position of extreme torture on
the rock, he does not blame himself nor does he cringe
before the powers that torture him. In Prometheus Bound
the rock and the tortures become graphic symbols of the
sometimes unintelligible suffering that accompanies the
good in life. The question "Why do the good suffer?" is
never finally answered. The Chorus finally decides "to
suffer any fate" with Prometheus. It has learned to
detest traitors such as Hermes. The final words of
Prometheus give a vivid description of the means by
which Zeus seeks to terrify him. They are a poetic
rendering of the fate which has overtaken Prometheus
because he has given fire to men.
2^Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 987-996._____________
40
The terror of fate which is unknown but which hangs
threateningly near is vividly portrayed in the Agamemnon
of Aeschylus. The Chorus and Cassandra reflect in their
speeches the intense emotion that is associated with a
foreboding of evil and destruction. The ominous threat
of nameless horror is in the following speech by the
Chorus,
Why ever thus persistently doth this terror hover at
the portals of my prophetic soul? Why doth my song,
unbidden and unfee'd, chant strains of augury? Why
doth assuring confidence not sit on my bosom's throne
and spurn away the terror like an uninterpretable
dream? . • . Not for naught is my bosom disquited as
my heart throbs against my justly boding breast in
eddying tides that presage fulfillment. (975-983;
995-997)
A similar feeling is expressed by Cassandra.
0 God, what can it be she purposeth? What is this
strange woe she purposeth here within, what monstrous,
monstrous horror, beyond love's enduring, beyond all
remedy? And help stands far away. (1100-1104)
Alternating speeches such as these mark the approach of
Agamemnon's doom and express the mystery of evil.
In addition to expressions of calm resolve or of
terror at the approach of fate there are expressions of
the death wish, of a desire that fate will hasten its
advent. Philoctetes, extremely despondent, longs for
death.
0 hateful life that keep'st me lingering on
In this vile world and wilt not let me join
41
: The world of shades
, And Creon appeals to fate to end his life.
Come, Fate, a friend at need,
I
I Come with all speed
Come, my best friend.
And speed my end I
Away, away I
Let me not look upon another day 1^0
Fate is felt by Creon as an unbearable weight.
Away with me, a worthless wretch who slew
Unwittingly thee, my son, thy mother too.
Whither to turn I know not; every way
I
Leads but astray,
And on my head I feel the heavy weight ;
Of crushing Fate. (Antigone. 1339-1344) *
In these examples we have illustrations of how the use j
of poetic symbolism allows for a wide range of expression j
in the reproduction of the emotional response to fate. !
The personification of fate as a friend, an ironic
touch, and its depiction as a weight, intensify the
emotional content of these dramatic passages.
^^Sophocles, Philoctetes. tr. F. Storr (Cambridge,
Mass., 1939), 1348-1349.
30sophocles, Antigone. tr. F. Storr (Cambridge,
Mass., 1939), 1328-1332.
; 42
1
' To sum up, then, In Homer and the tragedians fate
I is the darker aspect of existence. There is associated
' with fate the meaning that human limitation is felt
I
I intensely as a necessary part of existence. The word
i / %
translated "fate" has the root meaning "lot" or
"portion" and in its association with death and suffering
represents a gloomy portion of existence. Homer and the
tragedians do not conceive of fate as a deity in the
religious sense. No one prays to fate and fate is never
the cause of death. When fate is personified at times,
as in the speech by Creon, it is a poetic use of symbol.
It brings out in a graphic manner the sense in which
natural law at times appears to oppose*s man's aspirations.
In the Greek writers examined above, there is a
preoccupation with human problems. The use of myth is
creative and the deities of religion are used to depict
the human situation. The gods are associated with men's
achievements. Both gods and men must bow to natural
law; when fate is determined to take over, Zeus and the
gods withdraw. In other words, the gods act in harmony
with nature. The myths embody human purposes in conflict;
they are not an explanation of the supernatural.
The horror and terror which the use of the word
fate usually suggests is not evoked by a Satanic deity,
but by the fear of death and pain, which is universal.
43
The Greeks were very conscious of mortality and they
gave it artistic expression through the use of the
concept "fate."
There is in the concept of fate as it is represented
in the Greek writers we have examined a universal quality.
It is distinguished from painful incident, reversal of
fortune and catastrophe. Fate in the passages studied
seems to be related to calamity and obstacles as the
genus is related to the species. Fate is that which
overpowers, dooms, strikes down. It is part of the
natural order of things ; it works in the area of time-
space. Its action is described by transitive verbs
which are colorful and expressive in a dynamic way.
Fate always works in a negative way. The conception
is freighted with the idea of evil.^ Fate steps in where
it would be desirable for it to be absent. Fate implies
an expectancy of good, an idealism which is disappointed.
This does not mean that good or significance cannot be
derived from pain. Suffering may produce wisdom, but
the suffering is nevertheless not represented as a good
thing.
The Greeks seem not to have been concerned with
questions about the origin of fate. They dramatized
its action in the lives of great men and from the
representation derived a certain wisdom and a sense of
44
human grandeur.
In the following chapter, aspects of the portrayal
of fate in the novels of Zola and Couperus will be set
beside those discovered in the Greek writers.
CHAPTER III
FATE IN THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF THE CHARACTERS
IN THE NOVELS OF ZOLA AND COUPERUS
In our study of the Greek wordyU.0^0/in several
contexts it was discovered that the word is associated
with the feeling of limitation. It represents in Homer
and the tragedians a keen awareness of the restrictive
aspects of existence. This awareness of fate, as the
darker aspect of life is called, comes with the ex
perience of catastrophe, pain and frustration. At the
core of the concept ’ ’fate” is the sense of mortality,
the idea that eventually everyone must forfeit life,
achievement and joy.
In this chapter it is our purpose to show how Zola
and Couperus portray in human experience this feeling
of limitation and mortality which the Greeks experienced
and described. For one reason or another they appear to
have had a special interest in unhappy aspects of life.
Was it Zola’s determination to overthrow idealistic
notions of life, or his reforming zeal that caused him to
focus attention upon some of life’s darker moments? His
critical writings, as we shall see, suggest that perhaps
^5
46
both motives had a part in his interest in fate. What
ever motives we attribute to these novelists it will be
seen that Zola and Couperus produce something different
from the documentary studies of sordid living conditions
which one associates with case histories. Their sub
jective approach transforms their depiction of particular
conditions into something which is more universal, namely,
I a portrayal of fate.
I The manner in which these novelists secure verisi
militude, we shall see, is to let the environment suggest
or reinforce the mood of the characters. The piling up
of detail upon detail of sad experience in conjunction
with the suggestive use of milieu description creates a
mood in itself which gives credibility to the feelings
expressed by the characters. Zola’s suggestive use of
documentary detail, it was pointed out earlier in this
study, has been noticed only recently.
Zola and Couperus compare with Homer and the trage
dians in that they also deal with the feeling of limita
tion and mortality. The values or standards depicted
are based on a different world view but the experience
of fate is very similar.
Before the subjective approach to fate by these
novelists is examined, a brief look at Zola’s critical
writings may suggest some of his reasons for portraying
I
: the darker aspects of life. Zola seems to he in revolt
' against certain aspects of the romantic and realistic
I
' movements of the nineteenth century. In an attempt to
counter romantic tendencies in his own nature and to
outdo the realists, he sometimes appears to give a too-
detailed picture of milieu. At the same time, these
detailed drawings reinforce a feeling of monotony and
depression.
Zola’s chief quarrel is not with the exotic in
literature, typical of the romantic, but with the belief
or reliance in the supernatural which prevents, in his
estimation, a correct evaluation of fact. Zola’s de
termination to correct misimpressions of life by correct
documentation in the scientific manner is expressed in
the series of collected essays entitled The Experimental
Novel. He indicates a belief that art and science should
go hand in hand in his statement, ”a true drama brings
sharply out into broad daylight the true mechanism of
life? (p. 287)• Zola’s feeling that romanticism has
tainted him is expressed as follows,
I am afraid I have mingled too much in the romantic
mixture; I was born too soon. If I sometimes am angry
with romanticism it is because I hate it for the false
literary education which it has given me. I am tainted
with it, and it enrages me ... . When we have put
our phrases, which compromise the scientific formula,
to one side, when we shall have applied that formula
to the study of all conditions and all characters,
without the tra-la-la of our romantic frills, we shall
48
write true, solid, and durable works, (p. 274)
Works which are partly real and partly fanciful
Zola considers ’ ’illegitimate.” The novel is not the
place for idealisms; idealisms should be expressed in
poetry. Zola’s distaste for false views of life is
clear when he writes.
If you are a writer of dramatic fantasies, a poet,
write me some fairy tales, and I shall take great
pleasure in reading them. But if in a drama or a
comedy you pretend to give me men, and your men are
things of straw, you make me angry. The same way in
a novel; write poems freely if you experience a need
to idealize; do not give me grotesque and impossible
stories if you wish me to believe that all this has
happened in this way. Give me no illegitimate and
hypocritical works, that is all; no inacceptable
mixture ; no monsters, half real and half fabulous;
no pretense of arguments, based upon lies, which
reach a moral and patriotic conclusion, (pp. 264-265)
Reliance on the supernatural, Zola believes, can lead
only to metaphysical confusion and not to the ultimate
control of human phenomena. Zola links the goals of the
artist and the scientist and affirms the morality of his
work in the following fashion,
In our role as experimental moralists we show the
mechanism of the useful and the useless, we disengage
the determinism of the human and social phenomena so
that, in their turn, the legislators can one day dominate
and control these phenomena. In a word, we are working
with the whole country toward that great object, the
conquest of nature and the increase of man’s power a
hundredfold. Compare with ours the work of the
idealistic writers, who rely upon the irrational and
the supernatural, and whose every flight upward is
followed by a deeper fall into metaphysical chaos.
We are the ones who possess strength and morality.
(p. 31)
I 49
I
I It becomes clear, as Zola underlines his concept of
j what constitutes for him the chief human interest of the
' novel, that he wishes to juxtapose as clearly as possible
! humanity and its problems. The emphasis is on the actual
human situation of his times and is made from the point
of view, not only of the esthetic purpose of evoking the
most genuine type of emotion, but also from the functional
or practical point of view of the reformer. Zola wishes
description to be primarily truthful, and plot to be
simple and straightforward. He expresses his approval
of the increasingly simple plot as follows.
Our contemporaneous novel becomes more simple every
day from its hatred of complicated and false plots.
One page of human life and you have enough to excite
interest, to stir up deep and lasting emotions. The
slightest human fact takes stronger possession of
you than any other of no matter what imaginary com
bination. We shall end by giving simple studies
without adventures or climax, the analysis of a year
of existence, the story of a passion, the biography
of a character, notes taken from life and logically
classified, (p. 246)
Zola has difficulty in making clear just how novel-
writing can be considered a science, and how a novel can
be "experimental." He feels that experiment lies at the
heart of scientific discovery; it should, therefore, lie
at the heart of the technique of the novelist. When he
tries to compare the novel to an experiment, however, he
has difficulty with the analogy. Hence his critical
writing on the "experimental novel" fails to convince.
50
He'Writes, for example, "a hundred times, if necessary,
the novelist will repeat the experiment before the
public" (p. 30). What he apparently means to say is
that the novelist can take a basic human emotion and
describe it under a variety of conditions. This is
not an experiment, however, since the characters are
the novelist’s selection and are twice removed from
life. They are chosen from the limited observation of
the novelist. Zola is of the opinion that each novel
represents an attempt by the novelist to demonstrate
the manner in which human passions operate, and that
if the presentation is detailed enough, the novel or
"experiment" will convince anyone of its truth. Zola
does not see that truth in areas other than science
cannot always be measured with a yardstick. The methods
of the laboratory cannot be ipso facto superimposed on
the fine arts.
The weaknesses revealed in The Experimental Novel
are the weaknesses also of the naturalistic movement.
The method imposes its limitations on the artist. There
are times, however, when Zola escapes the self-imposed
limitations of the documentary method. When, for example,
he weaves the details into the portrayal of a mood, or
gives other evidence of the artist in him, the scientist
is forgotten.
51
That Zola is not entirely objective in the manner
of the scientist is evidenced by his analysis of the
elements which he feels should constitute the experimental
novel. His object is clearly a reforming one. He be
lieves something is wrong with society. He writes,
To be the master of good and evil, to regulate life,
to regulate society, to solve in time all the problems
of socialism, above all, to give justice a solid
foundation by solving through experiment the questions
of criminality— is not this being the most useful and
the most moral of workers in the human workshop? (p. 26)
Zola aims to reveal the flaws in society. He states his
purpose.
We teach the bitter science of life, we give the high
lesson of reality. Here is what exists; endeavour to
repair it. We are but savants, analyzers, anatomists;
and our works have the certainty, the solidity, and
the practical applications of scientific works. I
know of no school more moral or more austere, (pp. 127-
128)
There is implicit in the statements of Zola the con
viction that his insight into what is right or wrong is
correct and that he can martial the facts to prove his
point.
Zola’s method, partly colored by the reformer in
him, and partly colored by his reaction to certain
romantic characteristics, is applied to the study of
emotional states. It is in this area that he seems to
be most successful. The portrayal of fate in human
experience in Zola’s novels attains solidity and definite
ness because he depends on a detailed account of
52
I
' circumstances to convey the emotions of his characters#
; He does not use abstract terminology, but finds what may
be called "objective correlatives" for emotional states.
I His "scientism" is motivated, in part, as we have seen,
by a desire for truthfulness of expression. His The
Experimental Novel seems, from this point of view, a
plea for a more convincing form of expression, for an
exact depiction of emotion through the use of familiar
objects. It is at once a demand that literature concern
itself with everyday realities, and use the language of
actuality to present things precisely. Zola would like
to reform society by introducing a healthier syntax and
a more constructive approach to the problem of human
suffering. An examination of some of his work will show
his method.
In L’Assommoir. one of Zola’s better-known novels,
Gervaise is the central character. Her life is such a
continuous experience of misfortune that in her misery
she curses Fate. Fate in this instance represents some
thing behind the combination of circumstances which has
made her,life an unhappy one. It is clear enough to the
reader that the dram shop is ultimately the cause of the
disintegration of the family. The conception of fate
results from the attempt of the emotionally distraught
Gervaise to give expression to the feeling that something
! ^3
I
I has actively militated against her happiness. Fate is a
: semi-personified equivalent for the weight of misery
' which Gervaise feels.
! The word "fate" helps to convey the idea that what
is emotionally realized by Gervaise is larger than in
dividual circumstance. It is an area of existence. It
is limitation and death realized existentially. Existence
itself is misery. Gervaise is, as it were, surrounded by
! inimical forces which are gradually destroying her.
Stretching behind her in time there is a horrible chain
of experiences. The desertion of Lantier; the fight in
the laundry; Coupeau’s fall from the roof in her sight;
seeing the drunken Bijard kicking his wife to death—
these and many other incidents have demoralized her. As
a result she now drags herself about heedless of what
people say and looking, in Zola's words, "like a mangy
cur. "
Saturdays, Gervaise works for Virginie, the girl
she thrashed in the laundry years before. Virginie
takes delight in making Gervaise do the most degrading
tasks. This is her way of getting vengeance. Virginie
is married to Lantier, the man who deserted Gervaise.
Virginie gloats as she says to Gervaise, "I say, Madame
Coupeau, you have left some dirt over there, in that
54
corner. Scrub it a little better." Gervaise presents
an abject picture in the following description by Zola,
Gervaise obeyed. She went back to the corner, and
began to wash it over again. As she knelt on the
ground, in the midst of the dirty water, she was all
huddled up, her shoulder-blades sticking out, her arms
purple and rigid. Her old sopping skirt clung tightly
about her body. There on the floor she looked like a
heap of something not quite decent, her hair all in
disorder, the holes in her bodice shewing bits of
swollen flesh, an overflow of flesh which wobbled and
quivered under the rude shocks of her work; and she
was so bathed in sweat that great drops guttered off
her streaming face. (pp. 396-397)
When Lantier deserted her, Gervaise married Coupeau,
the tinsmith. Coupeau, while convalescing from injuries
suffered in his fall, took to drink and now is the com
plete slave of the dram shop. Little by little everything
in her possession goes to the pawn shop and Gervaise
finds herself sleeping on straw. The room in which she
and Coupeau live is like a dog kennel. Gervaise now
prowls the streets with the dogs looking for food in
front of the shops. On one occasion she goes to visit
Lalie Bijard. The little girl is dying of wounds in
flicted by her father. Gervaise is described as "so
bowled over by all this misery, that she could have
thrown herself under an omnibus, and so ended it"
(p. 428). She goes, in Zola’s words, "cursing Fate."
The manner in which description upon description of
sordid conditions can mirror the emotion of a person is
illustrated in the closing pages of L’Assommoir. The
55
descriptions are largely environmental. They not only
make graphic the feeling of limitation which Gervaise
has, but they are a criticism of life lived under such
conditions* Gervaise walks the streets in search of
something to eat. She passes the slaughter-house with
its "dark, evil-smelling courts, still humid with blood,"
and the Lariboisiere Hospital, "with its steep grey wall,
above which spread the gloomy wings, pierced at regular
intervals with windows" (p. 437)* Zola describes a door
in the grey wall known as the "door of the dead." This
door, writes Zola, "had the rigid silence of a tomb
stone" (p. 437)• Even the whistle of locomotives and
the rumble of trains lend gloom to Zola’s picture. The
unplastered walls painted with huge advertisements and
stained with soot are forcibly drawn for the reader. One
of the advertisements posts a reward of fifty francs for
a lost dog. "How someone must have loved that dog !"
Gervaise thinks.(p. 438). In contrast with the dog she
is utterly abandoned. Gervaise sees her shadow under a
gas lamp,
. . . the vague shadow drew together and grew definite,
a huge squat shadow, ridiculously round. It spread
out, the stomach, the chest, the hips, running into
one mass. She limped so badly with one leg, that, on
the ground, the shadow collapsed at every step, a
regular Punch and Judy show ! Then, when she got fur
ther away, the shadow grew larger, grew gigantic,
filled the boulevard with curtsies which knocked her
nose against the houses and the trees. Lord! how
funny, how frightful she was Î Never had she realized
56
I
before the depth of her degradation, (p. 44l)
j The climax of Gervaise*s sorrows is the sight of Coupeau,
who dies in a padded cell. In a passage similar to some
of Couperus* descriptions Zola writes of Coupeau,
He seemed to suffer much more than the day before.
His incoherent complaints indicated all sorts of
distresses. Thousands of needles pricked him. He
had something heavy all over his body; some cold,
damp beast dragged itself over his thighs, and dug
its claws into his flesh. Then there were other beasts
that clutched at his shoulders, and tore bits of his
j back with their claws, (p. 45o)
I And after Coupeau dies of alcohol poisoning, Gervaise
I
dies by inches.
The earth would have none of her apparently. She
became silly, she never even thought of throwing
herself out of the sixth story on to the pavement
of the court below, to end things. Death took her
little by little, bit by bit, bringing her to the
bitter end of the damnable existence she had made for
herself. No one ever knew exactly of what death she
died. It was put down to cold and heat. But the
truth was that she died of poverty, of the dirt.
(p. 468)
Zola’s portrayal of the feelings of Gervaise
utilizes a variety of techniques. The description of
milieu serves two purposes. It suggests the reason for
the state in which Gervaise finds herself, and it renders
graphic through association her intense feeling of gloom.
Her apprehension of death is suggested by the reference
to the blood in the slaughter-house and the "door of the
dead." Her loneliness is intensified by the notice
about the dog which reminds her that she is absolutely
57
friendless. She realizes intensely her degradation when
she sees her shadow. Its absurd and grotesque contours
remind Gervaise of her deformity and her dishevelled
appearance. The final effect on the reader is one of
intense human tragedy. Zola does not exonerate Gervaise
entirely. She acquiesces to the lure of the dram shop
and in seeking an easy out through alcoholism, she is
responsible to a large degree for her miserable state.
In one sense she does contribute to her sad state. This
refusal on the part of Zola to paint the situation in
black and white tones aids verisimilitude. Zola con
vincingly describes the subjective experience df limi
tation and mortality which the Greeks associated with
fate.
Zola’s interest in intense emotional stricture
results in another vivid description of how fate is
experienced, this time by a pater familias maltreated
by his wife and children. The situation of Josserand
in Pot-Bouille derives largely from an attempt by his
wife to maintain a standard of living which is beyond
her means. Josserand is depicted, then, as the victim
of false bourgeois standards. The story of Josserand at
once scores bourgeois hypocrisy and depicts vividly the
suffering it occasions.
In Pot-Bouille. as in L’Assommoir. the milieu is
58
used by Zola to describe something in the human situation.
As the novel begins, Octave Mouret comes to Paris from
Plassans. He is very soon aware that bourgeois morality
is largely a facade. The house in which he boards has
an entrance of "sham marble paneling."^ Campardon, the
architect, assures Mouret that the house is a thoroughly
comfortable one, and only lived in by respectable people.
Before long, however, we learn that the respectability is
only a name, and that actually the morals of the people
are reprehensible.
In Pot-Bouille the generally -low level of morality
is shown to affect everyone. The standards by which men
live are based on convenience, self-interest and self-
aggrandizement. The poor suffer at the hands of the
rich. The central theme of the novel is the education
and conquests of Octave Mouret, but the Josserand family
might almost be called the focus of interest because it
is through them that Zola’s indictment of bourgeois
manners becomes most cutting. The tragic note is sounded
in the story of Josserand. He devotes his energies and
money for the welfare of his wife and two daughters, but
they are entirely ungrateful. As they scheme for social
advancement, they squander the money he earns on trifles.
^Piping Hot, tr. Percy Pinkerton (New York, 1924),
p. 3. ___
59
Josserand is reminiscent of Balzac’s père Goriot.
Octave Mouret first meets the family one night
when he is going upstairs, candlestick in hand, and he
hears the rustle of silk dresses behind him. It is Mme.
Josserand and her daughters coming home from a party.
Although the mother stares at Octave, and the older
sister dismisses him with a petulant air, the younger
sister gives him a pretty smile. Zola gives a lyrical
description of the girl, one of the few such passages
in this otherwise somber and sordid account.
She was charmingly pretty, with tiny features, fair
skin, and shining auburn hair, and there was about
her a certain intrepid grace, the easy charm of a
young bride, as she came back from some ball, in an
elaborate gown covered with bows and lace, such as
girls never wea%. (p. 20)
The romantic effect of an encounter on the stairs by
candlelight is soon dispelled. Zola, by means of a
flashback, takes us to the party in the home of Madame
Dambreville in the Rue de Rivoli to describe the depar
ture of the Josserands. Madame Josserand slams the
street door in a sudden outburst of wrath, which she
has been suppressing for two hours. Her younger daughter,
Berthe, has again just missed getting a husband. "Well,
what are you standing there for?" she asks her girls.
"Walk on, do; for you needn’t imagine that we’re going
to have a cab and spend another two francs Î" When
Hortense, the elder, complains that the mud will ruin
! 60
'her shoes, the mother rejoins in fury, "When your shoes
; are done for, you’ll have to stop in bed, that’s alii"
(p. 22) The three women go down the street. The mother
' is thoroughly exasperated because the sole object of the
party-going is to secure a husband for the daughters,
and everything has been sacrificed to this goal. As they
plod their way along in the rain, the mother reveals her
low opinion of her husband. She has been completely
deceived by him concerning his capabilities, she claims.
The women are splashed by a cab. Then, having arrived
home, and having passed Octave Mouret on the stairs,
they find Josserand writing in the dining room by the
light of a small lamp.
Zola contrasts the diminutive Josserand with his
wife. She appears massive.
She looked enormous, .though her shoulders were still
comely, and resembled the shining flanks of a mare.
Her square face, with its big nose and flabby cheeks,
expressed all the tragic fury of a queen checking her
desire to lapse into the language of Billingsgate.
(p. 24)
Josserand wears a seedy frock coat. His countenance is
"washed out and dingy with thirty years of office rou
tine." He looks up at her with large, lack-lustre eyes.
He is a simple soul, resembling Gogol’s office clerk,
Akaki Akakievitch, described in the short story The
Cloak. The poor man simply stares at the women. He has
been addressing wrappers for periodicals at three francs
6l
a thousand. His cashier's salary is not sufficient to
support the family, and so he spends whole nights at
his task of addressing labels. He suggests that with
the three francs Madame may add bows to her gown. She
terms him an idiot and seeks to pick a quarrel with him.
She complains that he leaves the newspaper around all
day for the daughters to read. It reveals his utter want
of moral principle, she urges, because it gives her
daughters opportunity to read the scandal. Josserand
meekly receives the barrage of abuse. She continues,
I warn you that one of these fine days I shall go off
and leave you with your two empty-headed daughters.
Do you think I was born to lead such a beggarly life
as this? Always splitting farthings into four, denying
oneself even a pair of boots, while unable to entertain
one's friends in decent fashioni And you're to blame
for it all I Don't shake your head, sir; don't exasper
ate me furtheri Yes, your fault; I repeat, your faultÎ
You tricked me, sir; basely tricked me. One ought not
to marry a woman if one has resolved to let her want
for everything. You bragged about your fine future,
declaring you were the friend of your employer's sons,
those brothers Bernheim, who afterwards made such a
fool of you. What I Do you pretend to tell me that
they did not make a fool of you? Why, by this time you
ought to be their partner i It was you who made their
glass business what it is— one of the first in Paris,
and what are you? Their cashier, a servant, and under
ling i Pshaw I You've no pluck, no spirit I— Hold your
tonguei (pp. 30-31)
Josserand suggests that his eight thousand francs is a
"good berth," and then his wife accuses him of lack of
initiative and intelligence. The quarrel continues in
terminably. The girls listen tranquilly. They are used
to such discussions.
62
Then the wrath of Madame Josserand is vented upon
her daughters. She calls them simpletons. They are too
timid. Since they do not have a fortune, they ought to
catch men by other means. Madame Josserand tries to
teach Berthe how to laugh. Instead the girl bursts into
tears and the mother boxes her ears with all her might.
Berthe goes to bed sobbing and is consoled by her brother.
Saturnin. Saturnin is mentally retarded, the result of
an attack of brain fever. He has the mind of a child;
he is not insane, but wild-eyed.
The reader's sympathy is now with Josserand, and
the continued description of the family situation is
linked with his pitiable inner emotional experience.
Zola is projecting the conflict of a decent citizen with
certain reprehensible bourgeois traits. The piling up
of detail is clearly something more than the documentary
presentation of a sordid situation. The haunted figure
of Josserand is always in the background. At the close
of the foregoing scene he appears as follows,
. . . Monsieur Josserand, left alone, had put down his
pen, too grieved to go on writing. After a few minutes,
he got up and went gently to listen at the doors.
Madame Josserand was snoring. No sounds of weeping
came from his daughters' room. All was dark and silent.
Then, somewhat easier, he came back. He looked to the
lamp, which was smoking, and mechanically recommenced
writing. Unconsciously, two great tears fell onto the
wrappers, amid the solemn silence of the dreaming
house, (p. 4l)
Zola does not allow the reader to forget that the
63
emotional life of Josserand is closely linked to the
situation in his household. His intense chagrin keeps
pace with his continuing disillusionment. For example,
the true nature of the mother's pretended standards is
revealed when, on the visit of Uncle Bachelard, she and
her daughters conspire to get him tipsy in order to empty
his pockets.( Bachelard is a contemptible figure.
Covered with jewelry, and with a rose in his button
hole, he filled the center of the table— the type of
a huge, boozing, brawling tradesman who has wallowed
in all sorts of vice. There was a lurid brilliancy
about the false teeth in his furrowed, evil face; his
great red nose poised thereon like a beacon below his
snow-white, close-cropped hair; while now and again
his eyelids dropped involuntarily over his rheumy eyes.
Gueulin, son of his wife's sister, declared that his
uncle had never been sober during the whole ten years
that he was a widower, (p. 42)
The father, who has the devotion of a Goriot, is horrified
as his daughters proceed with the game. !
They flung their arms about his neck, called him the |
most endearing names, and kissed his inflamed face, '
without showing any disgust for the revolting odor of :
low debauchery which he exhaled. Monsieur Josserand, |
upset by this nauseous smell— a mixture of absinthe, i
tobacco and musk— was shocked to see his daughters' |
virginal charms in such close contact with this lecherous
old blackguard. "Do leave him alone!" he cried. "What
for?" asked Madame Josserand, as she gave her husband
a terrible look. "They are only having a game. And
if Narcisse likes to give them twenty francs, he has a
perfect right to do so I (p. 44)
The idiot. Saturnin, in the meantime plays with the food
on his plate, to add to the grotesqueness and sordidness
of the scene. There is a climax when Berthe picks the
pockets of Uncle Bachelard and Saturnin picks up a knife
' 64
I
î and threatens to disembowel those who wish to marry off
; his sisters.
Josserand is quite unequal to the scheming ways of
I his wife- When she promises a dowry of fifty thousand
I
francs to a suitor for one of his daughters, he feels ill
at ease and expresses his scruples. She silences him.
Berthe is married, but the dowry, of course, is not forth
coming.
Josserand*s world completely falls to pieces when
Berthe, a short time later, is found to be unfaithful.
She has been seduced by Octave Mouret. When the news
comes, the old man is absolutely stunned.
The father, utterly worn-out, with white, agonized
countenance, sat aloof in the far corner of the room,
leaning against the wall. The room reeked of rancid
butter, of the cheap kind on sale at the Hailes.
(p. 391)
During the quarrel which follows, the mother strikes
Berthe. Berthe bursts into tears.
Hearing her sob thus violently, her father was well-
nigh overmastered by emotion. Tottering forward, he
pushed his wife aside saying: "Tell me, do you want
you?" ^p 395^ ' ^^st I go down on my knees to
A short time later Josserand goes to the bedroom. There
is a dull thud and the family finds him on the floor.
On the floor, near the bed. Monsieur Josserand lay
in a swoon. His head had struck against a chair,
and blood issued in a thin stream from his right ear.
Mother, daughters, and maidservant stood around to
examine him. Only Berthe burst into tears, sobbing
convulsively, as if still smarting from the blow she
had received. And as the four of them lifted up the
65
old man and placed him on the bed, they heard him
murmur: "It's all over. They've killed me." (p. 399)
A short time later Josserand dies. He died, in Zola's
words,
. . . very quietly— a victim to his own honesty of
heart. He had lived a useless life, and he went hence,
like an honest wight, weary of all life's petty ills,
done to death by the heartless conduct of the only
human beings that he had ever loved. At eight o'clock
he stammered out Saturnin's name ; then, turning his
face to the wall, he expired, (p. 4l6;
Josserand's story is that of a sensitive person
I whose devoted attachment to his family and high ambitions
for them cause him to fall victim to their callous dis
regard for principle. Here destiny or fate seems most
cruel because a good trait in Josserand is the cause of
disappointment and death. Love for his daughters blinds
him to the fact that his family pays only lip service
to his standards. He gradually realizes that their
standards are different and that his love is not re
turned. There is a certain irony in the fact that the
only people he ever loved are the cause of his death.
Zola portrays in Josserand the bitter experience
of human limitation. The pity we feel for him compares
to some extent with the pity we feel for Prometheus in
the tragedy of Aeschylus. Josserand's fate, like that
of Prometheus, is unmerited. What is missing here is
the sense of heroism which Aeschylus infused into
Prometheus Bound. Zola's portrayal of cruelty and irony
,
i
! in life does not suggest how even undeserved misfortune
I can be faced with heroism. There is also an absence
I
of foreboding and mystery in the story of Josserand,
j
so that there is no terror experienced by the reader.
The story is a critique of bourgeois standards as a
source of unhappiness as well as a concern with the
problem of suffering as such.
Zola has, in the story of Josserand, touched on
many of the aspects of modern life which tend to be
depressing. Josserand's limitations prevent him from
rising in his place of employment and, therefore, fix
his living standard; his son is on the verge of idiocy
and is a liability to the family; Josserand and his wife
are incompatible; his daughter, Berthe, marries for
convenience and brings scandal to the family. Such
aspects of life cannot be avoided. They come, unlooked
for, and are often unavoidably part of the human situ
ation. They are part of man's lot and must be faced.
In so far as the story reflects aspects of modern life
in general, rather than the hypocrisy of a certain class
of people, it is pessimistic. It does not elevate the
feelings.
The restriction of ambition and the limiting of
one's ideals are ways in which fate is experienced. When
energy and motivation are suppressed or thwarted, a sense
I
iof gloom and mortality is awakened. Zola portrays
idisillusioned ambition to some extent in Josserand. He
I
!
pictures it more graphically in Florent, the hero of the
novel, Le Ventre de Paris. The underlying theme of
this novel is Weltschmerz. the romantic conflict with
a misunderstanding world. Florent, the idealist-politician
who has come back to Paris after surviving the horrors
of Devil's Island, finds neither sympathy nor understand
ing. He takes over the position of government inspector
in the fish market and even signs over part of his pay
to the retiring inspector, whose illness has caused him
to retire. He becomes the butt of the jokes of the
women in the market, he is renounced for his idealisms
by his own relatives, and he is finally betrayed to the ,
police by Lisa, his sister-in-law, as a dangerous anarchist:
The ending is ironic— he is condemned to be sent back to 1
I
Devil's Island. i
The theme of disillusionment is developed even in |
the minor characters of the novel. Claude Lantier, the
impressionistic painter (who embodies characteristics
of Zola's friend, Cezanne, in L'Oeuvre). is unable to
sell his paintings. His ambitions in art do not include
use of medieval themes and apparently the public has a
taste for such themes. Lantier recites the parable of
the Fats and the Thins. He compares himself and Florent
I
I to the Thin people who are devoured by the stronger,
: wealthier and better-fed people. Florent's sense of
I
alienation is reproduced, also, in the homeless waifs,
I
Marjolin and Cadine, who sleep in the cellars.
The irony which intensifies the feeling of dis
illusionment stems from the fact that, as in the case
of Josserand, Florent's relatives do not share his
ideals. When the mother of Florent and Quenu died,
Florent gave up a promising law career to provide for
the welfare of his half-brother. But opulence and ease
have sapped the moral fiber of Quenu so that Lisa is
able to persuade him that it is all for the best to
have Florent sent back to Devil's Island. The corrupting
power of wealth is a minor motif in the novel.
The characters are by no means black-and-white
sketches— the products of a naive theory of heredity.
Lisa is in one sense justified in what she does. The
evidence of red flags and arm bands and of the plans
to overthrow the government, which she finds in Florent's
room, leave no doubt in her mind that Florent means
business. Naive politician and harmless idealist that
he may be, she realizes that, should he succeed in his
plans, her shop would in all likelihood be taken from
her. Moreover, she does not take action before she has
consulted with the priest, from whom she usually gets
69
counsel in difficult matters.
Zola throws into hold relief the plight of the
naive idealist, who carries within his personality the
seeds of his downfall. The tension between Lisa and
Florent is not resolved. In his own eyes, Florent is
justified in seeking revenge upon a regime that unjustly
condemned him to exile. The purpose he has in mind,
that of eliminating the distinction of Fat and Thin,
is honorable. At heart, he is no revolutionary, and
desires merely the good of all. And Lisa also justifies
her methods; the survival of her way of life depends on
her acting quickly and decisively. The issues are real,
and the sense of tragedy is real. Zola has imaginatively
and dramatically juxtaposed man and his problems.
There is obvious irony in the fact that while Lisa
apparently has the sanction of the church, and is urged
by the priest to do as her heart tells her to do, her
action is really indefensible. She obeys the letter of
the law instead of its spirit. Florent is, after all,
her brother-in-law. It means that she, has put material .
interest above the more human interest of family loyalty.
Her strict moral code seems hollow, compared with the
sincere benevolence of Florent, who refuses the inheri
tance money which Lisa offers him as rightfully his,
and sacrifices his time to teach a child to read and
70
write. Lisa sacrifices nothing.
The part which the subjective plays in Zola's works
is indicated by the anthropomorphic descriptions which
appear from time to time in the novels. These descrip
tions, which are obviously connected to the central
theme of man's frustration, are sometimes blurred, as
t
if the emotional element had outdistanced the pictorial
sense. Nevertheless, they contribute to the portrayal
of fate as experienced subjectively. They suggest in
tensity of feeling on the part of the characters. In
Le Ventre de Paris the Hailes, the central market place.
is described as a monster. Zola describes the two
children, Marjolin and Cadine, as patting the monster
and receiving in return a smile. The children, in turn,
are compared to sparrows on the roof-tops, âs a result,
the reader receives an impression of the helplessness
of man before superior forces.
In the novels examined above, the portrayal of the
experience of fate, of limiting forces in life, seems
convincingly real. As in the Greek concept of fate,
forces of attrition are not supernatural; so in these
novels, misuse of liquor, money and political power
falls clearly within the bounds of natural law. The
novels do not suggest that the characters are marked
out for suffering and death. These studies of human
. 71
I
'experience merge in their depiction of something very
; similar to what the Greeks termed "fate."
I
! As we turn now to Couperus, we shall find that his
^novels also develop a detailed documenLary method into
the portrayal of a mood. It is a mood which binds
milieu and characters together and expresses the ex
perience of fate. The fate of the Van Lowe family is
described chronologically in four novels which close
with the death of Mrs. van Lowe. In the Small Souls
series the milieu is The Hague. The criticism of Hague
society, specific in its detailed delineation of mores,
also is transmuted into a rather depressing account of
how the petty manners of high society limit its members.
The story which binds together the four novels of the
series, namely. Small Souls. The Later Life. The Twilight
of the Souls, and Dr. Adriaan. is that of Constance
van Lowe. She returns to The Hague after an absence
of fifteen years. She had married a Dutch consular
official, de Staeffelaar, and gone with him to Italy.
The prestige that went with this union was highly re
garded by the family. But in Italy, Constance had an
affair with a young secretary of the legation, a certain
Van der Welcke. Dr. Staeffelaar on one occasion sur
prised the lovers and a first-rate scandal resulted.
Constance was divorced, and in order to repair matters
' 72
!
'she married Van der Welcke. They had a son, Addie, and
j the story opens on the first visit home of Constance
'and her son. The reactions of the various family members
I to this visit are revealing, as Constance revolves among
the other lights in the family, like a satellite of
somewhat tarnished glory. The recurrent theme is the
sin of Constance as viewed by the different members of
the family. It is the human drama, the emotional tension
created, that holds the novels together, rather than any
particular development of events.
The disintegration of the family is not the central
theme. Neither in Zola nor in Couperus are the members
of the family close-knit to begin with. The interest in
the Small Souls series, as in the Greek dramas which
portray men as somehow hemmed in by forces greater than
themselves, lies in the gradual filling-in, as if by an
artist, of the portrait of a nation or society. In this
type of picture the conflict which provides the tension
and the emotional overtones is often implicit in the
personalities involved, and this serves to heighten the
tension. Dreams and other premonitions may serve to
suggest that the characters will fall prey to the superior
forces which thwart their desires.
Robert Morse Lovett has suggested that the chronicle
of sophisticated society requires the complex personal
73
2
interrelationships provided hy the family. In the
I earlier picaresque novel, the picaro could act indepen-
'dently of organized society. Beginning with the novel
of manners, writers began to produce a sense of social
fabric by describing family ties in detail. The type
of hero or heroine was replaced by the family group. In
the family novel of the late nineteenth century, the
members of the family, by their varied interests, move
ments and occupations over two or more generations,
begin to reveal implicitly in their behavior, the forces
which are active on the national and international level.
National politics, economics, art and the like, are
represented and evaluated. The artist's task is to
render these forces in society in a vivid and authentic
fashion.
In the Netherlands, Couperus has inherited the
thought of generations which have been faced with the
problem of maintaining life within the limited environs
of a country situated below sea-level and threatened
constantly with inundation by the sea. On this soil
Calvinism, with its stern doctrine of foreordination by
God, flourished, supported, as it were, by the harshness
of the lessons taught by the elements of wind and water.
2
"Louis Couperus and the Family Novel," The Dial.
66:184, Feb. 22, 1919.
I 74
' Questions of good and evil have been debated in the
.Netherlands for centuries. Destiny has usually been
■ identified there with the will of God.
I
I There has been a danger in the Netherlands, because
of the smallness of the country and the hyper-Calvinistic
background (according to a recent writer on the subject
of the Dutch national character), to develop a smallness
of soul, a pettiness.3 It is this element which Couperus
chooses to make the heart of his fate-novels. Man
struggles pitifully to maintain certain outmoded tradi
tions against a background of inexorable change. Human
dramas of various sorts arise, motivated often by intrigue
and jealousy. Couperus turns on The Hague society the
judgment of a mature vision and analyzes it mercilessly.
Because that which is fixed or determined, such as
outdated institutions, past actions, death and so forth,
naturally militates against such things as freedom,
beauty and joy in life, this type of novel tends to be
pessimistic, not by choice of the novelist, but because
of the peculiar artistic device used. When the rigid
element is accentuated we get, on the one hand, mimicry
^A. Donker, pseud., Karaktertrekken der Vader-
landsche Letterkunde.
75
or satire,^ on the other, irony, pathos, and if death
is imminent, terror.
We have noticed in Zola how the milieu can reflect
the feelings of the protagonist, as certain details are
accented. In Couperus description of milieu plays a
large part in the portrayal of the feelings of the people
who live in an atmosphere of pettiness. In the Book of
the Small Souls the weather suggests the gloom which is
true also of the lives of the characters. The following
examples may be cited.
The oppressive sultry, rainless summer days followed
one after the other; and the night also waited in
oppressive expectation of oppressive things, which
were to happen and never happened, as though what we
expected to happen immediately withdrew and withdrew
farther and only hung over houses and people with
heavy stormy skies: skies of blazing morning blue—
a nature, tired with heavy, trailing summer life,
that had never finally become anything and was always
becoming something, never flashing forth in a bright
achievement of summer, but dragging her incompleteness
from heavy day to heavy day, under the heavy immensity
of skies toward the later bursting delights of autumn:
heavy wind, heavy rain, followed by the heavy death-
struggle and unwillingness to die of that which had
never been the glory gf the sun and yet left no
golden memory behind.5
This gloomy reflection on the weather is an oblique
k
H. Bergson, An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic,
tr. Brereton and Rothwell (New York, 1937), pp. 10, 21, 36.
5pr. Adriaan in The Book of the Small Souls, tr.
Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. 4 vols. in 1 (New York,
1932), p. 273. Citations in individual volumes will be
from this edition.
76
reference to life itself. It is the way life seems to
the "small souls." Even Dr. Adriaan, the most optimistic
of them all, is beset by the gloomy outlook. After
passing "mean little dwellings," and "silent gloomy
roads," he feels "weighed down by the heavy skies"
(p. 231). The descriptions of nature set the tone for
his reflections on life. They reveal the subjective
experience of the characters, showing how utterly dis
tasteful life is to those who live in the petty atmosphere
Couperus describes. Fate is identified with existence
itself. Life is gloomy and terrible. Dr. Adriaan
reflects that life is without prospect of achievement.
In harmony with the description of the weather,
... he suddenly sees his young liTe before him as
a dismal ruin, as a desolate block of masonry in a
dark night, as a desperate climbing and climbing in
the dusk, with no goal of light ahead, (p. 231)
The Van Lowe family is like the Buddenbrooks, described
by Thomas Mann. The initiative impulse of the ancestors
has passed away; the adventuring days of the Van Lowes,
when grandfather was Governor General in Batavia, are
over. Those early days of conquest and achievement
only help in reminiscence to emphasize the monotony,
the mechanical precision, the lack of creative ambition
which characterizes the life of the surviving members
of this family. By contrast, motives and passions are
now on a Lilliputian scale. There is no career for the
77
the boys to choose except in one of the various routines;
there is none for the girls except to marry into one.
The only outlet for the artistic impulses of Ernst and
Paul is the collection of curios.
The feeling of repression and limitation which
sinks into the souls of the characters who live in a
petty society results in a keen awareness of mutability;
there is a consciousness of growing old, of the short
lived nature of human youth and beauty. In The Twilight
of the Souls, Pauline, a lady of easy virtue, returns
after an absence of many years. She had known Gerrit
before he was married. Now married, and with many
children, Gerrit van Lowe feels an obligation to be
friendly. Pauline is obviously an outcast and has very
few illusions left. She hopes, perhaps, to find in
Gerrit a friend to sustain her, and tries in every way
to bind him to her. Instead, the meeting is for both
of them an experience of heavy disillusionment. She is no
longer young and the attractions of youth have fled. Cou
perus presents the reaction of Gerrit in interior mono
logue, "Lord, how old she looked 1 Her skin was wrinkled,
covered with freckles and blotches ..." (The Twilight
of the Souls, p. 222) For both Gerrit and Pauline
there seems facing them a "black abyss." What they had
hoped would be an exhilarating experience actually
' 78
t
, becomes a strong motivating factor for their later
suicides. Pauline now realizes that the only feeling
: Gerrit has left for her is pity. She is later found
floating in one of the canals. Gerrit becomes increas
ingly despondent and shoots himself.
The description of ugliness in both Zola and
Couperus is somehow never a purely esthetic judgment.
It is always associated with a social condition or inner
mood. It is part of the subjectivism which can be traced
through the novels. Beauty is never discussed in an
abstract way, only as it bears on social well-being. The
fault with the weather, housing or human appearance is
that it does not buoy up, or give cause for happiness.
It is a pragmatic and existential judgment. Often the
esthetic judgment is so emotionally tinged, so largely
negative, that it goes beyond a pragmatic point of view
and becomes an expression of an inner condition.
In an interesting manner, Couperus shows how a
basically good national trait can appear oppressive to
one who realizes it is only a fagade. Regular arrange
ment, cleanliness, conformity to pattern in the following
description suggest that deviation will not be tolerated.
The very milieu seems to enforce dullness, monotony, lack
of initiative to one who feels the lack of achievement
in life as a gloomy weight upon him. Couperus describes
I 79
I The Hague environment through the eyes of one of the
I "small souls."
! Marietje van Saetzema stood at the window and looked
out into the street. She looked down the whole street,
because the house, a corner-house, stood not in the
length of it, but in the width, half-closing the street,
making it a sort of courtyard of big houses. The street
stretched to some' distance; and another house partly
closed the farther end, turning it actually into a
courtyard, occupied by some well-to-do people. The
two rows of gables ran along with a fine independence
of chimney-stacks, of little* cast-iron pinnacles and
pointed zinc roofs, little copper weathercocks and
little balconies and bow-windows as though the archi
tects and builders had conspired to produce something
artistic and refused to design one long monotonous gable-
line. But the new street— it was about twenty years old
— had nevertheless retained the Dutch trimness that
characterizes the dwellings of the better classes; the
well-scrubbed pavements ran into the distance, growing
ever-narrower to the eye, with their grey hem of kerb
stone [sic] , their regularly-recurring lamp-posts; in
the middle of the street was a plantation; oval grass-
plots surrounded by low railings, in which were chestnut
trees, neatly pruned, and, beneath them, a neat shrubbery
of dwarf firs. The fronts of the houses glistened with
cleanliness after the spring cleaning; the ÿidily-laid
bricks displayed their rectangular outlines clearly,
even at a distance; the window frames were bright with
fresh paint, dazzling cream-colour or pale-brown; the
blinds, neatly lowered in front of the shining plate-
glass windows, were let down in each house precisely the
same depth, as though mathematically measured; and the
houses concealed their inner lives very quietly behind
the straight, nicely-balanced lace curtains. And this
was very characteristic, that above each gable there
jutted a flagstaff, held aslant with iron pins, the
staff painted a bright red, white and blue— the national
colours— as though wound about with ribbons, with fresh
ly-gilded knob at the top. All these flagstaffs— a
forest of staffs, with their iron pins, forever aslant
on the gables— waited patiently to hoist their colours,
to wave their bunting, twice a year, for the Queen and
her mother, the Regent. (Small Souls, pp. 22o-227)
Couperus uses, in addition to milieu-descriptions of
a suggestive sort, the interesting device of interior
; 8o
I
; monologue combined with impressionistic accounts of vision
; or hallucination. Mrs. van Lowe on one occasion has
i
' received her regular Sunday visit. But on this occasion
the children seem to look at her with spectral stares.
The truth of the matter is that her son, Henry, has been
stabbed to death in Paris and the children are afraid
to tell their mother. When the children leave, Mrs. van
Lowe has a vision of her son "with a deep, gaping wound
above his heart." She has, following this vision, a
rather vivid picture of fate in terms of the ocean rolling
in upon her,
. . . amid the emptiness of her brightly-lit drawing
room, a sort of roar came to her from the distance out
side the room, the distance outside the house, the
distance outside the night, the very distance of eter
nity, the eternity whence all the things of the future
come; a roar so overwhelming that it seemed to come
from a supernatural sea in which the poor, trembling
old woman was drowned, drowned with all her vanity and
all her unimportant, insignificant sorrow, a sea in
which her very small, small soul was drowned, swallowed
up like the veriest atom in the roaring, roaring waves;
a roar whose voice told her that it was coming, that
it was coming, the great sorrow, the thing before
which she trembled with fear because she had foreseen
it and because it would be so heavy for her to bear.
. . . (The Twilight of the Souls, pp. 284-285)
Her premonition of approaching sorrow is mixed with
self-pity. Mrs. van Lowe feels a sense of injustice at
the way in which fate seems to have held back sorrows
in abundance until the time when she feels too feeble
to endure them,
81
Why must fate be like that, so heavy, so ruthless and
crushing? Why had it not all come earlier, including
the thing which advanced with such a threatening roar
and under which she, too weary now, too weak and too
old, would succumb when it passed over her, when it
reached her at last out of the roaring, threatening,
distant, distant eternity, wherein all the things of
the future are born .... (p. 285)
The title of the third volume of the series. The
Twilight of the Souls, suggests the manner in which
Gerrit, whose will to live is slowly ebbing, surveys
the life before him. He feels that perhaps his own
family, his nine children, are tainted with the thing
that is crushing him. There is a plaintive note in his
questioning,
Would the twilight, afterwards, deepen . . . and
. . . deepen . . . and deepen . . . around them too
. . . until perhaps the very great things of life came
thundering and lightening unexpectedly before them,
crushing them . . .? (p. 338)
There is an interesting thought implicit in the despair
of Gerrit. Man is limited by the society in which he
lives, by the company he keeps. When there is no chal
lenge felt and no striving for light, then the bright
ness in life is forfeited. How is the initiative impulse
stifled? He is not quite sure.
Was it their fault or the fault of their life: the
small life of small souls? . . . Did the twilight come
from their blood, which grew poorer, or from their
life, which grew smaller? (p. 338)
He does not know whether to blame heredity or environ
ment, but he is afraid that his children are already in
danger. He asks, musingly, 82
Would they never behold through the twilight the vistas,
far-reaching as the dawn, where life, when all was said,
must be spacious . . . and would they never strive for
that? Would they never send forth the rays of their
golden sunlight towards the greater life and would they
not grow into great souls? (p. 338)
He is afraid that they will be crushed by the darkness
in life because they have no bright hope.
This view of fate in terms of deepening gloom is
reminiscent of the way in which the Greeks associated
fate with darkness. Couperus spells it out in existen
tial terms so that the gloom is identified with limited
vision, selfishness and old age,
. . . night was falling, one vast night around all the
family, under the grey skies of their winter. He knew
only that the light was growing dimmer and dimmer
around them until it. became unillumined dusk: the
dusk of age; the dusk of sorrow; the dusk of cynical
selfishness; the dusk of life without living; all
the heavy, sombre twilight that gathered around small
souls. . . . Oh, how dark and gloomy were the shadows
of the twilight and how heavy was the fate that hung
over their small souls, hung over them like a leaden
sky, an immensity of leaden skies! (pp. 338-339)
The mood suggested by the descriptions of milieu
and by the interior monologues of these people is combined
with the effect of petty actions. The result is a feeling
by the reader that life in The Hague is very limited.
The pettiness of the "small souls" is illustrated,
for example, in the outlook of Paul van Lowe. While
accompanying Constance on a shopping tour, he observes.
Look at all those shops, where you buy— or don't buy—
trashy manufactured things that have blood clinging
to them, things which you are now pretending that you
83
need for your house: that is human wretchedness.
. . . It's all ugly; and the trail of a morbid civili
zation shows through it all. . . . Look around you,
at those big lying letters, those gaudy posters: that
is human wretchedness. One cheats the other; and the
whole thing has become such a matter of system that
nobody is really taken in. It's the same with politics
and religion as with a pound of sugar or a box of
throat-lozenges. It is all humbug and all human
wretchedness. And it drags on, piecemeal, through
any average human life. It is all squalid, vulgar,
insincere, selfish, ugly and full of human wretchedness.
You think me a pessimist? Far from it, I am an idealist:
in my own mind, I see everything in a rosy light. My
power of imagination is so strong that I see everything
white and gold and blue, like the marble statues of
ancient temples with their blue sky and golden sun.
But, when I take leave of my imagination, then I see
that everything is human wretchedness: wars, politics;
the fat stomach of our friend yonder; the rain; and
those pots and pans which you're wanting for your
kitchen. All life, high and low, general and individual,
in the masses and in the classes, is squalid, ugly,
insincere and full of human wretchedness. (Small Souls.
pp. 126-127)
The theme of Paul's complaint is that existence is
wretched. His outlook is so jaundiced that whatever
basis his judgment may have in fact, his comments reflect
more on his smallness of soul than they do on the methods
of businessmen and politicians.
Another "small soul" is Brauws, not a member of the
Van Lowe family but definitely part of their society.
Brauws is unable to reconcile himself to the fact that
the illusions of youth, the great ambitions, have not
been fulfilled in his life. Life appears terribly
prosaic to him.
How prosaic life was! How prosaically it rolled along
its steady drab course, thought Brauws, silently to
84
himself, as he looked on while Guy carved the beef in
straight, even slices. . . . And, prosaically though
it rolled, what a very different life it always became
from what any man imagined that his life would be, from
the future which he had pictured, from the illusion,
high or small, which he had gilded for himself, with
his pettily human fancy ever gilding the future accor
ding to its pettily human yearning after illusions
. . . Now the years had passed; sorrow had faded away
and sorrow was being born again perhaps, for life
cannot exist without sorrow, laid up as an inheritance
for one and all; and yet sorrow was so very little and
became so small in the measureless life entire. . . .
(Dr. Adriaan. pp. 176-177)
There was a time when Brauws seemed to be one who could
raise himself out of the petty world of the small souls.
Constance compared him on one occasion with herself and
felt that he had resources that she did not have. She
thought then.
Oh, he was going to England, to lecture on Peace; for
him there were always those mighty problems which
consoled him for the smallness of that little world
of self! (The Later Life, p. 330)
Now he too succumbs to the general depression.
The clearest indictment of the "souls" devolves
from the treatment received by Constance at the hands
of her own kin. She is constantly reminded that she has
sinned. Remarks about her are neither kind nor con
siderate. Cateau, her sister-in-law, says to others of
the family on one occasion, "Constance has something
about her that's not quite proper." Adolphine replies,
"But propriety isn't her strong point." And then Karel,
in turn, comments, "Never was" (Small Souls, p. 55)*
I 8 5
‘ At a game of bridge, with Constance present. Uncle
j Ruyvenaer shouts, "The Queen falls," and then, "One
!
more unfortunate I" (Small Souls, p. 77) A local scandal
I
paper undertakes to spread the details of Constance's
past over its pages, claiming thereby to show how high
society lives. Adriaan hears his mother insulted by
Jaap, a cousin, and gets into a fight. At a family
gathering one of two aged and parüy-deaf aunts shouts
to the other, in the presence of Constance, who is
standing nearby, "She's a wicked woman. Bine, a wicked
woman I She's . . . she's a trollop, Bine! A common
trollop! A trollop!" (Small Souls, p. 432)
In these examples of the treatment accorded Con
stance, we see how the unforgiving attitude of the Van
Lowes throws into bold relief the essentially picayunish
nature of the characters of the small souls. There is
a sense in which these people cannot escape out of
their own pettiness; they become incapable of enjoying
life. Couperus states this in many ways: they have no
capacity for a broadened perspective; there is no vision
of the better things in life; there is no initiative
impulse. The petty souls, clinging pitifully together,
become a burden to themselves and life itself seems to
them oppressive. Fate is conceived here in terms of
the somber aspects of a petty social existence. Petty
86
traits such as "cynical selfishness" fall like a shadow
in their lives and give rise to the experience of fate.
"Life without living," is what Couperus labels the aim
less, prosaic existence of these people who live fated
lives, lives in which darkness is experienced existen-
tially.
Both Zola and Couperus, to sum up the findings of
this chapter, show how social institutions can produce
the experience of restriction which the Greeks called
"fate." The novelists show discouraging aspects of modern
existence and how they lead to the subjective awareness
of limitation in life. Some of the problems of contem
porary civilization, such as the competitiveness and the
class rivalries, are distinct from problems portrayed by ;
1
the Greek writers examined. But in a convincing depiction '
of subjective experience the work of these novelists com- |
I
pares well with Homer and the tragedians. The modern
I
writers convincingly portray the heaviness of spirit, the j
depression, the sense of darkness, the bitter feeling of
restriction, that was noticed in the older group of
writers. Also, they do not identify fate with super
natural forces which hound men to destruction. Zola and
Couperus are concerned with experience which takes place
within the framework of natural law. Both groups of
writers, we can safely say, portray in a vivid manner the
I 87
[
feelings that arise in man when he is keenly aware of the
; limited achievement and happiness in life.
I
In this chapter we have noticed how the novelists
I use elements in the milieu to convey an emotional state.
Zola and Couperus employ symbols as well in order to
suggest emotional response to forces which undermine
' man's happiness. Their extended use of symbol becomes
myth. This aspect of their portrayal of fate will now
be examined.
CHAPTER IV
MYTHICAL ELEMENTS IN THE PORTRAYAL OF FATE
In our discussion of fate as portrayed by Homer and
the tragedians it was seen that divine personages are used
to point up essentially human problems. Mythological
characters are embodiments of human purposes and impulses.
The value of this method, Otto suggests, is that it gives
universality to the portrayal of present problems without
jeopardizing the sense of the actual* He writes.
By the introduction of the divine . . . the element
of accident disappears. The details of the event and
their totality are mirrored in the eternal, and yet
none of the blood and breath of the living present
is lost. (The Homeric Gods, p. 220)
Otto suggests that life and achievement, the things that
contrast with the confining aspect of existence, are
represented in Homer by the deities. "Man's mightiest
achievements are explicitly regarded as deeds actually
brought about by the agency of a god" (p. 223). This
is a recognition of deity in man, Otto asserts. "One
ness of god and man in elemental being that is the
Greek view . . . the idea of the essential in man is
one and the same with the recognition of godhead"
(p. 236). Such statements are in harmony with the
88
89
opinions of others which have been cited above relative
to the creative use of symbol by Homer and the tragedians.
For purposes of this study, the interpretation of Otto
and Kitto will be accepted, namely, that the religious
meaning in the Greek myths, as treated by the Greek
writers, is man-centered, not god-centered. We shall
consider myth as the extended employment of symbol to
suggest subjective experience. We shall now examine
how Zola and Couperus respectively use mythical elements
in their portrayal of fate.
Zola uses characters to represent something larger
than themselves. The characters convey meanings and
stand for forces or movements. Extended narrative
accounts of destructive forces at work are suggested
through a symbolical use of surface narrative. The
first example we shall examine is Zola's use of the
mine in Germinal. It is a symbol, in its effect on the
workingman, of capitalism. The novel becomes a recount
ing of the myth of the world strike.
Germinal describes the inhuman laboring conditions
in a mining town. All through the novel capitalism is
shown in a bad light. Capital is described as a monster
in the following metaphorical passage.
Yes I labour would demand an account from capital; that
impersonal god, unknown to the worker, crouching down
somewhere in his mysterious sanctuary, where he sucked
the life out of the starvelings who nourished him I
90
They would go down there; they would at last succeed
in seeing his face by the gleam of incendiary fires;
they would drown him in blood, that filthy swine,
that monstrous idol, gorged with human flesh 1- ^
The symbolization of capital as an idol situated
somewhere in the depths of the earth is part of a larger
projection. The entire mine at Montsou— the machinery,
the buildings, the pits— represents the destructive and
oppressive force of a system which engulfs the working
man. The descriptions of milieu are highly subjective.
They suggest the fate of the workingman. The Voreux
pit, accordingly, is a gigantic beast which, at the
behest of Capital, engulfs the men who work for the
mining company. This is an early description of the
pit,
/
The Voreux was now emerging from the gloom. Etienne,
who forgot himself before the stove, warming his poor
bleeding hands, looked round and could see part of the
pit; the shed tarred with siftings, the pit-frame,
the vast chamber of the winding machine, the square
turret of the exhaustion pump. This pit, piled up
in the bottom of a hollow, with its squat brick
buildings, raising its chimney like a threatening
horn, seemed'to him to have the evil air of a glutton
ous beast crouching there to devour the earth, (p. 3)
The sound of the machinery suggests the consumption of
human life,
. . . the Voreux, at the bottom of its hole, with its
posture as of an evil beast, continued to crunch,
breathing with a heavier and slower respiration.
^Germinal, tr. Havelock Ellis (New York, 1924),
p. 290.
91
troubled by its painful digestion of human flesh,
(p. 11)
The men and women who work in the mine also carry
a certain symbolic meaning. They are the pawns of the
system. Their appearance, their speech and their actions
underline the fact that they symbolize the workingman
everywhere who is oppressed by capitalism. A few exam-
/
pies will make this clear. Etienne is interviewing M.
Bonnemort. The name Bonnemort is a nickname indicating
the narrow escapes that the miner has had. He is the
type of a miner who has suffered excruciating pain and
at whose expense others have become rich. He speaks to
/
Etienne, who, incidentally, is the only member of the
Rougon-Macquart family appearing in the novel. Bonnemort
states,
Yes, yes; they have pulled me three times out of that,
torn to pieces, once with all my hair scorched, once
with my gizzard full of earth, and another time with
my belly swollen with water, like a frog. And then,
when they saw that nothing would kill me, they called
me Bonnemort for a joke. . . . I was not eight when I
went down into the Voreux and I am now fifty-eight.
Reckon that upi I have been everything down there; at
first trammer, then putter, when I had the strength to
wheel, then pikeman for eighteen years. Then, because
of my cursed legs, they put me into the earth cutting,
to bank up and patch, until they had to bring me up,
because the doctor said I should stay there for good.
Then, after five years of that, they made me carman.
Eh? that's fine— fifty years at the mine, forty-five
down below, (p. 7)
In the course of the conversation it develops that
Bonnemort is to get a pension of one hundred and eighty
92
francs if he manages to hold on till he is sixty.
Bonnemort describes the proprietors of the mine as
"cunning." They would like to see him retire early,
because then the pension would only amount to one hun
dred and fifty francs. He comes from a long line of
miners, who have suffered as he has. His three brothers
and two uncles all perished in the mine.
In contrast to the poor miner, the company is fabu-
/
lously rich. Etienne asks the miner concerning the
wealth of the owners of the mine and he replies.
Ah I yes. Ah I yes. Not perhaps so rich as its neigh
bour, the Anzin Company. But millions and millions all
the same. They can't count it. Nineteen pits, thirteen
at work, the Voreux, the Victoire, Crèvecoeur, Mirou,
St. Thomas, Madeleine, Feutry-Cantel, and still more,
and six for pumping or ventilation, like Requillart.
Ten thousand workers, concessions reaching over sixty-
seven communes, an out-put of five-thousand tons a day,
a railway joining all the pits, and workshops, and
factories! Ah! yes, ah! yes! there's money there!
(p. 9)
✓
Etienne uses the example of Bonnemort to start a strike.
In his speech he assails the directors of the mine.
Was it not fearful? a race of men dying down below,
from father to son, so that bribes of wine could be
given to ministers, and generations of great lords
and bourgeois could give feasts or fatten by their
firesides! He had studied the diseases of the miners.
He made them all march past with their awful details:
anaemia, scrofula, black bronchitis, the asthma which
chokes, and the rheumatism which paralyses. These
wretches were thrown as food to the engines and penned
up like beasts in the settlements. The great companies
slowly absorbed them, regulating their slavery, threaten
ing to enroll all the workers of the nation, millions
of hands, to bring fortune to a thousand idlers.
(pp. 289-290)
93
Through concentration of injustice in the figure of one
person Zola gives him symbolic proportions. The lot of
all workers who are at the advantage of their employers
is implicit in the story. By increasing the proportions
of things Zola subjectively portrays the lot of labor at
the mercy of capital. He develops the story of a mining
community into a myth.
/
The strike which Etienne leads fails miserably, but
it foreshadows a world strike in which the workers will
eventually overcome injustice. The myth of the world
strike is developed in an interesting fashion. It is
symbolized in the destruction of the Voreux, an event
caused by sabotage. The Voreux is in danger of flooding
by the North Sea, and the strength of the mine is thus
pitted against the strength of the Sea. Zola's descrip
tions of the forces involved are significant and the
mythical intention will be evident from the following
examples.
The danger of flooding is first described.
It had been necessary in sinking the Voreux to establish
two tubbings; that of the upper level, in the shifting
sands and white clays bordering the chalky stratum, and
fissured in every part, swollen with water like a sponge;
then that of the lower level, immediately above the coal
stratum, in a yellow sand as fine as flour, flowing with
liquid fluidity; it was here that the torrent was to be
found, that subterranean sea so dreaded in the mine pits
of the Nord, a sea with its storms and shipwrecks, an
unknown and unfathomable sea, rolling its dark floods
more than three hundred metres beneath the daylight.
Usually the tubbings resisted the enormous pressure; the
94
only thing to he dreaded was the piling up of the neigh
bouring soil, shaken by the constant movement of the old
galleries which were filling up. (p. 459)
Zola gives the impression of tremendous pent-up energy
waiting to be released* A miner named Souvarine who has
been involved in the blowing up of a train in Russia
descends the pit and commences to attack the wood frame
work which supports the sides of the pit. There is des
cribed first his futile efforts and then his rage at the
monster which seems to defy his efforts. Implicit is the
thought of labor attacking capital. Souvarine is in a
dangerous position and in peril of falling to his death.
A breath would have sent him over, and three times he
caught himself up without a shudder. First he felt
.with his hand and then worked, only lighting a match
when he lost himself in the midst of these sticky beams.
After loosening the screws he attacked the wood itself,
and the peril became still greater. He had sought for
the key, the piece which held the others; he attacked
it furiously, making holes in it, sawing it, diminishing
it so that it lost its resistance; while through the ,
holes and the cracks the water which escaped in small I
jets blinded him and soaked him in icy rain. Two
matches were extinguished. They all became damp and
then there was night, the bottomless depth of darkness.
(p. 459)
His fury at initial failure gives him renewed strength
with which to try again.
From this moment he was seized by rage. The breath of
the invisible intoxicated him, the black horror of
this rain-beaten hole urged him to mad destruction.
He wreaked his fury at random against the tubbing,
striking where he could with his wimble, with his
saw, seized by the desire to bring the whole thing
at once down on his head. He brought as much ferocity
to the task as though he had been digging a knife into
the skin of some execrated living creature. He would
9^
kill the Voreux at last, that evil beast with ever
open jaws which had swallowed so much human flesh!
The bite of his tools could be heard, his spine leng
thened, he crawled, climbed down, then up again,
holding on by a miracle, in continual movement, the
flight of a noctural bird amid the scaffolding of a
belfry, (pp. 460-^61)
The renewed attack is successful. "The beast was wounded
in the belly; we should see if it was still alive at
night." Souvarine withdraws and watches the miners
going to work early in the morning. The miners descend
and when the walls of the shaft give way many are trapped,
/
including Etienne,
Gradually the whole mining area is undermined by
seepage. The ground begins to give way.
Beneath the enormous pressure the structures broke and
jarred each other so powerfully that sparks leapt out.
From this moment the earth continued to tremble, the
shocks succeeded one another, subterranean downfalls,
the rumbling of a volcano in eruption, (p, 479)
Zola gives the effect of enormous forces pitted against
each other. An engine takes on the aspect of a giant, *
beams are fractured, girders twisted.
For an hour the Voreux remained thus, broken into, as
though bombarded by an army of barbarians. There was
no more crying out; the enlarged circle of spectators
merely looked on. Beneath the piled-up beams of the
sifting-shed, fractured tipping-cradles could be made
out with broken and twisted hoppers. But the rubbish
had especially accumulated at the receiving room,
where there had been a rain of bricks, and large
portions of wall and masses of plaster had fallen in.
The iron scaffold which bore the pulleys had bent,
half-buried in the pit; a cage was still suspended, a
torn cable end was hanging; then there was a hash of
trams, metal plates, and ladders. By some chance the
lamp-cabin remained standing, exhibiting on the left
96
its bright rows of little lamps. And at the end of
its disembowelled chamber, the engine could be seen
seated squarely on its massive foundation of masonry;
its copper was shining, and its huge steel limbs
seemed to possess indestructible muscles. The enormous
crank, bent in the air, looked like the powerful knee
of some giant quietly reposing in his strength, (p.
480)
In another passage describing the final destruction of
the Voreux there is the suggestion of gunfire and cap
italism, personified as a giant, falls mortally wounded.
Subterranean detonations broke out; a whole monstrous
artillery was cannonading in the gulf. At the surface,
the last buildings were tipped over and crushed. At
first a sort of whirlwind carried away the rubbish
from the sifting-shed and the receiving room. The
boiler buildings afterwards burst and disappeared.
Then it was the low square tower, where the pumping
enging was groaning, which fell on its face like a
man mown down by a bullet. And then a terrible thing
was seen; the engine, dislocated from its massive
foundation, with outspread limbs was struggling
against death; it moved, it extended its crank, its
giant*s knee, as though to rise; but crushed and
swallowed up, it was dying. The chimney alone, thirty
metres high, still remained standing, though shaken,
like a mast in the tempest. It was thought that it
would be crushed to fragments and fly to powder, when
suddenly it sank in one block, drunk down by the earth,
melted like a colossal candle; and nothing was left,
not even the point of the lightning conductor. It
was done for; the evil beast crouching in his hole,
gorged with human flesh, was no longer breathing with
its thick, long respiration. The Voreux had been
swallowed whole by the abyss, (pp. 480-481)
Souvarine watches the destruction of the Voreux. He is
the type of the anarchist who will eventually destroy
middle-class tyranny. He fades away into the darkness;
he will return to be present at the final holocaust of
the world strike.
97
Afar his shadow diminished and mingled with the dark
ness. He was going over there, to the unknown. He
was going tranquilly to extermination, wherever there
may be dynamite to blow up towns and men. He will
be there, without doubt, when the middle class in
agony shall hear the pavement of the streets bursting
up beneath their feet. (p. 482)
The image of the mine, the pictorial element, gives
the impression of realism; it places the narrative
within the realm of the actual. The metaphorical ref
erence to the mine as a great beast prepares the way for
recurrent use of the mine as a symbol of capitalism.
The mine is set over against individuals who represent
the laboring class and they focus their struggle upon
the mine. The story becomes myth because Zola weaves
the symbols into a story representing the universal
fate of the workingman. The story becomes the vehicle
of meaning which is larger than the surface narrative.
The story is projected into the future so that it
becomes also the story of the fate of the middle-class
in prospect. The element of prophecy in the afore
mentioned reference to the destruction of the middle-
class is found again at the close of the book. It is
combined there with poetic expression. The final
prophetic note gives to a novel replete with symbol an
idealistic cast. Zola concludes as follows.
Now the April sun, in the open sky, was shining in
his glory, and warming the pregnant earth. From its
fertile flanks life was leaping out, buds were bursting
into green leaves, and the fields were quivering with
98
the growth of the grass. On every side seeds were
swelling, stretching out, cracking the plain filled by
the need of heat and light. An overflow of sap was
mixed with whispering voices, the sound of the germs
expanding in a great kiss. Again and again, more and
more distinctly, as though they were approaching the
soil, the mates were hammering. In the heated rays
of the sun on this youthful morning the country seemed
full of that sound. Men were springing forth, a black
avenging army, germinating slowly in the furrows,
growing towards the harvests of the next century, and
this germination would soon overturn the earth.^
The mythical projection of what might be is often
found in Zola's novels. Side by side with the harsher
picture of society, the brutality, the disasters, the
sorrows, he reveals glimpses of his own idealistic
ambitions. The suggestion of the ideal in the Rougon-
Macquart series implies that Zola does not consider
that life is without the prospect of a happier day.
Another example will illustrate this.
In L'Argent Saccard projects enormous financial
schemes and plays with millions of francs. When the
Banque Universelle, his vast scheme, fails at the end
of the novel, the Princess d'Orviedo reminds him of the
tragedy he has brought to many people. He shrugs it off
as a failure due only to the fact that he did not have
funds enough to compete with his enemies. The sad lot
of the people who have suffered loss in the collapse of
^Monev, tr. Benjamin R. Tucker (Boston, 1891),
p. 4l8.
I 99
i
! the hank is depicted clearly. The irresponsibility of
I men like Saccard is not minimized. In fact, a sub-title
for the novel might be one stressing the futility of
I
I ambition, and the suffering caused by irresponsibility.
I
Despite the gloom of this depiction of financial catas
trophe, Zola lends a certain fascination to this account
of the setting up of a bank and the handling of millions
of francs. It is much more than an account of the failure
of a venture which falls rather precipitously. One feels
that Zola himself would like to handle millions.
Zola creates in this novel a mythical figure who
does succeed in making money. He is the symbol of a
man who not only has vast knowledge and a keen mind but
who is able to control his desires. Zola projects in
this man his worship of will-power. The name of this
man is Gundermann. He does not depend on chance, as
does Saccard, but calculates carefully the result of
every transaction.
The entire scheme of the novel has mythical pro
portions. Zola is preoccupied with colossal forces in
nature and society. He imaginatively builds a financial
empire, has it tumble down, and then reflects on the
whole project. The myth becomes the vehicle for his
aspirations and his opinions, modified by his sense of
the actual. The action is rapid, fortunes rise and wane
1 0 0
quickly. We see Saccard through Zola's eyes as a
"fatalist"— "believing in chance, he trembled lest he
might compromise everything if he should alter the course
determined upon" (p. 105). Moreover, Saccard*s desires
are too strong. Gundermann says to Saccard, "You are
much too enthusiastic, you have too much imagination;
besides it always ends badly when one deals in others'
money" (p. 99). After his downfall, Saccard says of
Gundermann,
Ah, this Gundermann, this dirty Jew, who triumphs
because he has no desires i He is the whole tribe of
Israel, the obstinate and cold conqueror . . . (p.
418)
Saccard is a mythical figure with distinct weaknesses
and clear ambitions, the foil for Gundermann, the man
of strong nerves and iron will-power. L'Argent contains
a nineteenth-century serenade to science. Avoid
Saccard*s mistake, Zola seems to say, and you can be
rich.
In Germinal and L'Argent Zola's chief preoccupation
is with the destructiveness of capitalism. The novelist
uses symbols to project rapacity, massiveness, intricacy,
destructiveness. The mine and the bank, in some respects
take on demonic powers. The elaborate, imaginatively
created mythical accounts of the function of capitalism
are related in a subjective way to the mood of the
victims who experience fate. Capitalism is seen as an
1 0 1
instrument of fate. The reader's impression of the
helplessness of those who are oppressed by capitalism
is intensified by this method.
The novelist who wishes to use myth fur the por
trayal of intangible forces is faced with the problem of
creating symbols. Because of the lack of traditional
myth he must somehow establish the metaphorical force
of his imagery. Zola is not averse to using traditional
myth when he is able. In the novel Nana he creates a
symbol of his own and then, by associating the heroine
with an older system, establishes her metaphorical sig
nificance.
Zola's heroine, Nana, who gives the novel its name,
is introduced to the reader as a burlesque queen who
plays the part of Venus in a play entitled The Blonde
Venus. Zola describes the play in such a manner that
Nana's later destructive effect on society is fore
shadowed. It is like a play within a play. The action
of The Blonde Venus begins with the assembling of the
gods on Mount Olympus. The gods sit in council, then,
as various deities and mortals come to them with com
plaints. Diana, first, complains that Mars is getting
ready to desert her for the companionship of Venus.
Then a deputation of mortals arrives, introduced by
Ganymede and Iris. The members of this group are
1 0 2
described as
. • • respectable middle-class persons, deceived
husbands all of them, and they came before the master
of the gods to proffer a complaint against Venus, who
was assuredly inflaming their good ladies with an
excess of ardour.3
Thus at the outset Nana is associated with marital in
fidelity because of the role she plays on the stage.
In further descriptions of Nana Zola begins to
reveal her effect on the house. He establishes her as
a force in her own right by playing up her physical
attractiveness. Henceforth she is known popularly as
"the blonde Venus" and Zola suggests that the title is
appropriate in passages such as the following which
describe her acting,
Vulcan, as an elegant young man, clad, down to his
gloves, entirely in yellow, and with an eye-glass
stuck in his eye, was for ever running after Venus,
who at last made her appearance as a fish-wife, a
kerchief on her head, and her bosom, covered with
big gold trinkets, in great evidence. Nana was so
white and plump, and looked so natural in a part
demanding wide hips and a voluptuous mouth, that she
straightway won the whole house, (p. 27)
. . , scarcely was Diana alone, than Venus made her
appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the house.
Nana was nude. With quiet audacity, she appeared in
her nakedness, certain of the sovran power of her
flesh. Some gauze enveloped her, but her rounded
shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her wide hips, which
swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in
fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its
foamlike whiteness of tint, beneath the slight fabric
she wore. It was Venus rising from the waves, with
no veil save her tresses. And when Nana lifted her
arms, the golden hairs in her armpits were observable
in the glare of the footlights. There was no applause.
Nobody laughed any more. The men strained forward with
103
serious faces, sharp features, mouths irritated and
parched. A wind seemed to have passed, a soft, soft
wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the
bouncing child the woman stood discovered, a woman
full of restless suggestion, who brought with her the
delirium of sex, and opened the gates of the unknown
world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but her
smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men. (p. 34)
Nana is now established as a destroyer of men, as a
destructive force.
The rest of the novel is a portrayal of the des
tructive Venus as a force of nature. The mythical intent
of the whole is to portray the destruction of a generation
by vice. When she dies "a whole generation of men lies
stricken down before her" (p. 523). In harmony with the
idea that she is a destroyer Zola portrays first the
luxuriousness and attractiveness of her house, then
describes it as a pit. The description of the house is
impressionistic, as Zola's descriptions of milieu tend
to be. Representative are the lines,
A carpet was spread on the steps beneath the great
awning over the front door in the court, and the
moment you entered the hall you were greeted by a
perfume as of violets and a soft warm atmosphere
which thick hangings helped to produce. A window,
whose yellow and rose-coloured panes suggested the
warm pallor of human flesh, gave light to the wide
staircase, at the foot of which a Negro in carved
wood held out a silver tray full of visiting cards,
and four white marble women, with bosoms displayed,
raised lamps in their uplifted hands. Bronzes and
Chinese vases full of flowers, divans covered with
old Persian rugs, armchairs upholstered in old tap
estry, furnished the entrance-hall, adorned the stair
heads, and gave the first-floor landing the appearance
of an ante-room. Here men's overcoats and hats were
always in evidence, and there were thick hangings
104
which deadened every sound. It seemed a place apart:
on entering it you might have fancied yourself in a
chapel, whose very air was thrilling with devotion,
whose very silence and seclusion were fraught with
mystery, (p. 3?6)
Zola's description of the house as an abyss in
which men's fortunes are swallowed up makes graphic the
plight of the victims of vice. It is reminiscent of the
manner in which the mine in Germinal is compared to a
devouring monster which swallows up the laborers who
enter it. The following lines describe in mythical
fashion the destruction of multitudes of men,
This was the epoch in her existence when Nana flared
upon Paris with redoubled splendour. She loomed larger
than heretofore on the horizon of vice, and swayed the
town with her impudently flaunted splendour, and that
contempt of money, which made her openly squander for
tunes. Her house had become a sort of glowing smithy,
where her continual desires were the flames, and the
slightest breath from her lips changed gold into fine
ashes, which the wind hourly swept away. Never had eye
beheld such a rage of expenditure. The great house
seemed to have been built over a gulf, in which men—
their worldly possessions, their fortunes, their very
names— were swallowed up without leaving a handful
of dust behind them. . . . the place, metaphorically
speaking, was one great river. . . . Heaps upon heaps
of men, barrows full of gold, failed to stop up the
hole, which, ,amid this ruinous luxury, continually
gaped under the floor of her house, (p. 473-475)
The story moves along on the level of the actual,
but experience is heightened and concentrated through
out until at the end Nana's mythical role stands out
clearly. She takes on the character of an avenging
goddess. She is like a golden fly.
The fly that had flown up from the ordure of the slums.
105
bringing with it the leaven of social rottenness, had
poisoned all these men by merely alighting on them. It
was well done— it was just. She had avenged the
beggars and the wastrels from whose caste she issued.
And whilst, metaphorically speaking, her sex rose in
a halo of glory and beamed over prostrate victims like
a mounting sun shining brightly over a field of carnage,
the actual woman remained as unconscious as a splendid
animal, and in her ignorance of her mission was the
good-natured courtesan to the last. (p. 524)
Zola's Nana is a portrayal, in some respects, of
thé destructiveness of vice everywhere. The application
of the moral devolves easily from his treatment. His use
of deities in this novel signals his symbolic intent.
Clearly, his portrayal of Nana is à conscious attempt
to create a modern parallel for the goddess,Venus. The
details of her story are in many respects, to use Otto's
expression, "mirrored in the eternal."
Zola uses Greek deities in another instance to
depict the insidious nature of forbidden pleasure. He
uses them to support his suggestion that vice works as
a demonic force toward the destruction of those who
become prey to it. Impressionistic descriptions of
milieu are used in conjunction with frequent references
to the classical gods in the novel La Cure'e.
Renee, the heroine of La Curee. experiences a
desire for new pleasures to break the monotony of exis
tence. This is described in a highly subjective account
of the effect a landscape has upon her. Zola writes,
Renee, satiated as she was, experienced a singular
1 0 6
sensation of illicit desire at the sight of this land
scape that had become unrecognizable, of this bit of
nature, so worldly and artificial, which the great
vibrating darkness transformed into a sacred grove,
one of the ideal glades in whose recesses the gods of
old concealed their Titanic loves, their adulteries,
and their divine incests* And as the calash drove
away, it seemed to her that the twilight was carrying
off behind her, in its tremendous veil, the land of
her dream, the flagitious, celestial alcove in which
her sick heart and weary flesh might at last have been
assuaged.3
The gods are used in this instance to suggest the attrac
tiveness of sensual pleasure.
Zola makes use of ornamental deities in a suggestive
manner. Examples are.
At the further end of a glass-covered way on the right,
the stables, banded with red brick, opened wide their
doors of polished oak. On%e left, as if for a balance,
there was built into the wall of the adjacent house a
highly-decorated niche, within which a sheet of water
flowed unceasingly from a shell which two Cupids held
in their outstretched arms. Renee stood for a moment
at the foot of the steps, gently tapping her dress,
which refused to fall properly, (p. l6)
And under this bower of lace, under these curtains
that hid all the ceiling save a pale blue cavity
inside the narrow circlet of the crown, where Chaplin
had painted a wanton Cupid looking down and preparing
his dart, one would have thought one's self at the
bottom of a comfit-box, or in some precious jewel-case
enlarged as though to display a woman's nudity instead
of the brilliancy of a diamond, (p. l84)
Zola has an opportunity for a roll call of the gods
when he describes how several people, at an evening's
entertainment, form tableaus of mythical scenes. One
^La Cure^e (The Quarry), tr. Alexander Teixeira de
Mattos (New YorkT 1924), p. 9._________________________
' 107
I
I tableau dramatizes the love of Venus and Plutus. Nymphs
. are present in abundance (p. 269). Zola's description
I
. enlarges the tableau until it becomes something of
1
j mammoth size. For example, he writes, "There were
daughters of the trees, daughters of the springs, daugh
ters of the mountains, all the laughing, naked divinities
of the forest." Zola portrays in this manner the appeal
of illicit pleasure. The effect of the mythical frame
work is heightened by impressionistic descriptions of
the dress, or lack of it, of the participants.
We have examined, thus far, several examples of
Zola's use of symbol, a mythical element in his por
trayal of fate. A related motif in Zola's mythical
approach to the depiction of fate is the irrational or
non-natural. We have already seen how Zola concentrated
and heightened experience in the case of Bonnemort in
Germinal. We have also seen how Lantier in that novel
had a view of the mine which was of the nature of hallu
cination. There are many levels of deviation from the
normal in Zola's novels. Although he spoke disparagingly
of fanciful elements, and deplored his inherent romantic
tendenciesCin the passages we examined from The Experi
mental Novel), nevertheless he is not averse to altering
straightforward description of milieu in order to convey
a mood. He explains in The Experimental Novel that the
1 0 8
artist must be granted freedom in the use of the materials
derived from observation (p.223). He does not state to
what extent the artist should seek to preserve verisimil
itude of space-time forms. The border between natural
and non-natural is a very flexible one and quite difficult
to distinguish at times because of the novelist's im
pressionistic technique.
When several miners are trapped below in Germinal.
/ /
Etienne has a quarrel with Chaval. Etienne seizes a
piece of slate and "with exaggerated strength" crushes
Chaval's skull. Whenever the water rises in the mine
/
the corpse of Chaval is floated toward Etienne and
Catherine and strikes them. They repeatedly push the
corpse away, but it returns. Soon Etienne becomes
irrational, and his impressions are these,
At every shiver of the water Etienne received a slight
blow from the man he had killed, the simple elbowing
of a neighbour who is reminding you of his presence.
And every time it came he shuddered. He continually
saw it there, swollen, greenish, with the red moustache
and the crushed face. Then he no longer remembered; he
had not killed him; the other man was swimming and
trying to bite him. (p. 515)
Zola's use of the irrational in this instance increases
the feeling of horror the reader experiences.
The irrational is used systematically in La Curee
to suggest the mysterious power of the force which leads
to the destruction of Renee. The senses subvert reason
in situations such as the following. Ren/e is in the
109
greenhouse in the garden and sees everything in a sensu
ous manner,
Renee, standing by the tank, shivered in the midst of
this verdant magnificence. Behind her, a great sphinx
in black marble, squatting upon a block of granite,
turned its head towards the fountain with a cat's cruel
and wary smile; and, with its polished thighs, it
looked like the dark idol of this tropical clime.
From globes of ground glass came a light that covered
the leaves with milky stains. Statues, heads of women
with necks thrown back, swelling with laughter, stood
out white against the background of the shrubberies,
with patches of shadow which distorted the mad gaiety
upon their faces. Strange rays of light played about
the dull, still water of the tank, throwing up vague
shapes, glaucous masses with monstrous outlines. . • .
Unbridled love and voluptuous appetite haunted this
stifling nave ^in which seethed the ardent sap of the
tropics. Renee was wrapped in the puissant bridals
of the earth which gave birth to those dark growths,
those colossal stamina; and the acrid, birth-throes of
this hot-bed, of this forest expansion, of this mass
of vegetation all glowing with the entrails that
nourished it, surrounded her with perturbing effluvia ■
full of intoxication. At her feet steamed by the tank,
the mass of tepid water thickened by the saps from the
floating roots, enveloping her shoulders with a mantle
of heavy vapours; a mist that warmed her skin like the
touch of a hand moist with concupiscence, (pp. 43-44)
Later, when Maxime joins her, Zola intensifies his dee
scd.ption to suggest complete abandon of reason and re
straint,
Maxime and Renee, their senses perverted, felt carried
away in these mighty nuptials of the earth. The soil
burnt their backs through the bearskin, and drops of
heat fell upon them from the lofty palms. The sap
that rose in the trunks of the trees penetrated them
also, filling them with a mad longing for immediate
increase, for gigantic procreation. They joined in
the copulation of the hot-house. It was then, in the
pale light, that they were stupefied by visions, by
nightmares in which they watched at length the intrigues
of the ferns and palm-trees; the foliage assumed a con
fused equivocal aspect, which their desires transformed
1 1 0
into sensual images; murmurs and whisperings reached
them from the shrubberies, faint voices, sighs of
ecstasy, stifled cries of pain, distant laughter, all
that was audible in their embraces, and that was
wafted back by the echo. At times they thought them
selves shaken by an earthquake, as though the very
ground had burst forth into voluptuous sobs in a fit
of satisfied desire, (p. 193)
The green-house with its collection of tropical plants
cannot be taken as an objective or scientific descrip
tion of milieu. There is a subjectivity about the
selection of details which makes it non-natural, a pro
jection of an irrational emotional state. It is true
that landscapes have "moods" but, as ¥. H, Werkmeister
has suggested, "the 'mood* of the landscape is in each
case but a projection of man's own mood responding to
environing nature."^ The viewpoint throughout La Cure4
is evidently conditioned by Zola's intention of sug
gesting physical drives. If we look at it from the
author's standpoint, he has been highly selective in
his choice of plants and statuary._ The mood has deter
mined the selection of the détails for the story. Some
might wish to argue that an environment of this nature
is a physical possibility, but this would not obviate
the fact that the description is given in mythical
fashion. The intrigues of the palm trees and the ferns
h
"The Symbolism of Myth," The Personalist. 39:119,
April, 1958.
Ill
belong to the category of the non-natural.
The description of the plants in the green-house
is mythical not only from the point of view of the
image or picture presented. It is mythical because of
the meaning which the novelist intends it to have. At
one point in the account of activities in the green
house Zola describes how Renee bites on the leaves of
a tanghin-tree. He explains that the leaves of this
tree are poisonous. It suggests that the results of
intrigue in the green-house will be disillusioning.
The cruel smile which the sphinx wears also implies
this. The full implications of the green-house episode
are apparent when a contrasting description is given at.
the end of the novel. This time Renege*s impressions of
environment are entirely different. The occasion is a
return to her childhood home.
, . . She climbed higher, she followed the passages,
the servants* stairs, she made the journey towards the
children's room. When she reached the very top, she
found the key on its usual nail, a big, rusty key, on
to which spiders had spun their web. The lock gave a
plaintive cry. How sad was the children's room! She
felt a pang at her heart on finding it so deserted,
so gray, so silent. She closed the open door of the
aviary, with the vague idea that it must have been by
that door that the joys of her childhood had flown
away. She stopped before the flower-boxes, still full
of soil hardened and cracked like dry mud, she broke
off with her fingers a rhododendron-stalk: this skele
ton of a plant, shrivelled and white with dust, was
all that remained of their living clusters of verdure.
And the matting, the very matting, discoloured, rat-
gnawed, displayed itself with the melancholy of a shroud
that has for years been awaiting the promised corpse.
112
In a corner, amid this mute despair, this silent weep
ing abandonment, she found one of her old dolls; all
the bran had flowed out through a hole, and the'.por
celain head continued to smile with its enamelled lips,
above the wasted body, which seemed as though exhaus
ted by puppet follies, (p. 321)
Zola animates this environment as he does the green
house. In this case the environment suggests bitter
disillusion. It mirrors the "final bitterness," to use
Zola's words, which comes to Ren/e.
We shall reserve comment on the functional aspect
of the mythical elements in Zola's novels for the follow
ing chapter. We shall examine now how Couperus employs
elements of myth in a manner similar to that of Zola.
Zola and Couperus compare in this respect in that both
use myth to objectify or dramatize human purposes and
impulses. The Dutch novelist in his Small Souls series
uses myth to suggest the strange manner in which loss
of vitality is experienced by the Van Lowe family. He
makes use of irrational elements to concentrate experience
in their lives.
We saw, in the previous chapter, how Gerrit surveys
in a melancholy mood the fate that awaits his children.
Gerrit feels the limitations of his environment acutely.
He is physically strong, an officer in the Dutch army,
and the father of a large family. He has the horrible
feeling, however, that something is gnawing at his
backbone. He has hallucinations. The centipedes and
113
the dragons that he sees dramatically suggest the feeling
of disappearing vitality. It is a mythical approach
to this aspect of the fate of the Van Lowe family.
Gerrit*s nightmares are vividly described. The
third novel of the Small Souls series, The Twilight of
the Souls, begins as follows,
When Gerrit woke that morning, his head felt misty
and tired, as though weighed down by a mountain land
scape, by a whole stack of mist-mountains that bore
heavily upon his brain. His eyes remained closed; and
though he was waking, his nightmare still seemed to
cast an after-shadow: a nightmare that he was being
- crushed by great rocky avalanches, which he felt
pressing down inside his head, though he was conscious
that the red daylight was already dawning through his
closed eyelids. . . . He felt physically rotten and
did not quite know why. (p. 1)
His nightmares are a symptom of his general condition.
Gerrit seems on the whole to be "a healthy brute." This
is what his brother officers call him. But the outward
health and gaiety is a mask.
Gradually, almost mechanically, he had gone on showing
that unreal side, posing successfully as the strong
man, with cast-iron muscles and a simple, cast-iron
conception of life: to be a good husband, a good
father and a good officer; while inwardly he was
gnawed by a queer monster that devoured his marrow:
he sometimes pictured it as a worm with legs. 4 great,
fat worm, you know; a beastly crawling thing, which
rooted with its legs in his carcase, which lived in
his back and slowly ate him up, year by year, the
damned rotten thing !
After the affair with Pauline, Gerrit*s old flame, his
condition worsens.
Sick: was his soul sick? No, perhaps not: it was
only shrinking into itself under the heavy, heavy
114
melancholy. Sham strength: was his body weak? No,
not his muscles . . . but the worm was crawling about
in his spine, the centipede was eating up his marrow
. . . and nobody in the wide world saw anything— of
the centipede, of the worm, of all the horror of his
life . . . (p. 228)
The worm or centipede so vividly pictured for the
reader is obviously an objectification of a subjective
state. It expresses the feeling of limitation and de
pression which the other members of the family also
feel. Because people seem unaware of the inner pain he
feels Gerrit exclaims, "Oh, idiot people! Oh, blind,
idiot life !"
After the final parting with Pauline, he is stricken
with remorse and pity. He has premonitions of disaster.
A fevered condition causes him to have multiple halluci
nations. He now lives in an unreal atmosphere because
of his delirious condition and the grotesqueness of
everything in his world renders him incapable of rational
judgment.
Gerrit sees sinister faces.
What was it, what could it be, hanging in the air?
The clouds seemed to be bending over the town in pity,
an immense, yearning pity which turned into a desperate
melancholy while Gerrit hurried along with his great
strides; the wintry trees lifted their crowns of
branches in melancholy despair; the rooks-cawed and
circled in swarms; the bells of the tram-cars tinkled
as though muffled in black crape; the few pedestrians
walked stiffly with sinister faces: they passed him
like so many ghosts; and all around him, in the vistas
of the woods, rose a clammy mist, in which every out
line of houses, trees and people was blurred into a
shadowy unreality. And it seemed to Gerrit as if he
115
alone were real and possessed a body; and he ran and
rushed through the spectral landscape, through the
hollow avenues of death, (pp, 288-289)
The worm which has been gnawing away his strength is now
a dragon in size, "with bristles like lances sticking
out of its dragon back ..." (p. 290) And the faces
he sees become mermaid's faces.
. . . what impelled him to wander so aimlessly past
the Ornamental Water to the Nieuwe Weg? Why were
those ponds like tragic pools? Was it not as though
pale faces stared out of them, out of those tragic
pools, pale, white faces of women, multiplied a
hundredfold by strange reflections, eddies of white
faces, with dank, plastered hair and dying eyes,
which gleamed? (p. 291)
It soon becomes clear to the reader that the face
in the water is somehow identified with Pauline, and
that Gerrit's hallucinations are an expression of his
premonitions of her suicide. Pauline, it turns out,
has become a suicide. She has drowned herself in a
canal. The last thing she had asked of Gerrit was that
he would send her a picture of his children. Gerrit
recalls the request, and recalls also that he has the
photo in his pocket. He had been unable to bring himself
to give the photo to her. Couperus describes the feel
ings of the delirious man in such a way that it becomes
a preoccupation with death and the prospect of dying.
The horrors which the imagination conjures up, as it
seeks to penetrate this dark aspect of existence, are
clearly conveyed in these sombre pages of the Small Souls
116
series.
The mermaids become the object of Gerrit*s reflec
tions. He muses,
Lord, how cold and shivery the mermaids must feel down
there in those chilly, silent pools . . . their dying
eyes just gleaming up with a single spark I Were they
dead or alive, the chilly mermaids? Were their eyes
dying or were they ogling? How strangely they were
all reflected, until they became as a thousand mer
maids, until their faces blossomed like white flowers
of death above the light film of ice coating the pool!
(pp. 291-292)
And then Pauline's image flashes before his eyes.
She was no longer the girl she was. She was finished
with, done for; she had lain in his arms like a corpse,
tired of her own kisses, broken by his embrace, white
as a sheet, done for . . . Lord, how rotten to be done
for and still so young, a young woman! . . . Done for
. . . like a defective machine. Lord, how rotten!
. . . No, he couldn't give that photograph ... of all
his children . . . to a light-o'-love . . . (pp. 292-
293)
The dragon still accompanies him.
. . . he was chilled to his marrow; and a great hairy
dragon split its beastly maw to lick that chilled
marrow with a fiery tongue. How big the filthy brute
had grown! It was no longer inside him, it was all
around him now: it filled the air with its wriggling
body; it lifted its tail among the wintry boughs . . .
(p. 293)
And as these reflections go through his mind he decides,
after all, to deliver the photo to Pauline. When after
much wandering he reaches her home, he is told that she
has disappeared. He then overhears several policemen
talking. They describe how blue and bloated the body
of a young woman appeared when it was taken from the
117
I
' canal.
Gerrit now sets out for a mausoleum. On his way to
I
this place his mind conjures up the most fantastic scenes.
I
I The whole sky was full of purple dragon's blood; and
it now streamed down like pouring rain. The blood
streamed in a violent downpour, and appeared intent
upon drowning everything. . . .(p. 302)
When he arrives at the mausoleum, he is led between
tablets which cause him to think of his dead father.
For the present. Papa was living alone there, quietly;
but he was waiting, waiting for all of them . . .
until the shadows had deepened into thick darkness
around all of them and they came to him in that huge
sepulchral palace. . . . (p. 303)
In this place Gerrit finds it difficult to distinguish
life and death. The porter leads him to the body of
Pauline and she seems to him to be weeping. She is like
the mermaids he saw earlier.
Blue, was she blue? . . . The man lifted a corner of
the sheet: Gerrit saw a face, pale as that of a
mermaid whose features had blossomed up out of the icy
stillness of a tragic pool. . . . The eyes were open.
. . . What sad golden eyes those were !... Had they
not always laughed . . . with golden gleams of mockery?
(p. 305)
As he contemplates the face of the girl he had known,
he asks himself whether she is real. He seems to hear
voices calling him away to his home and in his imagina
tion he tears the photograph he is carrying into little
pieces and strews it over the corpse. It is a poignant
scene, and Couperus has made use of myth to convey the
mixed feelings of remorse, pity, wonder and horror that
118
contemplation of the dismal aspect of existence arouses
in Gerrit.
Gerrit returns home and is put to bed. He has
typhoid fever, and Couperus gives us lengthy descriptions
of the ravings of the sick man. In his delirium Gerrit*s
dragon returns, and he tries to defend himself against
the monster, while his children and mermaids look on.
The pages which recount these delirious ravings are
possibly best compared with the opium dreams related by
the English writer. De Quincey. They portray the dark
area of existence which borders on insanity. The dis
torted visions of Gerrit seem to approach expressionism
because in a sense the dragon represents the cruelty of
the members of the petty society.
As Gerrit is. near death he feels that his body is
brittle like glass. He seems to be sinking down in
finitely far "into a great, downy abyss." He recovers
eventually, but the dragon has sucked the life out of
him. The twilight, of his existence deepens until on
one dark day he uses his own pistol to put an end to it.
The descriptions of Couperus which explore the
tenuous border between reality and unreality, or sanity
and insanity have a peculiar ability to evoke a sense
of mystery and horror. The darkness in the introverted
souls of the people he describes is populated with fears
119
and ghosts. Gerrit*s daughter, Gerdy, says to her mother
that she hears a ghost upstairs and the following con
versation takes place,
"Listen, Mamma !"
"What?"
"Don't you hear? The sound . . . upstairs!"
"Hush! . . . Hush! . . . The sound . . ."
"Is dragging itself ..."
"Downstairs. It's like a footstep. It's always like
that."
"Oh, Mamma, I'm frightened!"
"It's nothing, dear: the wind, a draught, a board
creaking ..."
"Oh, but I'm frightened!" (Dr. Adriaan. p. 201)
Ernst, the brother of Gerrit, seems definitely
psychopathic. He has sought escape from his petty
existence by collecting curios. But ironically his
attempt to escape has led to mental derangement. Gerrit
visits him on one occasion and finds him tense. He says
to Ernst, "Wouldn't you do well to get some sleep?" And
Ernst replies, "No, I won't go to bed again. There are
three of them under the bed." Then the following con
versation ensues,
"Three what?"
"Three. They're chained up."
"Chained up? Who's chained up?"
"Three. Three souls."
"Three souls?"
"Yes. The room's full of them. They are all fastened
to my soul. They are all riveted to my soul. With
chains. Sometimes they break loose. But I was drag
ging two of them with me for ever so long yesterday,
in the street, over the cobblestones. They were in
pain, they were crying. I can hear them now in my
ears, crying, crying. . . . Don't you hear them?
The room is full of them. They belong to every age
and period. I've gathered them around me, collected
120
them from every age and period. They were hiding in
the jars, in the old books, in the old charts. I have
some belonging to the fourteenth century. They used
to hide in the family-papers. The first moment I saw
them, they rose up, the poor souls . . . with all their
sins upon them, all their past. They are suffering
. , . they are in purgatory. They chained themselves
on to me, because they know that I shall be kind to
them . . . and now they refuse to leave me. . . .”
(The Twilight of the Souls, pp. 28-29)
Gouperus uses the irrational in this case to pave the
way for a free use of pictorial elements which give
graphic and symbolic expression to inner experience.
He makes it clear that each of the small souls is in
his own way living a confined existence without con
tributing to the lives of others. Gerrit and Paul who
come to visit their brother, Ernst, each finds fault
with the letter's room in his own way. It does not have
the particular decoration that they are interested in,
and, therefore, the room seems "demented." Gouperus
suggests that the perspective of these people is also
limited. Because their gestures and language do not
clash with the people about them, Gerrit and Paul are
quite sure that they are sane. But Ernst is sure that
they are insane because they do not see the "souls" in
the room, Ernst believes that his is the normal and
ordinary view. Gouperus seems to ask the question,
"What are the criteria for normalcy? Are they entirely
objective, or entirely subjective?" The answer must be
that both extremes are false and that collectively the
121
small souls live abnormal lives. They do not give them
selves to anything.
Gouperus enforces his point that the small souls
must give themselves to something by having Gonstance
relate the parable of the small soul who shared. It is
an interesting variation of his use of symbol in the
depiction of fate. The parable is told because Marianne
van Naghel tells a parable first. She says,
. . . I have neither courage, Auntie, nor strength.
What am I? Nothing. There is a great, big river,
which rushes and flows, carrying everything, everything
with it like a deluge. And then there is ... a tiny
twig, a leaf. That's what I am. Auntie. . . . How can
I hope to . . .2 -(The Twilight of the Souls, p. 99)
Marianne is interrupted by Gonstance who tells a parable
in turn which is in part as follows,
A very small-soul it was, quite an insignificant soul.
It knew nothing about anything, it seemed to be walking
blindly, walking in a dream, a child's dream, light and
airy and fragile. . . . It gave itself away, Marianne,
gave everything it had to any one who might make it
shine more brilliantly. . . gave away everything it
possessed, for nothing . . . for an illusion. And it
already felt unhappy, thinking, "There is nothing more
coming; I've had everything now." It thought that
even before its fate arrived. It saw its fate arrive
and could still have avoided it, but did not, remained
blind, blind to everything. Its fate swept it along;
and it thought, Marianne, that everything was over,
over for good and all; that it would wither like a
flower, like a twig, like a leaf; and that the river
would carry it along with it. And then, Marianne,
then something else came. . . . What came, Marianne,
was not so very much; but the small soul does not want
much: an atom, a grain of absolute truth and reality;
a tiny grain, but all sufficing. . . . And of that
grain, Marianne, it even communicated a part . . . to
others. My child, that is the secret: to share your
grain, to give, though it he but of your superfluity,
122
to others, (pp. 99-101)
The parable is actually the story of Constance, who
failed to find happiness in Italy and returned to the
Netherlands where she experienced rejection by her own
family. She has learned, however, through her experience
not to seek happiness in dreams or illusions. Her
happiness, she tells Marianne, is
. . . the happiness of knowing, of understanding; the
happiness of resignation; the happiness of accepting
one's own smallness . . . and of not being angry and
bitter because of all the mistakes . . . and of being
grateful for what is beautiful and clear and true
... (pp. 101-102)
These parables together with the visions, hallucinations
and animated descriptions of milieu reveal a tendency to
personify or make graphic the intangibles in human ex
perience. The method of Gouperus is similar in many
respects to that of Zola. In both writers the subjective
element is prominent. The subjective mood applies to
elements of description, which are given a certain tone,
as well as to the action. There is a prevailing mood
based on a value judgment about the worthwhileness of
their way of life. The prevailing mood about social
conditions is often superimposed upon the description
of milieu.
The imaginative portrayal in symbolic and anthropo
morphic form of forces by Zola and Gouperus approaches
a parallel with the Greek mythological system. The
123
anonymity of Greek myth is lacking, as well as the overlay
of tradition, hut the characters are often larger than
life; they possess a universality characteristic of
myth. Literary motifs associated with myth present in
the novels of Zola are the non-rational, the gigantic,
the symbolic, the universal. Gouperus reveals mythical
motifs in his use of the .mysterious, the symbolic, the
universal.
The motifs associated with myth, such as symbol,
the irrational, the mysterious, lend themselves well
to the depiction of fate when the characters experience
intense emotion. Acute suffering tends to derange
normal perception, and these novelists can, therefore,
introduce the grotesque and the fantastic if it suits
their purposes. The literary use of the concept fate
is governed both in the Greek writers examined and in
the family novels of Zola and Gouperus by a respect for
the laws of cause and effect. Irrational and magical
elements are not used to sponsor naive credulity, but
to produce certain dramatic effects, often to reproduce
subjective states.
The world depicted by Zola and Gouperus is in some
respects a unique one. In their cosmology man and
nature, as we shall see in the following chapter, vibrate
in unison on occasion. A strange reciprocity exists
12i+
between man and environment. Their world is also a
restricted one, inasmuch as they are concerned with
the experience of fate. Their treatment shows a desire
to correct, to expose the evils of society. Because
such a cosmology assumes a close relationship between
environment and man, the criticism reflects on both the
influence of particular surroundings on man and also
man's responsibility for creating a good environment.
We shall now examine the functional aspects of the
portrayal of fate by these novelists.
CHAPTER V
FUNCTIONAL ELEMENTS IN THE PORTRAYAL OF FATE
From time to time in our discussion of fate in the
novels of Zola and Gouperus it has been suggested that
i there is implicit a criticism of society. Germinal.
I for example, is obviously aimed at an oppressive system,
; and the Small Souls series scores pettiness in the
Netherlands. It was noted also, that Zola gave evidence
in The Experimental Novel of anti-romanticism and of a
desire to work with scientists for "the conquest of
nature and the increase of man's power." It is the
purpose of this chapter to examine how the portrayal
of fate may set up pointers for the guidance of conduct
or manners. To state it another way, in the form of a
question, how may the recounting of obviously dark
aspects of behavior or experience serve as a guide for
society? Zola and Gouperus have woven elements of myth
into their novels; how do these elements further their
critical intention?
It is interesting that myth in primitive society
is considered to have a functional value. That is to
say, it serves to explain, confirm and justify the
12$
126
behavior of primitive man toward forces around him. Is
there any connection, then, between the critical intention
of Zola and Gouperus and their use of mythical elements?
We do not mean to suggest that their use of myth cor
responds exactly with that of man in primitive society.
One distinct difference between the function of myth
in primitive society and in modern society would be the
level of the wisdom or instruction involved.^ Our
1
Bronislaw Malinowski has maintained that all myth
has a functional aspect. That is to say, culture and
myth are so much a condition for each other that they
are "functions" of each other; the correspondence between
them is such that each is necessary for the existence
of the other. He states in Magic. Science and Religion
and Other Essays (Boston, 19^S), "Myth is thus a vital
ingregient of human civilization; it is not idle tale, I
but a hard-worked active force; it is not an intellectual !
explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic |
character of primitive faith and moral wisdom. ...
Myth fulfills in primitive culture an indispensable !
function: it expresses, enhances and enforces morality; i
it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains
practical rules for the guidance of man" (p. 79). Shelley '
believes that Homer captured in myth the ideals of his I
times. He says in "A Defence of Poetry" (Selected Prose i
and Poetry, ed. Garlos Baker, New York, 19$1, pp. 501, |
$07), "Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age
in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read
his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like
to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty
of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to
an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal
creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have
been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great
and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they
imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves
with the objects of their admiration. . . . he has clothed
sensual and pathetic images with irresistible attractions.
Their superiority over these succeeding writers consists
in the presence of those thoughts which belong to the
127
interest lies primarily in the manner by which observation
and documentation were transmuted into a work of art with
moral value. Does Zola, in establishing a scientific
equation for life, follow a pattern similar to that of
the primitive mythmaker who is guided by what he thinks
are the laws of nature? Zola's animation of natural
p
forces suggests that there is a parallel.
The answer to these questions lies in the manner in
H. Werkmeister states in the article, "The
Symbolism of Myth," quoted previously, "Man mingles
world-understanding and self-understanding in the
symbolism of myth" (p. 119). Man understands, according
to Werkmeister, that there are "constancies" in nature
such as the change of seasons. He understands the "con
stancies" in terms of projections of his own struggles.
But in turn these constancies give symbolic significance
to the struggle itself (pp. 124-125). Werkmeister is
concerned primarily with myth in primitive cultures,
but his Hegelian approach may have bearing on the modern
use of myth when he states that myth is involved in
situations where conceptualized understanding is not
yet possible. He writes, "Myths are the first projections
of man's dim and imagistic understanding of the events
in nature and of his own conditions. But myths are also
man's devices— employed but semi-consciously— to make
secure the progress he has won; for they give reasons
for, and sanction taboos which bar the way to retro
gression. . . . The only categories at his disposal for
understanding either himself or the world about him are
the imagistic symbols taken from his own experience.
They are antecedent to conceptualized understanding
and are an indispensable prelude to the emergence of
man as fully reflective and rational being, (pp. 125-126)
inner faculties of our nature, not in the absence of
those which are connected with the external: their
incomparable perfection consists in a harmony of the
union of all."
128
which Zola and Gouperus relate inner experience to
environment. We have shown how Zola uses the environ
ment to portray moods and how he treats inanimate objects
in a metaphorical manner. There is a tendency in this
procedure to humanize or animate nature. It seems to
run counter to scientific method of any sort, but Zola
affirms constantly in The Experimental Novel that his
method is "scientific." It is necessary, therefore, to
consider what Zola means when he states.
We cease to remain among the literary graces of a
description clothed in a fine style; we are busy
studying the exact surroundings, stating the conditions
of the exterior world, which correspond to the interior
conditions of the characters. (The Experimental Novel,
p. 233)
By the term "correspond" Zola suggests a relationship
which is such that the environment itself gives clues
to the meaning of the subjective lives of the people
who live in it. He does not intend in his novels that
environment shall be a backdrop for human drama or that
it shall merely help to express the mood of the charac
ters. The environment represents, or is analagous to
a vital part of man's life; it expresses the ontology
of man's existence and fate. An example from L'Assommoir
is the function of the dyer's stream. It corresponds
*
with the life of Gervaise. Thus its colors change during
the course of the novel. Zola writes,
She had to step over a black runlet, the dyer's stream.
129
smoking and opening a muddy passage in the midst of
the whiteness of the snow. The water was of the same
hue now as her thoughts. Those beautiful streams,
pale blue and pale pink, had all run to waste, (p. 448)
The novel concludes significantly with the thought that
Gervaise died "of the dirt and fatigue of a life that
had run to waste" (p. 468). It is an unusual example
but it helps to explain Zola's approach. Zola's analogies
suggest that there is a sympathetic relationship between
man and his environment.’ It is a poetic or primitivistic
approach which Zola tries to support by adducing the
obvious truth that there is a "reciprocal effect of
society on the individual and the individual on society"
(The Experimental Novel, p. 20). Zola does not admit
that his descriptions fuse cause-and-effect relationships
with analogous and sympathetic ones. Instead, he tries
to build up a scientific rationale for the whole. He
does it by simplifying in the manner of H. A. Taine.^
^History nf English Literature, tr. H. van Laun
(New York, 1886), p. 8, "What do we find, at first sight
in man? Images or representations of things, something,
that is, which floats within him, exists for a time,
is effaced and returns again, after he has been looking
upon a tree, an animal, any sensible object. This is
the subject matter, the development whereof is double,
either speculative or practical, according as the re
presentations resolve themselves into a general conception
or an active resolution. Here we have the whole of man
in an abridgment." Other examples of Taine's simplifi
cation are, "Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol
and sugar; . . . Let us then seek the simple phenomena
for moral qualities, as we seek them for physical
qualities" . . . (p. 6).
130
! He brings man down to the level of the environment with
1 the purpose of showing that activity in man is essentially
I
the same as that in the environment. He therefore builds
on the premise that the symbolic expression of human
attitudes and emotions in environmental terms is indis
putably sanctioned by science. Science, he believes,
has demonstrated that environment is as important as
man himself. He states,
We have given to nature, to the spacious world, a
place as large as that which we give to man. We do
not admit that man alone exists and that he alone is
of any importance, persuaded.to the contrary that he
is a simple result; and to have the human drama real
and complete we must interrogate all that is.) I know
that this startles philosophers. This is why we
place ourselves at the scientific point of view, at
the point of observation and experiment, which gives
us, at the present moment, the greatest certitude
possible, (p. 232)
The scientific formula which should control every account
of the environment he defines as follows, "Description
is an account of the environment which determines and
completes man" (p. 233)• The formula is somewhat de
ceptive. There is a sense in which man is influenced
by environment and reveals himself through environment.
But few today would accept as "scientific" the idea that
man is "determined" by the environment, that he is "a
simple result."
Whatever truth resides in the formula, Zola admits,
in effect, that it is a defense against those who do
131
not share his poetic or mythical view of nature. His
view, he says, startles philosophers and therefore he
feels that he must give it scientific support. He admits
that he does not work within the limits of his own for
mula and that at the root of his environmental descrip
tions there is a passion for nature.
Now it is very certain that we rarely hold ourselves
to this scientific rigor. All reaction is violent,
and we shall react still against the abstract formula
of the last centuries. Nature has entered into our
works with so impetuous a bound that it has filled
them, sometimes swamping the human element, submerging
and carrying away characters in the midst of a downfall
of rocks and great trees. This was inevitable. We
must leave time to weigh the new formula and to arrive
at its exact description, (p. 233)
Again,
The passion for nature has often carried us away, and
we have given bad examples in our exuberance, and in
our rapture over the open air. Nothing affects the
brain of a poet so surely as a sun-stroke. He dreams
of all kinds of folly, he writes books in which the
springs commence to sing, the oaks to talk with each
other, the rocks to sigh and palpitate like a woman
overcome with the midday heat. And there are symphonies
in the leaves, roles given to the blades of grass,
poems on light and on odors. If there is any excuse
to be offered for such digressions it is because we
have dreamed of broadening humanity, and that we have
imbued,even the stones in the roadways with it.
(pp. 235-236)'
Zola's love of nature is a respect for the concrete
picturesque which extends into every area of life. But
associated with it is the desire to animate and humanize.
It is a desire to expand the medium of expression, to
engage in a kind of visual thinking, using concrete
, 132
symbols to express the essentially human. He expresses
I this desire as follows,
I
. . . we never succumb to the need for mere description
; alone; but mingled with it there is always a harmonizing
or human purpose. The entire creation belongs to us;
we make it enter into our works; we dream of depicting
the whole of heaven's wide vault. To wish to shut us
up in a descriptive mania is to unjustly lessen our
ambition, not allowing us to get beyond the more or
less correct outlining of the conditions, (p. 237)
Zola's descriptions of environment in L'Assommoir
show the two-fold bias. They point toward factualness^-
the exact knowledge of observation— and toward the human
condition. The novel opens with a description of Gervaise ;
as she waits into the early hours of the morning for her
husband. The room in which she stays is small. A strip
of faded chintz hangs from the head of the bed and is
fastened to the ceiling by a piece of string. A drawer
is wanting in the walnut chest of drawers. A dilapidated
water jug stands on a greasy little table. The children's
bedstead fills up two thirds of the room and blocks the
chest of drawers. On the back of a chair hangs a pair
of trousers clotted with mud; they are too worn even for
the old clothes' dealer. On the chimney piece lies a
bundle of pawn-tickets, delicately pink coloured. It
is transparently a scene of neglect and of poverty. The
house is situated, Zola tells us, on the Boulevard de
N \
la Chapelle, to the left of the Barrière Poissoniere.
The exterior is described exactly. It is red up to the
133
second story. The shutters are rotten. Underneath a
lamp with cracked glass, between two windows are the
: faded yellow letters which spell out "Hotel Boncoeur,
tenu par MarsouillerIn the distance there are slaugh
ter houses and the stench of slaughtered beasts. A wall
runs along the street and we are told that sometimes at
night Gervaise hears the cries of people being murdered.
In the entire description there is the same general tone
of human degradation. The details seem selected to
underline the human problem, but they are nevertheless
graphic and distinct in their significance. The whole
picture underlines the moral that there is a need to
change such an environment if the human problem is to
be solved. It seems to represent death encroaching on
life.
The environment sometimes reflects hunger as in
Zola's description of the corridor where the walls ring
hollow "like empty stomachs." In this atmosphere every
thing takes on the condition of the starving people.
Even the air is described as something in which a gnat
could hardly live. To complete the picture Zola describes
an old workman starving under the staircase. Every
three or four days the neighbours push open his door to
see if he is dead yet, but somehow he survives on the
crusts thrown to him by Gervaise. She treats him in
13^
this way because she feels sorry for animals and old Bru
is like a dog to her.
It was a weight on her mind to know he was always
there, on the other side of the passage, forsaken of
God and man, living on himself, siuunk now to the
stature of a child, dried and shrivelled as an orange
drying over the fire-place, (p. 3^7)
In a description of this sort everything is focused on
the implication that there is injustice present.
Part of the cause for the situation in which Gervaise
finds herself is the dram shop. To make this clear Zola
outlines rather plainly the evils that attend those who
patronize it. Through the eyes of Gervaise the liquor
shop is metamorphosed into a destructive animal.
Gervaise saw two others by the bar who were taking
their gargle, and they were so tight that they emptied
their glasses under their chins, and poured it over
their shirts, thinking they were wetting their whistle.
Old fat Colombe, reaching out his huge arms, the terror
of the establishment calmly served out drinks. It was
very hot, the smoke of pipes went up in the blinding
glitter of gaslight, spreading like a cloud of dust,
and covering the drinkers with a slowly thickening
stream; and out of this cloud there came a deafening,
confused hubbub of cracked voices and the clink of
glasses, oaths and blows of the fist, like detonations.
Gervaise made a wry face, for a sight like that is not
a very entertaining one for a woman, especially when
she is not used to it; she choked, her eyes burned,
her head swam in the alcoholic small exhaled by the
whole place. Then, suddenly, she had an uncomfortable
sensation of something behind her back. She turned,
and saw the still, the drinking-machine working away
under the glass of the narrow court, with the quivering
motion of its wizard's kitchen. At night the coppers
looked duller, they had merely a sort of big red star
where they were round; and the whole apparatus flung
monstrous shadows on the wall at the back, figures
with tails, great beasts opening their jaws as if to
swallow up everything, (p. 366)
135
Zola describes first in terras of cause and effect how
liquor affects those who come under its power. Then he
uses analogy and says, in effect, you see it is like an
enormous beast which devours all. But Zola also suggests
that the machine somehow is in sympathetic accord with
the destructive action of the liquor. Gervaise has a
feeling that the machine is alive.
Zola expresses man's relationship to the environment
in various ways, but he keeps central the essentially
human. The "Wizard's kitchen" is interpreted in terms
of the effect liquor has on humanity. The description
of the corridors and walls which ring hollow reinforces
the impression of human misery. Even the description of
furniture evaluates the human condition.
Zola's method of linking human experience with the
conditions which contribute to it reflects very defi
nitely on the functional value of his novels, if we may
return to the questions asked at the beginning of this
chapter. The relationships he suggests may be partly
fanciful and unscientific, but there is no doubt that
the slum environment he describes does contribute to
demoralization. Although the reader realizes that man
is not completely determined by the environment, the
presence of an abundance of factual material tends to
convince the reader of the truth of the argument implicit
136
in the presentation, even if it is largely based on
poetic intuition or insight. The concrete picturesque
becomes in Zola's novels very often the basis for a
mythological presentation of the human problem.
At times Zola appears to "load" the facts against
his characters. For example, Gervaise. receives in
L'Assommoir so many rebuffs that it seems as if a mal
evolent force is driving her to destruction. Also,
environmental description in this novel seems designed
to "prove" that she is deserving of sympathy. There are
several aspects to Zola's use of facts, however, which
make it impossible to construe his use of facts in this
manner and at the same time to evaluate fairly his
method. His use of facts must be considered in the
light of his antagonism to the generalization of the
"idealists," as he calls them. There needs also to be
considered the fact that he is portraying an extremely
restricted experience. An expansive approach to life
would not reproduce the condition of life in which he
is interested. He closes all avenues of escape for
Gervaise so that he may more vividly and intensely por
tray the experience of limitation. Each fact is given
an evaluated weight in the suggestion of an inner con
dition.
Zola's passion for facts no doubt led him too easily
137
to identify facts with morality. Quite possibly he
considered that he was being moral just because he was
stating things that he had observed, that had actually
happened. This Indecency, if that is the proper term,
is part of his plan to shock people into awareness. He
believes that "the ideal is the root of all dangerous
reveries," and that "the morality of the idealists lives
in the clouds far above the facts" (The Experimental
Novel, p. 103). It is part of his purpose then to choose
and stress facts which oppose the "ideal." "Truth
misleads no one" (p. 104), he states, "No more lyricism,
k
no more empty words, but facts and information." His
concentration of fact, sometimes sordid fact, is as
much for the purpose of causing the idealist to see life,
as it is to motivate the action of his characters and to
convey inner experience.
A close look at the way in which Zola selects and
organizes his facts at times will reveal that he uses
constancies such as filthiness, sordidness, oldness as
a basis for evaluation. The facts are often not given
for the purpose of conveying the impression of photo
graphic realism but to suggest depth of moral impression.
p. 105. Apparently Zola is not opposed to lyricism
as such; he deplores lyricism when it becomes a mis
leading substitute for facts.
138
We may choose, for example, the description of a house
to which Coupeau takes Gervaise on a visit. Gervaise
stops outside and looks upward, as she examines the
outside of the house. The impression made upon her is
as follows.
It had five stories looking on the street, each with
fifteen windows in a line; their black and dilapidated
shutters gave an aspect of desolation to the immense
frontage. Four shops occupied the ground floor; on
the right of the entrance, a great greasy eating-
house; on the left, a coal merchant's, a haberdasher's,
and an umbrella shop. The house looked all the bigger
because it was built between two little low rickety
buildings on each side; and, with its square bulk,
like a block of mortar roughly thrown together, crum
bling and chipping under the rain, it stood out in
relief against the sky, high over the neighbouring
roofs, with its huge rough cubic mass, its dingy,
unplastered sides, stark and interminable as prison-
walls, in which the rows of dentated ornament seemed
like decrepit jaws gaping. . . . Under the porch, in
the middle of the paving stones, a gutter carried off
a stream of pink-coloured water. (L'Assommoir. p. 44)
The mathematical count of fifteen windows and their
linearity suggests monotony or crowded conditions. Zola
interprets for the reader the meaning of the dilapidated
shutters— they represent desolation. The greasy res
taurant suggests lack of propriety. Zola blames no
particular person for the neglect of the house, although
he records that the building is disintegrating under the
rain. He is more interested in using the house as a
symbol of a poisonous surrounding which infects Gervaise.
He expands on the depressing nature of the picture by
stating that the building resembles a prison. The
139
"gaping jaws" provide a final negative touch which
converts the house into something ominous. The pink-
coloured water is the one element of brightness in the
entire description. It is this stream that changes
color during the novel in a way which corresponds with
the prevailing color or tone of Gervaise's thinking. At
this stage her outlook is still hopeful.
Zola's description of the courtyard inside advances
the analysis of the exterior. The moral implications
of the impressions Gervaise receives are still in evi
dence. In the courtyard the walls are "eaten away with
a yellow rot" and are marked by drippings from the
roofs. There are no shutters or curtains to be seen.
The glass in the windows has "the greenish hue of muddy
water." The atmosphere is unsavory. Out of the windows
hang mattresses to air and the clothes lines are full
with "the whole washing of the establishment, men's
shirts, women's under-bodices, children's breeches."
Zola records that at the third story there is "a child's
diaper, all plastered with dirt." The description
becomes increasingly unpleasant. There are "slimy steps
of an iron-railed staircase." The pink water from the
dyer's stop mixes with cinders and shavings. Three
little hens walk around scratching the ground "with
their dirty claws, looking for earth-worms." The entire
l4 o
establishment now becomes animated in the eyes of
Gervaise, She
. . . looked slowly up and down, from the sixth story
to the ground, and up again, overwhelmed by the huge
ness of the place, fooling as if she were in the
midst of a living organism, in the very heart of a
city, interested by the house as if it were some
great living giant, (pp. 45-46)
As Gervaise accompanies Coupeau upstairs on another
occasion it becomes an immense exposure to degradation
and moral aberration. Every floor has its odors and
its squalor. For example.
Staircase B, grey and filthy, with its greasy steps
and rails, its walls from which the plaster was drop
ping, was indeed full of the odour of cooking. On
each landing there were long corridors, loud and
echoing; there was an opening of doors, painted yellow,
and blackened at the lock by the dirt of hands; and at
the level of the window, the gulleys gave out a fetid
odour, which mixed with the sharp smell of boiled
onions. From ground floor to sixth story could be
, heard the clatter of dishes, of frying-pans moved,
of saucepans scraped with spoons to scour them. . . .
There was a fight going on at the fourth story; a
trampling which shook the floor, furniture knocked
about, a horrible uproar of blows and curses; while
the neighbours opposite went on with a game of cards,
the door open to let in a breath of air. . . . As a
tall girl, carrying a pail, re-entered a room nearby,
Gervaise had a glimpse of a tumbled bed on which a
man in his shirt-sleeves was sprawling lazily; on the
door a visiting-card, written by hand, announced,
"Mademoiselle Clemence, Ironing done." (pp. 53-54)
At night, Gervaise leaves the building.
At that hour the staircase was deserted, lit only by
the burner on the second floor, which with its shrunken
flame, down in those depths of darkness, looked like
a night-light. Behind the closed doors there was a
heavy silence, the dead sleep of workmen who had gone
to bed the moment they got up from table. Only a
hushed laugh came from the room of the girl who took
I 4 l
in ironing. . . . And it seemed to Gervaise that the
house was upon her, about to crush her, striking a
chill to her shoulders, (p. 63)
Zola suggests that something has changed in Gervaise.
He records that
. . .-in order to get out, she had to jump over a
great puddle, which had trickled out of the dyer's.
That day it was blue, the deep azure of a summer sky,
which the little night-lamp of the concierge lit with
stars, (p. 63)
The stream has changed and is as blue as the mood of
Gervaise. Evaluative descriptions such as these are
found throughout L'Assommoir. and they reflect and in
terpret her moral disintegration. The individual sen
sations or impressions received by Gervaise become a
gigantic force which crushes her. The environment is
the cause of her demoralization, but it is also a pic
torial equivalent of the inner condition of the society
of which she becomes a part. The portrayal of fate in
the life of Gervaise is the story of her descent to the
moral level of a society whose inner condition is sym
bolized by the milieu in which it exists.
Zola's descriptions of milieu reveal that he sees
in the tangible picturesque various kinds of analogies
and symbols of the human condition. He draws inferences
from the facts, but he goes beyond deductive reasoning
based on cause-and-effect relationships and infuses the
environment with poetic meaning. Thus there are levels
* 142
I
of meaning in his "facts.It is a manner of mingling
, world understanding and self-understanding, and Zola
I seems constantly to fuse the human condition with en
vironmental detail in a mythological manner. It makes
possible an expression of Zola's feeling of injustice
-in social institutions and mores, without giving his
writing the nature of a polemical tract. The "facts"
give a sense of* objectivity to his writing and support
his conclusions. Mythical elements thus become a linking
device for man and his environment in such a manner that
they reflect on man's responsibility to change his sur
roundings. Facts take on universal force as, for ex
ample, a tenement house mirrors the condition of a
society and expresses its degradation. The house is
symbolic in its effect on Gervaise of the corrupting
effect of sordid living conditions. The organizing prin
ciple for Zola's recounting of facts is not scientific
but esthetic, and human experience is presented vividly
and persuasively. Factual material is expanded and
enlarged in poetic fashion so that it is more than
case-history.
nineteenth-century critic stated of Zola's
method, "The people are all mere symbols in this al
gebraic fiction-land." Frank Moore Colby, "In Zolaland,"
Bookman (New York), 8:241, November, I898.
143
If we turn now to Gouperus, we shall see that the
moral force of his Small Souls series also stems largely
from the manner in which he relates inner experience to
environment. Intensive description of the peLliness
which Constance sees and feels all around her gives
force and meaning to the implied argument which would
he unconvincing if stated propositionally. Gouperus,
in concentrating on several aspects of petty existence
reinforces his central argument that life lived in such
a society can become an intolerable burden. Because
correction of such a state of affairs can come only
through an enlargement of vision and an improvement of
motive, Gouperus magnifies the difference between pre
tension and actuality. The Van Lowe family pretends to
be a unit, but in fact it does not hold together. Cou-
perus shows in detail how fragmented the family actually
is. He shows that there is an ironic discrepancy between
the petty inner life and the grandiose display of social
attainment. The snobbery and vanity of the Van Lowes
becomes ridiculous in the light of their singular in
ability to muster initiative or moral courage.
Gouperus illustrates the stifling effect of one
petty life upon another in numerous ways throughout the
Small Souls series. Very frequently inanimate nature
mirrors the gloom and oppressiveness of restricted lives.
: 144
i An illustration of the manner in which an unforgiving
; attitude creates a barrier between people is the prejudice
which Van der Welcke holds against his son for his part
' in the scandal at Rome* On the first occasion of a
I
■reunion, after thirteen years, there seems to be an
immense barrier between father and son. Henri and his
wife, Constance, on this occasion have brought their son,
Addie, with them to visit with Henri's parents. The old
couple are pious people for whom the scandal was a tre-
I mendous shock, from which, after some thirteen years,
they have not yet completely recovered. As Henri seeks
to engage in conversation he finds it extremely difficult.
They all sat down; and Henri made an effort to talk
naturally, about Driebergen. The past that lay between
them was so high-heaped that it seemed as though they
were never to approach one another across this ob
stacle. So many words that should have been spoken
had remained unspoken, for the sake of an harmonious
silence, that silence itself became a torture; and so
many years were piled between the parents and the
children that it seemed impossible for them now to
reach one another with words. The words fell strangely
in the sombre room, which looked out upon the March
garden and upon the road paling away in the vague
mists; the words fell like things, strangely, like
hard, round things, material things, and struck against
one another like marbles clashing together. . . . When
they spoke of Addie's life as a small child, it was
as though they two, the father and the mother, were
reproaching the grandparents. There were no indifferent
topics; and a despairing gloom hung between the old
people and the child, because they could not reach the
child across their son and their daughter-in-law. . . .
Outside, the wind rose, howling; the heavy grey clouds
descended upon them like a damp mist; and the rain
clattered down. Henri had thought of asking his father
to take him into the garden, to see if he still recog
nized it, but the pelting rain prevented him; and he
iî+5
saw nothing but his mother's tears. In his heart, he
laid these to his wife's charge. The past was piled
up as a wall between each soul and its neighbour.
(Small Souls, pp. 113-11^)
The weather, in this instance, harmonizes with the mood
of the small souls and interprets it. The moral of the
passage is clear. A few words spoken in time by either
party might have bridged the gap of misunderstanding
between them, à broader perspective would have prevented
this painful moment. Animated nature helps to make
graphic the heavy gloom through which the small souls
find it impossible to penetrate.
There is another visit to the old couple at a later
date. The occasion is the last illness of Henri's
mother. Forgiveness on the part of the old couple now
sweeps in to make this last reunion one that is poignant
with remorse over the unrecallable past. The last
moments of the old woman seem intensely dark, as Couperus
again uses nature to interpret an inner condition.
As Constance approaches the home of the old couple
(Henri and Addie have preceded her) the weather suggests
that death is near.
It had rained steadily for days upon the dreary, wintry
trees, out of a sky that hung low but tremendously wide
and heavy, as oppressive as a pitiless darkness. Drear
ily the wintry roads shot forward as the carriage
rattled along them. Drearily, in their bare gardens,
the houses rose, very sadly, because they were deserted
summer dwellings, in the ice-cold winter rain.
The day was almost black. It was three o'clock,
but it was night; and the rain, grey over the road
146
and grey over the misty landscapes which could be
dimly descried through the bare gardens. The dreary
trees looked dead and lived only in the despairing
gestures of their branches when a wind, howling up
from the distance, blew through them and moved them.
(The Twilight of the Souls, pp. 237-238)
The poetic approach sets the tone for the meeting of
Constance and the old man, who leads her to the bed of
his dying wife. Their meeting is strange. It is the
meeting of estranged souls in the presence of death.
There is a new understanding, but also a realization
of how needless their separation has been. As Constance
enters the house her voice sounds to herself like music,
but it is because it contrasts with the gloom of the
house. The gloom of the interior in combination with
the weather Is an objectification of the gloomy inner
lives of small souls.
She herself did not hear what she said to the old
man. She was only conscious that her voice sounded
soft and sweet, as with a new music, in the gloomy
house. She was only conscious that she kissed the
old man. But she felt herself growing strange,
frightened and shuddering, in the dark room, in the
gloomy house, with the vast, low, heavy skies out
side. The black rain rattled against the panes.
The old man had taken her hand, awkwardly; he held
only two of her fingers; and they trembled, pinched
in his bony grip. He led her in this way to another
room, dark with the curtains of the window and the
bed, lighted only by the reflected gleam of an old-
fashioned looking-glass wardrobe. The black rain
rattled against the window panes. Oh, how she felt
the approach of dread death, that great, black death
before which small people shudder, even though they
do not value their small lives I How she felt it
rustling in the rain against the window, how she felt
the ghostly flapping of its cloak in the shadows
among the heavy furniture, how she felt death reflected
147
in the reflex light of that looking-glass I She shiv
ered, in her fur cloak. But in the shadow of the bed-
curtains two eyes smiled at her gently from out of the
suffering old face. . . . (pp. 240-24l)
The confession of error and the reliving of the
suffering it entailed is a painful experience for the
old woman— and for Constance as well.
There were those long, long years, dear. The years
which are now all dead. . . . There was your suffering
. . . but there was also our suffering. Father's . . .
and mine. . . . Oh, how I kept on thinking of my child I
But years followed upon year; and he remained dead.
Then by degrees I began to feel that it would not always
be like that, that things would be a little brighter
one day, that he would come back out of that distant
death. . . . He came back; I had my boy back. . . . I
saw you for the first time. Long dead years lay between
us; and when I wished to embrace you, I felt that I
could not, that I did not reach you. My words did not
reach you. They remained lying between us like hard,
round things. . . . I knew then that you had suffered
much and also that for long, long years you had been
full of grief and resentment. . . . (p. 243)
The old woman analyzes now the reasons for the barrier
that had separated them— "People are always like that:
they never understand each other as long as there is no
love; and when there is no love and no understanding,
there is bitterness" (pp. 243-244).
The old woman is of the opinion that her husband
will never forgive Constance for what happened, but she
is also certain that, beyond death, there will be a
complete reconciliation. She asks Constance, as her
dying request, to forgive the old man, and to love her
in memory.
Through a poetic use of environment Couperus has in_
I 148
these somber pages pictured clearly some of the con-
I tributlng causes for the gloomy experience of the Small
!
Souls* It is clear that the Small Souls contribute in
I a large measure to their own darkness. Couperus accom
panies his portrayal of fate in this instance with
rather explicit indications of how he feels such situ
ations could be relieved or avoided.
As in Zola's novels, the environment is animated
to interpret the human situation. It serves to indi
cate the intensity of the experience of fate and helps
to give it a universal significance. It mingles the
experience of Constance with the timelessness of natural
phenomena. The misunderstandings of these people are
set against the dream-like quality of a tableau in
which things are not subject to the limitations of time-
space, but in which everything reflects the eternal
quality of death, which will forever separate the old
woman from the other Small Souls.
The criticism of both Zola and Couperus clearly
aims at a change wherever possible in conditions which
contribute to the experience of fate. Neither novelist
is particularly interested in suggesting courageous
acceptance of necessary evil, although Couperus suggests
that man can rise above depression by extending his
horizons. The plea of Zola and Couperus is for a wisdom
149
which will recognize obvious evil causes for human
suffering and will aim positively at their removal.
Their criticism is in harmony with the modern liberal
outlook of Euripides who illumines in his Hippolytus
the results of jealousy, unrequited love and unrea
soning anger.
The portrayal of fate draws out to ultimate con
sequences the motives and actions of the characters.
The mythological approach contributes to a graphic re
production of inner experience; it helps to relate
everything in the world of the characters to the
central human condition. It focuses attention on the
subjective experience. In its concern with death, the
portrayal of fate sets injustice and smallness of soul
against a background which causes them to appear com
pletely reprehensible.
CEâPTER VI
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Fate in Homer and the tragedians is predominantly
an impersonal conception. It represents the experience
of limitation and mortality in life which even super
human power cannot overcome.
The Greek word moira sometimes has the neutral
meaning of "share" or "allotment," but it is used also
to express the experience of gloom which develops from
an awareness of human mortality. The word is used in
the latter sense to suggest that limitation is felt in
an existential way as an evil allotment. When used in
this way, the word moira is translated "fate" or "doom."
Classical scholars have debated about the exact
meaning of fate, and opinions are not uniform. Much
dispute centers around the attempt to define the relation
ship of fate to the gods, on the one hand, and to the
will of man, on the other. There is general agreement
that Homer and the tragedians were not "fatalists," and
that they were concerned with the results of free choice.
It is also generally agreed that the gods who appear in
the writings of these poets are not the gods of the
popular religion of the times. The gods represent forces
_________________ 150_________________________
I 151
! in the experience of man, and they are used in a poetic
I manner. The concept of fate as three sisters (the
Moirai) underwent a transformation along with the gods
i
I of the early Greek religion. Hesiod describes the three
i
Moirai. whose name means basically "sharers out of death,"
as avenging deities and as those who give men at birth
both good and evil. In Homer this concept is replaced
by an impersonal one which focuses on experience. The
question of whether fate originates in a concept of
power different from the gods has been debated, â simple
answer is probably not the correct one. Fate is a com
plex concept in that it gathers into itself a great many
subjective emotions. Furthermore, in Homer there are
elements of the former personification, and sometimes
fate seems to be equated with the will of Zeus. Homer
and the tragedians apparently used the materials available
to them to express a definite area of human experience.
Fate, then, is not a philosophic or religious concept
in their writings. Its force is derived not from credal
sources, but from the sense of mortality in Greek ex
perience.
It becomes apparent that fate or destiny in Homer
and the tragedians is an evaluative conception of life.
An area of life can be considered as experienced by
humanity, or as doled out by the forces and circumstances
152
which give rise to it. Fate or destiny is a conception
that treats of human experience in its more tragic aspect
in an evaluative way. It combines the subjective feelings
of gloom, pathos and terror with the feeling of limi
tation or necessity. Fate has a universal quality about
it, as expressed by the Greek writers. It is the gloomy
aspect of existence which all must experience. In the
authors examined, fate is distinguished from painful
incident and catastrophe and is related to them as the
genus is related to the species. Fate is experienced
as that which overpowers, dooms, strikes down.
Fate in Homer and the tragedians is essentially an
emotional and subjective concept. It does not exist
outside of human experience. It arises out of the
realization that man, unlike the gods, is subject to
change, old age, pain and death. Achievement and aspi
ration must at last give'way before death and life's
limitations. Fate, then, is juxtaposed with the buoy
ancy, freedom and happiness in life. It is a concept
which expresses negation. Fate is experienced when joys
fade and the .unpleasant aspect of existence presses in
on man's consciousness.
The use of myth by Homer and the tragedians is
humanistic and rationalistic. The gods belong to the
area of human experience. They represent the forces in
153
man's experience which result in achievement. Man's
exploits are constantly attributed to the action of the
gods. The hierarchy of gods is thus associated with
what is divine in man. The myths still have religious
meaning, but the meaning is man-centered. Zeus in the
Homeric epics is symbolical of life, therefore he must
yield to fate and death. When man's life is at an end,
when death is ready to take over, then in poetic state
ment, the man dies "according to the will of Zeus."
The study of myth by anthropologists has led to
important new considerations which bear on the origin
and nature of myth. Myth is now considered as the
product of a selective and transforming process in which
folklore has been modified to conform to the ethos or
national character. The conclusion of modern students
of myth is that there is more complexity in it than was
previously realized. Homer and the tragedians in varying
ways humanized and rationalized myth to conform to their
idea of the meaning of life. The older system was
pressed into service, but it became the vehicle for new
meanings.
In the symbolic structure which developed as a
result of this transformation, the concept of fate re
tained some of its former associations. Colorful action-
verbs describe its presence in human experience. Fate
' 154
I
' "stands by" or "waits" and there is always an ominous,
, gloomy connotation to such references. Fate counters
the will to live and threatens to remove man from the
! land of the living. Every limitation of man's will is
ultimately connected to the final obliteration, and
thus fate is usually described as "cruel" and "merciless."
There is an inevitability about death which the word
"fate" brings into focus, but this is not the same as
fatalism. >
The sense of allotment which characterized the
concept of the three sisters, who spun, measured and
cut the thread of life, is carried over into the more
impersonal concept which is found in Homer and the
tragedians. There is a real sense in which this carry
over into the more existential concept is relevant.
Experiences of one sort and another are referred to in
the modern idiom as "bitter," and the expression "it is
fated" also suggests the sense of allotment which
accompanies the frustration of ambition or the experience
of unlooked for misfortune. It also suggests the rig
orous manner in which natural law follows up specific
acts with definite consequences. Natural law sets
boundaries for man's ambitions and permits only a brief
span of life.
The visual imagery associated with the concept
155
' "fate" is uniformly gloomy and depressing. "Darkness,"
I "a weight," "a snare," are expressions suggesting first
a heaviness of spirit, an inner depression, and second
a sense of descending into the darkness of death, where
all is formless and where the pleasure of achievement is
no longer possible. These images express and interpret
the undesirable aspect of existence from an existential
point of view. They reproduce an inner state and convey
more than the depression which may accompany misfortune;
they convey the idea of a world where man is conscious
only of darkness. In some respects these expressions
of gloom convey the idea of an incipient stage of the
formless existence of the shades who have departed this
life. The bitterness which is conveyed through the
adjectives which accompany the word "fate" points up the
reluctance of man to enter a realm where consciousness
is gone and where man exists only as a memory. But under
duress, it was seen, Creon in Antigone considered fate
as a friend.
As used by Homer and the tragedians, myth is an
extended symbolism representing aspects of human exper
ience. It expresses and interprets aspects of the
disagreeable area of existence by a use of suggestive
imagery in.association with the word "fate." The Greeks
had many symbols ready-to-hand in the traditional deities.
j ■ 156
' ' The modern novelist who seeks in a similar way to portray
j fate through a use of symbol must, to a large extent,
I
, develop a symbolism of his own. The two novelists,
I Zola and Couperus, overcome the lack of traditionally
accepted symbol by making use of the suggestive qualities
of milieu, and by enlarging characters, so that they em
body more experience and significance than they do nor
mally.
Fate in the Greek writers which we examined is
often used as a background for the portrayal of courageous '
acceptance. In the novels of Zola and Couperus the j
I
depiction of fate reflects on contributive causes which |
man can alter. As a rule the novelists do not portray 1
courageous acceptance. Their portrayal of fate shows |
up sordid living conditions or undesirable character |
traits. It becomes a unifying theme which cements |
together milieu description and character portrayal. |
The naturalist movement, founded by Zola, has been *
criticized for its inclusion of sordid aspects of life |
in the novel. Zola's novels were considered for a long
time as pseudo-scientific documents, an elaborate but
futile attempt to establish the truth of certain theories
about heredity and environment. This impression clouded
the critical estimate of the Rougon-Macquart series for
some decades. Recent studies have found a subjective
: 157
I
' element in Zola's writings which serves to unify his
i factual materials. The conclusion of recent criticism
is that he was more the artist than the would-be scientist
I Zola's critical writings find him largely on the
defensive against those who ascribe immorality to his
work and those who declare him fatalistic. It seems
clear now that the critics who assailed him failed to
recognize his purpose. Zola was interested in truth and
' social justice, and he felt that he could help the scien
tist and the legislator by exposing the actual conditions
under which some people were forced to live. He collected
an enormous amount of factual material but he selected
and arranged it to convey the moral and emotional impres
sion of sordid conditions on characters who perforce
succumbed to them. It served his purpose to portray an
intense experience of fate, and he did so by restricting
his material so that it focused on the human problem.
It made for simplicity of plot, for which Zola confessed
an admiration, and it enabled him to concentrate on the
portrayal of the sombre mood which is associated with
the experience of fate.
The Dutch novelist, Couperus, similarly concentrated
his portrayal of bourgeois pettiness in The Hague in the
lives of those who succumbed to it. He was able, in
this way, to focus attention on the emotional and moral
158
impact of pettiness. As the members of the Van Lowe
family experience fate and become aware of extreme
limitation, the reader's attention is directed forcibly
to the social evil which the novelist criticizes*
A study of the manner in which Zola portrays fate
in the subjective experience of his characters reveals
many of the emotional overtones portrayed by the Greek
writers. The feeling of gloom and limitation which the
Greeks associated with fate is vividly portrayed in the
case of Gervaise in L'Assommoir. or in that of Josserand
in Pot-Bouille. Sordid living conditions and intolerable
family relationships cause life itself to be a daily
burden. The experience of fate by these characters is
not a momentary realization, but a painful existence in
which everything vibrates in harmony with the tone of
extreme depression. Mingled with the sense of gloom is
the feeling on the part of the characters that life is
extremely cruel. Life drags out for them its monotonous
crushing routine until they are completely frustrated,
disillusioned and crushed. The crushing forces, which
the novelist assembles and arranges so that escape is
impossible, may appear to be the product of a fatalistic
philosophy if the criterion is "life-likeness." The
purpose of the novelist, however, is to express the
human situation, to convey the emotions which accompany
159
extreme suffering, and .in this he succeeds. Environmental
details are often selected to convey the mood, and in
their collective sombreness they support and intensify
the complaints of the victims of fate. Sometimes, as in
the case of Josserand, good intentions are thwarted and
actually cause the victim to become prey to the forces
which crush him. The reader feels that fate is not just
in such a case and that the victim is to be pitied.
Rather uniformly, the characters who experience fate in
Zola's novels are crushed by forces beyond their control,
which impinge upon their lives from outside.
In the Small Souls series the milieu also plays a
large part in the portrayal of the feelings of those who
are overcome by fate. The weather often interprets the
mood, and rainy skies reflect the intense gloom that is
felt by the characters. In these novels the source of
gloom is in large part within the petty souls themselves.
Their lack of positive moral courage, their limited
vision and their mean motives destroy the brightness in
life for them. They are, therefore, all the more con
scious of mutability, of dullness, of monotony. They are
unable to break out of their dark world because they have
never responded to challenge and now the initiative
impulse has been stifled. The characters bring with
them the criteria which cause life to appear gloomy.
160
and darkness is experienced existentially by the petty
souls who engage in life without living. Couperus, as
well as Zola, convincingly portrays the heaviness of
spirit and the depression that is found associated with
fate in Homer and the tragedians.
Both Zola and Couperus use mythical elements in
their portrayal of fate. Their imaginative portrayal
in symbolic and anthropomorphic form of forces which
crush man approaches a parallel with the Greek mytho
logical system. The anonymity of Greek myth is lacking,
as well as the overlay of tradition, but the characters
are often larger than life; they possess a universality
characteristic of myth.
Zola uses characters to represent something larger
than themselves; they convey meanings and stand for
movements. Extended narrative accounts of destructive
forces at work in society develop from a symbolic use of
surface plot. An example is Zola's recounting of the
myth of the world strike in terms of the destruction of
a mining community by sabotage. In this interpretative
use of symbol, Zola's basic philosophy transparently
relates the pictorial element with the underlying meaning.
The laws of nature will prevail, and as the sea under
mines man-made towns, so capitalism will inevitably fall;
as the seed germinates to overturn the earth, so the
I6l
labor movement will destroy the tyranny of the middle
class. In Zola's method, percept and concept are often
loosely related in this manner by bonds which devolve
from poetic insight. Zola sees analogies between natural
events and social institutions where, strictly speaking,
no logical or scientific tie exists.
Although Zola predominantly creates his own symbols,
he does lean at times on the mythological system of
classical antiquity. Nana's mythical role is introduced
by identifying her at the outset of the novel with the
Roman goddess of love, Venus. Nana becomes a modern
parallel for the classical goddess. At other times
ornamental deities serve to create an atmosphere or to
suggest meanings of one sort and another. Zola gives
his characters symbolic meaning by enlarging them.
Bonnemort in Germinal typifies the injustice meted out
by the capitalist system. His ancestors perished in the
mine and he has experienced nothing but misfortune and
maltreatment. Nana's brief life is crowded with in
cident, so that she typifies the rise of vice from the
slum areas. She is an avenging goddess, a golden fly
whose mission is to poison society. Zola's novels tend
to become an intricate network of symbolic meanings
because there are levels of meaning in his description
of environment.
' 162
I
! Central in Zola's use of symbol is the interpretative
; purpose of conveying to the reader the subjective state
^ of his characters. The dark inner world and the condi-
! tions which give rise to it are held together by mytho
logical, rather than logical, means. Sometimes the
condition, of the environment is the means of outlining
j the metaphysics of the inner world, and at other times
it suggests emotional and moral impressions made on
characters. The strange relationship of the hot-house
to Renege in La Cur^. is an example. The forces at work
in the dense, luxuriant tropical foliage also work in
her. The hot-house is an equivalent picture of what is
happening in Renee's life. Zola's method of uniting
character and environment is to animate or humanize the
inert material so that it becomes a vital part of man's
existence. The unifying factors, as we said, are not
logical. Zola suggests that the hot-house is not only
a picture of what happens in Renee, but an influence upon
her and an organic part of her. It is not a scientific
account, an objective relation of fact.
The motifs usually associated with myth which are
present in Zola's novels are the non-rational, the
gigantic, the symbolic, the universal. The non-rational,
or non-natural element stems, as we have seen, from his
purpose to make the human condition central. He essays
163
to expand humanity, a purpose clearly stated in The
Experimental Novel.
Couperus also expands the human element in his novels.
He uses hallucination and vision to portray elements of
the dark experience of fate. His descriptions of the
limited inner world of the petty souls merge with accounts
of delirious ravings and psychopathic states. The dark
ness in the lives of his characters is made vivid by
what appears, in many respects, to be an extension of
the unconscious. His characters have strange dreams.
Apprehension, fear, premonition and other emotions which
make the lives of his characters a burden to themselves
and to others are expressed in graphic terms. Couperus
explores and reproduces the dark area in life which
fringes bn the abnormal.
We have used as a common denominator for our approach
to myth in the Greek writers and the novelists the cri
terion of symbolism. "The use of symbol to portray human
experience" is a minimum definition which obviates the
difficulty of reconciling different intellectual climates,
levels of civilization and so forth. It may be argued
that there is little value in robbing a term of its
qualifying connotations. Nevertheless, if myth is limited
to anonymous tales of primitive man, insights which derive
from comparison are lost. There are ways in which the
164
novels of Zola and Couperus take on new meaning when
mythical elements are traced through them. Mythical
motifs and methods serve certain literary and functional
purposes irrespective of the age in which they are used.
Malinowski's definition of myth, although it applies
in some respects only to primitive myth, does have an
application to the manner in which Zola and Couperus use
symbols to express human experience. Malinowski has
stated that primitive man was primarily concerned with
survival, and that he used myths to explain, confirm and
justify his behavior toward the forces around him. While
this aspect of myth is not expressly contained in a
definition of myth which focuses on the symbolic process,
it is implied in it. Symbol universalizes and contains
within itself, when it portrays human experience, the
lessons which derive from life. Shelley thought it was
safe to assume that the auditors of the Homeric poems
were led to imitate the nobler qualities of the heroes.
In many respects the mythical elements in the novels of
Zola and Couperus support the functional aspects, of
their novels. The two novelists deal with destructive
forces in society which must be modified or corrected
if certain people are to be rescued from their dismal
lot. They interpret the forces in terms of their causal
relationship to human misery, and, therefore, implicitly
165
criticize people or institutions responsible for per
petuation of the status quo.
Zola's "correspondence theory" does not completely
explain his symbolic method. He follows to a large
extent the deterministic theory of Taine, who builds
upon the theory that race, milieu and epochs are funda
mentally the sources of man's character, and that vari
ations in character are due to changes in these basic
constituent elements. According to this theory, a man's
mental processes employ the images of his surroundings,
and many of Zola's milieu-sketches concentrate on
specific images as seen by his characters, but he goes
beyond the theory when he animates the milieu. The
determinist theory does not explain how walls can resound
to correspond with the rumbling of empty stomachs, as
Zola describes it in L'Assommoir. This type of "corre
spondence" is not objectively linear in the sense of a
cause-and-effect relationship, but is the result of
poetic insight. The fact that Zola introduces sympathetic
relationships of this sort into his novels points up the
fact that his world is more than that of the journalist
or the scientist.
Zola's animation of environmental facts prevents
his documentation from assuming a polemical tone. It
is an interpretative and evaluative method in which there
l66
is implicit a passion for social justice. Ultimately
J
Zola's description of environment derives its meaning
from the destruction of the characters.
The use of fate by Zola and Couperus as an esthetic
device coincided with the subjective and realistic ten
dencies of the literary movements at the close of the
nineteenth century. It provided for an objective
analysis of social phenomena and, at the same time, gave
room for emotional appraisal of human problems. The
synthesis which their use of fate achieves has not been
given recognition. The depiction of fate, because it
depends so much on a portrayal of subjective experience,
tends to use the motifs associated with myth, such as
symbol, the irrational, the mysterious. In the literary
use of the concept fate in classical times or in the
family novels of Zola and Couperus, the use of such
motifs is governed by a respect for the laws of cause
and effect. Irrational and magical elements are not used
to sponsor a naive credulity, but to produce certain
dramatic effects, often to depict subjective states.
By using the concept "fate" the novelist can
describe the tension between the external life'of a
society and the emotional life and introspective states
of man. As used by Zola and Couperus it reveals a
reflective and critical stage in literary production.
167
It is an attempt to wed the functional and the esthetic.
The fate-novel is the result of a desire to please and
instruct.
This study has revealed certain elements which
modern literature has in common with that of classical
times. Modern novelists have pictured the tragic aspects
of existence, as have the classical tragedians, to
obtain dramatic intensity and to secure certain func
tional results. The modern interest in fate along with
the interest in myth reveals a rational and humanistic
aspect of literature perhaps indicative of a stage in
the progress of society. The reflective approach
indicates an examination of traditional standards, the
mark of a critical stage in the culture of a period.
LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED
Books
Asselbergs, W. J. M. A., ed., Geschiedenis van de
Letterkunde der Nederlanden. 9 vols. *s Hertog-
enbosch, 19^5'.
Barbusse, Henri. Zola, tr. Mary B. Green and Frederick
C. Green. New York, 1933.
Beach, Joseph Warren. The Twentieth Century Novel. New
York, 1932.
Bergson, Henri. Laughter, an Essay on the Meaning of
the Comic, tr. Cloudeley Brereton and Fred Rothwell.
New York, 1937.
Bordewijk, F. (and others] . Over Louis Couperus.
Amsterdam, 1952.
Bush, Douglas. Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition
in English Poetrv. Minneapolis, 1932.
Cornford, F. M. Greek Religious Thought from Homer to
the Age of Alexander. London, 1923.
Couperus, Louis Marie Anne. De Boeken der Kleine Zielen.
4 vols. Amsterdam, 1901-03.
____________________ The Book of the Small Souls.
tr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. 4 vols in 1,
containing Small Souls, The Later Life. The Twilight
of the Souls and Dr. Adriaan. New York, 1932.
De Graaf, J. Le Reveil Littéraire en Hollande et le
Naturalisme Français (i860-1900). Amsterdam. 1937.
Donkersloot, N. A. Karaktertrekken der Vaderlandsehe
Letterkunde. Arnhem, 1945. '
Dunbar, Helen Flanders. Symbolism in Medieval Thought
and its Consummation in the Divine Comedv. New
Haven, 1929.
168
169
Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York, 192?.
Greene, William Chase. Moira. Fate. Good and Evil in
Greek Thought. Cambridge, Mass., 1944.
Guthrie, W. K. C. The Greeks and their Gods. London,
1950.
Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Wav to Western Civilization.
New York, 1942.
Harrison, J. E. Prolegomena to the Study of Greek
Religion. 3d ed. Cambridge, 1922.
/
Hammings, Frederick William John. Emile Zola. Oxford,
1953.
Josephson, Matthew. Zola and his Time; The History of
His Martial Career in Letters; With an Account of
His Circle of Friends. His Remarkable Enemies.
Cyclopean Labors. Public Campaigns. Trials, and
Ultimate Glorification! New York, 1928.
Kitto, H. D. F. The Greeks. London, 1951.
Lang, A. Custom and Myth. New York, 1885.
_______. Myth. Ritual and Religion. New York, I887.
/ /
Le Blond-Zola, Denise. Emile Zola raconte par sa fille.
Paris, 1931.
Livingstone, R. W. The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to
Us. London, 19l5.
Loeb Classical Library, founded by James Loeb. vol. 1-.
Cambridge, Mass., 1912-.
Maeterlinck, Maurice. Wisdom and Destiny, tr. Alfred
Sutro. New York, 1S98.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. Magic. Science and Religion and
Other Essays. Boston, 1948.
Moore, C. H. The Religious Thought of the Greeks.
Cambridge, Mass., 1925.
Moore, George F. History of Religions. New York, 1914.
170
Moulton, Richard G. The Modern Study of Literature.
Chicago, 1915*
Muir, Edwin. The Structure of the Novel. London, 1928.
Muller, K. 0. Prolegomena zu einer Wissenschaftlichen
Mythologie" Berlin, l82ÿ.
Nilsson, M. P. Cults. Myths. Oracles and Politics in
Ancient Greece. Lund, 195'l.
_____________. Greek Popular Religion. New York, 19^0.
_________ . A History of Greek Religion, tr. F. J.
FieIden. Oxford, 1925%
Otto, Walter F. The Homeric Gods; The Spiritual Sig
nificance of Greek Religion, tr. Moses Hadas.
New York, 19^^*
Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. M. Cary, A. D. Nock
^nd others] • Oxford, 19^+9.
Pauly, A. F. von. Real-encyclopadie der classichen
altertumswissenschaft; neue bearbeitung. 9 vols.
Berlin, 1894-1916.
Root, Winthrop H. German Criticism of Zola 1879-1891;
With Special Reference to the Rougon-Maoouart Cycle
and the Roman Experimental. New York, 1931.
Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich. Ausfuhrliches Lexikon der
Griechischen und romischen Mythologie. 6 vols, and
3 suppl. Leipzig, 188^-1937•
Scudder, Vida. Prometheus Unbound. Boston, 1892.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Selected Prose and Poetry, ed.
Carlos Baker. New York, 19^1.
Spence, L. Introduction to Mythology. New York, n.d.
Taine, H. A. History of English Literature, tr. H.
van Laun. New York, lo86.
Wallis, W. D. Religion in Primitive Society. New York,
1939.
Wellek, Rene and Austin Warren. Theory of Literature.
New York, 19^9.
171
White, Lucien W. "Representative French Criticism of
Les Rougon-Macquart 1873-1895." Unpublished
doctoral dissertation. Illinois University, 19^7.
/
Wilson, Angus. Emile Zola; an Introductory Study of His
Novels. New York, 1952.
Yeats, W. B. Ideas of Good and Evil. London, 1907.
/
Zola, Emile. LVAssommoir. tr. Arthur Symons. New York,
1924" .
__________. La Curee. tr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos.
New York, 1924.
___________ . Dr. Pascal, or Life and Heredity, tr.
Ernest Vizetelly. London, 192?.
___________ . The Experimental Novel and other Essays.
tr. Belle M. Sherman. New York, 1893.
___________ . Germinal, tr. Havelock Ellis. New York,
1924.'
. Money, tr. Benjamin R. Tucker. Boston,
1891.
___________ . Nana, tr. not given. New York, 1941.
Oeuvres Completes, ed. Maurice Le Blond.
Paris, 1927.
Piping Hot, tr. Percy Pinkerton. New York,
19^
. Le Roman Experimental. Paris, I88O.
. Therese Raaùin. Paris, I868.
Articles and Periodicals
Agard, W. R. "Fate and Freedom in Greek Tragedy,"
Classical Journal. 29?117-126, November, 1933*
Colby. Frank Moore. "In Zolaland," Bookman (New York)
8:24l, November, I898.
172
Cooper, Frederic Taber. "Some Novels of the Month,”
Bookman. 40:304-306, November, 1914.
Duckworth, G. E. "Fate and Free Will in Vergil's
Aeneid.” Classical Journal. 51:357-364, May, 1956.
Duffy, J. "Homer's Conception of Fate,” Classical
Journal. 42:477-48?, May, 1947.
Leach, Abby. "Fate and Free Will in Greek Literature,"
American Journal of Philology. 36:373-401, October,
Lovett, Robert Morss. "Louis Couperus and the Family
Novel," The Dial. 66:184-186, February 22, 1919.
Werkmeister, W. H. "The Symbolism of Myth," The
Personalist. 39:119, April, 1958.
I^Qlversity of Southern CaUfornia

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Creator Vanderlip, Eldad Cornelis (author)

Core Title Fate in the novels of Zola and Couperus; a comparison with the Greek concept of fate

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag language, literature and linguistics,OAI-PMH Harvest,Social Sciences

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Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c37-57403

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