Romantisme et Modernités La pensée littéraire et artistique d'Émile Zola Une esthétique vitaliste

The 19th-century French writer Émile Zola is known for his realism and naturalism. Realism is a literary movement that seeks to depict reality as it really is. By further developing this concept, Zola established naturalism, which involves describing social and human reality from a scientific perspective. However, if one considers his work as merely a reflection of reality, they risk missing its full intellectual depth.
 
While depicting reality, Zola demonstrated his imagination and used various metaphors to express human vitality and the strength of nature. This writing was guided by his principle of vitalism. Recognizing a particular value in the life force of humans and nature, Zola sought to give it an artistic form. To oppose conservative ideas, he proposed art that presents life as the unique beauty of his time. This book attempts to shed light on this approach by Zola.
 
The Zola era was marked by a major turning point caused by the upheaval of the traditional order following the French Revolution and the rise of modern society. This profound transformation also influenced literature and the arts. Zola asserted that future art must represent “human life,” thereby criticizing the tradition based on the concept of “absolute beauty.” Absolute beauty is an idea rooted in the religious ideology of the Ancien Régime. Such a mindset imposed on artists the need to represent noble beauty as expressed by God. However, the French Revolution brought an end to this old order, and a new conception of art, detached from a transcendent being, now prevails. The democracy established by the Revolutionary values, in place of God, is the very life of ordinary people. Zola suggests that life should become the new standard of beauty in this era, and in his works, he illustrates the ways of life for individuals. The challenge is to replace divine art with human art.

Zola’s vitalism is also linked to the ecological perspective that we face today. In traditional thought, humans, created in God’s image, are considered superior to nature. In contrast, Zola does not favor humanity; he sees humans like all living beings, equal to plants and animals. He perceives the “environment” as a space where human beings, objects, plants, and animals are interconnected, and he depicts this complex relationship. In works such as La Faute de l’abbé Mouret (1875), Zola elevates nature, which had previously been seen merely as a backdrop in traditional thinking, and describes plants with richness that raises them to the level of the sacred, thereby mythologizing nature.
 
Zola’s literature thus embodies the great upheaval of modernity, where the idea of God as the supreme being collapsed and human life, along with nature, began to be profoundly valued. In an era where democracy and ecology progress hand in hand, Zola gives new meaning to the word “life,” at the intersection of these two dynamics. Today, in the context of an increased awareness of humanity’s coexistence with nature and diversity, re-reading Zola from this perspective has become increasingly important.
 

(Written by JITTANI Soichiro, Lecturer, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2024)