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A review by blueyorkie
La Terre by Émile Zola
5.0
Another uppercut in the total groin: Zola is in great shape. I believe a true masterpiece: The Earth, at least the one that speaks to me the most among Rougon-Macquart!
As always, old Émile is well documented, and one almost feels the land of Beauce under our nose. Here is an excellent tonic and documentary novel, as was the author's intention in writing the cycle of Rougon-Macquart. This tome is one of the four or five best in the sequence, if not a little better, which is saying a lot. Here, Jean Macquart (Gervaise's brother in the Assommoir), hired by the big operator of the area and mayor of the village, Hourdequin, is desperately trying to introduce new farming techniques and faces his refractory workforce.
The Fouan family is the other big pole of the book. It is reminiscent of the original Rougon-Macquart family (see La Fortune des Rougon ) with its flaws and vices. First is the heritage of old Fouan, where we do not know who is the most stingy and the readiest to bleed his family, between the father and the children. His young son, Buteau, is a paragon of avarice, greed, brutality, and harshness (well, it's true; do not look too nuanced here at Zola).
Despite Zola's resolutely polemic turn to his rural fresco, I found all the flaws and the mentality of the peasant world I encountered in my travels on literature in the early twentieth century. Of course, no baseness of this world will be spared, but is it not a vision, undoubtedly disillusioned? Indeed, a slight caricature, magnified or condensed, but primarily suitable, relevant, of the human in the broad sense?
Emile Zola shows us our species stripped of its frail shell of "good manners," this varnish of civilization; it shows us rough, rough, gruff, but without fuss, a little as if you had direct access to what think those who made us smile on the surface. So I leave you to read and dig up rotten bulbs, for which we are a bit prepared.
I award a Special Mention for the character of "the great," old Fouan's sister, a real old wicked woman who enjoys sowing discord. (the role of "the old woman harmful" is a classic Zola and returns in many of his novels; would he have accounts to settle on that side?) and discord within his family while being as loving as an extensive drystone.
I give another Special Mention to the "Jesus Christ" character, the eldest son of the old Fouan, a chronic alcoholic who is determined never to work, an exceptional pyromaniac who offers the author the opportunity to sign a hilarious chapter (part four, chapter 3).
As always, old Émile is well documented, and one almost feels the land of Beauce under our nose. Here is an excellent tonic and documentary novel, as was the author's intention in writing the cycle of Rougon-Macquart. This tome is one of the four or five best in the sequence, if not a little better, which is saying a lot. Here, Jean Macquart (Gervaise's brother in the Assommoir), hired by the big operator of the area and mayor of the village, Hourdequin, is desperately trying to introduce new farming techniques and faces his refractory workforce.
The Fouan family is the other big pole of the book. It is reminiscent of the original Rougon-Macquart family (see La Fortune des Rougon ) with its flaws and vices. First is the heritage of old Fouan, where we do not know who is the most stingy and the readiest to bleed his family, between the father and the children. His young son, Buteau, is a paragon of avarice, greed, brutality, and harshness (well, it's true; do not look too nuanced here at Zola).
Despite Zola's resolutely polemic turn to his rural fresco, I found all the flaws and the mentality of the peasant world I encountered in my travels on literature in the early twentieth century. Of course, no baseness of this world will be spared, but is it not a vision, undoubtedly disillusioned? Indeed, a slight caricature, magnified or condensed, but primarily suitable, relevant, of the human in the broad sense?
Emile Zola shows us our species stripped of its frail shell of "good manners," this varnish of civilization; it shows us rough, rough, gruff, but without fuss, a little as if you had direct access to what think those who made us smile on the surface. So I leave you to read and dig up rotten bulbs, for which we are a bit prepared.
I award a Special Mention for the character of "the great," old Fouan's sister, a real old wicked woman who enjoys sowing discord. (the role of "the old woman harmful" is a classic Zola and returns in many of his novels; would he have accounts to settle on that side?) and discord within his family while being as loving as an extensive drystone.
I give another Special Mention to the "Jesus Christ" character, the eldest son of the old Fouan, a chronic alcoholic who is determined never to work, an exceptional pyromaniac who offers the author the opportunity to sign a hilarious chapter (part four, chapter 3).