White on Lumbroso (2024)

Olivier Lumbroso represents the modern incarnation of that fine tradition in Zola studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and, amongst various roles, he is now the directeur of the Cahiers naturalistes and co-responsable of the Centre d’étude sur Zola et le naturalisme (ITEM-CNRS). As well as coordinating many of the collective research activities in the Zola world, in the form of colloquia and edited volumes, Lumbroso continues to write prodigiously in his own right, and this book is the latest output in that regard, following his recent work on La Bête humaine.  

The eminent eighteenth-centuryist, Nathalie Ferrand, is the general editor of the recently founded Hermann series Collection “Dans l’atelier de...” to which Lumbroso provides this new volume, alongside Jacques Neefs’s volume on Flaubert and Andrea Schellino’s on Baudelaire. In a series of brief monographs inspired—we are told—by half a century of genetic criticism, the series responds to the following questions: “Qu’ils appartiennent à notre présent ou aient vécu il y a plusieurs siècles, comment les écrivains travaillent-ils? Quelle est la relation qui les unit à leurs propres manuscrits? Et en quoi le spectacle d’intuitions jaillissant sur le papier, ou d’hésitations dissimulées sous une rature, nous importe pour comprendre des œuvres, qu’elles soient abouties ou inachevées?”

The very word atelier echoes through Lumbroso’s compelling account not only of Zola’s career, but also of the subsequent history of Zola studies, viewed from the perspective of a key scholar at the Parisian center of the field. Indeed, Zola represents something of a special case for this series given the ready association of his work with artisanship and craftsmanship, both as a thematic focus and an authorial method. 

Lumbroso’s first chapter, “Les lieux de la creation,” begins Zola’s story by tracking the material environments in which he writes, not simply from the modest circumstances of his youth to “Médan... lès-Tours,” which Lumbroso also describes as “Médan-Roman,” but beyond to English exile in 1898–99, and to the “studio” of Zola the photographer from 1888 to 1902. 

Chapter two, “Histoire d’une archive-monde," is anticipated in a preface that promises “l’histoire muséale d’une archive-monde exceptionnelle, digne d’un roman policier qui embrasse cent vingt ans de conservation patrimoniale” (9). This chapter traces the history of Zola’s manuscripts which, Lumbroso explains, were already objects of interest during thebataille littéraire of the 1880s. The tracking of this history reveals how, after the turn of the mid-twentieth-century, “Zola ne sort que lentement du purgatoire universitaire” (89). The chapter culminates in an account of how, beyond Gallica’s digitization of the manuscripts, the community of Zola scholars have in recent years developed the possibilities of the digital: in the projet Archiz under the leadership of Alain Pagès; and through Jean-Sébastien Macke’s engagement with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and the application of tags (in French, balises) to various aspects of the Zola archive, not least the encoding and tagging by an international team of scholars of Zola’s ébauches in the projet ScéNa. This follows similar teamwork in the presentation on the EMAN portal (Édition de Manuscrits et d'Archives Numériques) of over 2,000 letters sent to Zola from around the world (quite literally, from Argentina to Zanzibar).

Chapter three, “Dans le ventre des cycles,” takes us into the inner workings of Zola’s writing process via an account of his preparatory dossiers. Finally, chapter four (“À l’école de l’atelier”) takes us beyond Zola’s internal fictional world into the realm of mediation and intersubjectivity, in particular in his epistolary relationship to other writers in “son rôle de conseiller, de ‘coach’” (173). What is most refreshing, here as in previous chapters, is an undaunted resistance to clichés and simplifications. Rather than eliding Zola’s counsel and practice, Lumbroso reminds us: “l’enseignement de Zola à ses disciples, dans les lettres, est-il à l’image de son atelier privé, dans ses manuscrits? Se donne-t-il à lui-même les mêmes leçons, garde-fous et démarches? En réalité, assez peu” (181). And before we rehearse another reference to that much-cited document, Différences entre Balzac et moi, he encourages us to consider a much longer historical arc: “Moins visible que Balzac, son discret modèle qui l’accompagne depuis sa jeunesse, dès 1862, est Montaigne: écrire tant qu’il y aura du papier et de l’encre” (183). 

What emerges is a book that will be indispensable, not only for Lumbroso’s peers in Zola studies, but also for any graduate student wanting to orientate their first steps in the field. In this sense, Lumbroso’s guide is truly meta. The book will be particularly useful to students in the Anglophone world where the sense of Zola’s cultural location is quite different and where it might now seem somewhat old-fashioned to publish a book simply about Zola. In France, a good number of books are still published on Zola alone, which allows for an internalized view of a field which feels sufficient unto itself. Less visible from this perspective are Anglophone chapters on Zola discreetly housed within books on nineteenth-century France which are not framed in terms of specific authors. Think inter alia of Dorian Bell on L’Argent, Peter Brooks on Nana, Andrew Counter on La Terre, Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson on La Débâcle and Paris, Maurice Samuels on L’Argent and Vérité. And, given the title of Lumbroso’s third chapter, we might also think of Janet Beizer returning to Zola, twenty years after Ventriloquized Bodies, in an exquisite reading of Le Ventre de Paris in her recent book, Harlequin Eaters. Lumbroso’s book comes from a different intellectual tradition, steeped in constant renegotiation of Zola’s relation to the republic it inhabits. As Lumbroso reminds us, this culminated in President Macron reopening the house at Médan in October 2021 in its new guise as the Maison Zola-Musée Dreyfus (79). In this vein, Lumbroso’s book allows us to properly understand Zola’s place within the French patrimoine.