Émile Zola a Genova

Abstract

In my paper, I will focus my attention on Emile Zola’s first Italian journey, in order to demonstrate to what extend the writer played a pivotal role in both Italian and in French literary life.Towards the end of September 1892, the travel of Emile Zola and his wife Alexandrine across the Ligurian Riviera represents the first encounter between the French writer and his father Francesco’s native country. During his brief stay in Genoa, Zola visited a town animated by celebrations for the Colombian Exposition, on the occasion of the four-hundredth year since discovery of America. Once there, he had the opportunity to meet distinctive personalities and journalists and to talk about his vision of Italian and French politics, his works and projects, Le docteur Pascal and the Three Cities Trilogy, and about his impressions on contemporary Italian men of letters. The numerous interviews granted in Liguria and in the French Riviera on his way back, attest the Emile Zola’s relevance as an intellectual both in Italy and in France.