Zola. Vol. II: L'Homme de 'Germinal' (1871-1893) by Henri Mitterand (review)

Abstract

996 Reviews Adieu and L'Auberge rouge 'le temoignage', in Melmoth reconcilie 'le don', and performatively in Le Chef-d'ceuvre inconnu. The approach is broadly deconstructionist, but the theoretical pedal is used deftly,and as a discreet accompaniment in the footnotes, rather than to play the big tune. Lots of Derrida, some de Man, but no Freud?for Lee's aim is to explore the literarity of Balzac's text, to take seriously, at face value, the letter of these works, carefully to weigh his words rather than be drawn into the powerful gravitational field ofthe monumental, indeed ossified, Balzac statue erected by the nouveaux romanciers and traditional criticism of the past. Many stimulating insights result: the readings are careful, coherent, only very occasionally questionable, taking full account of the complexities of Balzac's text: this really is close reading, and its perceptions, one feels, owe much more to Lee, and to his chosen topic of excess, than to his theoretical patrons. So the mirrorings and echoings of Un drame au bord de la mer take it,we may infer,into the corpus of Balzac's suggestive gender reversals, while Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu,Adieu, and L'Auberge rougeand Melmoth reconcilie are all examined via the occlusions, obfuscations, and blindnesses of characters, narrators, and texts. He is particularly good when reading against the grain, taking the opposite of the surface meaning or received opinion, or even of his own guiding theme: he gets much from looking at Porbus's restraint, forexample, or from the theme ofthe giftin the Melmoth story.In themselves, these are highly cogent and perceptive readings, but they constitute a fairlyclosed system, on which it is difficultto get a creative purchase, and from which it may be difficultfor anyone other than Lee to build out. Balzac's stories, at least those considered from this period, are indeed largely self-contained; but they were or became also part of a larger whole, of which Lee gives virtually no sense: there is scarcely any mention of Balzac's wider opus, the bibliography is solid but not exhaustive, and there is an index of key theoretical terms only. Interestingly, afterthe decades of postmodern deconstruction of Balzac, Lee tentatively gestures to? wards seeing in him a unity discovered in symbolic patterns and reversals, while none the less holding back from discerning one of any transcendent, still less numinous, kind, which might be, to use his phrase, 'trop rassurante'. But the cumulative effect of reading Balzac, even without deconstruction, is hardly reassuring, and Balzac's unity, like that of the world he purportedly represents, is very much an article of faith: it asks to be taken on trust.The narrowness of Lee's sample leads him to an unduly conventional and restrictive conception of the nouvelle as the only form of Balzac's shorter fiction,of its structures as the principal site of Balzac's unity,and to a rather positivistic view of it as a merely transient form in La Comedie humaine; but in analysing these five stories so sharply, and in showing within them the concealments and deceptions of realism, he has made a valuable contribution to Balzac studies. Pembroke College, Oxford Tim Farrant Zola. By Henri Mitterand. Vol. n: L'Homme de 'Germinal' {i8ji-i8gj). Paris: Fayard. 2001. 1192 pp.; 32 plates. ?42. ISBN 2-213-60831-8. Henri Mitterand has devoted his academic career to the study of Zola's life and work and is deservedly acknowledged as the doyen of Zola studies. His massive threevolume biography of Zola, timed to coincide with the centenary of Zola's death in September 2002, is the culmination of his research and more than confirms this reputation. This, the second volume of the biography, deals with the period, from 1871 to 1893, when Zola wrote and published all twenty Rougon-Macquart novels. As befits a biographical study, Mitterand is less concerned with a literary analysis of the novels than with their preparation and reception. (The selected bibliography points the reader to relevant works of literary criticism.) For each novel, Mitterand MLR, 98.4, 2003 997 looks in detail at Zola's copious preparatory notes, identifying the real-life people...