M. Brunetiere says Zola's characters are not
true to the French fact; that his peasants, working-men,
citizens, soldiers are not French, whatever else they may be; but
this is merely M. Brunetiere's word against Zola's word, and Zola
had as good opportunities of knowing French life as Mr.
Brunetiere, whose aesthetics, as he betrays them in his
instances, are of a flabbiness which does not impart conviction.
Word for word, I should take Zola's word as to the fact, not
because I have the means of affirming him more reliable, but
because I have rarely known the observant instinct of poets to
fail, and because I believe that every reader will find in
himself sufficient witness to the veracity of Zola's
characterizations. These, if they are not true to the French
fact, are true to the human fact; and I should say that in these
the reality of Zola, unreal or ideal in his larger form, his
epicality, vitally resided. His people live in the memory as
entirely as any people who have ever lived; and, however
devastating one's experience of them may be, it leaves no doubt
of their having been.
III
It is not much to say of a work of literary art that it will
survive as a record of the times it treats of, and I would not
claim high value for Zola's fiction because it is such a true
picture of the Second Empire in its decline; yet, beyond any
other books have the quality that alone makes novels historical.
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