Zola was an artist, and one of the very greatest, but even before
and beyond that he was intensely a moralist, as only the
moralists of our true and noble time have been. Not Tolstoy, not
Ibsen himself, has more profoundly and indignantly felt the
injustice of civilization, or more insistently shown the falsity
of its fundamental pretensions. He did not make his books a
polemic for one cause or another; he was far too wise and sane
for that; but when he began to write them they became alive with
his sense of what was wrong and false and bad. His tolerance is
less than Tolstoy's, because his resignation is not so great; it
is for the weak sinners and not for the strong, while Tolstoy's,
with that transcendent vision of his race, pierces the bounds
where the shows of strength and weakness cease and become of a
solidarity of error in which they are one. But the ethics of his
work, like Tolstoy's, were always carrying over into his life.
He did not try to live poverty and privation and hard labor, as
Tolstoy does; he surrounded himself with the graces and the
luxuries which his honestly earned money enabled him to buy; but
when an act of public and official atrocity disturbed the working
of his mind and revolted his nature, he could not rest again till
he had done his best to right it.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25