ZOLA, Émile. L’Œuvre. Paris: G. Charpentier. 1886.
8vo. Early 20th-century morocco-backed marbled boards, original yellow wrappers bound in, title in gilt to spine, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, marbled endpapers; pp. [4], 491, [1]; spine lightly faded, extremities lightly rubbed; light marginal toning and light spotting but overall very good; authorial inscription “à Henry Bauer / son dévoué confrère / Emile Zola” in ink to half-title; with 2 pp. autograph letter signed from Zola to Bauër bound after half-title and dated 6 April 1886 (see below).
First edition of Émile Zola’s most autobiographical novel, a unique presentation copy inscribed to the French journalist Henry Bauër (1851-1915), including a seemingly unpublished letter from Zola to the same recipient.
L’Œuvre is the fourteenth novel in Émile Zola’s monumental twenty-volume Les Rougon-Macquart, his naturalist chronicle of “the natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire”. Among the series, L’Œuvre stands out as the most autobiographical, with the character of the novelist Pierre Sandoz serving as a clear self-portrait of Zola. Drawing inspiration from Balzac’s La Comédie humaine, Zola sought not only to depict contemporary society but also to explore the workings of heredity and environment within a family line. In L’Œuvre, he turned his attention to the artistic world, which he knew intimately through his lifelong friendship with Paul Cézanne, a bond dating back to their childhood in Aix-en-Provence.
The novel first appeared in serial form in Gil Blas beginning in December 1885, and was published in book form by Charpentier in 1886. Upon receiving his copy, Cézanne recognised himself in the tortured artist Claude Lantier and Sandoz as a stand-in for Zola. Deeply hurt, Cézanne responded with polite detachment, returning the book to Zola and severing all ties with him. Claude Monet, meanwhile, wrote an open letter disputing that the characters reflected any of the Impressionist circle. But the damage was done.
Provenance: from the library of French journalist Henry Bauër, to whom this copy was inscribed and sent by Zola on the very day Bauër’s review appeared in L’Écho de Paris, 6 April 1886. The son of Alexandre Dumas père and Anna Bauër, a German woman of Jewish origins married to an Austrian commercial agent in Paris, Bauër had a colourful life: a Communard, exiled for seven years to New Caledonia, he returned to France to become a prominent theatre critic, first at Le Réveil, then at L’Écho de Paris.
Bauër’s review followed that of Edmond Lepelletier (published in the same paper a day earlier), and was both enthusiastic and perceptive. He hailed L’Œuvre as “one of the two or three works that will matter in our age,” and praised Zola for capturing an artistic passion hitherto unexplored in literature: “While sexual appetite in its many forms has been described by masters, the artist’s love for his art had not yet found its analyst”. For Bauër, L’Œuvre was nothing less than “the novel of art,” and he saw Zola’s depiction of artistic torment as applicable to all creators – those tormented by an ideal they perceive but cannot fully realise. “What could the average bourgeois understand of this?” he asked. “In contrast, every man of letters can cry out: ‘This is my book’”. He concluded: “welcome to one of the century’s books – Zola’s masterpiece”.
Zola read the review the day it appeared and immediately responded by sending this copy of the book along with a letter. In it, he describes Bauër’s piece as “a cry of enthusiasm that goes straight to my heart”. He accepts the critic’s view that the book is for a cultured few, acknowledging: “I knew full well that the book was doomed in advance to bourgeois scorn”. But he adds, “Who cares? Isn’t an article like yours enough to make one proud to be understood and loved?”.
Bauër would go on to support Zola not only as a literary figure but also politically, notably championing J’accuse!, Zola’s inflammatory open letter in response to the events of the Dreyfus affair.
See Halstead, “The art of ruining a friendship: Zola, Cézanne and L’Œuvre”, BL, online; Jensen, “Book Find: Understanding France’s scandalous Dreyfus Affair through the friendship and correspondence of two Jewish outsiders”, University of Virginia Library, online.
The text of the letter runs as follows:
Paris 6 avril 86
Mon cher confrère,
Je lis votre article, et ce cri d’enthousiasme me va profondément au cœur. Vous l’avez vien dit, c’est pour nom tous, c’est pour moi, que j’ai écrit “l’Œuvre”, sentant bien que le livre était condamné à l’avance aux dédains bourgeois. Mais qu’importe! Ne suffit-il par d’un article comme le vôtre pour être fier d’être compris et aimé? Merci, merci, et bien cordialement à vous.
Emile Zola
#2121879