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Austin Macauley Publishers - Nancy Molavi

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151 pages

English

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Emile Zola (1840-1902), prominent leader of French Naturalism in novels and drama, was also an environmentalist, way ahead of his time. He had a great love and respect for animals of all kinds and shapes. Throughout this book, you will discover his love from the smallest creatures: ants, spiders, bugs and frogs, bats and rats, all the way to birds, rabbits, cats, dogs, donkeys, cows and bulls, horses, and even zoo lions. The stories, which are partly fictional but mostly realistic, clearly show his love of and admiration for most animals. In the process of telling them, he inter-mingled some humorous episodes. Who wouldn't laugh at the description of Gedeon, his donkey, getting drunk after savoring a bucket of red wine and raising havoc in his stable? And who wouldn't cry at the death of a dear pet? The stories in this book have been gathered after reading his complete works (fifteen volumes of more than 18,000 pages of Emile Zola: Oeuvres Completes, edited by Henri Mitterand, the most eminent scholar of Zola's works, professor emeritus at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Columbia University in New York City, in the 'Cercle du Livre Precieux' edition).

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	23 octobre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528942874
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0175€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Emile Zola’s Ark
A Lesson in Tolerance and Universal Brotherhood
Nancy Molavi
Austin Macauley Publishers
2018-10-23
Emile Zola’s Ark About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © In Memory Of Preface Chapter I Love of Animals How to Protect Universal Life from Suffering Speech at the Annual Session of the Society for the Protection of Animals What Is Love for Animals? Drifting Along in a Canoe And an Ode to Nature: Le Paradou Chapter II Of Cats and Dogs White Paws, the Grateful Dog A Stray Dog’s Day My Dog Fanfan Sir Hector Pinpin Bertrand Another Bertrand Voriau, the Village Dog Mathieu the Dog and Minouche the Cat Loulou Nero, the Emperor’s Dog Bijou Lulu Catherine and Françoise The Old Cat Cats’ Paradise Minouche Moumou Mouton The Fat Red Cat François, the Black and White Spotted Cat Chapter III Our Feathered Friends Blackbirds Finches Finches in the Snow Of Birds and June Bugs Warblers Bird Nests Different Parks, Different Birds… The Red Cockerel Alexander, the Red Rooster Geese and Company La Trouille’s Geese Tata the Parakeet The Little Black Hen The Sad Fate of a Goose The Róccolo The Finch Competition Hunting Memories Song Thrushes and Hares Chapter IV Small Critters So Speak the Woods Skinny-Dipping Universal Life Insects Of Bats and Rats… A Ratty Vision Chapter V Horses and Donkeys, Our Faithful Companions The Old Horse Balthazar Monarque Bonhomme Coalmine Horses: The Yellow Horse Cast of Characters: Bataille and Trompette: The Story of Two Friends Combat Horses: Prosper and Zephir Zephir’s Death And Yet More Horses… A Recurring Vision Emperor Napoleon III on Horseback La Lison, the Mechanized Filly The Snow Storm Gideon the Donkey The Little Gray Donkey Chapter VI Farm Animals Désirée’s Barnyard Once There Was a Piglet Named Mathieu The Tide of Life Of Cows and Bulls: César and Coliche Coliche is Pregnant… Pologne, the Doe Rabbit Lost in Flood Waters Chapter VII Wild Animals Inside the Wild Animals Cage A Model School Bibliography Articles Books
About the Author
Nancy Molavi was born in Switzerland. She spent her childhood in Lugano, Monaco, and Madagascar. She was bilingual French-Italian, studied Latin and Greek in high-school, and graduated from the Lycée of Monaco. She studied at the School of Translation and Interpretation in Geneva, Switzerland, learned English and some Farsi before meeting her future husband. They were married in Columbia, Missouri, where they both attended the University of Missouri. They live in Columbia; they have two children and two grandchildren.
She earned her PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures (French and Spanish). Besides her love of languages and her interest in translation, she developed a profound admiration for Émile Zola’s work; she lectured on the author’s novels and plays at Stephen’s College of Columbia and at the University of Missouri, Columbia. After she retired in 2011, she devoted her attention to Zola, searching for all the sketches and portraits of animals scattered throughout his complete works, and translated them into English.
Dedication
To my husband, who has been so patient with me and so helpful with his suggestions.
Copyright Information ©
Nancy Molavi (2018)
The right of Nancy Molavi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788483025 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781788483032 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528942874 (E-Book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2018)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd™
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
In Memory Of
Snow White, our rabbit; Tweetie, the parakeet; our dog, Babri; Sweetie Pie, with his cohort of thirty social and almost civilized raccoons; and our three wonderful cats: Sam the Cat (Samantha), queen of the house; Maui the Pacifist; and Tiger the Hunter, who loved to bring his catch to the front door.

ZOLA’S ARK
“Why are all animals a part of my family, like all men, as much as men?” 1

Œuvres Complètes, Cercle du Livre Précieux XIV, 737. ↩︎
Preface
I wrote ZOLA’S ARK because of my profound admiration for one of the greatest French writers of the 19 th century and also, because I thought an important aspect of his creation had not been developed enough: his love for animals and his portrayals of them. Émile Zola’s daughter Denise Le Blond-Zola aroused my curiosity when describing her father’s personality and the world of animals he surrounded himself with, whether in Paris or in Médan, in her book Émile Zola raconté par sa fille , published in 1931. Zola had many pets: cats, dogs, ducks, roosters, rabbits, piglets, even a little mouse that hid in his waste basket in London, a horse named Bonhomme, and a cow named Coliche. His property of Médan included a small island in the Seine, where most of them lived. If one died, he was disconsolate and cried for days. When in exile in London, during the Dreyfus affair, he constantly thought about the pets he had left behind and deeply suffered from the separation. 1
I began researching all the animal vignettes he scattered throughout his works and translated them into English, for the enjoyment of readers who do not speak French. Who can forget the tender friendship of the two horses of Germinal , Bataille and Trompette, or the jovial temper of the donkey Gédéon enjoying his barrel of wine, the coquettishness of female cats, the faithfulness and good nature of dogs, the loving care of a family of birds, the cruel stupidity of hens, or the military drill of a flock of geese?
What strikes one the most, when reading Zola’s works – novels, letters, critical essays, and journalistic articles – is his fundamental goodness, his compassion, and his love of justice and truth, which he extended to the animal world; he considered it to be one of the many wondrous facets of our universe. His humor and good heartedness permeate his descriptions and portrayals, contrary to the old-fashioned and trite opinion that the author of the Rougon-Macquart only delved into putrid or scandalous matters and had a morose, hypochondriac character.
Zola never fails to plea for justice and kindness toward our ‘brothers and sisters’ 2 – the animals. We should love them, no matter how small, ugly, deformed, or unimportant they may seem to us. For, after all, they live, grow old, and die like us; they express pain and sadness through their eyes, even their tears, and their body motions. All of us, humans, animals, and plants, are linked to each other on this earth for some kind of general and all-inclusive purpose. We live off each other, we depend on each other; we would be desperately lonely without each other. Animals’ natural needs, their instincts, their simplistic ‘philosophy of life’, their unimpeded love affairs, their basic honesty are in a sense a moral compass in our overcomplicated lives. As for insects and bugs, Zola was intrigued by their social organization and disciplined work ethics toward a common goal. When asked which animals he preferred, he answered, “All of them.” 3
Like his most famous predecessors, whom he deeply admired back in his college years and thereafter – the Greek fabulist Aesop, the comic playwright Aristophanes ( The Wasps, The Birds, The Frogs ) and mostly Jean de La Fontaine, the 17 th century author of Fables and naughty short stories, Contes et Nouvelles – Zola makes extensive use of animal physiognomic features and expressions to give a human voice to them. Physiognomy was a branch of science, already mentioned in 1623 by French novelist Charles Sorel, in his ‘ Francion ’, 4 that became very important during the 19 th century; so were, of course, Darwin’s theories on the origin of species and hereditary features, which Zola read in translation, and Dr. Prosper Lucas’s voluminous ‘ Philosophical and Psychological Treatise on Natural Heredity ’ 5 from which he drew the bulk of his ideas in creating the characters of the Rougon-Macquart families. As a ‘naturalist’, Zola never failed to base his ideas on the minute observation of nature grounded in scientific data and experiments. In this, he was a disciple of Michelet whose work he read with much admiration. 6
If Zola were alive today, he would be an impassioned environmentalist and conservationist. His love of animals began at an early age: he had a female monkey and wouldn’t eat his breakfast unless his cat shared it with him. 7 Later on while in college, he and his best friends, Paul Cézanne and Jean-Baptistin Baille, 8 would walk for hours through the olive groves and rocky lands of lower Provence then rest under the shade of trees along the River Arc. As they lay on the warm sand and listened to the fish jump, the frogs croak, the birds tweet, the insects buzz, and the cicadas shrill their drone during summer evenings, they discussed all kinds of new ideas, politics, history, science, poetry, literature and painting, sexual matters, and women. Later in his life, Zola became an avid and dedicated long-distance biker, which allowed him to observe nature in all its splendor and seasonal changes, and to listen to birds and other critters to his heart’s content.
He often said that he wished to embrace the whole universe in its reality, and he dreamed of a humanity of brothers and sisters across all established lines. He hated hypocrisy and dogmas. Thanks to his acute observation and perception of the world surrounding him, thanks to his ‘sympathy’ understood in the original ancient Gr