Biography for
Émile Zola More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

2 April 1840, Paris, France

Date of Death

28 September 1902, Paris, France (asphyxiation)

Birth Name

Émile-Édouard-Charles-Antoine Zola

Mini Biography

Émile Zola was born on April 2, 1840, in Paris, France. His father was an Italian engineer. Young Zola studied at the Collége Bourbon in Provence, where his schoolmate and friend was Paul Cezanne. In 1858 Zola returned to Paris and became a student at the Lycée Saint-Louis, from which he graduated in 1862. After working at clerical jobs, he began to write a literary column for a Parisian newspaper. Zola's main literary work was 'Les Rougon-Macquart', a monumental cycle of twenty novels about Parisian society during the French Second Empire under Napoleon III and after the Franco-Prussian War.

Zola was the founder of the Naturalist movement in 19th century literature. His medicinal approach in scrupulous description of the lives of ordinary people was based on the contemporary theory of hereditary determinism, which he used to demonstrate how genetic and environmental factors influence human behavior. His most notable novels: 'L'assommoir' (1877), 'Nana' (1880), and 'Germinal' (1885) displayed Zola's concerns of both scientific and artistic nature, as well as his stances on the social reform. His life in the Parisian intellectual elite was that of a statesman and a bon vivant. He lived in a villa in Medan on the Seine and had a home in Paris. He was a political apprentice and follower of Victor Hugo in his stand against the corrupt monarchy of Napoleon III. Zola was among the strongest proponents of the Third Republic and was elected to the Legion of Honour. At the same time he was an important figure in the Parisian cultural milieu. He entered a circle of realist writers such as Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev, and Gustave Flaubert, his literary mentor and a close friend. After his novels brought him critical and financial success, Zola himself became surrounded by such followers as Guy de Maupassant and Paul Alexis among others.

Zola shook the Parisian art world with his novel 'L'Oevre' (The Masterpiece 1886). Its protagonist, named Claude Lantier, was actually an amalgam of several artists including Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet, and Claude Monet. Zola also portrayed himself and his friend and mentor Gustave Flaubert. However, the personality and artistic career of painter Paul Cezanne was shown with a closer resemblance, especially when it came to intimate personal characteristics. Zola and Cezanne were schoolmates and close friends from their childhood, which gave the writer a wealth of material for the novel. Cezanne's reticent personality, his self-doubt, his artistic anxieties, and his more hidden sexual anxieties, all came out in Zola's narrative. He revealed Cezanne's "passion for the physical beauty of women, and insane love for nudity desired but never possessed", his almost misogynistic perception of the "satanic female beauty", which affected his sexuality, and sublimated in his brush-strokes that he laid on his paintings. He showed Cezanne's work on his numerous sketches of nudes and impressionistic bathers as an outlet to artist's masculinity. He also hinted on Cezanne's countless depictions of apples as a sublimation and displacement of the artist's erotic interests. Zola used Cezanne's inner struggles of artistic and sexual nature and the interdependence of his sexual and artistic anxiety, to show some intricate parts of an eternal conundrum where lies one of the mysterious sources of creativity. In Zola's novel the artist fails to depict a perfectly beautiful nude, his wife has a baby that has a disfigured head and dies, then artist presents a painting of his dead child to the Salon, then artist commits suicide. In real life Cezanne, as a highly sensitive and refined individual, took Zola's novel too personally. The book ended their life-long friendship. Even the wise and friendly comments by Claude Monet and Camille Pisarro failed to help their reconciliation. Zola's powerful literary image had formed a lasting perception of Cezanne among his fellow artists, as well as among critics and public. Paul Cezanne fled from the Parisian art world into a self-imposed isolation.

Émile Zola risked his career in February of 1898, when he defended Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was wrongfully placed in jail. Zola accused the French government of anti-Semitism in an open letter to Felix Faure, the President of France. Zola's 'J'Accuse' was published on the front-page of the Paris daily, L'Aurore. Zola declared that conviction of Alfred Dreyfus was based on false accusations of espionage and was a misrepresentation of justice. Zola was brought to trial for libel for publishing his 'L'Accuse', and was convicted two weeks later, sentenced to jail, and removed from the Legion of Honour. Zola managed to escape to England. He returned during the collapse of the government and continued defending Alfred Dreyfus. France became deeply divided by the case, known as the Dreyfus affair. Zola stood together with the more liberal commercial society opposite the reactionary army and church. Zola's open letter formed a major turning point in the Dreyfus affair. The case was reopened and captain Alfred Dreyfus was acquitted, then convicted again, but was ultimately freed and completely exonerated by the French Supreme Court.

Zola's strange and tragic death of a carbon monoxide poisoning was caused by a stopped chimney and remained an unresolved mystery. Zola's enemies were blamed, but nothing was proved. He died on September 29, 1902, in Paris, and was initially laid to rest in the Cimetiere de Montmartre in Paris. On June 4, 1908, Zola's remains were laid to rest in the Pantheon in Paris, France.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Shelokhonov

Spouse

Alexandrine-Gabrielle Meley

(31 May 1870 - 28 September 1902) (his death)

Trivia

Founder of the Naturalist Movement.

Was an only child.

Was a friend of Paul Cézanne while boarding at the Collège Bourbon at Aix. Won a drawing prize over Cézanne while there.

Failed his baccalaureate twice in 1859.

Failed his entrance exam to L'École des Beaux-Arts in 1861.

Had a daughter, Denise (b. Sept. 20, 1889), with his mistress, Jeanne Rozerot. And also a son, Jacques (born in 1891).

Pictured on a 0.46e postage stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary year of his death.

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