(Re-reading) His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) by Émile Zola, translated by Brian Nelson

I have been re-reading His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) because I have a lovely new OUP edition, translated by Brian Nelson.  I’m not going to review the novel again because I’ve already reviewed the Vizetelly translation as part of my Zola Project to read the entire Rougon-Marquet series, but I do want to comment about why it’s so much more enjoyable to read a new edition than a freebie from Project Gutenberg.

I admire the whole concept of Project Gutenberg, and I’ve read plenty of their titles that I couldn’t otherwise source. The wonderful team of volunteers at PG have saved many titles from oblivion, and these titles are free, which makes them accessible to all budgets. But there are limitations with some titles, and the Vizetelly translations of Zola’s novels are particularly problematic…

I call them Vizetelly translations, but actually, Vizetelly was the publisher and although Brian Nelson says in his Translator’s Note that His Excellency was translated by Henry Vizetelly’s son Ernest in 1897, Wikipedia says that it’s not known who the translator was. That’s probably just because WP hasn’t caught up with the scholarship, but it is true that Gutenberg editions sometimes don’t #NameTheTranslator because translators weren’t acknowledged in the original editions. In the case of Zola, it may be that anonymity was desired, perhaps by a lady translator, because Zola was considered salacious and as Vizetelly learned to his cost, it wasn’t just risky for a lady’s reputation… there were worse consequences than that.

Henry Vizetelly (1820-94) was fined and imprisoned for three months in 1889 over the publication of La Terre, which was considered offensive. Subsequent editions of all of Zola’s novels were heavily edited by his son Ernest Vizetelly (1853-1922) in order to avoid further prosecutions. (Source: The Books of Émile Zola)

In the case of His Excellency the 1897 translation is after Henry’s gaol term, so it falls into the category of ‘heavily edited’.

So it’s not just that contemporary readers of Vizetelly have to adjust to reading a 19th century English version of 19th century French. It’s also that the novels were self-censored, as it were. Sometimes this prudishness doesn’t much matter. The missing details of Clorinde in scandalous (un)dress holding court to a coterie of admiring men while an artist paints her as Diana the Huntress, are hardly significant. OTOH readers would understand something completely different about a lovers’ relationship from Nelson’s use of the word ‘enslavement’ when referring to a woman wearing a dog collar and a badge inscribed with ‘I belong to my master,’ compared to Vizetelly’s coy ‘servitude’. Even though I read the Vizetelly back in 2014, I became quite adept at identifying text that had been cut or sanitised. ‘I bet that’s not in Vizetelly!’, I found myself saying, and each time I was right.

But also, there are details which make no sense to a modern reader without explanatory notes. For example, when Rougon is being told about a plot to assassinate the emperor, his informant suddenly says:

‘It’s planned for tomorrow night… They aim to assassinate Badinguet outside the Opera, as he is going in.’ (p.185)

Huh? thinks the modern Australian reader, who is this new character Badinguet and what has he got to do with anything? The Gutenberg edition on my Kindle leaves me none the wiser, but Brian Nelson’s Explanatory Notes helpfully explain that Badinguet was a derisive nickname for the Emperor. Louis-Napoleon had made two unsuccessful attempts at a coup before his triumphant third attempt, and was imprisoned after the second one. He escaped in disguise as a labourer by name of Badinguet. It’s not just a clever bit of French history thrown in at random: Zola is showing that this Emperor is still widely held in contempt.

I don’t often re-read books but this new translation based on the original French was a real treat. Extra features of this edition which enhanced my reading so much compared to the Kindle edition of the Vizetelly translation, include an Introduction; the Translator’s notes; a Bibliography, a Chronology of Zola’s life, and a Family Tree of the Rougon-Macquart, and Explanatory Notes.

PS I should add that there was a 1958 translation by Alec Brown for Elek Books, but my experience with Brown’s translation of La Bête Humaine was that it was utterly unreadable so my advice is to avoid Brown’s translations at all cost.

Author: Émile Zola
Title: His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon)
A new translation by Brian Nelson
Publisher: Oxford World’s Classics, OUP (Oxford University Press), 2018, first published in 1876, 333 pages (not including the Explanatory Notes)
ISBN: 9780198748250
Review copy courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Available from Fishpond: His Excellency Eugene Rougon (Oxford World’s Classics) and from OUP. (Not the easiest site to navigate to find the rest of the Zolas, but if (from the Oxford World’s Classics home page) you click on Show More, and then Click on View All Titles, and then choose search ‘from Z to A’ all the Zolas in OUP editions come up, one after the other.)

Cross-posted at ANZ LitLovers.

‘Son Excellence Eugène Rougon’ Cover Images

Son Excellence Eugène Rougon was first published in 1876 and has been translated as His Excellency and His Excellency Eugène Rougon.

For images of other covers please look on the Images page.

His Excellency Eugene Rougon, by Emile Zola, Translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

His Excellency Eugene Rougon (1876) is the sixth published novel of the Rougon-Macquart series, but the second one to read if you follow the suggested order. It’s the riveting story of Eugène Rougon, the eldest son of Pierre and Félicité Rougon who are first introduced to the reader in The Fortune of the Rougons. (See my thoughts about it here). In The Fortune of the Rougons Eugene makes a late appearance as a cunning manipulator who was involved in the 1851 coup d’état that put Napoleon III on the throne, and by providing his parents with crucial information he enabled them to establish power in the (fictional) town of Plassans. This sets the Rougons up to be the rich and successful side of the family, in contrast to the Macquarts who are on their way to poverty, debauchery and drunkenness.

His Excellency Eugene Rougon is a superb study of political power – how it is won and lost, and how it corrupts. I would like to recommend it as compulsory reading for all aspiring politicians, but alas, a recent translation seems not to be available and this Vizetelly translation is very dated in style. It also omits passages here and there because of prevailing Victorian sensibilities. Reading this book with the group at GoodReads, we soon found examples where allusions to cleavage and other ‘racy’ passages had been self-censored by Vizetelly. Lest we judge him harshly, we should remember that

Henry Vizetelly (1820-94) was fined and imprisoned for three months in 1889 over the publication of La Terre, which was considered offensive. Subsequent editions of all of Zola’s novels were heavily edited by his son Ernest Vizetelly (1853-1922) in order to avoid further prosecutions. (Source: The Books of Émile Zola)

So even though the later publications were more heavily edited than the earlier ones, it would seem that Vizetelly was prudent to be a bit coy even in the novels published before 1889.

The story begins when Rougon has offended Napoleon III (because of an inheritance claim that involves a relative of the Empress), and he’s on the outer. This does not stop his cronies from harassing him night and day over various projects all of which involve graft and corruption to a greater or lesser extent, and they are aghast when he has to resign. Madame Correur speaks for them all when she says ‘It is necessary that you should be everything so that we may be something’.

BEWARE: SPOILERS

If he’s feeling a bit downcast about this change in his fortunes he is soon distracted by the arrival of Mademoiselle Clorinde Balbi, a young lady of somewhat obscure antecedents and about whom many rumours circulate. Rougon doesn’t care: she cheers him up. She needs to: by the time of the lavish Imperial Christening all the promises he has made to his pals have fallen through. But, attracted by her eccentricity and her beauty, he makes the grave mistake of underestimating her. She is not like other women: she doesn’t care much about her appearance, she’s as interested in power as he is. He makes an even more serious mistake when he declines to marry her, and he compounds his error by failing to realisethat she is his ally for her own purposes.

Zola modelled his story closely on real events, and when Rougon is reinstated, much to the delight of the hangers-on, he becomes Napoleon’s hatchet man, imposing harsh measures to repress any dissent and ruthlessly purging potential opposition. He becomes a ‘synonym for stern repression, the refusal of all liberties’ and he relishes every aspect of his power to exile, deport, imprison, censor the press and destroy careers. His arrogance is breath-taking: he summons important people to his office and then keeps them waiting for hours, and he ‘revels in his godlike powers’.

The whole country trembled in the terror which like a black storm cloud rolled forth from the room with the green velvet curtains where Rougon laughed aloud while stretching his arms.

For Rougon, this power is what matters:

He loved power for its own sake, without any hankering for riches and honours. Very ignorant, and of little skill in things which were not connected with the management of men, it was only his keen craving for power that elevated him to a position of responsibility. The ambition of raising himself above the crowd, which seemed to him to be composed of fools and knaves, and of leading and driving men by sheer force, developed most energetic skill and cunning in his heavy nature. He believed only in himself, took his convictions for reasons, and held everything subordinate to the increase of his personal influence. Addicted to no vice, he yet rebelled as at some secret orgy in the idea of wielding supreme power.

He surrounds himself with his intimate associates, and distributes honours such as the Legion of Honour to his friends. Kahn gets his dodgy railway line; the Charbonnels win their suit, and there are literally ‘jobs for the boys’ including a completely unqualified and bone-idle son of Jobelin. Under pressure to maintain his power-base Rougon bestows favours through corruptions large and small, and his hubris leads him to reject the Emperor’s warning that he’s going too far. Rougon’s friends are not just a drain on his energy but also the source of his power, and he cannot afford to lose their support: he has to deliver on the promises he makes or lose everything.

In every organisation and institution, there are people who have power, either de jure (as of right, through holding some formal position) or de facto (which is exercised through the persuasive power of personality). What Zola shows in the contrasting figures of Rougon and Clotilde is just how powerful de facto power could be, even when wielded by a woman. The catalyst for Rougon’s climb to de jure power from a position of obscurity is catastrophe (the coup d’état and the failed assassination attempt), and his success derives from his ability to be in the right place at the right time and choosing the right side to be on. But Clotilde, whose origins are not merely obscure but also dubious, wields power on the sly. She gets the ear of the Empress, and she makes her way into the Emperor’s bedroom, triumphantly proclaiming it by wearing a black velvet ‘dog-collar’ bearing the words ‘I belong to my master’. (This seems a bit cringe-worthy, but hey, maybe you had to be there to perceive debasement as an assertion of power?)

Clotilde gets her revenge in a wonderful scene at a charity bazaar where all the characters assemble to support the Empress’s favourite charity. There’s some splendid symbolism in this chapter, Clotilde manning the drinks booth like a common waitress; and the Crown Prince trundling past in a carriage as the dejected Rougon goes for a walk after his downfall. (The Prince never got to take the crown because the monarchy was abolished).

But as we have seen so often in Australian politics, politicians reinvent themselves, and despite what appears to be a disastrous banishment to the back benches, they manage to ‘rehabilitate’ themselves and bounce back into the top job. Zola knew this: Rougon does it too!

Cross-posted at ANZ LitLovers

Lisa Hill, January 2014

Author: Emile Zola
Title: His Excellency Eugène Rougon, (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon) in The Complete Works of Emile Zola (Illustrated)
Translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
Publisher: Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition, 2012.
ISBN: 9788074840357
Source: Personal copy.

Exceptional Excerpts: His Excellency Eugene Rougon, by Emile Zola, translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

I was reading His Excellency Eugène Rougon, by Émile Zola, (No #2 in the Rougon-Macquart cycle and part of my Zola project) when I came across this passage in Chapter 9.  The repression that Rougon exacts in the name of the Emperor and the lust for power at any price made me think of Stalin …

Outside, France was hushed in fear. The Emperor, in summoning Rougon to power, had been desirous of making examples. He knew the great man’s iron hand, and had said to him on the morning after the attempt on his life, with all the anger of one who has just escaped assassination, ‘No moderation, mind! They must be made to fear you.’ He had just armed him, too, with that terrible Law of General Safety, which authorised the confinement in Algeria or the expulsion from the empire of anyone who might be convicted of a poli­tical offence. Although no single Frenchman had taken part in the crime of the Rue Le Peletier, the Republicans were about to be hunted down and transported; there was to be a general sweeping away of the ten thousand ‘suspects’ who had been passed over at the time of the coup d’état. There were rumours of contemplated action by the revolutionary party. The authorities were said to have made a seizure of weapons and treasonable documents. Already in the middle of March, three hundred and eighty persons had been shipped at Toulon for Algeria, and now every week a fresh contingent was sent off. The whole country trembled in the terror which like a black storm cloud rolled forth from the room with the green velvet curtains where Rougon laughed aloud while stretching his arms.

The great man had never before tasted such complete contentment. He felt well and strong, and was putting on flesh. Health had come back to him with his return to power. When he walked about the room he dug his heels into the carpet, as though he wanted his heavy tread to resound throughout France. He would have liked to shake the country by merely putting his empty glass down on the side-table or casting aside his pen. It delighted him to be a source of fear, to forge thunderbolts amidst the smiling grati­fication of his friends, and to crush a whole nation with his swollen parvenu fists. In one of his circulars he had written: ‘It is for the good to feel confidence, and for the wicked only to tremble.’ He revelled in playing this part of a divinity, damning some, and saving others. He was filled with mighty pride; his idolatry of his own strength and intelligence was becoming a real religion with him.

Among the new men who had sprung up with the Second Empire, Rougon had long been known as a partisan of strong government. His name was a synonym for stern repression, the refusal of all liberties; despotic rule, in fact. All knew therefore what they had to expect when they saw him called to office. To his intimate friends, however, Rougon un­bosomed himself. He did not, he said, so much hold opinions as feel a craving for power. Power had too much attraction for him, and was too essential to his appetite for him to refuse it, whatever the conditions on which it might be offered to him.

To rule, to set his foot on the neck of the crowd, was his first and immediate ambition; the rest was merely secondary matter to which he could easily accommodate himself. The one thing which he really wanted was to be chief. It so hap­pened, however, that the circumstances under which he was now returning to power made his success very pleasant. The Emperor had given him complete liberty of action, and he was at last in a position to realise his old dream of driving the multitude with a whip like a herd of cattle. Nothing filled him with greater satisfaction than to know that he was feared and disliked. And sometimes when his friends told him that he was a tyrant, he smiled, and said with deep meaning: ‘If I should become a liberal some day, people will say that I have changed.’ Rougon’s very greatest joy was to stand triumphant amidst those friends of his. He forgot France and the obsequious functionaries and the crowd of petitioners who besieged his doors, to regale himself with the perpetual admiration of his ten or twelve intimate associates. His office was open to them at any hour, he allowed them to make it a home, to take possession of his chairs, and even of his desk itself; he told them that it was a pleasure to have them always about him like a pack of faithful dogs.

from His Excellency Eugène Rougon, by Émile Zola, in the Complete Works of  Émile Zola (Illustrated) (Kindle Locations 64059-64091). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

Instructive, n’est-ce pas?