Problema Zolja vo Francii [23-04-1932] - [D107]

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Article by Eichengolts Problema Zolya vo Francii [The Zola issue in France].
On the recent biographies of Zola published by Barbusse (1932) and Jouvenel (1931), the Soviet critic wrote: In his magazine “Monde”, Barbusse repeatedly spoke of Zola’s socialism. Critic Eichengolts says it is a vision that already developed in France from ’28-’29: “Even the openly bourgeois literary school of ‘populism’, led by L. Lemonnier and A. Thérive, adapting itself to ‘democracy’, turns its gaze to Zola, citing the fact that he ‘portrays the little people’. And the ‘Literary Society of the Friends of Emile Zola’ became the centre of Zola’s propaganda in the circles of the bourgeois ‘left-wing bloc’. Despite the fact that the society’s statutes emphasise that ‘all discussions and discourses of a political nature are strictly forbidden’, the speeches printed in the society’s ‘Bulletin’ have a certain political colouring and mainly glorify pro-Dreyfus Zola, referring to Zola as ‘prophet’, ‘apostle’, ‘visionary’, ‘mountain of the gospel’, where they call for the rapprochement of classes.” In reality, Eichengolts points out, both critics rather emphasise Zola’s “reformism”, which yes, he was on the side of the weak and defeated and showed the distortions of capitalism, but at the same time he thought it was essential with this to ‘frighten’ the bourgeoisie in order to prevent the revolution from happening.