ola's natural talent made for his immortality was spoiled
by a liking for dirty realism and his filthy language. Literature
cannot use such expressions of which even peasants are ashamed. The
real truth, if the question is about vicious people, can be attained
by other means, by probable reproduction of the state of their souls,
thoughts, deeds, finally by the run of their conversation, but not by
verbal quotation of their swearings and most horrid words. As in the
choice of pictures, so in the choice of expression, exist certain
measures, pointed at by reason and good taste. Zola overstepped it
to such a degree ("La Terre") to which nobody yet dared to approach.
Monsters are killed because they are monsters. A book which is the
cause of disgust must be abandoned. It is the natural order of
things. From old production as of universal literature survive the
forgetfulness of the rough productions, destined to excite laughter
(Aristophanes, Rabelais, etc.), or lascivious things, but written
with an elegance (Boccaccio). Not one book written in order to excite
nausea outlived. Zola, for the sake of the renown caused by his works,
for the sake of the scandal produced by every one of his volumes,
killed his future. On account of that happened a strange thing: it
happened that he, a man writing according to a conceived plan, writing
with deliberation, cold and possessing his subjects as very few
writers are, created good things only when he had the least
opportunity to realize his plans, doctrines, means,--in a word, when
he dominated the subject the least and was dominated by the subject
most.

Such was the case in "Germinal" and "La Debacle." The immensity of
socialism and the immensity of the war simply crushed Zola with all
his mental apparatus. His doctrines became very small in the presence
of such dimensions, and hardly any one hears of them in the noise of
the deluge, overflowing the mine and in the thundering of Prussian
cannons; only talent remained. Therefore in both those books there are
pages worthy of Dante. Quite a different thing happened with "Docteur
Pascal." Being the last volume of the cycle, it was bound to be the
last deduction, from the whole work the synthesis of the doctrine, the
belfry of the whole building. Consequently in this volume Zola speaks
more about doctrine than in any other previous volume; as the doctrine
is bad, wicked, and false, therefore "Docteur Pascal" is the worst and
most tedious