Rupert Christiansen's Tales of the New Babylon
Zola's La Debacle, first planned in 1868, was the penultimate chapter in Les Rougon-Macquart. Warfare was something Zola had always meant to give full play in Les Rougon-Macquart, and his 1868 scheme had provided for "a novel that will have the military world as its framework...; an episode in [Napoleon III's] Italian campaign." But after the calamitous Franco-Prussian War, this installment acquired special significance. What had originally been envisaged as one tale among others came to be seen as the denouncement of the entire saga. Zola decided almost immediately to recount in La Debacle not only the virtual annihilation of half the Army of the Rhine but the bungled opportunities, political maneuvers, and missed cues that brought about this disaster.The two-month Paris Commune ensued when the Republicans of Paris staged a bloodless revolution and proclaimed the establishment of the Third Republic shortly after this fall of the Loius Napoleon. As far as Marx was concerned, he felt that at the Commune was merely "the rising of a city under exceptional conditions and its majority was in no wise socialist nor could it be." However Marx emphasised that its "great social measure...was its own existence."
Rupert Christiansen's Tales of the New Babylon would certainly support Zola's theory, as it paints a picture of Paris which envisages all of the above in a society which seems thirsty for entertainment, and in which thrives immorality and dissolution: During the furore of the Commune in the final section of La Debacle, the burning of Paris is seen as a sacrificial fire. In spite of the death of Maurice, the vision of a nation about to be reborn gives Zola a hopeful note on which to end his novel, and it becomes clear that his whole purpose has been to lead up to this climax. On the last page he gives Jean's reflections as he looks out over the smoking city. * Karl Marx-Isaiah Berlin-Harper Collins, 1995
Some common words found in the essay are:
La Debacle, English French, Communist Manifesto, Maurice Jean, France France, Loius Napoleon, Zola Prussian, Tales Babylon, Paris Commune, Jean Maurice, la debacle, paris commune, own existence, les rougon-macquart, franco-prussian war, emile zola-f, loius napoleon, 1996 *, measures commune,
Approximate Word count = 2526
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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