Why was Émile Zola refused 25 instances on the French Academy? | EUROtoday

This letter, which could have been a simple administrative detail, becomes a symbol. For academicians, this letter is not only clumsy, it is arrogant. She reveals a man who does not understand – or worse, who refuses to understand – the tacit rules governing this venerable assembly. Some, like Pierre Loti, compete with flattery and curvings in their letters of application. Others, like Anatole France, adopt a measured tone, almost servile. But Zola refuses to play this game.

His difficulty is not limited to his tone. It is her work herself that poses a problem. The French Academy, at the end of the 19th century^e century, is dominated by conservatives, men of the world, parnassian poets and worldly playwrights. The latter despise naturalism, this literary current that Zola brilliantly embodies. For them, the novels of Zola, with their raw descriptions of misery, sexuality and shallows, are vulgar, unworthy of “nice literature”.

Zola, perpetuity candidate

Ernest Renan, influential academicianpublicly admits that he has never read Zola. This contempt is shared by a large part of the immortals, who refuse to see naturalism enter their august assembly. Zola, however, is not alone. He benefits from the support of the “tutorial left”, a small group of progressive writers, including Alexandre Dumas fils, Ludovic Halévy and François Coppée. These men, themselves writers, see in Zola a talented colleague, a man who deserves his place at the Academy. But their influence is limited. At each election, Zola is beaten, often by more consensual candidates, such as Pierre Loti or Anatole France, writers deemed less subversive.

Zola’s applications do not go unnoticed. Each failure is widely commented in the press, which revels in this struggle between the writer and the institution. Zola himself plays the media game. He declared in a letter to Figaro : “As lengthy as there’s a French academy, I have to be. »»