Jean Gourdon's Four Days

By Emile Zola

1874

First Published

3.83

Average Rating

Number of Pages

2H55M

Audio Length

"The Four Days of Jean Gourdon" (Les Quatre Journees de Jean Gourdon; 1874, in: Nouveaux Contes a Ninon) deserves to rank among the very best things to which Zola has signed his name. It is a study of four typical days in the life of a Proven al peasant of the better sort, told by the man himself... —- In the first of these it is "Spring" Jean Gourdon is eighteen years of age, and he steals away from the house of his uncle Lazare, a country priest, that he may meet his coy sweetheart Babet by the waters of the broad Durance... Next follows a day in "Summer," five years later; Jean, as a soldier in the Italian war, goes through the horrors of a battle and is wounded. This episode, which has something in common with the "Sevastopol" of Tolstoy, is exceedingly ingenious in its observation of the sentiments of a common man under fire... The "Autumn" of the story occurs fifteen years later. Jean and Babet have now long been married. They are rich, healthy, devoted to one another, respected by all their neighbours; but there is a single happiness lacking - they have no child. Only now, when the corn and the grapes are ripe, this gift also is to be theirs... The optimistic tone has hitherto been so consistently preserved, that one must almost resent the tragedy of the fourth day. This is eighteen years later, on a Winter's night: The river Durance rises in spate... —- It is impossible to give an impression of the charm and romantic sweetness of this little masterpiece. It raises many curious reflections to consider that this exquisitely pathetic pastoral, with all its gracious and tender personages, should have been written by the master of Naturalism, the author of "Germinal" and of "Pot-Bouille" ("Piping Hot "). (Edmund Gosse)

Avg Rating

3.83

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

20%

4 STARS

48%

3 STARS

27%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Emile Zola

Author · 69 books

Émile François Zola was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism, and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. More than half of Zola's novels were part of a set of 20 books collectively known as Les Rougon-Macquart. Unlike Balzac who in the midst of his literary career resynthesized his work into La Comédie Humaine, Zola from the start at the age of 28 had thought of the complete layout of the series. Set in France's Second Empire, the series traces the "environmental" influences of violence, alcohol and prostitution which became more prevalent during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution. The series examines two branches of a family: the respectable (that is, legitimate) Rougons and the disreputable (illegitimate) Macquarts for five generations. As he described his plans for the series, "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world." Although Zola and Cézanne were friends from childhood, they broke in later life over Zola's fictionalized depiction of Cézanne and the Bohemian life of painters in his novel L'Œuvre (The Masterpiece, 1886). From 1877 with the publication of L'Assommoir, Émile Zola became wealthy, he was better paid than Victor Hugo, for example. He became a figurehead among the literary bourgeoisie and organized cultural dinners with Guy de Maupassant, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other writers at his luxurious villa in Medan near Paris after 1880. Germinal in 1885, then the three 'cities', Lourdes in 1894, Rome in 1896 and Paris in 1897, established Zola as a successful author. The self-proclaimed leader of French naturalism, Zola's works inspired operas such as those of Gustave Charpentier, notably Louise in the 1890s. His works, inspired by the concepts of heredity (Claude Bernard), social manichaeism and idealistic socialism, resonate with those of Nadar, Manet and subsequently Flaubert.