La Curée by Émile Zola

La Curée Reviews

• 
  Richard (on hiatus)

  The Kill by Emile Zola is the second in his ‘Les Rougon Macquart’ book cycle. This 20 book series was started in 1871 and completed in 1893 and covers the period in France known as the Second Empire, a period in which Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, by means of a coup d’etat in 1851, claimed absolute power.
  The book cycle features members and branches of the Rougon and Marquart families introduced to us in the first book of the series The Fortune Of The Rougons. All books can be read as stand alone novels.
  After reading and being impressed by ‘Germinal’ Zolas famous novel from later in the series, I decided to undertake the project of gradually reading the books in order.
  The rule of Louis Napoleon was a time of fresh thinking, populism and a massive modernisation of France. The railways system was vastly improved and much of Paris was rebuilt. Many of the dramatic wide boulevards and impressive edifices we know today came from this period, many designed by Georges Eugène Haussmann the famous architect.
  During this period, whole swathes of Paris were bought up to be redeveloped. This manic land speculation led to complicated deals, fraudulent practices and all sorts of lying and cheating in the stampede by those trying to get rich.
  Zola, in The Kill, shines a light on this corruption and the obscene wealth that ensues.
  Aristide Rougon, introduced to us in the first book, a fickle, unpleasant character with absolutely no moral compass, moves with his family to Paris. There he becomes very rich, very quick by way of property speculation and a myriad of very suspect business dealings. He changes his name and soon takes on a beautiful new wife. His vain, indolent but quick witted son Maxime, becomes a darling of society.
  The language in The Kill is heavily lyrical, dense and sensuous in places. There is a sexual dimension to much of the imagery that suits the story of shocking forbidden love and excess. There is also a gritty reality and unflinching objectivity in the writing, unlike contemporaries such as Dickens.
  This is a political novel and Zola’s criticism of the self serving, monied, upper and middle classes is clear.
  Zola’s aim of this book cycle was to to create an almost scientific examination of French society and to highlight the everyday lives of citizens from all walks of life.
  The quality of the books vary and The Kill is not one of the most talked about in the series but despite some slow and overwritten sections, I enjoyed it greatly and am keen to read the next instalment.
• 
  Ahmad Sharabiani

  La Curée = The Kill (Les Rougon Macquart #2), Émile Zola
  
  The Kill is the 2nd novel in Émile Zola's 20 volume series Les Rougon Macquart. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy Nouveau riche of the Second French Empire, against the backdrop of Baron Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 1850's and 1860's.
  
  The book opens with scenes of astonishing opulence, beginning with Renée and Maxime lazing in a luxurious horse drawn carriage, very slowly leaving a Parisian park (the Bois de Boulogne) in the 19th century equivalent of a traffic jam.
  
  It is made clear very early on that these are staggeringly wealthy characters not subject to the cares faced by the public; they arrive at their mansion and spend hours being dressed by their servants prior to hosting a banquet attended by some of the richest people in Paris.
  
  There seems to be almost no continuity between this scene and the end of the previous novel, until the second chapter begins and Zola reveals that this opulent scene takes place almost fourteen years later.
  
  تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1984میلادی
  
  عنوان: سهم سگان شکاری، نویسنده: امیل زولا، مترجم: محمدتقی غیاثی، تهران، نیلوفر، 1362؛ در 430ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسوی سده 19م
  
  سهم سگان شکاری، با عنوان اصلی «ذِبح»، رمانی ست، از: نویسنده، نمایش نامه نویس، و روزنامه‌ نگار فرانسوی، «امیل زولا»، که در سال 1872میلادی در «فرانسه» منتشر شد، این کتاب دومین جلد از مجموعه ی بیست جلدی «روگن ماکار» است، کتاب شرح زندگی و گذران روزگار به نگاشته ی «زولا»، تازه به دوران رسیده‌ ها، در زمان امپراتوری دوم فرانسه است، داستان درباره زندگی یکی از خانواده های اشرافی فرانسه است؛ «رنه» دختری زیباست، که برای اشتباهی دخترانه و سرپوش نهادن بر آن ننگ، با مردی مسن و پولپرست ازدواج میکند، و پسر مرد را بزرگ میکند؛ زندگی آنها پر از فساد است.؛ مرد برای پول از همسر و فرزند خود نیز میگذرد، و پسر برای هوس خویش حتی از پدر خود میگذرد و با نامادری رابطه برقرار میکند ؛ نحوه ی پولدار شدن، و فساد اشراف فرانسه در آن دوران را به خوبی نشان میدهد.؛ ترجمه ی تحت‌ الفظی عنوان اثر در زبان فرانسه، به معنی «صحنه ی پس از شکار» است، که سگ شکاری، پس از فرو افتادن شکار، به دنبالش می‌رود، تا آن را بیابد
  
  تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 23/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
• 
  Luís

  Zola continues his "social study" with Aristide Rougon, now Saccard in Paris. He seeks by all means to make a fortune. However, death takes his first wife when fate knocks on his door.
  Once again, brilliantly, Zola demonstrates the opportunism of an upstart. The character of the characters worked to perfection. We feel the protagonists of the story come to life before our eyes.
  It is also an opportunity for the author to highlight women's rule and positions. To others, simple objects are means for their husbands to obtain, thanks for their intervention, the power or the relations.
  It is also a masterful demonstration of women's frivolity and inconstancy who have always had money that burned their fingers an exceptionally well described relationship to the financier.
  We must admit that Zola is the undisputed master of descriptions: living rooms, dresses, landscapes, characters. By reading this author, we are quite simply in the middle of a film where everything is thought out and mastered.
  I am often overwhelmed by Zola's writing, which is so cruel, so cynical at times, and poetic.
  I often wonder how a man could be so fair and precise in his social study, mainly since he was only about thirty years old when this novel appeared.
• 
  Julie

  This novel reads like one very long hangover: just below the conscious mind, there lives a life of opulence, excess and absinthe. You retire from it than a little bit drunk, than a little bit confused, than a little bit thirsty for something .
  
  A curée is the portion thrown to the hounds, after a hunt. It would be fair to sum the novel as a representation of the division of the spoils, for in this book there are as many hounds as there are hunters; and as they grasp, and snarl, and growl and tear at the city of Paris, it is difficult to distinguish who is the hunter and who the hound.
  
  This is Paris, in the 1850s 60s, in the Second Empire, under the hand of Napoleon III. His vision for a "new Paris" was carried out by Georges Eugène Haussman, his prefect, and "master of urban renewal". While the sentiment behind the initial revitalization might have been a valid one, it soon ate Paris alive with its corruption, exploitation and extortion schemes. A seedier bed of scoundrels is difficult to imagine:
  
  This was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of the hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women. Vice, coming from on high, flowed through the gutters, spread out over the ornamental waters, shot up in the fountain of the public gardens, and fell on the roofs as fine rain. At night, when people crossed the bridges, it seemed as if the Seine drew along with it, through the sleeping city, all the refuse of the streets, crumbs fallen from tables, bows of lace left on couches, false hair forgotten in cabs, banknotes that had slipped out of bodices, everything thrown out of the window by the brutality of desire and the immediate satisfaction of appetites. Then, amid the troubled sleep of Paris, and even clearly than during its feverish quest in broad daylight, one felt a growing sense of madness, the voluptuous nightmare of a city obsessed with gold and flesh.
  
  In the very heart of this debauchery rises Aristide Saccard (né Rougon, for he is none other than fils de Pierre Rougon, the miscreant from the first novel of this series.) Not only is he at the heart of the corruption; he is the creator of much of it, scheming and plotting to his very soul's content, as he gambles himself into and ill gotten gains and ensnares his wife's fortunes for his own purposes.
  
  And also into the heart of this debauchery rises Renée, Aristide's second wife, his junior by decades, who is predestined to rise and fall, like Anna Karenina, like Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Arguably, she is the French equivalent, for her life is just as frantic and dissolute and her fate speaks of an equally broken and disconsolate ending. The heartbreak that I felt was real, for surely Renée, much like Anna, much like Tess was "sinned against than sinning". There are, in fact, as many echoes of Anna in Renée as there are shades of Tess a wonderful amalgam of the two most pitiful, lamentable heroines in 19th century literature.
  
  This is a novel of lasciviousness and cupidity: greed and hunger for gold; financial gain at its most perverted; lust and desire of the flesh at its most degenerate level; anguish and regret at its most bitter.
  
  
  
  Notes on the translation: The original is exquisite, of course, so if you have a choice, read it in French. If not, I highly recommend Brian Nelson's translation, who must have been channelling Zola throughout the writing process, so harmonious is his work to the original. I read a digital copy in French and longed to have a paper copy, but could only find it in translation, which is how I came to read both versions.
• 
  E. G.

  Introduction
  Translator's Note
  Select Bibliography
  A Chronology of Émile Zola
  Map: The Paris of 'The Kill'
  
  The Kill
  
  Explanatory Notes
• 
  Gary Inbinder

  This is a dark, disturbing yet highly engaging read. It's also an example of Zola at his best: prose that's strong and compelling, yet poetic and atmospheric; psychologically complex characters; minute detailed description that makes the time and place come alive; plotting and pacing that grips you from from the beginning and doesn't let go. There is also Zola's trademark social critique and a large dose of sensationalism.
  
  The title La Curee (The Kill) refers to the offal that is thrown to the dogs following the traditional French hunt. The "kill" in this story mostly involves land speculation but it may also refer to the "kill" or spoils of a greater part of society and the culture of the period.
  
  The novel is set during the Second Empire (1852 1870) and focusses on the evisceration and modernization of Paris under Napoleon III and his Prefect, Baron Hausmann. The principle characters are Aristide Saccard (Rougon) an unscrupulous speculator in real estate; Maxime, Aristide's foppish son by his first wife; and Aristide's second wife, Renee.
  
  Three of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed, Lust and Gluttony, constitute Zola's main theme. Businessmen, politicians and bureaucrats benefit from the renovation and construction projects by conspiring to defraud the government and the public. Women play their roles in the conspiracy, and sell themselves to the highest bidder. Everything is for sale, and conspicuous consumption is on display in lavish mansions, fashions, jewelry, carriages, courtesans, banquets and balls.
  
  In addition to the shady dealings of Aristide and others, Zola explores an incestuous relationship between Renee and her stepson Maxime that draws upon Classical literature, most particularly Racine's Phaedra. The play is referenced several times in the text; at one point Renee and Maxime actually attend a performance. Moreover, at several points in the narrative Zola appears to foreshadow Racine's tragic ending. However, this is not a "spoiler." Zola doesn't give us the ending that readers familiar with the story of Phaedra, Hippolytus and Theseus might anticipate. Without revealing anything, I'll just say that Zola's conclusion is wryly ironic and chilling.
• 
  MJ Nicholls

  If I had to sum up The Kill in one clause (and this clause is coming up now so get ready) I’d say it’s about Haussmannisation and incest. Baron Haussmann transformed Paris during the Second Empire—a period of absolutely fantastic debauchery—where francs flowed in the streets and enterprising capitalists were free to make a monetary killing. So we have Saccard, a heartless but forgiving cash seeker interested in power and lucre, who marries into wealth to prevent a scandal. He marries Renée, a carefree sensualist taken with Saccard’s effeminate son Maxime, a rotter who pleasures himself beneath the skirts of society ladies. This novel is the most exhausting Zola so far (except Germinal—don’t get me started), stuffed with long spooling descriptions of the old buildings, some exquisite, some supersize. A few chapters in the semi incestuous romance becomes the dominant plot, and Zola’s remarkable depiction of Renée’s descent into debauched behaviour is intoxicating and thrilling. Unlike most characters of this ilk, she doesn’t collapse spread eagled at the altar of Jesus and repent her frolics to all passing monks. She retains her pearly wonder after her husband’s fleeced her fortune and she’s doomed to a wintry cabin with nothing but the thoughts of romping in the hothouse with her stepson. I loved Renée. Anyway. Great novel.
• 
  Alice Poon

  I read "The Kill" ("La Curee") about three years ago and liked it so much as to have written a long review of it in my Asia Sentinel (an online magazine) blog. I’ve dug out that review and have shortened it a bit for sharing here at Goodreads.
  
  "The Kill" ("La Curee") is the second in Emile Zola’s twenty volume Rougon Macquart saga, which is a fictional historical account of a family under France’s Second Empire, a semi despotic, semi parliamentary kleptocracy of Louis Bonaparte Napoleon III. This novel aroused my interest in the author Emile Zola, whom, after deeper research into his life and works, I’ve come to like and respect.
  
  As suggested by the title of the novel, the hunting spoils (the French term is “la curee”) are rewards for the hounds for killing the quarry. In allegorical interpretation, spoils of economic development are rewards for those callous enough to prey on the weak and vulnerable. This is the main theme of the novel.
  
  The story of "The Kill" is set in Paris during the reign of the Second Empire, a city that was undergoing dramatic transformations highlighted by greed, graft and conspicuous consumption. The background setting features massive public works which include demolition of broad swaths of old Paris for the construction of spacious boulevards and widespread expansion of railroads. The social backdrop tells of how the middle class rushes to embrace new found gold digging opportunities and how the government wades knee deep in corruption and cronyism.
  
  “From the very first days Aristide Saccard sensed the approach of this rising tide of speculation, whose spume would one day cover all of Paris. He followed its progress closely. He found himself smack in the middle of the torrential downpour of gold raining down on the city’s roofs. In his incessant turns around city hall, he had caught wind of the vast project to transform Paris, of the plans for demolition, of the new streets and hastily planned neighborhoods, and of the massive wheeling and dealing in land and buildings that had ignited a clash of interests across the capital and set off an unbridled pursuit of luxury..”
  
  Against this background, the main story line centers on Aristide Saccard’s rapacious graft at the government office and his coldhearted exploitation of his beautiful but soulless wife Renee, and simultaneously threads through a materially decadent and morally depraved period of her life, which culminates in her engagement in incest with her step son Maxime. The story ends with an abrupt and cruel shattering of Renee’s self indulgent delusions, her heartbreak caused by the discovery of her husband’s and Maxime’s egregious treachery. Her tragic end has a dark symbolic ring to it she becomes part of the hunting spoils.
  
  
• 
  Helga

  Paris sat down to dinner and dreamed bawdy dreams for dessert.
  
  La Curée is the second novel in the twenty volume series of Les Rougon Macquart featuring the greedy, calculating nouveau riche Aristide Rougon, the youngest son of ruthless, money grabbing Bonapartists, Pierre and Felicite Rougon of the first novel.
  
  Thou shalt be rich!
  
  The setting of the novel is Paris, a city bent on pleasure, immorality and adventure, where rogues rule, devious deals are made , consciences are sold and women are bought. In a word, Paris is drunk!
  
  "What is it you want? What on earth do you dream of?"
  "I want something different"