The Belly of Paris will delight some and infuriate others. As I make my way through Zola's landmark 20-volume series, I find I am in the former category.

In fact, 'delight' would be too loose a term. I'm positively enchanted. Here, Zola does what he does best: restricts his narrative playing field to a single geographic location in a specific time, but infuses it with all of the complexity of the city, the country, the era, and of every social class. ("Events overlapping each other", as [a:Lawrence Durrell|8166|Lawrence Durrell|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1463722118p2/8166.jpg] once wrote, "crawling over one another like wet crabs in a basket.")

Belly has several direct links to other volumes in the series through recurring characters, but the novel also stands alone. In his justly famous "literary symphonies", Zola spills liberal amounts of ink describing the great Les Halles in microscopic detail, ruminating on every possible type of food avaialble - much as he did with flowers in [b:The Sin of Abbe Mouret|34946979|The Sin of Abbe Mouret (Les Rougon-Macquart, #5)|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1493029826l/34946979._SY75_.jpg|941617]. The imagery of the children growing up literally amongst the waste piles and sewers of Les Halles, the grubby interactions between its denizens, and the mere fact that every page is - for those of us living 150 years later - a laser-sharp history lesson... I mean, gosh, there's so much to be found here.

While the novel stands alone, it shouldn't have to. Zola's Rougon-Macquart is a heady project to tackle, but it rewards many times over. I recently moved house, and found myself discussing the series with the moving men (naturally!). One of them likened the series to that great 2000s TV series The Wire and I think he was right on point. While we won't meet most of this rugged and rich cast of characters again in the other 19 novels, we are constantly reminded of them. Their various political views, their social interactions and attitudes toward one another, and Les Halles, the great beast itself, looming over their lives, and creating a human hothouse within. Every character in the series can be connected to many others through thought, word, or deed, and the same is true of place.

A fascinating read. ( )

Il flusso che minaccia di espandersi anarchicamente, misto di passioni e di cibo, il desiderio dei corpi e il sogno delle anime, l’insieme delle pulsioni anarchiche, che queste forze sperano di controllare, vengono canalizzate in un quadro razionale, destinato a dar loro un ordine. Vogliono imporre lo spazio regolatore della “superficie”, la moderna architettura delle Halles (i cui vari padiglioni sono in costruzione mentre si svolge la vicenda), contro la minaccia del “sotterraneo” e l’esplosione delle cospirazioni. (introduzione, p. 6)

(Un’idea sul naturalismo):
Claude era estasiato da quella baraonda; si perdeva dietro a un effetto di luce, o a un gruppo di bluse, oppure a un carro che stava scaricando. Alla fine uscirono fuori. Procedendo sempre lungo la strada principale furono avvolti a un tratto da un delizioso profumo che si spandeva tutt’intorno e sembrava seguirli. Erano in mezzo al mercato dei fiori. Nello spiazzo, a destra e a sinistra, alcune donne stavano sedute davanti a canestri quadrati, pieni di mazzi di rose, di violette, di dalie, di margherite. I mazzi si scurivano come macchie di sangue, o impallidivano dolcemente in grigi di notevole delicatezza. Vicino a una cesta, una candela accesa spandeva su tutto il buio li’ intorno un’intensa melodia di colori: le screziature vivaci delle margherite, il rosso sanguigno delle dalie, i riflessi bluastri delle violette, la viva carnalita’ delle rose. (61-2)

Florent andava e veniva, nell’odore del timo intiepidito dal sole. Era profondamente felice per la quiete e l’armonia della campagna. Da quasi un anno ormai aveva visto soltanto ortaggi pestati dagli scossoni dei carretti, strappati dalla terra il giorno prima, ancora sanguinanti. Era contento di ritrovarli li’, a casa loro, tranquilli in mezzo al terriccio, intatti e in piena forma. … Allora le Halles che aveva lasciato quella mattina gli parvero un vasto ossario, un luogo di morte cosparso soltanto di cadaveri, un carnaio maleodorante e in via di decomposizione. … Claude aveva ragione alle Halles tutto agonizzava. La terra era la vita, l’eterna culla, la salvezza del mondo. (280)

Intorno a lei, nell’angusta bottega, stava ammassata la frutta. Dietro, lungo la mensola, c’erano file di meloni, di cantalupi coperti di bozzi, poponi dalle trine grigie, culs de singes dalle gobbe nude. Tutta quella bella frutta in mostra, disposta delicatamente nei cesti, tonda come guance ascose, ricordava visi di fanciulle appena intravisti dietro una cortina di foglie; specialmente le pesche, quelle rosseggianti di Montreuil, dalla buccia fine e candida come la pelle delle ragazze del nord; e le pesche del meridione, arse e gialle come il colorito delle ragazze della Provenza. Le albicocche, adagiate sul muschio, assumevano toni ambrati, il colore del sole al tramonto che infiamma le nuche delle brune, dove s’increspa la lanugine dei capelli. (304-5)
( )

It's difficult to read about all the dead animals...fish, poultry, and all the comestibles Made from their parts and secretions...that Zola wrote about Les Halle's, the huge market that all of Paris and surrounds fed from. Les Halle's is closed now, and all that torture and slaughter is hidden from consumers' eyes, as it is in this country, lest the consumers' "delicate" senses be offended by screams and the sight of blood and guts.
Other than that, it's a book about the great divide between the beourgoisie and the poor, made so much worse by the"ruling" classes' desire to have it so. Zola is an artist, and spoke so eloquently about this, his passion, that he inflamed readers with his words. So much so that he paid for it with his life. ( )

boring.

The Belly of Pairs represents a splendid artistic development in the French novel. Combining the down and out urchin tales of Hugo and Sue, with Zola's own brand of reportage.

It is easy to forget how teeming the streets are throughout history. Especially in Paris at this time. Legions of gossip peddlers, flower sellers, ragamuffins, illicit performers, and an infinite array of characters call the streets their home.

Putting some of the tenants of Impressionism into his work, Zola's writing is characterized by a high level of detail. He writes with the sensibility of a painter, describing scenes as if he were composing a painting with words, including the tones, color, light, and composition of the scene. It will delight many readers, even today, like a very accurate, meticulous old film.

Zola cultivates a compulsive precision of atmosphere. In terms of his writing ability, one gets the sense he is showing off. What it lacks in lyricism it compensates for with sheer content. He has a remarkable range, and brings the marketplace of Les Halles to life.

The story of Marjolin and Cadine was precious and worthy of Hugo when it finally made its appearance in the second half of the novel. Before these characters arrived there was less focus on story and simply a ceaseless accumulation of nitty-gritty set-pieces. Of course, there are many charming segments of satire and humor throughout the book. Zola finds the joy of discovery in everything. Mixing the charm and grotesquerie of the lives of these poor urchins and the folk on the streets, scraping together a living by haggling over cabbage and pig's feet, the essence of life is distilled, and the writing flows. It's easy to get swept away in it.

One cannot ignore the all-pervasive meat-stink, the literal ripeness of this novel. There is an underlying fester, with the swill of blood and the cracking of bones as soundtrack. Fitting for a Post-revolutionary literary landscape, one might suppose.

Cleverly, Zola draws so much attention to butchers and fishwives, the market squabbles, and the struggling working class, it is easy to forget the political backdrop, the threat of another revolution like the one in '48, and Florent's unjust imprisonment.

Balzac's shoes were still warm when Zola already started to fill them. His 20-volume cycle (Les Rougon-Macquart) took up less space than Balzac's Human Comedy, was more methodical in structure, more researched, and more detailed in certain respects. Political, financial and artistic contexts form a multigenerational saga, and the relish and steamy splendor of the age is palpable, if not as controlled as Balzac's subdued literary experiments.

Zola's writing is reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence's. It is almost teasing, as if the author is baiting you, daring you to call his work obscene. Of course, like Lawrence, Zola was charged with publishing pornography, even though the subjects he describes are merely sensual, and not even provocative by today's standards. Still, there is a lot of flesh in this novel, most of it animal, and hanging from hooks, dripping blood onto the pavement. There are plenty of women, of course, amply described, who sort of grip the setting of the novel with their blood-doused hands. As Zola contrasts the fat and the thin in his work, most of the females are bulky, and the males tend to be frail, and foolishly ambitious. At least in this novel, the woman are working far more, sweating, putting muscle into the economy, and the men are chasing skirts and getting knocked in the head by the people in the skirts.

Zola is inexhaustible. Bringing to bear the fruit of months of research, observation and the production of his own imagination to conjure the panoply of cabbages, carrots, characters, scoundrels, drayhorses, merchantmen, and the endless catalogue of items, accessories, gewgaws and literary props, which he bandies about and piles up into two-page paragraphs stuffed with adjectives like a Dagwood sandwich. It reads like a Fellini film - if Fellini were given an infinite budget, and the film were six hours long.

Zola gravitates toward what we now call the encyclopedic mode, without quite attaining the excesses we have achieved in today's monolithic novels. To categorize his excessive inclusions, Zola nonetheless depleted the materials of his time. The central themes of the work only become clear by degrees, concealed as they are by mounds of fleshy tripe and what not.

Less subtle than Balzac, Zola is effusive, exuberant, brazen, but well-equipped for satire and straight-faced storytelling. Why does he spend so much time writing about lard, veal and glistening hare pâté? you might wonder. As a device, as a distraction, and as a mode of communication, this description serves him well. He buries his true intention, and asks that you devour his language in order to uncover the messages lying at the bottom. Zola occupies the opposite end of the spectrum to Proust, who explored interiors and didn't leave his bedroom for 200 pages. Natural and social history, that is what Zola wrote about. Laying the groundwork for the movement in literature called Naturalism, you cannot ignore Zola's impressive contribution. How to represent a diseased society, how to depict human behavior as a product of its environment, and how to do it in a way that had never been done - that is the sum of Zola's achievement. The frantic pursuit of pleasure, the mask of propriety in the empire of ill-gotten freedoms - that is what Zola observed. The voracious appetite that Balzac alluded to is given free reign in the pages of Zola.

Great literature parallels life in some way. It discusses human beings confronting their own messes, both psychological and physical. The social decomposition of Paris in the 19th century is nowhere more evident than in this documentary-esque exploration of the great city, where history bleeds from the stone walls, where the people are encumbered by pounds and layers of heavy adversity. ( )