M. Edouard Rod, an able critic, writing in the _Contemporary Review_
(1902), pointed out that the influence of Zola has transformed novel
writing in Italy, and that its effect in Germany has been not less
pronounced. The virtue of this influence on German letters was
undoubtedly great. It made an end of sentimentality, it shook literature
out of the sleepy rut into which it had fallen and forced it to face
universal problems.
One must regret for his own sake that Zola was unable to avoid offending
those prejudices which were so powerful in his time. The novelist who
adopts the method of the surgeon finds it necessary to expose many
painful sores, and is open to the taunt that he finds pleasure in the
task. On no one did this personal obloquy fall more hardly than on
Zola, and never with less reason. It may be that he accumulated unseemly
details and risky situations too readily; but he was an earnest man with
a definite aim in view, and had formulated for himself a system which
he allowed to work itself out with relentless fatality. The unredeemed
baseness and profligacy of the period with which he had to deal must
also be borne in mind.
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