When he returned to active
service he took part in crushing the excesses of the Commune in Paris,
and by a strange chance it was his hand that killed his dearest friend,
Maurice Levasseur, who had joined the Communist ranks. _La Debacle_
has been described as "a prose epic of modern war," and vast though the
subject be, it is treated in a manner that is powerful, painful, and
pathetic.
In the preface to the English translation (_The Downfall_. London:
Chatto & Windus) Mr. E. A. Vizetelly quotes from an interview with Zola
regarding his aim in writing the work. A novel, he says, "contains, or
may be made to contain, everything; and it is because that is my creed
that I am a novelist. I have, to my thinking, certain contributions to
make to the thought of the world on certain subjects, and I have chosen
the novel as the best way of communicating these contributions to the
world. Thus _La Debacle_, in the form of a very precise and accurate
relation of a series of historical facts--in other words, in the form of
a realistic historical novel--is a document on the psychology of France
in 1870.
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