Nana (Émile Zola)

Overview

Nana (1880) is the ninth novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle (Wikipedia, "Nana (novel)"). It was serialised in the daily Le Voltaire from 16 October 1879 to 5 February 1880 under an advertising campaign that covered the walls of Paris with posters, and appeared in book form with Charpentier in February 1880 (Wikipedia). It follows the rise of a young woman of the working-class Parisian demi-monde, Anna Coupeau, "Nana", who becomes a courtesan and destroys the men around her. The novel opens at the Théâtre des Variétés with the first night of an invented opéra-bouffe, La Blonde Vénus (a pastiche of Offenbach's La Belle Hélène), in which the talentless Nana, cast as Venus, takes the house by her body rather than her voice (Wikipedia).

Marie and Nana

The book was the scandal of her first winter in the Paris art world, and she reads it, rejects it and uses it as a measure of other people.

• 23 January 1880 (087.0303): among "trente-six mille choses à la fois" she lists "une [composition] sur Nana", next to Taine's Ancien Régime and the Nouvelle Revue; what that composition is (a picture or a written piece) is not stated.
• 25 February 1880 (087.0535): chasing a model, Léonie, and meeting her family, she calls it "du Zola pur, du Zola de Nana, du reste c'est ce nom-là que je donne à Léonie".
• 10 March 1880 (087.0585): at the studio, Julian "me compare à l'héroïne 'de certains romans que nous avons lu, quand elle paraît au second acte de la Blonde Vénus'" (Marie adds, for readers who have not read "l'infecte Nana"): "entre nous... vous comprenez jusqu'où va la comparaison, du reste entre artistes, ne vous récriez pas, vous êtes flattée". The comparison is to Nana's entrance as Venus.
• 31 July 1880 (089.0260): she says she has read "un mauvais livre", Belot's Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme, "pour m'étourdir, m'oublier sans fatigue"; "Vous savez bien j'ai lu 'Nana', du reste il n'y a pas de mauvais livres; pourtant il paraît qu'il y a des intelligences qui s'en ressentent."

Notes and doubts

• Marie writes "Nana" and "la Blonde Vénus" (the play within the novel); the identification is clear from both the title and Julian's reference.
• She reads Zola in French as a topical reader of 1880, within weeks of the book's release; the diary does not say how she got it (she was later "apportée Zola complet", 104.0116, May 1884).
• For Zola as an author, see Émile Zola.

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Nana (novel)": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nana_(novel)
• French Wikisource, "Nana"; Project Gutenberg ebook 5250.