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Nana (novel)
Encyclopedia
Nana is a novel by the French naturalist
author Émile Zola
. Completed in 1880, Nana is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart
series, the object of which was to tell "The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire
", the subtitle of the series.
who invited him to see an operetta with him on February 15, 1878, and took him backstage. Halévy told him innumerable stories about the amorous life of the star — Anna Judic
, whose ménage à trois
would become the model for Rose Mignon, her husband, and Fauchery — and also about famous cocottes such as Blanche d'Antigny
, Anna Deslions, Delphine de Lizy, and Hortense Schneider
, an amalgam of which was to serve the writer as the basis for his principal character.
(1877), another of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, in which she is portrayed as the daughter of an abusive drunk; in the end, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.
The new novel opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés. The Exposition Universelle (1867)
has just opened its doors. Nana is 15 years old (the number 18 mentioned in the book is not more than a fig leaf). Zola had taken care to make this clear to his readers by publishing an elaborate family tree of the Rougon-Macquarts in the newspaper Le Bien Public in 1878 when he started writing Nana. Zola describes in detail the performance of La blonde Vénus, a fictional operetta
modelled after Offenbach
's La belle Hélène
, in which Nana is cast as the lead. She has never been seen on a stage, but tout Paris is talking about her. When asked to say something about her talents, Bordenave, the manager of the theatre (he calls it the brothel), explains that a star doesn't have to know how to sing or act: Nana has something else, dammit, and something that takes the place of everything else. I scented it out, and it smells damnably strong in her, or else I lost my sense of smell. Just as the crowd is about to dismiss her performance as terrible, young Georges Hugon shouts: "Très chic!" From then on, she owns the audience, and, when she appears only thinly veiled in the third act, Zola writes: All of a sudden, in the good-natured child the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.
The novel then goes on to show how Nana destroys every man who pursues her: Philippe Hugon, Georges' brother, imprisoned after stealing from the army, his employer, for Nana; Steiner, a wealthy banker who is ruined after hemorrhaging cash for Nana's decadence; Georges Hugon, who was so captivated with her from the beginning that, when he realized he could not have her, stabs himself with scissors in anguish; Vandeuvres, a wealthy owner of horses who burns himself in his barn after Nana ruins him financially; Fauchery, a journalist and publisher who falls for Nana early on, writes a scathing article about her later, and falls for her again and is ruined financially; and Count Muffat, whose faithfulness to Nana brings him back for humiliation after humiliation until he finds her in bed with his elderly father-in-law. Becker explains: "What emerges from [Nana] is the completeness of Nana's destructive force, brought to a culmination in the thirteenth chapter by a kind of roll call of the victims of her voracity" (118).
When Nana's work is done, Zola has her die a horrible death from smallpox
: What lay on the pillow was a charnel house, a heap of pus and blood, a shovelful of putrid flesh. The pustules had invaded the whole face, so that one pock touched the next. While outside her window the crowd is madly chanting To Berlin! To Berlin! (the time is July 1870, after the Ems Dispatch
), Venus is decomposing, her moral corruption is now physical. And this is, Zola implies, what is about to happen to the Second Empire.
The novel was an immediate success. Le Voltaire, the French newspaper that was to publish it in instalments from October 1879 on, had launched a gigantic advertising campaign, raising the curiosity of the reading public to a fever pitch. When Charpentier finally published Nana in book form in February 1880, the first edition of 55,000 copies was sold out in one day. Flaubert and Edmond de Goncourt
were full of praise for Nana. On the other hand, a part of the non-reading public, spurred on by some critics, reacted to the book with outrage. While the novel is held up as a fine example of writing, it is not especially true to Zola's touted naturalist philosophy; instead, it is one of the most symbolically complex of his novels, setting it apart from the earthy "realism" of L'Assommoir
or the more brutal "realism" of La Terre
(1887). However, it was a great deal more authentic than most contemporary novels about the demimonde
.
Nana is especially noted for the crowd scenes, of which there are many, in which Zola proves himself a master of capturing the incredible variety of people. Whereas in his other novels—notably Germinal (1885) -- he gives the reader an amazingly complete picture of surroundings and the lives of characters, from the first scene we are to understand that this novel treads new ground.
Flaubert summed up the novel in one perfect sentence:
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...
author Émile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
. Completed in 1880, Nana is the ninth installment in the 20-volume Les Rougon-Macquart
Les Rougon-Macquart
Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire , it follows the life of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire and is an example of French...
series, the object of which was to tell "The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
", the subtitle of the series.
Origins
A year before he started to write Nana, Zola did not know anything yet about the Variétés. It was Ludovic HalévyLudovic Halévy
Ludovic Halévy was a French author and playwright. He was half Jewish : his Jewish father had converted to Christianity prior to his birth, to marry his mother, née Alexandrine Lebas.-Biography:Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris...
who invited him to see an operetta with him on February 15, 1878, and took him backstage. Halévy told him innumerable stories about the amorous life of the star — Anna Judic
Anna Judic
Anne Marie-Louise Damiens, stage name Anna Judic was a French comic actress. Her ménage à trois proved the inspiration for that in the 1880 Émile Zola novel Nana.-Life:...
, whose ménage à trois
Ménage à trois
Ménage à trois is a French term which originally described a domestic arrangement in which three people having sexual relations occupy the same household – the phrase literally translates as "household of three"...
would become the model for Rose Mignon, her husband, and Fauchery — and also about famous cocottes such as Blanche d'Antigny
Blanche d'Antigny
Blanche d'Antigny was a French singer and actress whose fame today rests chiefly on the fact that Émile Zola used her as the principal model for his novel Nana.-History:...
, Anna Deslions, Delphine de Lizy, and Hortense Schneider
Hortense Schneider
Hortense Catherine Schneider, La Snédèr, was a French soprano, one of the greatest operetta stars of the 19th century, particularly associated with the works of composer Jacques Offenbach.-Biography:...
, an amalgam of which was to serve the writer as the basis for his principal character.
Plot summary
Nana tells the story of Nana Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class cocotte during the last three years of the French Second Empire. Nana first appears in the end of L'AssommoirL'Assommoir
L'Assommoir is the seventh novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Usually considered one of Zola's masterpieces, the novel—a harsh and uncompromising study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris—was a huge commercial success and established...
(1877), another of Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, in which she is portrayed as the daughter of an abusive drunk; in the end, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.
The new novel opens with a night at the Théâtre des Variétés. The Exposition Universelle (1867)
Exposition Universelle (1867)
The Exposition Universelle of 1867 was a World Exposition held in Paris, France, in 1867.-Conception:In 1864, Emperor Napoleon III decreed that an international exposition should be held in Paris in 1867. A commission was appointed with Prince Jerome Napoleon as president, under whose direction...
has just opened its doors. Nana is 15 years old (the number 18 mentioned in the book is not more than a fig leaf). Zola had taken care to make this clear to his readers by publishing an elaborate family tree of the Rougon-Macquarts in the newspaper Le Bien Public in 1878 when he started writing Nana. Zola describes in detail the performance of La blonde Vénus, a fictional operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
modelled after Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
's La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène
La belle Hélène , opéra bouffe in three acts, is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach to an original French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy...
, in which Nana is cast as the lead. She has never been seen on a stage, but tout Paris is talking about her. When asked to say something about her talents, Bordenave, the manager of the theatre (he calls it the brothel), explains that a star doesn't have to know how to sing or act: Nana has something else, dammit, and something that takes the place of everything else. I scented it out, and it smells damnably strong in her, or else I lost my sense of smell. Just as the crowd is about to dismiss her performance as terrible, young Georges Hugon shouts: "Très chic!" From then on, she owns the audience, and, when she appears only thinly veiled in the third act, Zola writes: All of a sudden, in the good-natured child the woman stood revealed, a disturbing woman with all the impulsive madness of her sex, opening the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was still smiling, but with the deadly smile of a man-eater.
The novel then goes on to show how Nana destroys every man who pursues her: Philippe Hugon, Georges' brother, imprisoned after stealing from the army, his employer, for Nana; Steiner, a wealthy banker who is ruined after hemorrhaging cash for Nana's decadence; Georges Hugon, who was so captivated with her from the beginning that, when he realized he could not have her, stabs himself with scissors in anguish; Vandeuvres, a wealthy owner of horses who burns himself in his barn after Nana ruins him financially; Fauchery, a journalist and publisher who falls for Nana early on, writes a scathing article about her later, and falls for her again and is ruined financially; and Count Muffat, whose faithfulness to Nana brings him back for humiliation after humiliation until he finds her in bed with his elderly father-in-law. Becker explains: "What emerges from [Nana] is the completeness of Nana's destructive force, brought to a culmination in the thirteenth chapter by a kind of roll call of the victims of her voracity" (118).
When Nana's work is done, Zola has her die a horrible death from smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
: What lay on the pillow was a charnel house, a heap of pus and blood, a shovelful of putrid flesh. The pustules had invaded the whole face, so that one pock touched the next. While outside her window the crowd is madly chanting To Berlin! To Berlin! (the time is July 1870, after the Ems Dispatch
Ems Dispatch
The Ems Dispatch , sometimes called the Ems Telegram, caused France to declare the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870. The actual dispatch was an internal message from the Prussian King's vacationing site to Bismarck in Berlin, reporting demands made by the French ambassador; it was Bismarck's...
), Venus is decomposing, her moral corruption is now physical. And this is, Zola implies, what is about to happen to the Second Empire.
Reception
Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt , born Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:...
were full of praise for Nana. On the other hand, a part of the non-reading public, spurred on by some critics, reacted to the book with outrage. While the novel is held up as a fine example of writing, it is not especially true to Zola's touted naturalist philosophy; instead, it is one of the most symbolically complex of his novels, setting it apart from the earthy "realism" of L'Assommoir
L'Assommoir
L'Assommoir is the seventh novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Usually considered one of Zola's masterpieces, the novel—a harsh and uncompromising study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris—was a huge commercial success and established...
or the more brutal "realism" of La Terre
La Terre
La Terre is a novel by Émile Zola, published in 1887. It is the fifteenth novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. The action takes place in a rural community in La Beauce, an area of northern France...
(1887). However, it was a great deal more authentic than most contemporary novels about the demimonde
Demimonde
Demi-monde refers to a group of people who live hedonistic lifestyles, usually in a flagrant and conspicuous manner. The term was commonly used in Europe from the late 18th to the early 20th century, and modern use often refers to that period...
.
Nana is especially noted for the crowd scenes, of which there are many, in which Zola proves himself a master of capturing the incredible variety of people. Whereas in his other novels—notably Germinal (1885) -- he gives the reader an amazingly complete picture of surroundings and the lives of characters, from the first scene we are to understand that this novel treads new ground.
Flaubert summed up the novel in one perfect sentence:
- Nana tourne au mythe, sans cesser d'être réelle.
Iconography
- Édouard ManetÉdouard ManetÉdouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
, who was much taken with the description of the "precociously immoral" Nana in Zola's L'assommoirL'AssommoirL'Assommoir is the seventh novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. Usually considered one of Zola's masterpieces, the novel—a harsh and uncompromising study of alcoholism and poverty in the working-class districts of Paris—was a huge commercial success and established...
gave the title "Nana" to his portrait of Henriette Hauser. The painting was rejected by the hanging committee for the Paris Salon of 1877.
- Niki de Saint PhalleNiki de Saint PhalleNiki de Saint Phalle, born Catherine-Marie-Agnès-Brandon Fal de Saint Phalle was a French sculptor, painter, and film maker.-The early years:...
, when asked about her own Nanas, is reported to have stressed that it was not an intellectual connection to Zola that she was aiming at, but more a kind of "fusion" with the opulent forms of RubensRubensRubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...
. This in a way ties in with Paulus' description of Blanche d'AntignyBlanche d'AntignyBlanche d'Antigny was a French singer and actress whose fame today rests chiefly on the fact that Émile Zola used her as the principal model for his novel Nana.-History:...
, the principal model for Nana: Not a beauty in the classical Greek sense. But what a complexion! What an opulence of forms! A Rubens!!
Miscellany
- Nana became popular, in spite of or, as some say, because of the opprobrium it garnered.
- In a retort to Nana and Zola's theory of heredity, author Alfred Sirven wrote a novel called Nana's Daughter (ca. 1880), in which he tells the story of Nana's daughter, who rises up out of "the gutter" and becomes a respectable lady.
Other media
- Nana (1926 film)Nana (1926 film)Nana is Jean Renoir's second full-length silent film and is based on the novel by Émile Zola.-Plot:A government official, Count Muffat, falls under the spell of Nana, a young actress. She becomes his mistress, living in the sumptuous apartment which he provides for her...
, a French film by Jean RenoirJean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s... - Nana (1944 film)Nana (1944 film)Nana is a 1944 Mexican film by Celestino Gorostiza and Roberto Gavaldón. It is an adaptation of Emile Zola's novel Nana. It was the last film of the Mexican star Lupe Vélez.-Plot:Based in the Emile Zola same name novel...
, a Mexican film by Roberto GavaldonRoberto GavaldónRoberto Gavaldón was a Mexican film director.Eight of Gavaldón's films were featured on the list 100 Best Movies of the Cinema of Mexico...
starring Lupe VélezLupe VélezLupe Vélez was a Mexican film actress. Vélez began her career in Mexico as a dancer, before moving to the U.S. where she worked in vaudeville. She was seen by Fanny Brice who promoted her, and Vélez soon entered films, making her first appearance in 1924. By the end of the decade she had... - Nana (1982 film)Nana (1982 film)Nana is a 1982 film directed by Dan Wolman.The music is by Ennio Morricone.-Cast:* Jean-Pierre Aumont, Count Muffat* Katya Berger, Nana* Debra Berger, Satin* Mandy Rice-Davies...
, a film by Dan Wolman - Nana (1985 film)Nana (1985 film)Nana is a 1985 Mexican film by Rafael Baledón. It is an adaptation of Emile Zola's novel Nana. Is the film adaptation of a Mexican stageplay produced and starred by Irma Serrano.-Plot:...
, a Mexican film by Rafael Baledón, starring Irma SerranoIrma SerranoIrma Serrano is a Mexican actress of film, television, and theater; and also a singer, screenwriter and politician. Thanks to her beauty, her figure and her way of being controversial, coming out of the standards of the time, Serrano managed to attract the attention of directors and producers, so...
External links
- Nana, available at Internet ArchiveInternet ArchiveThe Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
. Scanned books. - Nana -Both Chinese and English Ebook in HTML.
- Nana Map Nana, audio version
