Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 3
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Zola's Spatial Explorations of Second Empire Paris / Julia Kröger
Keywords: lived space, naturalism, Zola, Paris, urban experience
<1> Literary criticism now has several decades of intense research on spatiality behind it. Yet it was only with the paradigm shift of the so-called "spatial turn" (Soja 1989: 39; Jameson 1991: 154) that new ideas regarding the interrelation of space as both conceived and perceived, the dialectics of space and place, and the significance of both to human experience, began to be systematically developed (see Foucault 1984; Lefebvre 2000; Relph 1976; Detering et al. 2012: Lotman 1972; Bachtin 2008). The central premise of much of this work is that space and place are produced through a dialectical interaction of our practical experience of place with our mental conceptions thereof (cf. Relph 1976). It is important to note, however, that literary studies (at least on the continent) have generally failed to take into account both sides of this dialectic (space as a mental and physical entity). By focusing on the translation of cognitive space alone into literature, literary criticism has tended to omit actually perceived, real-life geographical space, thus rendering impossible an understanding of "lived space" (Lefebvre 2000) [i].
<2> The aim of this article, then, is twofold: Firstly, I shall attempt to demonstrate the ways in which Lefebvre's theory lends itself to the analysis of the construction of space in Zola's preparatory work and its subsequent expansion into the "lived space" of the novels. In doing so, I hope to show, secondly, that the constructed "lived space" of Zola's fiction can be seen as the result of the author's physical and cognitive real-life encounter with Parisian space, i.e., in this case, the Paris Halles [ii]. Zola offers us a unique opportunity in this respect, since his process of literary production involved a transformation of conceptions and perceptions of space into the lived space of the novel's storyworld. His notebooks consisted of, on the one hand, a series of documents and maps which enabled him to construct a conception of Parisian space and, on the other, his jottings based upon his direct perceptions and observations of city life. He depicts the Paris Halles as more than just an architectural infrastructure; via his notes we become aware of the emotive and affective quality of the atmospheric market quarter. Thus, I hope to show that Zola's work is not only a rich source of historical and topographical knowledge, but also that it offers a crucial insight into past urban experience. It "[enables] its readers to experience the created world from an interior perspective, rather than a didactic external perspective" (Lehners/ Siewert 2011: 7) [iii]. The article concludes by examining the ways in which Zola transposed his preparatory notes into novels by employing various strategies of narrativization, and which constitute ways of organizing space within the text.
Encountering Paris - Zola's scientific observations - conceived space
<3> Zola's notebooks - les carnets d'enquêtes - are part of the preparatory dossiers [dossiers préparatoires] which contained the research that formed the basis of each novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle; they thus played an essential role in the genesis of his works [iv]. Henri Mitterand (2007: 1) divides the content of the notebooks into "things seen" [choses vues] (Zola's direct observations) and "things read" [choses lues] (including heterogeneous documents such as photographs, indexes of names, hand-drawn maps and drafts [cf. Pierre-Gnassounou in Nelson 2007: 86]). The dossiers thus consisted of a whole range of material which reflected the scientific culture of the 19th century in general and Zola's principles of a naturalistic fiction in particular [v]: in line with Lefebvre's triad, I claim that this culture informed Zola's conceptions of space. This is the space of "savoir (knowledge) and logic, of maps, mathematics, the instrumental space of social engineers and urban planners, of navigators and explorers" (Elden 2004: 191). Conceived space (l'espace conçu) is thus the abstract space of geometry and measurement which inscribes itself in social practice (and thereby informs it) [vi]. As we shall see, Zola approached the city of Paris not only from the standpoint of the literary scholar, but also with the architect's systematic gaze in order to render urban complexity measurable and mappable.
<4> The conceptual discourses which influenced Zola most were those originating in the natural sciences and positivism; his combination of these ideas with a literary method is set out in his book, The Experimental Novel (1880). Drawing on the theories of the scientist Dr. Prosper Lucas and the physiologist Claude Bernard, Zola attempted to introduce observation and experimentation into literature, and in doing so to transform the writer into a scientist who not only entertains his readers, but actually educates them (cf. Mitterand 2007: 2) [vii]. The naturalist doctrine is thus characterized by its strong focus on societal reality, its belief in people's being conditioned by their environments, and its determinist theory of causality and heredity. It aimed to test out hypotheses in the story that were first formulated on the basis of documents humains (cf. Zola 2003: 49) [viii]. Consequently, literature was seen as needing to provide universal, practically applicable knowledge that not only contained information about physical human particularities, but which also furnished insights into people's emotional and mental states.
<5> What does this seemingly scientific approach tell us about Zola's conception of Second Empire Paris [ix]? I claim that Zola contributed to the production of a conceived space of Paris via the creation of a mental map which was the result of his own theoretical and empirical research [x]. In the notebooks for his novel The Belly of Paris [xi], for example, one can find information about the urban built environment and sketches of the pavilions and streets adjoined to the market halls. These sketches often attested to the author's highly developed spatial sense, a capacity that brought him close to the work of 19th century architects [xii]. Zola's positivist leanings thus informed his cognitive map of Paris. Taken as a whole, it amounts to nothing less than "the building of a theoretical apparatus" which helped him (and the reader) "to possess the city in imagination" (Harvey 1989: 2).
<6> As well as being mediated through the powerful scientific discourses of his time, Zola's experience was also influenced by the increasingly complex literary discourse on Paris [xiii]. Throughout the 19th century, positive attributes of the city - such as its cultural and intellectual diversity - were often overshadowed by the idea of the city as an "abyss", "hell", or "Babylon" (see Rousseau, Diderot, Mercier); as "unreal", "mythical", "labyrinthine" or "a black ocean" (see Hugo, Poe, Baudelaire) - to cite only a few examples. The underlying presuppositions of this literary discourse were that the city was legible and that the expression of urban experience in language was possible. In a cyclical process, the urban experience was translated into a multiplicity of metaphorical images which in turn became elements of actual urban experience. Many authors' main aim, however, beyond this "metaphorisation" of the city, was to produce a total representation of it (hence the gargantuan efforts embodied in Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle or Balzac's Comédie humaine) - an attempt that was doomed to fail because of the impossibility of capturing the full complexity of urban experience. The substantial and dynamic transformation of 19th-century Paris - whether driven by Haussmann or capital accumulation or both - was almost by definition unrepresentable.
In short, taken together, the scientific and literary discourses were central in the formation of Zola's conception of space.
Zola's sensorial perception of the market quarter - perception of space
<7> It is worth bearing this in mind when we turn now to his research methods and notes, i.e. his literal, affective encounter with the urban environment. In the spirit of Lefebvre's triad, I shall name this aspect of Zola's work his perception of space. Whereas conceived space is a mental construct, perceived space (l'espace perçu) is concrete, "the space of gestures and journeys, of the body and memory […], the space that is generated and used [by its inhabitants] (Elden 2004: 188f.) [xiv]. It is precisely the observation of people's use of space, their movements and actions within it, and their appropriation of it that attracted Zola's interest. Because it has gone largely unnoticed, I shall spell out at some length the exact functions of spatial sense-perceptions in the notebooks.
<8> Zola collected his data - those "things seen" - over days of time-consuming fieldwork at particular locations (mainly in order to inform his creation of characters and setting). He spent days and nights in the market halls observing the bustling activity around him [xv]. Thus his conception of space was extended and enriched by his personal experiential appropriation of Les Halles [xvi]. Like an ethnographer, Zola thereby sought to produce a "thick description" (Geertz 1999) of the city - an account of human behavior enhanced by a supplementary description of that behavior's context. What is important here is that he experienced the context himself in order to gain knowledge. It is at this preparatory stage in Zola's work that he came closest to what we might call the perception of "material and physical" space (Elden 2004: 189) - that is, that aspect of space which the so-called "spatial turn" in literary studies has tended to ignore.
<9> Ethnographical fieldwork often stresses the preponderant role of the senses of sight and hearing. The remarks in the notebooks concerning the topography of the market halls, as well as the streets, commodities, shops etc. also attribute an importance to visual and auditory perceptions. Let us consider two examples - the first taken from Zola's nightly observations of the market halls, here the unloading of vegetables:
Market halls at night. Each pavilion forms a square, with interior gas-lights (…rising in clouds); […] Hardly any one there, noise muffled. […] An employee - fat, large jacket, flabby hat, side whiskers, cane - gives out paperwork: "Oi! Over there, let's get moving…How many metres you got?...Five?...
[Les Halles la nuit. Le carré que forme chaque pavillon, avec les gaz intérieurs (rangés pour certains, poudroyant pour les autres); […] Peu de monde, bruit sourd. […] Un employé, gros, grand paletot, chapeau mou, favoris, une canne, distribue les bulletins : « Eh! Là-bas, avançons… Combien avez-vous de mètres ?...Cinq ?...] (Carnets [henceforth C.], 364).
The second example is a compilation of impressions taken from different parts of the notebooks:
There are coconut-sellers. Cock cry, afternoon; mud on the pavement. Hansoms pass by more rapidly and noisily. Sweepers, taking a break, with their big brushes;
Afternoon, church silent, people are confessing but you can hear the hubbub of the market halls, and especially the carriages rolling by the Saint Eustache clock. The church has stoves;
At the barrier, overload, customs officers sounding people out. Noise of the jolts, in the great silence, with echoes against the houses, on the pavement strip;
[Il y a des marchandes de coco. Un chant de coq, l'après-midi; Boue sur les pavés. Les fiacres passent plus rapides et plus sonores. Des balayeurs dans une éclaircie, avec leurs grandes brosses] (C., 349, Notes générales);
[L'après-midi, l'église silencieuse, on confesse et l'on entend le brouhaha des Halles, et surtout le roulement des voitures à la pointe Saint-Eustache. L'église a des calorifères] (C., 359, Les rues autours des Halles);
[A la barrière, encombrement, les gabelous sondant. Le bruit des cahos, dans le grand silence, avec échos contre les maisons, sur la bande de pavés] (C., 364, Une nuit aux Halles).
The visual descriptions are linked to the topographical, geometrical or architectural properties of space ("square"; "by the Saint Eustache clock" [carré; à la pointe Saint-Eustache]; see also p. 349: "One angle of the market halls, oblique views of Montmartre street" [Un aspect des halles, vues de biais, de la rue Montmartre]) and serve the needs of a true-to-original conception of characters ("coconut-sellers" [marchandes de coco]; "An employee - fat, large jacket, flabby hat etc." [un employé, gros, grand paleton etc.]) [xvii]. The auditory impressions register snippets of conversation ("Oi! Over there" etc. [Eh! Là-bas…]) in their temporal unfolding, snap-shots of daily urban life ("Cock cry" [Un chant de coq]) and the contrast between silence and noise ("Noise of the jolts, in the great silence" [Le bruit des chaots, dans le grand silence]). This linking together of sight and hearing is quite typical of the notebooks [xviii]. Since both senses were related to rationality and knowledge in scientific discourses of the 19th century, one might argue that Zola, the naturalistic author, consciously foregrounded the primacy of sight and hearing in his observations in order to connote the precision of his work [xix].
<10> But there is an alternative explanation. Zola was close to the impressionist painters Monet and Cézanne and once wrote: "I have translated them into literature by the touches, notes, and colorations, by the palette of many of my descriptions" [ Je les ai traduits en littérature, par les touches, notes, colorations, par la palette de beaucoup de mes descriptions] (cited in Lethbridge in Nelson 2007: 67). Nelson (2007: 4) rightly states that "[h]e combines the vision of a painter with the approach of a sociologist and reporter in his observations […]". It thus comes as no surprise that various pictorial impressions in the notebooks stand in the tradition of impressionist painting. Just as these painters emphasized the role of light and colors in their (urban) motifs, so Zola examines the effects of light on substances throughout his notes [xx].
<11> And yet, even though visual and auditory perceptions are numerous in the notebooks, one cannot but stress the equal importance of the so-called 'lower' senses of smell and touch in Zola's perception and construction of material space. Touch is mentioned at various points and is mainly associated with narrowness and the crowd ("narrow paths" [étroits sentiers] (C., 366), "They [the eels] slide over one another" [Elles [anguilles de mer] glissent l'une sur l'autre] (C., 389), "Massive crowd gathers around the sales offices" [Une foule énorme se presse autour des bureaux de vente] (C., 390)). However, those passages in which smell is perceived are more striking still: The Vauvilliers street is described as "stinking" [puante] (C., 355), and the vegetable market as follows: "In terms of odour what dominates is the sour smell of the carrots, and the perfume of parsley and celery" [Ce qui domine comme odeur, c'est la senteur âpre des carottes, et le parfum du persil, et du celery] (C., 364). Unsurprisingly, the flower market also has olfactory connotations: "Extremely penetrating and delicate smell" [Odeur très pénétrante et très delicate] (C., 367); the cheese displayed in the cheese dairy has a "strong odour" [odeur forte] (C., 396), each cellar "its own smell" [son odeur proper] (C., 400), and the descent into the poultry storeroom is rendered thus:
On entering, strong smell, penetrating and as if warm. It's the smell of feathers, of poultry excrement where the alkalis grab you by the throat, and the smell stays on your clothes for a long time. It must be very unhealthy to live in this enclosed air, full of living scents.
[En entrant, odeur forte, pénétrante et comme tiède. C'est une odeur de plume, de fiente de volaille où les alcalis vous prennent à la gorge, et l'on garde longtemps l'odeur dans ses vêtements. Ce doit être très malsain de vivre dans cet air renfermé plein de senteurs vivantes] (C., 402) [xxi].
<12> Zola seems to be very sensitive to "those qualities of the physical and geographical formations that are most difficult to detect" (Prieto in Tally 2011: 14). The passage quoted above is only one example of how Zola detects and describes the affective qualities of an environment, or the effects of a perceived space. It shows how odours emanate within a closed space, becoming interiorized; Zola's stressing that it "grabs you by the throat" creates an atmosphere of malaise and imprisonment. In each case one can sense what Kraftl and Adey (cited in Rose et al. 2008: 339) call the "push that the particular relationship between a body and a building could bring about: an affect." This push is initiated by the fusion of bodily behavior and sensory perception (of light, bodies in motion, e.g., merchants, crowds etc.) and results in an affective "feeling of buildings" (see Rose et al. 2008) or sense of place [xxii].
<13> In short, Zola's notebooks are full of sensory impressions, all of which help us to reconstruct at least a working hypothesis of the author's actual perception of space. And yet, this perception, as we have seen, is always-already informed or mediated either by his conceptions of space or by the prevailing artistic discourses of his time. It is crucial to bear this in mind since Zola's notebook perceptions are all non-reflexive: we enter a realm that appears to reside outside consciousness, constituted solely by the senses and "various 'reflexes and automatisms' which constitute […] 'the bulk of [the city's] activity'" (ibid., 338). The notebooks include no consciously formulated valuations of, or opinions about, the effect of the urban encounter. In fact, there is no verbal elaboration of Zola's cognitive or emotional state whatsoever - on the contrary, the notes consist solely of spontaneous, off-the-cuff perceptions, free from any narrative form. Through the author's intermittently shifting observations in the present tense the reader has the impression of experiencing Parisian space in all its immediacy. Nevertheless this immediacy is never disinterested: Zola's approach to the urban is selective; he views the terrain, not only through the eyes of an impressionist painter, but also those of a (naturalist) novelist actively seeking out those locations or events which could eventually be exploited in the composition of the novel (cf. Mitterand 1987: 82) [xxiii]. Moreover, it is important to note that even if the olfactory and tactile, visual and auditory explorations of the Paris Halles are recorded without detailed emotional commentaries, the reader can sense the unease or pleasure Zola must have felt at certain places. Indeed, the emotive quality of the physical environment, as insignificant as it might seem in the notebooks, will become no less than the motivation for the overarching structures of symbolic and metaphorical meaning in the lived space of the novels.
The Belly of Paris - lived space
<14> The last section of this article will focus precisely on how Zola brings together his conceptions and perceptions of space in the "lived space" (i.e., the third and final element of Lefebvre's conceptual triad) of the novel itself. This third space (l'espace vécu) is the space of inhabitants, of artists and philosophers etc.; [it is] "invested with symbolism and meaning, […] real-and-imagined" (Elden 2004: 190). Lefebvre describes it as a layer which covers material space by adding a symbolic connotation to its objects which thereby become signs decipherable by its inhabitants [xxiv]. It is at the level of lived space, then, that subjective experiences, people's imagination and feelings are registered. In Zola's case, we can witness the creation of a fictionally represented lived space invested with symbolism and meaning which still contains his mental conceptions of space as well as his concrete and personal observations. This entails a process of translation of the elements of espace perçu and espace conçu into the fictional realm of the storyworld [xxv].
<15> At a very basic level, The Belly of Paris (henceforth B.) [Le Ventre de Paris (henceforth V.)] translates Zola's conceived space in several ways. Firstly, the whole structure of the book mirrors the spatial organization of Baltard's market halls; that is, there exists a structural homology between the concrete physical environment of Les Halles and the textual distribution of spatial information in the novel. Each chapter introduces a different pavilion (vegetables, fish etc.) and explains how it functions. Secondly, the narrative distribution of information is always linked back to topographical reference points which specify a character's location ("[…] Florent glanced up at the luminous clock of Saint-Eustache […], (B., 10); All the way down the Rue du Pont-Neuf…, (B., 13); [Florent […] levait les yeux sur le cadran lumineux de Saint-Eustache […], (V., 24); Tout le long de la rue du Pont-Neuf…, (V., 28)]. However, the communication of such empirical information through the medium of the novel is only one of the novel's functions. If Zola, in true naturalist guise, saw himself as a scientist whose job was to educate and enlighten the masses, he was also a novelist who wanted to tell a story about the city of Paris and its inhabitants. One might even go as far as to say that the novel itself is structured by these dual desires: to inform and to entertain, to describe and to narrate.
<16> How did Zola go about doing both at once? He uses two main strategies. Firstly, he distributes both his conceptions and perceptions of space across several characters throughout the novel. The mental map of the Parisian market halls, for example, is deployed via character-guides like Claude, the painter, or Madame François (or - another ploy - reconstructed through Florent's memory of places from before his exile). Because of the large variety of his personal data, Zola uses several characters, each of whom might be said to represent one facet of his urban experience, thus creating overlapping layers or multiple 'senses of place'. His characters are thereby reduced to what Philippe Hamon (1983) has called "functionaries" [fonctionnaires] - mere conduits through which Zola can pour his perceptions and research. What is important to note here is that the diverse and multiple materials of the notebooks could potentially be spread across an infinite number of characters; thus, to prevent this boundless proliferation, Zola must limit them to the parameters of a fictional narrative. He cannot make use of the well-known 19th-century tradition of the Parisian tableaux, which consisted of non-narrative descriptions of particular locations and urban physiologies, precisely because this form is itself potentially infinite (after all, how many tableaux is too many tableaux?). In line with the need for closure inherent to the classical novel form, Zola thus had to find some way of producing an ordered narrative whole. He did so, firstly, via the imposition of a more or less enclosing spatial unit (the market quarter) on the multiple characterological perspectives, thus limiting them to a finite number. Then, secondly, he subordinated the individual lives and perceptions of the characters to an overarching narrative leitmotif: the battle between the fat [ les Gros] and the skinny [les Maigres]. Thus, the first strategy for combining information and narration consists in distributing his research material across a cast of characters whose respective perspectives are unified by the space of the market halls and the overarching plot of les Gros versus les Maigres.
<17> The second strategy for the narrativization of his research material was to include an abundance of descriptions. The novelist translates his material through long descriptive passages that function as an illustration of the determining milieu. It is the senses which filter this environment, hence why they play a significant role in the stylistic deployment of the story. As Philippe Hamon has shown: "By definition a description is an interruption in the syntagmatics of the narration due to a paradigm (a catalogue, an enumeration, a lexicon), and thus a prolongation of the act of looking of the character who is assigned the description" (1983: 312). The longer and more technical these passages become, the more the reader has the impression that the writer's authorial voice is taking over, thus undermining the character's independent act of perception (yet another reason why Zola's characters feel as if they lack psychological depth). Internal focalization (characters as reflectors, cf. Stanzel 1995) fuses with the external focalization of the heterodiegetic narrator, meaning that we often cannot abstract the multiplicity of perceptions from Zola's overriding standpoint. The consequence is that the feeling of immediacy the reader experienced when consulting the notebooks is now diluted because of its being channelled through a specific character's perspective.
<18> There is then a second aspect to this process of translation between the notebooks and the novel: what, in the notebooks, was primarily denotative becomes, in the descriptions contained in the novel, connotative (that is, broadly speaking, symbolic). And it is precisely through this use of symbolic language that a creation of a meaningful sense of place occurs. Let us look at one of the translations of the notes into a descriptive passage. Here is the notebook version: "Bit by bit, however, day rose. At the end of Rambuteau street, in the sky, white tears. Then all becomes a tender grey. The gas-lights grow pale." [Peu à peu cependant le jour grandit. Au fond de la rue Rambuteau, dans le ciel, des déchirures blanches. Puis tout devient d'un gris tendre. Les gaz pâlissent] (C., 367). These impressions are altered and prolonged in the novel:
In the bars at the end of the neighbouring streets, the gas jets went out one by one, like stars dimming with the coming of day. Florent watched Les Halles emerge slowly from the shadows, from the dreamland in which he had seen them, stretching out like an endless series of open palaces (B., 24-25).
[Chez les marchands de vin, au fond des rues voisines, les becs de gaz s'éteignaient un à un, comme des étoiles tombant dans la lumière. Et Florent regardait les Halles sortir de l'ombre, sortir du rêve, où il les avait vues, allongeant à l'infini leurs palais à jour] (V., 41).
It is not only the comparison of the street lamps with falling stars that seems poetic; above all, it is the awakening of the market halls from a dreamland that dramatizes the dawn. The contrast between nature and culture is also illustrated in another passage in which a tableau of fish is aestheticized through its visual and auditory comparison to jewellery. A "broad sunbeam [which, J.K.] falls from the windows of the large, covered street and [which, J.K.] makes the fish sparkle" [large rai de soleil [qui, J.K.] tombe des vitres de la grande rue couverte et [qui, J.K.] fait resplendir tout le poisson] (C., 388) becomes
A shaft of light suddenly came through the glass roof of the covered avenue, illuminating all these precious colours, toned and softened by the waves-the iridescent flesh-tints of the shellfish […]. It was as if the jewel boxes of some sea nymph had been emptied out on dry land-a mass of fantastic ornaments, heaps of necklaces, fabulous bracelets (B., 91-92).
[Une barre de soleil, tombant du haut vitrage de la rue couverte, [qui, J.K.] vint allumer ces couleurs précieuses, lavées et attendries par la vague, irisée et fondues dans les tons clairs des coquillages […] . C'était comme les écrins, vidés à terre, de quelque fille des eaux, des parures inouïes et bizarres, un ruissellement, un entassement de colliers] (V., 128).
This excessive stylization produces clusters of affect, a type of writing which Katherine Ashley has labelled écriture artiste:
Like the Impressionist Painters of the nineteenth century who, to a large extent, neglected or rejected the moralizing narrative function of art in favour of perception and immediacy, écriture artiste draws attention not so much to the object being described as to its sensory effect (Ashley 2005: 25).
Here resides the most fundamental difference between the notebooks and their literary translation: the staccato-like notes of the writer's perceptions which retained the urban reality as their reference point are transposed into semiotically poeticized impressions where the fictional urban world is combined with a layer of myth. Through this multisensory aesthetic Zola transforms the abbreviated, pseudo-objective observations of the notebooks into descriptions whose affective intensity is a key component in the novel's representation of "lived space" - that type of space in which, as urban geographers have taught us, the real and the imagined combine.
<19> These two strategies of narrativization come together to produce, at the level of the actual storyworld, an extremely nuanced sense of "lived space". The space of the novel is more than simply a setting in which the action takes place. As Bertrand-Jennings (1987: 11) argues:
[…] symbolic or anthropomorphic, Zolian places live their own lives, shelter, crush, oust their occupants, and even tend to substitute themselves for these latter: they transform themselves into the protagonists of the great conflicts which traverse Les Rougon-Macquart.
[…] symboliques ou anthropomorphes, les lieux zoliens vivent de leur propre vie, abritent, écrasent, évincent leurs occupants, et tendent même à se substituer à eux pour se métamorphoser en acteurs des grands conflits qui traversent Les Rougon-Macquart.]
On several occasions, Paris is described as a living organism [xxvi]. It is in the imaginative fusion of external and internal milieux where Zola's strength lies. Nelson (2007: 5) explains that the resulting atmospheres in his novels are "always presented through the eyes of individuals, and are never separate from human experience." The multiplicity of atmospheres and fictional urban experiences presented in The Belly of Paris always take as their starting point the physical interaction of characters with their environment, and in that sense they embody that very modern conception of the "production of space" about which Lefebvre wrote in such great detail. Indeed, the milieu is so closely interwoven with the characters that there would be no such space as Les Halles without the social groups inhabiting it. Thus, this type of literature contains representations of the production of lived space, ones which reproduce in fictional guise the simultaneously bodily and ideological dynamics of spatial production.
<20> I want now to sketch out in more depth the precise nature of the "lived space" which is produced in the fictional world of Zola's novels. I have already referred to the distribution of the documentary material amongst the characters of the novel. This distribution allows the novelist to explore imagined affective worlds that are based on his actual 'feeling of place' as described above. In the case of The Belly of Paris Zola presents four versions of space, which together form the totality of the novel's "lived space" [xxvii]: the space of artistry (1) (Claude), the space of spectacle (2) (Madame Saget, La Sarriette, Madame Lecoeur), the space of abundance and power (3) (Lisa, Quenu, Les Méhudins), and the space of nature (4) (Mme François, Marjolin & Cadine). All four belong to one or another of the two main collective protagonists of the novel: the Fat and the Skinny [xxviii].
<21> These multiple affective topoi are partially unified through the perspective of Florent, whose alienation from his surroundings provides Zola with an excuse to have him constantly wander through the market halls. In contrast to Florent, whose unease regularly manifests itself in bodily form [xxix], Claude's "space" - the space of artistry (space 1) - can best be described through fascination and curiosity [xxx]. His relation to the halls stands for the attitude of les Maigres in general: he is well aware of the present injustices and often complains about them, but he dare not act on this awareness because of his fear of being quite literally digested by the market [xxxi]. His painterly vision - sight the most cerebral and distancing of the senses in Zola's eyes - enables him to separate himself from his lived environment to a greater extent than other characters in the novel, but unlike Florent, the political rebel, he remains ultimately just as trapped by the space of the market halls. The space of spectacle (space 2) also contrasts with Florent's negative experience of Les Halles; where the three ladies eagerly scour the market halls in search of scandals, exploiting the architectural peculiarities of the building the better to snoop and pry, Florent is repulsed by the excessive sensuality of the very spectacles they desire. Indeed, Lefebvre's explanation of the body as a site of resistance becomes pertinent here as a way of interpreting Florent's somatic unease as a mode of political resistance to the market system. No place, however, embodies these sensuous excesses more than the fishmonger's and the butcher's shop (the space of abundance and power - space 3) [xxxii], places whose olfactory and tactile (not to mention sexual) overabundance are of truly Rabelaisian proportions. If Claude could at least partially distance himself from his milieu, some of the Gros are almost physically embedded in it [xxxiii]. It is only when Florent enters the space of nature (space 4) that he experiences feelings of homeliness and peace. This is the space of tradition or provinciality where, in a somewhat idealized manner, the senses come to rest [xxxiv]. This space, too, manages to achieve a certain distancing from the dominant space of the market hall, located as it is on the periphery between country and city.
<22> The interaction of these four competing spaces - each of which embodies one or another aspect of Zola's spatial conceptions or perceptions - constitutes the lived space of the novel. And yet one of them is dominant: the space of abundance and power is the place of les Gros and it is this place which, because of the economic and political power of that class, constitutes the overarching space within which the other characters must function - whether that be simply to acquiesce, to create a pocket of resistance or, like Florent, to openly rebel. Lisa is the only character who seems to develop throughout the novel, ultimately becoming the incarnation of the successful petite bourgeoise. Following Lefebvre's Production of Space, one might argue that she represents the class which owns space and controls its production from a central position. It is Lisa who eventually unveils her hypocritical character and puts an end to the spatial disorganization produced by Florent. Space thus becomes an active force, "the main issue in the conflict being related" (Pierre-Gnassounou in Nelson 2007: 95). The great narrative antagonism between les Gros and les Maigres, that same antagonism which we recognized as one of the formal organizing principles of the novel, is thus unveiled as a simultaneously spatial and affective antagonism. It is condensed in the ideological force-field of the "lived space" produced by Zola's work in which senses of space, when drawn into the gravitational field of fiction, become constitutive elements of the novel's literary form.
Conclusion
<23> What I hope to have demonstrated is that the Parisian space in Zola's work in general and in his novels in particular is much more than just a simple necessity or décor, but on the contrary a highly researched, explored and elaborated spatial unit. Using Henri Lefebvre's theory, I have distinguished the various types of space that come into play during the genesis of Zola's novels - in this case, The Belly of Paris. The notebooks evidence that Zola's physical encounter with the market halls left a lasting impression on him - one that helped structure the whole narrative not only on the basis of his (mental) map or plans (conceived space), but of the actual physical space of Les Halles. This overarching frame, linked to the battle between Les Gros and les Maigres, is then filled with the author's real life experiences (perceived space), distributed among various characters' individual senses of space and enriched by metaphor and symbolicity (lived space). The arrangement of these elements results in a dialectical movement between conceived, perceived and lived space, between the real and the imagined: the layers merge without fully dissolving into an indistinct whole. One must bear in mind, however, that the representations of space in literature cannot be abstracted from the very literariness of the genre; the novel brings together real life experiences with the levels of style, form and narrative. It is a medium which brings us close to the actual sensory and affective aspects of spatial experience, and one that captures the complex interweaving of practices, conceptions, perceptions and symbols in Zola's production of space.
Notes
[i] "Lived space" is a fusion of physical and mental constructs, symbolism and meaning. It can be usefully compared with the notion of "real-and-imagined" space (in literature) (Detering et al. 2012: 263; see Soja 1996). Weigel (2002) coined the term 'topographical turn' to refer to the interdisciplinary work of cartography and literature, i.e. literary criticism's use of non-literary topographical knowledge for its analysis of space in texts. But because the notion implies an approach that works with already mediated materials (maps etc.), it lent itself to a substantial extension. Consequently, it has since accrued a much wider scope and now designates diverse types of spatial representations (see Detering et al. 2012: 258). Even if Detering et al. concentrate their critiques on continental literary studies, Hones (2011) stresses that Anglo-American narrative theory also needs to revise its limited conception of space - a demand that she sees as being answered by literary geographers.
[ii] Victor Baltard designed the central market in Paris, consisting of twelve pavilions to be built from the then modern materials of glass and iron, and which were subsequently constructed between 1857 and 1936 (cf. Woollen 2000: 24).
[iii] We must, of course, always remain aware that this experience is overdetermined by the literary forms in and through which authors compose their works. Moreover, fictional storyworlds are obviously not always mediated through internal focalization; nevertheless, reader involvement is generally higher in those passages that are, for example, internally narrated from a single viewpoint (cf. Hillebrandt 2011: 87).
[iv] The notebooks were published in 1986 under the direction of Henri Mitterand who extracted incoherent excerpts of the dossiers and arranged them into thematic groups. In the case of The Belly of Paris these include: "General notes on the market halls" [Notes générales sur les Halles], "Streets adjoined to the halls" [Les rues autour des Halles], "A night in the market halls" [Une Nuit aux Halles], "Sales" [La vente], "The pavilions" [Sous les pavillons de Baltard], "The basements" [Les caves, les resserres], Les Quenu-Gradelle (a family in the story).
[v] The subtitle of his magnum opus, The Natural and Social History of a Second Empire Family, already hints at the aim of a cultural anthropology on the one hand and at the association of literature and science on the other (cf. Kaiser 1990: 37).
[vi] See Lefebvre (1991: 38f.): "Representations of space: conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdividers and social engineers, as of a certain type of artist with a scientific bent - all of whom identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived […]. This is the dominant space in any society (or mode of production). Conceptions of space tend, with certain exceptions to which I shall return, towards a system of verbal (and therefore intellectually worked out) signs." [« Les représentations de l'espace, c'est-à-dire l'espace conçu, celui des savants, des planificateurs, des urbanistes, des technocrates « découpeurs » et « agenceurs », de certains artistes proches de la scientificité, identifiant le vécu et le perçu au conçu […]. C'est l'espace dominant dans une société (un mode de production). Les conceptions de l'espace tendraient (avec quelques réserves sur lesquelles il faudra revenir) vers un système de signes verbaux donc élaborés intellectuellement » (Lefebvre 2010: 49).]
[vii] Cf. in particular: Claude Bernard: Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale (1865). Paris: Garnier-Flammarion 1966; Prosper Lucas: Traité philosophique et physiologique de l'hérédité naturelle. Paris: Baillière et fils, 1847-1850. Likewise, the dossiers attest to a strong affiliation with Hippolyte Taine's social environmentalism which aimed at the analysis of the context of literary works based on "race", "milieu" and "moment".
[viii] Ashley (2005: 71) defines the notion document humain as follows: "[…] the process of literary creation and the status of the document as material to be exploited in a novel [and] the result of the process of observation and the accumulation of data.[…] The document is, on the one hand, a material trace of a present or past empirical reality […] and generate[s] what can, given the dual meaning of the term, be considered a new document: the novel."
[ix] For the purposes of this short article, I am going to concentrate on the preparatory notes of The Belly of Paris and their translation into the final novel. My conclusions can, however, be adapted to his other novels even though the content and location may vary.
[x] The works mentioned in the dossiers include: Du Camp, M.: Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans la seconde moitié du XIXè siècle. Paris: Hachette et cie, tome II, 1870; Delord, T: Histoire du second Empire. 6 vol. Paris 1869-75; Delescluze, Ch.-L.: De Paris à Cayenne, journal d'un transporté. Paris: Le Chevalier 1869 (cf. Scarpa 2000: 17).
[xi] The Belly of Paris is set in 1858-1859 and depicts the story of the Quenu-Gredelle, a branch of the Macquart family. Its protagonist is Florent who returns to Paris after escaping from the island of Guyana where he had been wrongly imprisoned. No one knows his secret except for his brother Quenu and his wife, Lisa. The latter couple own a well-run butcher's shop within the market halls [Les Halles] of Paris. The situation worsens when Florent seeks to overthrow the ruling order of the market hall, thus endangering the existence of his brother's family.
[xii] Zola's friend, the architect and author Frantz Jourdain, went so far as to call him "the architect of Médan" [l'architecte de Médan] because of his precise rendering of the department store building in Au Bonheur des Dames (1884), thus confirming Zola's proximity to the architectural discourse of his time (cf. Jourdain in Nakai 2000: 556).
[xiii] The elaboration of this discourse coincided with the very emergence of modern Paris itself (cf. Stierle 1993: 48).
[xiv] See Lefebvre (1991: 38): "The spatial practice of a society secretes that society's space; it propounds and presupposes it, in a dialectical interaction; it produces it slowly and surely as it masters and appropriates it. From the analytic standpoint, the spatial practice of a society is revealed through the deciphering of its space."; [« La pratique spatiale d'une société secrète son espace; elle le pose et le suppose, dans une interaction dialectique: elle le produit lentement et sûrement en le dominant et en se l'appropriant. A l'analyse, la pratique spatiale d'une société se découvre en déchiffrant son espace » (Lefebvre 2000: 48).]
[xv] Cf., for example, the entry "A night in the market halls" [Une Nuit aux Halles] in the notebook.
[xvi] This included useful observations on the day-to-day functioning of this specific quarter, i.e. the flows of commodities and people as well as the mechanisms of control and administration (cf. Harvey 1989: 262).
[xvii] There are other examples that testify to Zola's precision in topographical information: a whole chapter in the notebooks is devoted to the naming and description of streets in the market quarter.
[xviii] One can find traces of this linking together in the Experimental Novel as well: "Here it is nearly always an experiment "pour voir" ["to see"], as Claude Bernard calls it."; "The observer relates purely and simply the phenomena which he has under his eye… He should be the photographer of phenomena, his observation should be the exact representation of nature…He listens to nature and he writes under its dictation" (Zola 1934: 7f.).
[xix] Recent research on the social and cultural history of the senses shows, however, that such a derivation is mistaken. Smith explains that the dominance of the eye traces back to "a particular style of […] historical writing on the history of the senses […] by intellectual historians" (2007: 13). He sees it as a cultural product of a particular social class that does not necessarily tell us something about the actual use of the senses. David Howes (1991, 2003, 2005), Constance Classen (1993, 1994, 1998) und Alain Corbin (1986, 2000) offer useful overviews of the range of cultural and social research on the senses.
[xx] Cf. "Only the streets' supine glass roofs give off rays of sunlight in the general gloom" [ Les verrières allongées des rues jettent seules des rais de soleil, dans le gris general] (C., 348, Notes générales); "The play of the light changes at every moment the face of the market halls. Sunset over the halls, the glass shines on high" [Les jeux de lumière changent à chaque instant l'aspect des Halles. Un coucher de soleil sur les halles, les vitres brillent, en haut] (C., 349, ibid.); "Effect of a lantern beam on a heap of vegetables" [ Effet d'un coup de lanterne sur un tas de legumes] (C., 365, Une Nuit aux Halles). Alternatively, one might also explain this interest in light as a consequence of the use of steel and glass as building material in Haussmann's Paris. New architectural conditions - vast visual axes (streets, boulevards), the apparent annihilation of boundaries between inside and outside (market halls) and so forth - enabled new ways of perceiving which stressed the visual (cf. Palmbach 2001: 25-64).
[xxi] The last sentence may refer to the idea that malicious smells cause diseases. This reasoning was common in France before the insights brought about by Louis Pasteur's bacteriology.
[xxii] The distinction between space and place has been studied in various disciplines. I understand place as the result of a transformation of conceptual space into a factual, i.e. humanized and enclosed, centre of established values (cf. Westphal 2011: 5).
[xxiii] Colette Becker emphasises the fact that a first plan of the novel existed prior to Zola's fieldwork (cf. Becker 2003: 11). There are passages in the Carnets which prove this, for example: "It is in the poultry storeroom that I will have the rape scene take place" [ C'est dans la resserre aux volailles que je fera passer ma scène de viol] (C., 403); "I could make them love Cadine by holding a beautiful soiree there [in the auction pavilion]" [Je pourrais y [dans le pavillon des criées] faire aimer Cadine par une belle soirée]. The observations could nevertheless influence the general plan (cf. Mitterand 1987: 84f.).
[xxiv] See Lefebvre (1991: 39): "Representational spaces: space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of 'inhabitants' and 'users', but also of some artists and perhaps of those, such as a few writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. This is the dominated - and hence passively experienced - space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational spaces may be said, though again with certain exceptions, to tend towards more or less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs." [« Les espaces de représentation, c'est-à-dire l'espace vécu à travers les images et symboles qui l'accompagnent, donc espace des « habitants », des « usagers », mais aussi de certains artistes et peut être de ceux qui décrivent et croient seulement décrire : les écrivains, les philosophes. C'est l'espace dominé, donc subi, que tente de modifier et d'approprier l'imagination. Il recouvre l'espace physique en utilisant symboliquement ses objets. De sorte que ces espaces de représentation tendraient (mêmes réserves que précédemment) vers des systèmes plus ou moins cohérents de symboles et de signes non verbaux» (Lefebvre 2000: 49).]
[xxv] Even if the dossiers prove his systematic approach to writing - Zola sketched a first plan for each novel (brief notes on the story's chapters) and then reviewed this plan with the help of his documentation - the actual genesis of the novel, i.e. the configuration of the research material, was a complex process of adaption and transformation of information (cf. Becker 2003: 11).
[xxvi] For example: "They seemed like some satiated beast, embodying Paris itself, grown enormously fat, and silently supporting the Empire" (B., 124) or "The great voice of the markets grew louder" (translation modified) (B., 20) [Paris entripaillé, cuvant sa graisse, appuyant sourdement l'Empire] (V., 169) or [La grande voix des Halles grondait plus haut] (V., 36).
[xxvii] It is important to note that these four "spaces" are theoretical constellations that I, as a reader, have abstracted from my experience of reading the novel. The whole point is that, from the fictional perspective of the characters in the storyworld, these four "spaces" are experienced as place.
[xxviii] Claude, the painter, the political friends and the two gossips, Mme Saget et Mme Lecoeur, belong to the Skinny with Florent as their 'king' whilst the Quenu, the Méhudins, Monsieur Lebigre (a pub owner), Gavard, the young lovers Marjolin & Cadine and La Sarriette, a fruit merchant, are part of the Fat (cf. V., 252-254).
[xxix] Florent's growing unease is generally rendered via the visual sense: "He wished he could no longer see; he turned towards Saint-Eustache, which he could now see […]. The tide was still rising. He had felt it round his ankles, then on a level with his stomach, and now it threatened to drown him altogether. Blinded, submerged, his ears ringing, his stomach crushed by everything he had seen, feeling the presence of new, endless quantities of food, he prayed for mercy;" (B., 26ff.). [ Il ne voulait plus voir, il regardait Saint-Eustache, […]. Il l'avait senti à ses chevilles, puis à son ventre; elle menaçait, à cette heure, de passer par-dessus sa tête. Aveuglé, noyé, les oreilles sonnantes, l'estomac écrasé […] il demanda grâce ] (V., 42ff.).
[xxx] Cf. "Claude had enthusiastically jumped onto the bench […]", (B., 25). [ Mais Claude était monté debout sur le banc, d'enthousiasme] (V., 43).
[xxxi] Cf. "Paris was chewing over the daily food of its two million inhabitants […]", (B., 29). [ Paris mâchait les bouchées à ses deux millions d'habitants] (V. 49).
[xxxii] Both places are described visually, but receive their characteristic stamp from tactile and olfactory impressions. The fish market is presented as a rude and malicious milieu that has generally negative connotations: "[…] penetrating smell […]; the stench of rotting flesh mingled with the smell of mud in the neighbouring streets […],the stench rose and the air grew heavy with the hot air of plague", (B., 121). [[…]odeur pénétrante […]; des senteurs de chairs tournées se mêlèrent aux souffle fades de boue […], la puanteur monta, alourdit l'air d'une buée pestilentielle] (V., 164). The butcher's shop is a place of abundant nutrition; it is place and space at the same time since it is a miniature version of the overall structuring space of the Fat and the Skinny.
[xxxiii] Cf. "She had the fine skin and pinky-white complexion of those who spend their lives surrounded by fat and raw meat", (B., 35). [Sa chair paisible avait cette blancheur transparente, cette peau fine et rosée des personnes qui vivent d'ordinaire dans les graisses et les viandes crues] (V., 57, my italics).
[xxxiv] Which is not to say that Zola always idealized nature. On the contrary, in true Enlightenment spirit, he believed it was necessary to
domesticate it. Take the characters Marjolin and Cadine, for example. They are creatures born in the market halls and seem to respond to their environment
in a naïve and intuitive way. They explore the subterranean spaces via vertical movements, climbing up on the roofs of the halls or hiding in the
basements. And yet this potentially transgressive force must always be tamed: when Marjolin attacks Lisa with "the strenght of a bull" (B., 182) [ une force de taureau] (V., 239), she fights back and thus re-establishes order.
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