Saltykov-Shchedrin on Zola and Goncourt after reading “Manette Salomon”, in a letter of 1875
Saltykov-Shchedrin in a letter to Nekrasov, 14 November 1875:.
“Goncourt writes excellently… Zola’s article on the Goncourts is very good… Zola’s despatch on the floods is the kind of thing that makes one’s hair stand on end. A whole appalling drama… If it does not work out with Zola, then I should think it useful to invite Goncourt, not for a feuilleton, of which he is incapable, but let him give us a novel.”
Saltykov-Shchedrin in a letter to P. V. Annenkov, 20 November 1875:
“I read Goncourt’s ‘Manette Salomon’ the other day, and it was as though my eyes had been opened. I came to hate both Zola and Goncourt… Dickens, Rabelais and the rest place us face to face with living images, whereas these wretches… regale us with psychology… Now, in my eyes, of all Zola’s works only ‘The Belly of Paris’ exists. Psychology is an arbitrary affair: however you string it together, you will either fall short or overshoot. And what comes out is a twisted, clipped mug, not a human being but a comprachico.”
He has seen the light, and thank God for it!
