As some of you may know, I teach in the history department at Baylor University and one of my fields is military history. Every once in a while, my day job shows up here.
In 1892, French novelist Émile Zola finished the penultimate novel in the 20-volume series of books he’d been working on for over two decades. It’s entitled The Debacle, and it tells the story of the catastrophic French defeat at the Battle of Sedan on September 1, 1870. The battle resulted in the surrender of the French army to the Prussians, and the capture of Emperor Napoleon III who was leading his soldiers. It brought the curtain down on the Second French Empire, triggered the workers revolution in Paris that become known as The Commune, and introduced Europe to the new German Empire that would dominate the continent until WWI. The novel was the best seller of all the books in Zola’s series. Within a few months of its release, it sold over 150,000 copies.
In 1893, an American reviewer wrote that “it is a book for which modern literature is distinctly the richer. War is the scene of countless tales, but we have never had the like of this to bring before us with startling reality what war means; not to the general in his tent, but to the soldier in the field....” Also, said this reviewer, in its pages could be found “one of the finest pieces of French prose that this century has given us,” and “what might be the finest battle picture in literature.” That’s high praise.
As I read this review, I started thinking of films like Saving Private Ryan. Today, through the use of movies and special effects, visual details of things like war can be brought before the public in much more graphic ways than the novelist’s pen can muster. But that doesn’t mean that movies are the greater art form.
I’m working my way through the entire series of Zola’s novels and I’m hoping to finally reach this one maybe next spring if I’m lucky. I’m not sure I understand the outlines of French history any better than I did before I started reading him, but I do think I understand the timeless aspects of human nature more clearly. That 1893 reviewer noted that far from making his stories idealistic, Zola “sets out to paint life as he finds it.” When it comes to war, Zola shows us that it can sometimes bring out the best in our nature, but more often, it brings out the worst.
Artists don’t necessarily teach us history, but they can tell us volumes about the people who inhabit it. And that means us.
