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Zola and Busnach: The Temptation of the Stage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Martin Kanes
Martin Kanes*
Affiliation:
University or California, Davis
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Extract

What could have possessed Zola to let a writer of vaudevilles tamper with his novels? André Antoine asked himself the question in his journal the day after the dismal failure of Germinal, and we still wonder about it today. Very little is known about Busnach, except that he was one of the directors of the Athénée theater, and the author of such items as Ali-Baba and Froufrou. Did Zola really think this theatrical butterfly was capable of converting Germinal, or any other novel for that matter, into a play?

Let us not judge him by his boulevard reputation alone. Sarah Bernhardt called him the wittiest man in Paris, no mean compliment coming from her.2 He possessed the gift—or burden— of extreme sensitivity, and a line from one of his letters to Zola, “Je suis trop votre collaborateur et pas assez votre ami” might serve as epigraph to their relationship. Moreover, Zola had burned himself at the sputtering limelight of the Boulevard des Italiens with Les Heritiers Rabourdin and Le Bouton de rose; why should he not have welcomed the cooperation of a man who knew his business well? Despite the fact that there is a mass of available material on this collaboration— material which throws much light upon Zola's critical and esthetic theories—there has been no real attempt to relate Zola dramaturge with Zola romancier. Relationships did nevertheless exist, as I shall indicate. In the course of their collaboration, Busnach wrote Zola nearly 2000 letters, and in the absence of Zola's replies, these remain our chief source of information.3 My remarks are based upon them, and upon the texts of the plays.4

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , 1962 , pp. 109 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

Notes

1 The material in this paper was presented briefly at the Modern Language Association Meeting in Philadelphia in December 1960. All quotations from the works of Zola are taken from the Œuvres complètes, ed. Maurice Le Blond, 50 vols. (Paris, 1927-29). William Busnach was born on 7 March 1832 and died on 20 January 1907. He came of a North African family of some artistic pretentions, related to the illustrious Halévy family. Like many beginning men of letters, he first held a government position, but then was able to support himself by his stage productions alone. He eventually became director of the Théâtre de l'Athénée, where many of his pieces were staged. His personal production, mostly boulevard comedies and musical revues, was vast. A factual (although somewhat incomplete) account of his collaboration with Zola can be found in the unpublished dissertation (Yale, 1951) by Lawson A. Carter, “Zola and the Theater.”

2 S. Bernhardt, Ma Double Vie. Mémoires de Sarah Bernhardt (Paris, 1923), ii, 11.

3 The Busnach letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale are catalogued Nouv. Acq. fr. 24513, 24514 and 24515, each containing about 700 letters. In my references the number following the virgule is the folio number assigned by the Bibliothèque Nationale. Since the classification is basically chronological, such numbers will be supplied only when the letter involved is undated.

4 L'Assommoir, Nana, and Pot-Bouille were published (W. Busnach, Trois Pièces tirées des romans et précédées chacune d'une préface de Emile Zola, Paris: Charpentier, 1884). The censor's manuscript of Germinal is now in the Archives nationales, série F18, no. 981. Le Ventre de Paris was staged in 1887, but I have been unable to locate a manuscript. La Bête humaine was written shortly after the publication of the novel, and was re-worked intermittently as late as 1900. It was never staged and its manuscript is consequently not on deposit at the Archives nationales.

5 Details can be found in L. Deffoux, La Publication de l'Assommoir (Paris, 1931), pp. 115-125.

6 Nos Auteurs dramatiques, “Alexandre Dumas fils,” p. 139.

7 There are frequent complaints by Busnach about Zola's lack of enthusiasm. Apropos of La Bête humaine, for example, he wrote, “Vous n'avez jamais cru à la pièce.” (24513/643).

8 Letter of 30 July 1877. These lists were usually part of the correspondence, although certain allusions by Busnach indicate that the plays, like Zola's novels, each had a dossier.

9 In an article in defense of Germinal, published in the Figaro for 25 April 1888, and reproduced in the volume of Mélanges, Zola declared that he assumed an increasing share of the work as the collaboration proceeded. The letters indicate that this linear development was not exactly accurate; moreover, mere quantity of work does not necessarily indicate the proportion of creative effort involved.

10 “Dans ce que vous demandez qu'on fasse, c'est-à-dire dans une série de tableaux ...” (24514/444 verso).

11 Nevertheless, Zola, in his running battle with Albert Wolff over Germinal, could flatly state: “Que ceux qui ont bien voulu lire mon roman aillent voir le drame; et ils reconnaîtront au passage des pages entières. De mes cinq œuvres, adaptées par Busnach, celle-ci est celle qui a été le plus respectée. Malgré ce qu'on en a dit, pas une des situations, pas un des personnages employées n'a été changé dans son ensemble” (Mélanges, “Germinal,” p. 144).

12 Zola's well-known difficulty with dialogue explains one of his chief demands upon Busnach. A study of the dialogue of Germinal, almost exclusively Zola's product, might shed some light on his use of the “style indirect libre” in the novels.

13 In the context of the times, these productions were perhaps not the dismal failures adverse criticism made them out to be. In a letter of 23 July 1883 (24514/202), Busnach quotes a remark of Sarah Bernhardt, who was interested in playing the Mme Jusserand of Pot-Bouille: “Depuis quatre ans il n'y a eu que votre collaboration avec Zola qui ait fait de l'argent à l'Ambigu.”

14 Nouv. acq. fr. 24514/318. The responsibility for the décor was largely Busnach's, although Zola specified, by controlling the choice of tableaux, what they were to be.

15 For contemporary critical reactions to these spectacular stagings, see Carter, op. cit., p. 157.

16 Archives nationales F18, no. 981; tableau 10: “L'Ecroulement du Voreux.”

17 Trois pièces, “L'Assommoir,” p. 65.

18 Le Naturalisme au théâtre, “Les Décors et les accessoires,” p. 77.

19 Mélanges, “Germinal,” pp. 143-147.

20 Ibid., p. 147.

21 Le Naturalisme au théâtre, “Les Décors et les accessoires,” p. 76.

22 Trois pièces, pp. 107, 122, and 148.

23 Ibid., p. 407.

24 Ibid., p. 261.

25 Archives Nationales, F18, no. 981. Third tableau: “Chez les Maheu”; Sixth tableau: “Au Cabaret de Rasseneur.”

26 E. de Goncourt, Journal, ed. R. Ricatte (Monaco, 1959), xv, 105.

27 Quoted in H. Massis, Comment Emile Zola composait ses romans (Paris, 1906), p. 21.

28 Nouv. Acq. fr. 24513/326.

29 Dossier of La Bête humaine, Nouv. Acq. fr. 10274/2.

30 Le Naturalisme au théâtre, “Les Décors et les accessoires,” pp. 75-76.

31 One must distinguish between Zola's insistence upon elaborate décors as a factor in “realism” and the glittering elaboration of décor à la Scribe which he rightly condemned. The consistency of his argument (provided one accepts his presumptions about “reality”) often escaped his contemporaries, who reproached him with doing what he condemned in others.

32 Quoted by Carter, op. cit., p. 164.

33 A. Antoine, Le Théâtre (Paris, 1932), ii, 386.

34 Reproduced in Mélanges, “Germinal,” p. 144.