Zola's La Bete Humaine - homo homini lupus est

Written in the end of the 19^th century, La Bete Humaine (The Beast in Men rendered in English – inaccurate but an improvement on the literal title of The Human Beast) is a harrowing tale about, essentially, the closeness of love, lust, jealousy and hatred in human beings. It removes the lustre in which love is usually enshrouded, reducing it to its component parts and examines, with blunt sangfroid, the parochial nature of these powerful emotions that bring out the eponymous beast.

Zola is not known for writing particularly memorable characters; a technique he has intentionally adopted to make his creations true to life. The characters, particularly Severine, were skilfully fleshed out in an understated fashion designed to lend verisimilitude to the protagonists as average men and women. The contrast of Roubaud and Severine is made particularly apparent – the ungainly, awkward, rough, blue collared man and the much younger, pretty, blushing, petit and child-like wife who had an upbringing of culture and education above her station. This disparity weaves tension and unease – highlighting the fragility of their union in the first few pages, the catalyst that kindles the rest of the tragedies to follow. 

The snowballing of events and psychological tension is well rendered. One of the most enjoyable segments of the novel is Zola’s portrayal of Lantier masterfully coaxing his train. Not only is it surprisingly detailed, giving readers a insight on the toughness and skills required for such a job, the relationship between driver and his engine is endearing and touching, giving Lantier a layer onto which to latch some empathy and even affection. It is also beautifully written and engaging, somewhat reminiscent of Hemmingway’s Old man and the sea – the situation of a man totally absorbed in the joys of exerting his strength, skill, experience and concentration to satisfy the pride in his craft. There are some wonderful phrases, such as when Zola describes the engine, La Lison, shrouded in snow as akin to a lady wrapped in ermine.

Whilst enjoyable on many levels, the lack of virtue in any notable characters is remarkable. The amount of debasement of humanity and the resorting to homicide by virtually all characters is a bit much to swallow. On top of that, the curious and dark kink in Lantier’s character, integral though it is to the finale, takes away the verisimilitude of the story. But as Lantier shares family tie to other characters in Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart series, this trait may be illuminated by reading the other books. It is true that the beast lies in all of us – homo homini lupus est. However, while man can be wolf to man as Plautus stated, as Seneca countered, man can also be sacred to man. This is in no way a paradox but highlights the essential quality of conflict underlying all people.

Zola’s merciless unveiling of what Nietzsche called the Dionysiac or what Freud would call the ego in its full raw, selfish, bestial, explosive nature and the conflict it causes with one’s morals and ethics is confronting and thought-provoking. This echoes, or rather, is influenced by (as both Nietzsche and Freud are influenced by Schopenhauer) Schopenhauer’s Wille zum Leben – will to live, where one is driven by one’s own desires, leading ultimately to unhappiness, pain and suffering. Especially pertinent is Schopenhauer’s examination of sex and its impact on psychology, avant-garde in his time, and even linking the power of these stirrings to ultimately the generation of progeny – thus foreshadowing the theory of evolution and large parts of Freud.

As Hitchens and Rushdie pointed out, conversing most enthusiastically and wittily about love, people often make the mistake of confusing love with other things like fidelity. Love is so often held up to the zenith of human quality, it has become largely a cliché that disallows reflection upon it (not helped by bad poetry and lyrics). The dangerous side of love is often waved aside. However the shadow of love can annex more than any other emotion. Murder is almost always an intimate crime, dealt by someone who nominally shared love with the victim. Love and hate are not opposites, far from it. The cliché of them being the different sides of the same coin is more insightful than it appears. The opposite of love is indifference. The opposite of hate is indifference. The deeper we love, the deeper we fear, the deeper we hurt and the deeper we hate.

The important things, it seems to me, is to reduce love and hate down to a level where they can be faced with irony, humour and frivolity (which doesn’t necessarily mean a lacking of seriousness). These contradictions and incongruities existing in everyone is precisely what drive persons to act. The idea of cognitive dissonance as put forth by F. Scott Fitzgerald, capsulated beautifully by the poem ‘The Two Sided Man’ by Kipling:

‘I would go without shirt or shoe, 

Friend, tobacco or bread, 

Sooner than lose for a minute the two 

Separate sides of my head!’

Kipling clearly recognises and relishes the incoherency existing in all of us. The title of Hitchens’s memoir ‘Hitch-22’, a play on Heller’s famous Catch-22, again is an affirmation of this two-sidedness and the fruits that can germinate by embracing rather than denying it. The way to avoid being mastered by these conflicts like the characters in La Bete Humaine is therefore to face these inconsistencies and domesticate it with honesty, philosophy, psychology and irony.

To quote Blake’s Pebble and the Clod:

Love seeketh not itself to please;

Nor for itself hath any care. 

But for another, gives its ease, 

And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.

But then again:

Love seeketh only itself to please, 

To bind another to its delight. 

Joy in another’s love of ease, 

And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.

Perfectly capturing the two-sidedness of love.

Despite the unbelievably numerous accumulation of incidents and vile personalities, and the abrupt ending that doesn’t quite ring true of the characters involved, it is worthy of its place in the Parthenon of French literature and speaks well of the author of J’accuse!, a man who lies in the Pantheon alongside Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.