The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fruitfulness, by Emile Zola

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Title: Fruitfulness
Fecondite

Author: Emile Zola

Release Date: March 17, 2009 [EBook #10330]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRUITFULNESS ***

Produced by David Widger and Dagny

FRUITFULNESS

(FECONDITE)

By Emile Zola

Translated and edited by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

"FRUITFULNESS" is the first of a series of four works in which M. Zola
proposes to embody what he considers to be the four cardinal principles
of human life. These works spring from the previous series of The Three
Cities: "Lourdes," "Rome," and "Paris," which dealt with the principles
of Faith, Hope, and Charity. The last scene in "Paris," when Marie,
Pierre Froment's wife, takes her boy in her arms and consecrates him,
so to say, to the city of labor and thought, furnishes the necessary
transition from one series to the other. "Fruitfulness," says M. Zola,
"creates the home. Thence springs the city. From the idea of citizenship
comes that of the fatherland; and love of country, in minds fed by
science, leads to the conception of a wider and vaster fatherland,
comprising all the peoples of the earth. Of these three stages in the
progress of mankind, the fourth still remains to be attained. I have
thought then of writing, as it were, a poem in four volumes, in four
chants, in which I shall endeavor to sum up the philosophy of all my
work. The first of these volumes is 'Fruitfulness'; the second will
be called 'Work'; the third, 'Truth'; the last, 'Justice.' In
'Fruitfulness' the hero's name is Matthew. In the next work it will be
Luke; in 'Truth,' Mark; and in 'justice,' John. The children of my
brain will, like the four Evangelists preaching the gospel, diffuse the
religion of future society, which will be founded on Fruitfulness, Work,
Truth, and Justice."

This, then, is M. Zola's reply to the cry repeatedly raised by his hero,
Abbe Pierre Froment, in the pages of "Lourdes," "Paris," and "Rome": "A
new religion, a new religion!" Critics of those works were careful to
point out that no real answer was ever