- in original text:
...zending boeken. Mes haines van Zola zou ik op willen toepassen Zola’s eigen woorden betreffende...
...begin ik in dezen te zeggen dat ik dus niet ben onder degenen die Zola dit boek kwalijk nemen. Ik leer er Zola door kennen, ik leer er Zolas zwakke zij door kennen – onvoldoende begrippen in zake...
...vind Manet ook knap – maar erg interessant, Zola over kunst, soortgelijk interessant als b.v. een...
...van die critiek evenwel bij wijze van weeromstuit, is Zola wel thuis in den Elzas, en ware hij er t...
...en dès lors is hij voor mij hors ligne.
Zola heeft met Balzac gemeen dat hij weinig afweet van...
...las ’t met pleizier. waarom – om de zelfde reden als ’t boek van Zola. om de persoonlijkheid van den man die ’t schreef.
Hebt ge gemerkt Zola Millet niet eens noemt. Toch las ik van Zola een beschrijving van een boerenkerkhof en een sterfbed en begrafenis van een oud boertje, zoo mooi als...
...groot veld met kluitjes aarde en een lucht.
Ik zou Zola wel eens die vraag willen doen welke ik aan...
- in translation:
...to Zola’s Mes haines Zola’s own words about Hugo, ‘I should like to demonstrate that, given such a man on such a subject, the result could not be another book than the one it is’, also Zola...
...who blame Zola for this book. Through it I’m getting to know Zola, I’m getting to know Zola’s...
...I too think Manet is clever — but very interesting, Zola on art, interesting in the same way as...
...question, however, inevitably raised by this criticism: is Zola familiar with the Alsace, and if he...
...sublime, and so for me he is extraordinary.
What Zola has in common with Balzac is that he knows little about painting. I think two artist types in Zola’s works, Claude Lantier in Le ventre de...
...reason as the book by Zola. Because of the personality of the man who wrote it.
Have you noticed that Zola doesn’t even mention Millet? Yet I read a description by Zola of a country graveyard and...
...of earth and a sky.
I’d like to put to Zola the question that I’d like to put to some other...
- in date note:
...in letter 358 of on or about 2 July 1883, such as Zola’s Mes haines, the drawings that Van Gogh is...
- in note 1:
...Zola’s article ‘Les chansons des rues et des bois’ in Mes haines: ‘Given Victor Hugo and subjects pertaining to idylls and eclogues, Victor Hugo could not have produced any other work but Les Chansons des rues et des bois. That is the theorem that I propose to prove...I shall not cease to repeat, criticism of it, in the way it is conducted, seems to me a monstrous injustice ... When he wrote Les Chansons des rues et des bois, Victor Hugo was true to his whole past, his whole genius. He could not write them in any other way, because then he would have lied to himself, and he would have given us a work whose origins nothing would have explained. That is what had to be demonstrated.’ (Étant donné Victor Hugo et des sujets d’idylles et d’églogues, Victor Hugo ne pouvait produire une oeuvre autre que Les Chansons des rues et des bois. Tel est le théorème que je me propose de démontrer ... Je ne cesserai de le répéter, la critique, telle qu’elle est exercée, me parait être une monstrueuse injustice ... Victor Hugo, en écrivant Les Chansons des rues et des bois, a obéi à tout son passé, à tout son génie. Il ne pouvait les écrire autrement, parce qu’il se serait alors menti à lui-même et qu’il nous aurait donné une oeuvre dont rien n’aurait expliqué la naissance. C’est ce qu’il fallait démontrer.) See Zola 1966-1970, vol. 10, pp. 80-86 (quotations on pp. 80, 86). On Mes haines, see letter 358, n. 19....
- in note 2:
Zola received numerous indignant letters provoked by Mes haines; subscriptions to the magazine L’Evénement – in which part of the book was pre-published – were cancelled and there were even people who tore it up at the kiosks. This was too much for the publisher and he replaced Zola by a traditional art critic. See D. Baguley, Bibliographie de la critique sur Emile Zola...
- in note 3:
...pas ce monde alsacien qui emplit l’oeuvre.) See Zola 1966-1970, vol. 10, pp. 126-138 (quotations on pp...
- in note 6:
For Claude Lantier in Le ventre de Paris by Zola, see letter 288, n. 4. In Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin (1867) the adulterous Thérèse becomes an accomplice in the murder of her husband Camille by her lover, who...
- in note 8:
A reference to the article ‘M. H. Taine’ in Mes haines; see Zola 1966-1970, vol. 10, pp. 139-156.
- in note 14:
...Zola’s story La mort du paysan, included in Comment on meurt, which Van Gogh had mentioned earlier, also with regard to Millet (see letter 244, n. 5). The deathbed of the peasant Lacour, the peaceful cemetery and the funeral are described in detail. When Lacour is buried, the text reads: ‘He knows the earth and the earth knows him’ (Il connaît la terre et la terre le connaît). See Zola 1976, chapter 2, pp. 621-627 (quotation on p. 627...