The Nouvelle Athènes
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| Edgar Degas, 'L'Absinthe' (1875) [Supposedly set in the Nouvelle Athènes] |
Chapter seven is set in the Nouvelle Athènes - a bar just off the Place Pigalle. This part of Paris became infamous in the twentieth century as a red light district, but the area did not have quite the same reputation during the period Moore describes. (The Café de la Nouvelle Athènes was replaced by a strip bar only later.) In the 1870s, Pigalle was more closely associated with the Bohemian artist types who lived in nearby Montmartre. In chapter seven, Moore relates how the café was frequented by writers such as Villiers de l'Isle Adam and painters, such as Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet. The debates and discussions about art and literature, he explains, offered him an education as rich as that offered by Oxford or Cambridge.
Entitled 'The Synthesis of the Nouvelle Athènes', chapter seven seeks to capture that atmosphere of intellectual and aesthetic fervour. But the form and content of the chapter is challenging and it landed Moore in deep trouble.
Formally, it consists of snatches of dialogue overheard in the café:
There seem to be two voices here, but Moore doesn't provide speech marks or narrative indications to help us distinguish who is speaking. The reader is left to figure out this debate about literary authenticity and the economic value of art.
The contents of the chapter are challenging and got Moore into trouble, because the voices in this chapter offer their full, frank and free verdict on contemporary art and literature without any sense of restraint. The exchange above is followed by a sequence in which the work of Émile Zola is heavily criticised:
Moore's anonymised presentation means we can't tell whether each of these criticisms is voiced by a different speaker or just one speaker who really doesn't like Zola. The chapter's title is perhaps intended to diffuse the effect - this is a 'synthesis' of the kind of talk Moore had overheard in the café. But his readers were not convinced.
The chapter did not cause much of a stir when it was published in England, but when it was translated into French and serialised in the Revue independente, word reached those French artists and writers who had come in for hostile treatment. Moore wrote to Zola and went to visit him at his home in France in an unsuccessful attempt to mollify him. He pointed out that the voices in this chapter do not belong to him and their criticisms are not his criticisms, but Zola was not convinced and their friendship suffered.
Moore had burned his boats with a key literary influence, but this may have been his intention. The point may have been to signal his independence from a formative master. In my next post, I'll explore his relationship with Zola in a bit more detail.
Garçon, un bock! I write to please myself, just as I order my dinner; if my books sell I cannot help it – it is an accident.
But you live by writing.
Yes, but life is only an accident – art is eternal.
There seem to be two voices here, but Moore doesn't provide speech marks or narrative indications to help us distinguish who is speaking. The reader is left to figure out this debate about literary authenticity and the economic value of art.
'What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style [...]
He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper’s shop [...]
His last novel l’Oeuvre, how terribly spun out' etc.
Moore's anonymised presentation means we can't tell whether each of these criticisms is voiced by a different speaker or just one speaker who really doesn't like Zola. The chapter's title is perhaps intended to diffuse the effect - this is a 'synthesis' of the kind of talk Moore had overheard in the café. But his readers were not convinced.
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| Émile Zola |
Moore had burned his boats with a key literary influence, but this may have been his intention. The point may have been to signal his independence from a formative master. In my next post, I'll explore his relationship with Zola in a bit more detail.
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