Summary and synopsis of "The Lugon Makkar Series," Volume 17, "The Beastmen."
Emile Zola (1840-1902)Wikipedia.
The Beastmen is the 17th volume of Emile Zola's "Lugon-Macquart series," which took 24 years to complete and was published in 1890.
I read "The Beastman" translated by Mitsunori Terada, published by Fujiwara Shoten.
Again, let's look at the synopsis in the obi description.
A pioneering "railroad novel" that makes full use of the railroads that dashed ahead of the times in the 19th century!
The film depicts the bloody beastliness of the engineer who stabbed to death the woman he loved at the end of his sensuality.
◆A vivid portrait of the society and people of the same period by railroad
This is one of the most popular detective stories in the series. Lebeau, an assistant at Le Havre station of the Western Railway, conspires with his wife, Séverine, to murder Grand Morin, the president of the company, on the train.
The protagonist, Jacques, an engineer, witnesses the murder by chance, but he is attracted to Séverine and refuses to testify in the case, which leads to her becoming his lover in turn.
In the end, however, Jack's fascination and fear of women drives him to murder her with his own hands in a fit of rage. This is the reason why Jack is called a "beastman.
During the Second Empire, railroads were at the forefront of the times as symbols of civilization and progress. If we can read the railroad as the shadowy protagonist of this novel, we can understand Zola's originality in breaking new ground in fiction by using the railroad to vividly depict the society of his time and the sensibilities of the people living there.
Fujiwara Shoten Publishing "Beastmen" translated by Mitsunori Terada
Some line breaks have been made.
The main character in this work, Jack...Izakaya."He is the second son of Gervaise of and is located in the McCall family, a family with crazy genetics.
ProductionHis brother Claude, who appeared in the "The madness for art,Geluminaire."The protagonist of this film, Jacques, also has a madness that when he feels a strong desire for a woman, he wants to kill her.
It tormented him daily to suppress this madness, and the only time he could forget it was when he was working on trains as a railroad worker.
The current story, "The Beastman," depicts the psychological struggle of a person with these uncontrollable murderous impulses rising from deep within his body, and the process of becoming involved in a murder case.
Thoughts - From a Dostoevskyian Perspective
In fact, "The Beastmaster" has become a work that has a serious connection with Dostoevsky.
What a surprise, Zola!Crime and Punishment."It is said that he was inspired to write this work by the
Let's look at the translator's commentary.
If one were to name a famous novel of the same era that examines murder, it would be Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," to say the least.
In the book, the protagonist, Raskolnikov, dared to murder an old woman moneylender on the grounds that murder is permitted for the elite. The French edition of "Crime and Punishment" was published in 1885, and Zola read it and referred to it twice in his "Chapter Draft" of "The Beast Man.
In his plot to kill Roubaud, Jacques, the protagonist of "The Beast," reasons that, like Raskolnikov, the strong have the right to kill those who stand in their way, but even so, he is unable to carry out such a convincing murder, a rational murder, until the very end. But instead of killing Roubaud, he kills his lover Séverine in a fit of rage.
Fujiwara Shoten Publishing, translation by Mitsunori Terada, The Beastman, p. 517.
Some line breaks have been made.
In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov pushed the limits of reason, resulting in murder.
Dostoevsky depicted in "Crime and Punishment" that the end of reason is murder, and Zola would submit the exact opposite opinion in this novel.
I will quote from the main part of the novel where this is exactly what is shown in a nutshell. It is the scene where Jacques is wondering whether to kill Lebeau, the husband of his mistress Séverine.
Isn't Lebeau the only obstacle standing in the way of his own happiness? When he dies, he can marry his beloved Séverine, no more sneaking around, and have her all to himself forever. Then he will have his money, his fortune. He would quit his hard job and go to America, this time as president. Her colleagues used to tell her that in the U.S., engineers were digging up gold by the shovelful. My new life in the U.S. was unfolding before my eyes like a dream. A wife who would love me passionately, instant wealth, an easy life, full of ambition, and anything else I wanted. To make this dream come true, all he has to do is act a little and kill one person. He is like a weed that gets in the way of walking, so let's stomp him down. He's a boring guy who has recently become fat and slow, has a ridiculous passion for gambling, and has lost all of his former energy. Why should we tolerate him? There is no sympathy for him anywhere I look. He is guilty on all counts. No matter how I look at it, I can only think that it would be better for everyone if he died. It would be crazy and cowardly to hesitate to kill him. (omitted)
Let's kill him, I decided. I decided to kill him, so that I could recover from my illness, and so that I could have my wife, whom I love, and my fortune. If anyone needed to be killed, it was him. At the very least, from the standpoint of interest and logic, I can kill him for a good reason. (omitted).
But while he was dwelling on the utter minutiae of the matter, the irrepressible feeling of disgust secretly returned. An inner protest roused him all over again. No, no, no, don't kill! Killing again seemed cruel, unworkable, unthinkable. In his mind, the civilized man was rebelling. It was a power nurtured by education, an idea passed down from generation to generation, a human foundation slowly and unwaveringly built up. He had absorbed with his milk the idea of not killing, an idea that had been passed down from generation to generation. His brain marrow was refined by civilization, stuffed with conscience, and as soon as he began to reason about killing, he pushed it away with fear. Yes, he could kill when instinctive desire or excitement overtook him! But if you try to kill people deliberately, out of calculation, out of interest, you will never be able to do it to yourself! [omitted].
No, no, I can't kill a man! I can't kill such a defenseless man. You can never kill with reason. You must have the instinct to bite, the body's dynamism to pounce on the prey, and the frenzy to tear it apart.
Fujiwara Shoten Publishing, translation by Mitsunori Terada, The Beastman, p. 366-376.
What do you think? Compare it to Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
You can see that Raskolnikov and Jack are saying the exact opposite of each other. (For more on Raskolnikov's philosophy, see the following article.)
Dostoevsky argues that reason is what drives man to ruin, while Zola says that man's animal nature, or instinct, is what leads him to murder.
Jacques is unable to commit murder by reason until the end, and instead easily kills Séverine by impulse.
It was too easy.
After agonizing over whether or not to kill Lebeau, he turns his back on his beloved Séverine with surprising ease. (*Of course, he had been patient enough not to kill her until then.)
Raskolnikov killed by reason, Jack by instinct.
The contrast between the two is perhaps the clearest illustration of the difference between Dostoevsky's and Zola's views of humanity.
I will not go any deeper here, but "The Beastman" is a very interesting work in terms of comparison with "Crime and Punishment".
If you are hooked on "Crime and Punishment," I hope you will read this one as well.
I recommend this book along with Balzac's "Old Gorio" (see article below).
The above is "Zola's 'Beastmen' Murder is Reason or Instinct? Zola's railroad suspense inspired by "Crime and Punishment"".
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