Asked
a few years later whether he felt more Polish or more German, [Marcel
Reich-Ranicki] said he thought of himself as “half-Polish, half- German, and
completely Jewish.”[i]
History is a tricky thing, but not half so tricky as memory: and what
else is history but the collective history we all live in, live through, and
try to remember as accurately as possible?
Art and entertainment are something else, although often they pretend to
be part of our total memory; and indeed, by the power and persuasion of words
and images, along with the pressure of other people doing the same thing, they
crowd out our personal experiences and substitute the crafted version of past
events—and thus, in not a few cases, shape the way in which we from then on
walk through the present, littered as it is with the relics of what was once
part of our personal and collective experiences.
Scene 45[ii]
Zola in exile in
England learns the news of various confessions by those whom he accused and who
then tried to bluff their way through the different trials—his own three,
Esterhazy’s and Piquard’s—and, then unable to maintain the ruse against the
facts, committed suicide, resigned, or absconded. With tears in his eyes, Zola feels vindicated
and prepares ti return to France. This
scene shows the nearly year-long self-imposed exile to escape prison as a
conflated event. The arrival of Madam
Zola in London and the writer’s mistress and his diverse children has been
deleted.
Scene 46
Now the scene
shifts to Devil’s Island and Dreyfus’s long ordeal. Guards read out to Dreyfus notice of quashing
of guilty verdict and command to return to France. Dreyfus stunned, cannot believe he is free,
walks in and out of cell confused. He is
old, haggard and nearly bald. The whole
second court martial in 1899 and its guilty verdict, the granting of a pardon a
few days later, and Dreyfus’s long struggle for rehabilitation culminating only
in 1906 have been excised. Everything
looks as though it were the result of Zola’s brave stand, and that
Dreyfus—himself, a passive pawn in this game of French history—had no other
supporters and did not transform himself into an intellectual, a poet, moral
essayist, historians, and Jewish husband.
Scene 47
Zola in train
returning to Paris with wife and supporters.
He announces he can now continue the fight for Justice. All this material is conjectural. Many of Dreyfus’s supporters abandoned him or
worse when he accepted the pardon. The
later struggle was not for Truth and Justice but for the political agendas of
the anarchists and socialists. Zola did
not live to see the Jewish officer fully exonerated.
Scene 48[iii]
Zola back at
home, seated at his desk, and writing his book on Justice. His wife enters and
there is a domestic conversation with Alexandrine. As they talk, his wife puts coal in the fire,
and the camera focuses on fumes seen escaping, hint of the imminent asphyxiation. It is the eve of Dreyfus’s reinstatement in the
Army. Zola tells Alexandrine, “What
matters the individual if the idea survives.”
Zola is thus full of foreboding
of terrible future for Europe on the brink of disaster. His book will be about anti-military
themes. Wife leaves to retire while her
husband stays up late to continue writing.
As he writes his book, noxious fumes spread into the room, and Zola dies. Much of this is conjectural or downright
false but the scene is constructed to be a comment on the dangerous events in
Europe in the late 1930s.
Scene 49[iv]
Years pass. It is 1906.
Dreyfus reinstated. Military
ceremony and parade, as he receives the Legion of Honour. Crowd shouts “Long live Dreyfus”. Alfred asks where Zola is. A newspaper boy announces: “Zola found dead.” The two events are juxtaposed thematically but
were not close in time or place. There
is a question as to whether Zola died accidentally or was murdered by an
anti-Dreyfusard assassin pretending to be a plumber who had fixed the flu on
the stove the previous day. Zola and his
wife actually were in bed together, and Alexandrine barely survived the
poisoning.
Scene 5[v]
Zola’s
funeral. In the great rotunda of the
Pantheon Alfred and Lucie are seen in attendance. Anatole France (or Cézanne) makes the final
eulogy: long praise for Zola’s commitment to truth and justice, “a moment in
the conscience of man.” [vi] The
film conflates two separate events, the first funeral after Zola was found dead
of asphyxiation, and the second several years later when his remains were taken
from Père Lachaise to the Pantheon to be buried among France’s immortals. At this second grand memorial service,
Dreyfus was lightly wounded by a would-be assassin’s bullet. It was his last appearance at a public event,
and other then his service in the Army during the Great War, his last public
duty.
To be continued....
[i] “Germany’s Top Literary Critic,
Holocaust Survivor: Dead”, AFP (19
September 2013 online at http:www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5iFpnF-WQSMxAKpepQ44ZAC8xCQ?docld=CNG.56cb9b3bfa017f8386e2d207ff53d207ad1.3d1&1hl=en
[ii] Reproduced in radio play.
[iii] This scene is given by the radio
play in a condensed form, with time and context deleted. No discussion of the
individual and group obligations.
Alexandrine pleads with Zola to come to bed and to leave the window
open. Then low music suggests the spread
of noxious fumes, as he reads from unfinished novel Justice, coughs, and
chokes. Alexandrine enters the room,
calls for Emile, then shrieks when she discovers he is dead. Background voices spread the news that the
author is dead.
[iv] Radio play cuts most of this
scene. The shift is into the funeral,
where Lucie is heard explaining to young Jeanne and Pierre that a great man has
died.
[v] Anatole France’s eulogy is
heard, stressing that people should not forget those who have fought and died
for their liberty. “Do not pity Zola,
envy him because of his great heart, which won for him a proud destiny: a
moment in human conscience.”
[vi] Following the end of Scene III
of the radio drama, the two main actors are introduced: Josephine Hutchinson
who plays Alexandrine, and Paul Muni who plays Emile Zola. She thanks the director of the radio play,
other actors, and then turns microphone over to the presenter/host. He asks Muni to explain what happened to
Dreyfus after his rehabilitation, as many in the audience have wondered. He says there was an attempted assassination
of Dreyfus at Zola’s funeral (meaning not the first but the later ceremony
transferring his remains to the Pantheon) and then later in the Great War
Dreyfus was promoted to Lt. General and served his nation. He died “a few years ago.” Some of this is true. See my next book on Dreyfus and Lucie between
1906 and Alfred ‘s death in 1935.
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