Emile ZOLA and the memory of MAUPASSANT.

Emile Zola (1840.1902)

Autographed letter signed to Jacques Normand.

Pinches and defects at the upper margin.

Two pages in-8°. Médan. September 25, 1894.

"Maupassant's friends will take care of it."

Zola became involved in the subscription launched, at his initiative, by the Society of Men of Letters for the construction of a monument to the memory of Guy de Maupassant.

“My dear colleague, I unfortunately won’t be going to Paris before October 7th, and I don’t want to make you come here in such dreadful weather. But I think we can come to an agreement by letter, unless your departure is after the 7th. I completely agree with you. For the paltry sum of two thousand francs, there’s no need to open a subscription in Le Figaro. We’ll find the money; we ourselves— Maupassant’s friends—will take care of it. And as for the readers on the city council, would you like me to take personal action as soon as I get back? If I don’t act, it’s because I’m no longer on the committee and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Besides, this whole affair seems to be progressing well ; and as soon as you return, it will surely be finished. Yours sincerely, Emile Zola.”

After several months of agony, Guy de Maupassant died on July 6, 1893. On the 8th, the writer was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Zola delivered the eulogy there: “ I do not mean to say that his glory needed this tragic end, this profound resonance in people’s minds, but his memory, since he suffered this dreadful passion of pain and death, has taken on in us a certain supremely sorrowful majesty that elevates him to the legend of the martyrs of thought. Beyond his glory as a writer, he will remain as one of the happiest and most unhappy men on earth, the one in whom we most clearly feel our humanity hope and be shattered, the beloved brother, cherished, then vanished amidst tears…”

A few days after Maupassant's funeral, Zola proposed to the Société des gens de lettres (Society of Men of Letters) that a monument be erected in his memory. It was inaugurated on October 25, 1897 in the Parc Monceau.