Le Rêve
1888
Émile Zola writing a fairy tale. That's the first thing to understand about Le Rêve, the unexpected poem tucked inside his monumental Rougon-Macquart cycle. Instead of the industrial squalor and brutal heredity of his better-known works, Zola offers something gentler: a cathedral town in snowbound Picardy, a nine-year-old orphan found shivering on church steps, and a love that blooms between that girl and the son of a wealthy family. But don't mistake tenderness for simplicity. This is still Zola, still obsessed with the forces that shape a life: what we're born into versus what we dream of becoming. Angélique's impossible romance is both genuine passion and a kind of waking fantasy, a girl reaching beyond her station into a world that shouldn't have room for her. The result is a strange, luminous novel that reads like a religious painting come to life: part romance, part social critique, fully a poem of longing.
Editions
X-Ray
“But you said so yourself,the poor lass will die of it...Do you really want her to die?'Yes, I'd rather she died than have a bad life.””
— Emile Zola
“The vision that had emerged from the invisible was returning to the invisible. It was no more an appearance that was fading away, having created an illusion. All is but a dream. And, at the peak of happiness, Angélique had vanished, in the faint breath of a kiss.””
— Emile Zola
“He still loved her more each day, the way you love at twenty, quite unreasonably, as your capricious heart dictates, just for the joy and the pain of loving.””
— Emile Zola
“Angélique loved solitude; and it was a real and joyous recreation for her to spend time alone in her bedroom, evening and morning: here she could give free rein to her fantasy, and escape into the world of her daydreams.””
— Emile Zola
“All at once, she had fallen into the most extreme wretchedness: that of believing that one is not loved.””
— Emile Zola
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Le Rêve by Emile Zola free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Le Rêve by Emile Zola free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Zola, Emile. Le Rêve. Lex, lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6.Zola, E. (1888). Le Rêve. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6Zola, Emile. Le Rêve. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/le-r-ve-41749290-f4e7-4cce-a91c-0187f5aafef6.
