The Human Beast

ORIGINAL EDITION. One of the numbered copies on Holland paper, the only paper after 30 Japon copies.

The terrible seventeenth volume of Les Rougon-Macquart: murders, rapes, suicides, battered women, adulteries, poisonings, small sums, political calculations, the perfect ultra-dark tableau by a novelist “tired of [his] series” who wishes to conclude it quickly. Jacques Lantier is a born criminal, with the exception that, until now, he has committed no crime; everything exists potentially in his mind, heated to white-hot by repressed urges that only flesh excites, which distinguishes him from Raskolnikov, an ideological criminal. Crime and Punishmentwas translated in 1884, and Zola became passionate about the work. Jacques Lantier, however, is unaware of the superman's existence; he is simply burdened by his crime-inducing heredity as the son of Gervaise and that scoundrel Lantier.