Henry Vizetelly was sentenced to three months in prison and a heavy fine, and his publishing house subsequently went bankrupt. These censorious measures might explain why it was only ten years later that Edward Vizetelly felt able to risk translating another novel by Zola and why, when it was eventually published, it appeared in a bowdlerized version prepared by his brother Ernest. Scenes of a sexual nature and anything that might be considered in the least indelicate were removed. The fact that Madame Victoire works as a lavatory attendant is not mentioned. Roubaud’s attempt to make love to his wife and the first love-making between Jacques and Séverine are omitted. The novel does not work convincingly without these scenes. The difficulties that are reflected in Vizetelly’s translation would make a very rewarding study for anyone interested in the practicalities of Victorian censorship. Despite (or perhaps thanks to) these excisions The Monomaniac was reprinted in 1902. and again in 1915 and 1920. More recent translations have benefited from a more open approach to such matters. They include Alec Brown’s The Beast in Man (1956), Leonard Tancock’s La Bête Humaine (1977) and Roger Pearson’s La Bête Humaine (1996).

The novel has also lent itself to a number of film adaptations. The most famous of these is La Bête Humaine (1938), directed by Jean Renoir, with Jean Gabin as Lantier, Simone Simon as Séverine, Fernand Ledoux as Roubaud and Renoir himself as Cabuche. For the present-day viewer it is a strikingly ‘period’ piece, although the period in question is different from that depicted in the novel. The film focuses on Séverine’s unhappy marriage to Roubaud and her relationship with Jacques. The stories of Flore and Philomène are sidelined; the blizzard, the train crash and Misard’s murder of Aunt Phasie are omitted entirely. Jacques is portrayed as a killer with a conscience; he eventually takes his own life by leaping from his train. The film redirects Zola’s narrative but it engages with Zola’s text intimately. The dialogue is at times exactly as Zola has written it, and scenes are recreated which draw upon subtle details of Zola’s descriptions of moment and place. A freer adaptation is Fritz Lang’s Human Desire (1954). Lang’s film is more properly speaking a reworking of Renoir’s film rather than of Zola’s novel. It translates the action into the context of post-war America. The characters are given new names, and Jacques (Jeff Warren in Lang’s film) becomes an entirely different person. He is no longer the ‘monomaniac’, driven by atavistic instinct to kill women; he is a perfectly ordinary, fun-loving American soldier who has just returned from military service in Korea. The killings are worked out in the context of a domestic rift. There are no steam trains in Lang’s film, and much of the powerful symbolism which Zola attaches to his ‘ferocious’ locomotives is lost. The film is a tame reflection of the disturbing power of Zola’s novel, yet at the same time it succeeds in relating it to a more modern world.

The achievements and insights of previous translators and film-makers have acted as an inspiration and encouragement in the preparation of this new translation. Given the novel’s violent subject matter, the writing displays a remarkable reserve and sobriety. This is not the Zola that the Duchesse de Guermantes delights in referring to as ‘the Homer of the sewers’1. The use of idiomatic or colloquial French is limited; ‘expletives’ are few and far between, and fairly mild when they do occur. Zola makes considerable use of free indirect speech, which allows him to transcribe conversations and direct exchanges with a degree of formality that direct speech would lack.