Émile Zola came late to the Dreyfus Affair. When his famous “J’accuse” appeared on the front page of the Paris newspaper L’Aurore in 1898, Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army officer wrongly convicted of treason, had already been imprisoned on Devil’s Island for three years. Nevertheless, with a single headline and in a single day, Zola managed to draw back the curtain on the yearslong spy scandal, uncovering motive and plot and naming names.
Though written as an open letter addressed directly to the French president, “J’accuse” reads more like the libretto of a tragic opera. It concludes with a series of accusations against the men who whipped an entire nation into antisemitic fury and conspired to sentence an innocent Jew to unspeakable suffering, all to protect themselves and the “honor” of the French Army.
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