The hostile critic of Le T e l e graphe ( 17 March 1877 ) who juxtaposed this particular passage and Lantier's humming ( p.630 ) to accuse Zola of plagiarism would have felt vindicated had he had access to the novelist's work-notes .sx But Zola's reading of this section of Poulot's book has implications beyond selective citation .sx While it remains interesting that by no means all the songs of L'Assommoir are referred to in Le Sublime , more significant is the fact that some of Poulot's formulations are associatively elaborated , both structurally and thematically .sx And it is precisely at these textual moments , as we shall see , that Zola's conception of the caf e -concert becomes more problematic than his original recourse to prejudices shared with Poulot might suggest .sx What has been amply demonstrated by recent research is that singing , in this period , was not an innocent activity .sx While relaxation of the Second Empire's censorship laws coincided with its demise , the experience of the Commune was sufficient to remind those now in authority of the dangers of collective grievances being articulated in harmony .sx Words to be sung in the caf e s-concert were thus subject to daily scrutiny ; and approval was accordingly refused if there could be detected even the most oblique allusion to famine , begging or borrowing , the disinherited , trials , fraternity , revolutions from 1789 to the Commune itself , Hugo , military dishonour and the like ; songs submitted under the inadequate camouflage of a " chant moral et patriotique " or a " chanson patriotique " fooled nobody .sx The merely bawdy engaged song-writers and censorship officials in a semantic duel notable for its feeble humour and interpretative prowess .sx Even grammar was suspect :sx the imperative was to be avoided !sx But the extent to which this obsessive process was taken seriously is underlined by the 1872 retrospective analysis of songs permitted under an earlier r e gime .sx And the Censor's voluminous files in the Archives Nationales do allow us to reposition those of L'Assommoir in an ideological context it would be a mistake to ignore .sx To re-read Qu e cochon d'enfant in this perspective is to be made newly aware of the resonance of its vocabulary .sx Its " la Gr e-grave ve " ( p.593 ) is less the water's edge than the place of the guillotine and of those congregating there in the hope of earning their daily bread .sx It was not surprising that a song explicitly called La Gr e-grave ve was banned in May 1870 .sx To refer to a " ma i-circ tr' vidangeur's " " noyaux de c e rises " ( p.594 ) scatologically challenged the ruling on Les Vidangeurs two years earlier .sx The Censor , at least , had no need of the more comprehensive glossary our editions of L'Assommoir fail to provide .sx The " Non " scrawled across La Moutarde de Dijon ( " chansonnette a-grave la sauce piquante " ) in November 1868 recognized preoccupations other than the gastronomic .sx The refrain " qu'est-ce qui paiera " , in La Baronne de Follebiche ( p.585 ) came into the same dangerous category as Ma Paye , while its title met with disapproval on a number of counts :sx that the allusion to the notorious term ( " " ) invented by Nestor Roqueplan in 1857 involved the army ( a " patrouille " of lovers ) was bad enough ; its Germanic echoes and accents made it one of those songs , proscribed as late as the 1880's , " de nature a-grave e veiller les susceptibilit e s de l'Ambassade de l'Allemagne " .sx Those were apparently so finely sensitized that even P e-grave re Bru's " Trou la la , trou la la " ( p.588 ) trespasses on territory from which every variation on a " Tyrolienne " ( Belgian , no less , in 1874 !sx ) was rigorously excluded .sx He had been invited to sing Les Cinq Voyelles , prohibited in January 1876 - eighteen years after the scene supposedly takes place , but shortly before Zola began work on L'Assommoir .sx Such anachronisms are less important , of course , than the extent to which the novel parades these illegitimate texts .sx Le Petit Riquiqui was only approved once three offending verses had been removed .sx C'est dans l'nez qu' c-cedille a me chatouille ( p.60 ) had been considered beyond the pale , an 1874 decision astonishing only those na i ve enough not to confuse one orifice with another in a manner popularized by Colmance's Le Nez Culott e .sx Like those of most artists of his time , Zola's views on censorship are ferocious .sx In 1871 , flying in the face of post-war interdiction , he went so far as to advocate a prize for " le po e-grave te qui aurait e crit le chant le plus insolent contre la Prusse " ( OC , XII , 708) .sx Not until 1885 ( OC , XII , 635-41 ) would he turn the full force of his sarcasm on officials " [qui] sauvent le gouvernement a-grave chaque couplet qu'ils biffent " .sx This had been sharpened by his own experience , notably in the case of the interrupted serialization of La Cur e e .sx In response to advice to eliminate " les expressions trop nettes et trop vigoureuses " in Madeleine F e rat ( 1868 ) , Zola's construction of the Censor's point of view is a pertinent one :sx " Parlez du vice , si vous voulez , mais parlez-en avec des calembredaines de vaudevillistes , risquez des mots orduriers dans un e clat de rire , faites un couplet dont toutes les honn e-circ tes femmes rougiront .sx Tout cela est permis " ( OC , X , 769-70) .sx For , at this juncture , it should perhaps be spelt out that it is not being argued that the proscribed songs of L'Assommoir put it in formal breach of the existing legislation ; that would be to rewrite the laws of the time by extending the brief of the authorities from public performance to private reading .sx What the songs of the novel certainly do , however , is dramatize the impotence of the legislation , in keeping with Zola's irony at the expense of its absurdities and hypocrisy .sx The anxiety of those responsible for the machinery of contemporary censorship was well-founded .sx A confidential 1872 report on the evils of the caf e -concert ( " on ne peut imaginer a-grave quel degr e de d e vergondage en arrivent les auteurs de ces chansons " ) barely hides official frustration at the loophole whereby the printing and selling of song-sheets , and their reproduction in the press , was not subject to control , " ce qui am e-grave ne une confusion dans l'esprit de bien des gens " .sx Indeed , it must have been somewhat galling to try to pre-empt decontextualization , emphases and reading between the lines , only to find advertised on the back of the submitted text a " S e rie de chansons comiques , satiriques , politiques , grivoises et bachiques , d e fendues dans les caf e s-concerts de Paris par la Censure ( 50 num e ros r e unis en un volume broch e ) " .sx The dismissive " Non " across Le Cri-cri d'Amanda was supposed to silence the refrain which , as Zola had noted a week earlier , " semble devoir faire le tour de nos th e a-circ tres " ( OC , XII , 68) .sx But an oral culture was , in any case , impossible to suppress .sx Far away from the Eldorado , " dans les faubourgs , les petites salles , les bouges o u-grave l'on chante la gaudriole et la romance " ( as Zola put it ; OC , X , 1060 ) , what has been called " le roman des pauvres " escapes the Censor's vigilance altogether .sx Nor is it just the actual songs of L'Assommoir which testify to these contradictions .sx Mme Lerat's censoring activities are precisely those of the official arbiters Zola would accuse of " une pr e occupation de l'ordure qui tourne au sadisme :sx les mots les plus innocents prennent pour eux des sens abominables " ( OC , XII , 636) .sx In his work-notes , he described her as " ayant une sorte de monomanie de l'ordure " ( fol .sx 134) .sx On the surface , she reflects an e tat-civil which belies her name , " travaillait dans les fleurs et habitait la rue des Moines " ( ) .sx With her " e paules carr e es de gendarme " ( p.589 ) , and handling her umbrella like a truncheon ( p.438 ) , she defends virtue , warns against moral dangers , and both represents ( p.681 ) and imposes linguistic propriety :sx " pourvu qu'on n'employ a-circ t pas les mots crus , on pouvait tout dire " ( ) .sx But she also displays " une manie pour les mots a-grave double entente et d'allusions polissonnes , d'une telle profondeur , qu'elle seule se comprenait " ( p.453 ) , matched only by a perverse curiosity in word-play she is unable to fathom ( ) .sx An ambivalent response to semantic slippage may not be limited , however , to this odious character .sx It could be suggested that readers , too , are implicated in the text's punning possibilities , enjoying the " signification cochonne " by which Mme Lerat's charges " d e tournaient le mot de son sens " at her expense ( p.719 ) , while still wanting to know the answer to her question about Lantier's chance meeting with Nana :sx " Dans quel sens l'avez-vous vue ?sx " ( ) .sx And we might well ask where Zola himself stands in relation to the former's self-indulgence , in the midst of the laundresses , " adorant leurs gros mots , les poussant a-grave en dire , tout en gardant lui-m e-circ me un langage choisi " ( ) .sx Amidst L'Assommoir's rising tide of uncertainly attributable " gros mots " , Gervaise gives expression to a problem almost as intriguing as that of aesthetic distance :sx " lorsqu'il abordait le chapitre des salet e s , elle ne savait jamais s'il parlait pour rire ou pour de bon " ( ) .sx While the songs of L'Assommoir fill only a small corner of this critical frame , their own ludic value can neither be discounted nor confirmed .sx It is clear , nevertheless , that they occupy a place in the novel more consciously devised than illustrative purposes alone would have warranted .sx The note " On chante en travaillant " ( fol .sx 143 ) , taken from Poulot's observations , generates details less banal than simply the immemorial habits of labouring men and women .sx These are duly inserted ( p.415 , p.423 , p.496 ) , but also allow Zola to engage in indirect commentary .sx Gervaise's " chanson de lavandi e-grave re " , for example , ironically refers to her own " c oe-ligature ur/ tout noir de douleur " ( p.401 ) at the very moment of " gaiet e f e roce " which leaves Virginie's rump so black and blue .sx Many of the songs thus function as an accompaniment to the narrative itself , not least the wickedly appropriate C'est dans l'nez qu' c-cedille a me chatouille ( p.630 ) which takes Lantier back to Gervaise's bed as she is overcome by an insidious sensuality at odds with moral rectitude .sx The entire singing episode of Chapter 7 is deliberately organized in counterpoint , underlined by Zola's intentions ( " Enfin comme on commence les chansons , Lantier arrive " ( fol .sx 32 ) and translated into a double focus reminiscent of Flaubert's comices agricoles , as news of approaching temptation is interpolated between songs of seduction ( Le Volcan d'amour , ou le Troupier s e duisant ) and resistance ( A l'abordage !sx ) .sx But Poulot's condemnatory " La chanson d e vergond e e , e nervante , rempla c-cedille a les chants patriotiques " generates a structure of alternation which extends beyond the sobriety of Les Adieux d'Abd-el-Kader and the intoxication of Les Vins de France .sx These are but the sanctioned pauses in the accelerating rhythm of a transgressive repertoire .sx For between the serious and the salacious , on the one hand , and respectful silence and a deafening roar , on the other , the chapter charts the progression of an unbridled laughter .sx Its disruptive potential is already asserted in the telling disturbance of those muslim curtains between room and street ( p.585 , p.592 ) which separate the private and the public .sx Within the domestic space of " la simple vie de Gervaise Macquart " , Zola's premeditated correlation of performer and performance ( fols 33-36 ) ensures that the songs are angled as mirrors in which characters either locate themselves or are reflected for the reader in individuated echoes .sx The strains of exotic Spain and Arabia ( pp .sx 586-87 ) , in the 'romances' for which Zola had a particular loathing , open up " des horizons d'or " which had remained encased with " les petits dieux de l'Orient " ( p.447 ) in the Louvre ; and they anticipate the more prosaic flight to Brussels in Goujet's proposal to Gervaise of " un enl e-grave vement , comme cela se passe dans les romans " ( ) .sx The informing desire of a rural idyll is a recurrent motif :sx in Coupeau's Oh e !sx les petits agneaux ( p.479 ) and Ah !sx qu'il fait bon cueillir la fraise ; and , especially , in the mawkish Faites un nid :sx " car c-cedille a rappelait la campagne , les oiseaux l e gers , les danses sous la feuill e e , les fleurs au calice de miel " ( ) .sx Of these inconsequential negations of an urban destiny , none is more grotesquely redolent than the title of the last .sx For Gervaise's life-long dream of " un nid chaud " ( p.644 ) is precariously placed between the literal and the figurative ; and it is terminally parodied when the " avoir un trou a-grave soi " ( fol .sx 91 ) takes her to the " niche " ( p.796 ) previously occupied by P e-grave re Bru ; as we are further forewarned by his " Trou la , trou la , trou la la !sx " which is the hopelessly insistent sub-text of the celebration of her apparent triumph .sx