I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don’t care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.

In this declaration Zola rejects an ideal of art grounded in timeless “beauty” or classical “perfection,” and instead affirms a modern, present-tense aesthetic: art should grapple with lived experience—its pressures, conflicts, and heightened energies. The emphasis on “life, struggle, intensity” aligns with the naturalist project often associated with Zola: representing society and human behavior in their material, contested reality rather than polishing them into exemplary forms. “I am at ease in my generation” signals a refusal of nostalgia and a willingness to be judged by contemporary conditions, suggesting that the artist’s task is not to emulate “great centuries” but to confront the urgencies of one’s own time.