Germinal

GERMINAL

ÉMILE ZOLA
, born in Paris in 1840, was brought up in Aix-en-Provence in an atmosphere of struggling poverty after the death of his father in 1847. He was educated at the Collège Bourbon at Aix and then at the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris. After failing the
baccalauréat
twice and then taking menial clerical employment, he joined the newly founded publishing house Hachette in 1862 and quickly rose to become head of publicity. Having published his first novel in 1865 he left Hachette the following year to become a full-time journalist and writer.
Thérèse Raquin
appeared in 1867 and caused a scandal, to which he responded with his famous Preface to the novel's second edition in 1868 in which he laid claim to being a ‘Naturalist'. That same year he began work on a series of novels intended to trace scientifically the effects of heredity and environment in one family:
Les Rougon-Macquart
. This great cycle eventually contained twenty novels, which appeared between 1871 and 1893. In 1877 the seventh of these,
L'Assommoir
(
The Drinking Den
), a study of alcoholism in working-class Paris, brought him abiding wealth and fame. On completion of the Rougon-Macquart series he began a new cycle of novels,
Les Trois Villes: Lourdes, Rome, Paris
(1894–6–8), a violent attack on the Church of Rome, which led to another cycle,
Les Quatre Évangiles
. While his later writing was less successful, he remained a celebrated figure on account of the Dreyfus case, in which his powerful interventions played an important part in redressing a heinous miscarriage of justice. His marriage in 1870 had remained childless, but his happy, public relationship in later life with Jeanne Rozerot, initially one of his domestic servants, brought him a son and a daughter. He died in mysterious circumstances in 1902, the victim of an accident or murder.

ROGER PEARSON
is Professor of French at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in French at The Queen's College, Oxford. He is the author of standard critical works on Voltaire, Stendhal and Mallarmé. He has translated and edited Voltaire,
Candide
and Other Stories
(1990), Zola,
La Bête humaine
(1996) and Maupassant,
A Life
(1999). He has also revised and edited Thomas Walton's translation of Zola,
The Masterpiece
(1993).

ÉMILE ZOLA

Translated with an Introduction and Notes
by
ROGER PEARSON

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published
1885

This translation published
2004

Translation and editorial matter copyright © Roger Pearson,
2004
All rights reserved

The moral right of the translator has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

9780141908373

Chronology

Introduction

Further Reading and Filmography

Note on the Translation

GERMINAL

Notes

Glossary of Mining Terms

1840  2 April Émile Zola born in Paris, the son of an Italian engineer, Francesco Zola, and of Françoise-Emilie Aubert.

1843  The family moves to Aix-en-Provence, which will become the town of ‘Plassans' in the Rougon-Macquart novels.

1847  Francesco Zola dies, leaving the family nearly destitute.

1848  The rule of King Louis-Philippe (the July Monarchy, which came to power in 1830) is overthrown and the Second Republic declared. Zola starts school. Karl Marx publishes
Manifesto of the Communist Party
.

1851  The Republic is dissolved after the
coup d'état
of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte who in the following year proclaims himself emperor as Napoleon III. Start of the Second Empire, the period that will provide the background for Zola's novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle.

1852  Zola is enrolled at the Collège Bourbon, in Aix, where he starts a close friendship with the painter Paul Cézanne.

1858  The family moves back to Paris and Zola is sent to the Lycée Saint-Louis. His school career is undistinguished and he twice fails the
baccalauréat
.

1860  The start of a period of hardship as Zola tries to scrape a living by various kinds of work, while engaging in his first serious literary endeavours, mainly as a poet. These years saw the height of the rebuilding programme undertaken by Baron Haussmann, Prefect of Paris from 1853 to 1869, which is reflected in several of Zola's novels.

1862  Zola joins the publisher Hachette, and in a few months becomes the firm's head of publicity.

1863  Makes his début as a journalist.

1864  Zola's first literary work, the collection of short stories,
Contes à Ninon
, appears. Founding of the First International.

1865  Publishes his first novel,
La Confession de Claude
. Meets his future wife, Gabrielle-Alexandrine Meley; they marry in 1870.

1866  Leaves Hachette. From now on, he lives by his writing.

1867  Publication of
Thérèse Raquin
, the story of how a working-class woman and her lover kill her husband, but are afterwards consumed by guilt. In the Preface to the second edition (1868), Zola declares that he belongs to the literary school of ‘Naturalism'.

1868–9 Zola develops the outline of his great novel-cycle,
Les Rougon-Macquart
, which he subtitles ‘The Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire'. It is founded on the latest theories of heredity. He signs a contract for the work with the publisher Lacroix.

1870  The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War leads in September to the fall of the Second Empire. Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie go into exile in England and the Third Republic is declared. Paris is besieged by Prussian forces.
La Fortune des Rougon
starts to appear in serial form.

1871  Publication in book form of
La Fortune des Rougon
, the first novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle. After the armistice with Prussia, a popular uprising in March threatens the overthrow of the government of Adolphe Thiers, which flees to Versailles. The radical Paris Commune takes power until its bloody repression by Thiers in May; the events would have great importance for the Socialist Left. Zola was shocked both by the anarchy of the Commune and by the savagery with which it was repressed. He begins to think of writing a novel about radical politics, which would later become
Germinal
.

1872  Publication of
La Curée
, the second of the Rougon-Macquart novels. Part of it had appeared in serialized form (September–November 1871), but publication had been suspended by the censorship authorities.

1873  Publication of
Le Ventre de Paris
, the third of the cycle,
set in and around the market of Les Halles. Mikhail Bakunin publishes
Statehood and Anarchy
.

1874  Publication of
La Conquête de Plassans
.

1875  Publication of
La Faute de l' Abbé Mouret
.

1876  
Son Excellence Eugène Rougon
follows the career of a minister under the Second Empire. Later in the same year, the seventh of the Rougon-Macquart novels,
L'Assommoir
(
The Drinking Den
), begins to appear in serial form and immediately causes a sensation with its grim depiction of the ravages of alcoholism and life in the Parisian slums.

1877  
L'Assommoir
is published in book form and becomes a bestseller. Zola's fortune is made and he is recognized as the leading figure in the Naturalist movement.

1878  Zola follows the harsh realism of
L'Assommoir
with a gentler tale of domestic life,
Une page d'amour
. Buys a house at Médan.

1879  
Nana
appears in serial form, before publication in book form in the following year. The story of a high-class prostitute, the novel was to attract further scandal to Zola's name.

1880  Publication of
Les Soirées de Médan
, an anthology of short stories by Zola and some of his Naturalist ‘disciples', including Maupassant. Zola expounds the theory of Naturalism in
Le Roman expérimental
. In May, Zola's literary mentor, the writer Gustave Flaubert, dies; in October, Zola loses his much-loved mother. A period of depression follows and he suspends writing the Rougon-Macquart for a year.

1882  Zola's next book,
Pot-Bouille
, centres on an apartment house and the character of the bourgeois seducer, Octave Mouret. The novel analyses the hypocrisy of the respectable middle class.

1883  Mouret reappears in
Au Bonheur des Dames
, which studies the phenomenon of the department store. While on holiday in Brittany meets Alfred Giard, left-wing
député
for Valenciennes, who interests Zola in the miners' cause.

1884  
La Joie de vivre
. At the invitation of Giard spends a week at the end of February visiting the mining community of Anzin, near Valenciennes, and goes down a working mine to research the realities of life underground. Law passed on
21 March legalizing trade unions. 2 April Zola begins writing
Germinal
, which starts to appear in
Le Gil Blas
in November and is published in book form the following year.

1886  
L'Œuvre
provides a revealing insight into Parisian artistic and literary life, as well as a reflection of contemporary aesthetic debates, drawing on Zola's friendship with many leading painters and writers. However, Cézanne reacts badly to Zola's portrait of him in the novel, and ends their friendship.

1887  
La Terre
, a brutally frank portrayal of peasant life, causes a fresh uproar and leads to a crisis in the Naturalist movement when five of his ‘disciples' sign a manifesto against the novel.

1888  Publication of
Le Rêve
. Zola begins his liaison with Jeanne Rozerot, the mistress with whom he will have two children.

1890  
La Bête humaine
, the story of a pathological killer, is set against the background of the railways.

1891  
L'Argent
examines the world of the Stock Exchange.

1892  
La Débâcle
analyses the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the end of the Second Empire.

1893  The final novel in the cycle,
Le Docteur Pascal
, develops the theories of heredity which have guided
Les Rougon-Macquart
.

1894  With
Lourdes
, Zola starts a trilogy of novels, to be completed by
Rome
(1896) and
Paris
(1898), about a priest who turns away from Catholicism towards a more humanitarian creed. In December, a Jewish officer in the French Army, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, is found guilty of spying for Germany and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony on Devil's Island, off the coast of French Guiana.

1897  New evidence in the case suggests that Dreyfus's conviction was a gross miscarriage of justice, inspired by anti-Semitism. Zola publishes three articles in
Le Figaro
demanding a retrial.

1898  Zola's open letter,
J'Accuse
, in support of Dreyfus, addressed to Félix Faure, President of the Republic, is published in
L'Aurore
(13 January). It proves a turning point, making the case a litmus test in French politics: for years to come, being pro- or anti-Dreyfusard will be a major component of a French person's ideological profile (with the
nationalist Right leading the campaign against Dreyfus). Zola is tried for libel and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs. In July, waiting for a retrial (granted on a technicality), he leaves for London, where he spends a year in exile.