Germinal (82 page)

4.
the lesion…harboured within his young, healthy body
: Principally on the basis of his reading of Prosper Lucas's
Traité philosophique et physiologique de l'hérédité naturelle
(1847–50), Zola was persuaded that alcoholism was inherited, and he used this as one of the main elements in his depiction of the degenerate Macquart branch of the family. Étienne's brother Jacques in
La Bête humaine
is similarly afflicted.

5.
Pas-de-Calais
: The Department of the Pas-de-Calais is situated immediately to the north-west of the Département du Nord.

1.
crosse
: This game, somewhat similar to golf, is described in detail in Part IV, Chapter VI.

2.
ten years' service
: Horses were generally sent down the mine at
the age of four, ponies at the age of three, and the average length of service was ten years. Mules and donkeys had also been used but proved less co-operative.

1.
beer
: In French ‘chope', literally a beer mug or tankard. As Zola discovered on his visit to Anzin, a miner could buy a glass or mug of beer in three sizes: small, medium or large. The price was two sous, irrespective of the size. (See Henri Mitterand,
Zola. II L'Homme de ‘Germinal' (1871–93)
(Paris, 2001), p. 725.) By translating ‘chope' as ‘beer' I have left the quantity drunk imprecise, as in the original French.

2.
asking the bosses for what was possible
: Rasseneur's political views equate to those of the so-called ‘possibilists', members of the Socialist Party formed in 1879 (under the leadership of Jules Guesde (1845–1922)), who subsequently parted company from their more radical leader in 1882 and founded (under the leadership of Paul Brousse (1844–1912)) the Revolutionary Socialist Party, renamed the Federation of French Socialist Workers in 1883. Despite this temporary ‘revolutionary' tag they were in fact opposed to revolution and favoured legislative reforms as the means to political and social progress.

1.
some forty thousand francs
: See Part I, Chapter II,
note 5
. Hence somewhere in the range of
£
125,000 to
£
150,000, or approximately $200,000.

2.
standard currency unit of the day
: Namely in the period before the French Revolution, after which the sou and the denier (and the écu) were replaced by the franc and the centime.

3.
for a derisory sum
: The State would have appropriated the land from Baron Desrumaux's heir during the Revolution.

4.
rejected by the Salon Hanging Committee
: The selection committee for the Salon annually arranged by the Académie des Beaux Arts for the exhibition of new work. The rejection of Jeanne Deneulin's painting, no doubt among a very large number submitted by amateurs and professionals alike, offers an ironic reminder of the furore created in 1863 (only three years before the fictional chronology of
Germinal
) when so many reputably innovative works (including Manet's
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
) were rejected
by the committee and the Emperor himself gave orders for an alternative Salon, the so-called Salon des Refusés, to be organized. This controversy in turn forms the backdrop to
L'Œuvre
(
The Masterpiece
), the novel which follows
Germinal
in the Rougon-Macquart series and which was published in the following year. The battle fought by its central character, Claude Lantier (Étienne's brother), to have his own work accepted illustrates the difficulties faced by the Impressionists as they, too, struggled for recognition – a struggle in which they were supported by Zola himself, who, as a journalist, conducted a vigorous campaign on their behalf in the press.

1.
poor mites…bearing this brioche
: Zola may be intending an ironic reference to the notorious remark made by Queen Marie Antoinette (1755–93), wife of Louis XVI (1754–93), when, on being told that the Parisian populace were engaged in a hunger riot and demanding bread, she sought to solve the problem by saying: ‘Qu'ils mangent donc de la brioche!', commonly but incorrectly translated as ‘Let them eat cake!' See Part V, Chapter IV,
note 1

1.
having their end away, as they put it
: In French ‘se jetant à cul', literally to upend each other roughly.

1.
the Tsar
: Zola's readers in 1885 would have been mindful of the fact that there had been a failed assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander II (b. 1818) at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg (on 17 February 1880) and that he had finally been assassinated in the following year (on 13 March).

2.
Poland
: Souvarine's choice of name reflects the anarchist's wry recognition of Russia's dominance over Poland throughout the preceding century. Within the fictional chronology of
Germinal
the suppression of a Polish insurrection in 1863–4 was fresh in the memory.

3.
International Association of Workers…founded in London
: See Introduction,
p. xviii
.

4.
iron law of the irreducible minimum
: Originally formulated by
the British economist David Ricardo (1772–1823), this ‘iron law' was described in E. de Laveleye's
Le Socialisme contemporain
(2nd edn, 1883), which Zola read. It had been given prominence by the German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–64) in his Open Letter of 1863.

5.
co-operative societies
: Co-operative societies were the brain-child of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65). For him the founding principle of the new society was ‘mutuality', a federation of small, semi-autonomous groups of workers supported by ‘self-help' arrangements such as ‘friendly societies' and the provident fund which Étienne will establish and run. See Introduction,
p. xvii
.

6.
new contracts
: In French ‘marchandages', literally something acquired through bargaining.

1.
ducasse
: The name given to an annual celebration, lasting a minimum of three days, held (on their own chosen date) in towns and villages throughout the area now covered by Belgium and the north-eastern corner of France. The tradition dates back to pre-medieval times, and the celebration is characterized by fairs, processions and feasting.

2.
Prince Imperial
: Napoleon III's son Eugène (1856–79), who died fighting in the British army against the Zulus.

3.
Walloon
: The dialect of French spoken by those living in southern Belgium or the adjacent parts of north-eastern France.

1.
The Hygiene of Miners
: Zola himself had read Dr H. Boëns-Boisseau's
Traité pratique des maladies, des accidents et des difformités des houilleurs
[coal-miners], (Brussels, 1862).

2.
‘
social question
': See Introduction,
p. xxv
.

3.
cards
: In French ‘livret', a booklet. Since early in the century French workmen had had to have a booklet, which was stamped by their employer and certified by the municipality. The requirement was abandoned by a law passed on 25 April 1869. Having one's booklet returned was synonymous with being fired, as in comparatively recent British usage when a worker was given his or her ‘cards' (bearing National Insurance stamps).

1.
Prefect
: The administrative head of a Department in France, answerable to the Minister of the Interior, who at this time enjoyed very wide-ranging powers, including that of being able to deploy the army or the police.

2.
École des Mines
: France's national School of Mining founded on 19 March 1783.

3.
La Grand'Combe
: A small town in the mining area near Alès in the Languedoc.

4.
École Polytechnique
: Founded on 1 September 1795 as a national school to train young men for public service in various branches of civil and military engineering.

5.
longed for the days of Louis-Philippe
: Louis-Philippe (1773–1850) came to the throne following the 1830 Revolution and was deposed during the 1848 Revolution. He had acceded to power promising reform, but several of the liberal provisions of the Charter of 1830 were subsequently reversed under his increasingly oppressive rule.

6.
Emperor…with his concessions
: From 1860 onwards, and against the advice of the majority of his ministers, the Emperor Napoleon III had introduced a series of constitutional reforms that represented a move away from government by decree towards real parliamentary democracy.

7.
'89
: 1789, the date of the French Revolution.

1.
contador
: A desk or bureau particularly designed for work with account books.

1.
Assembly
: The Assemblée Nationale, of which the Chambre des Députés was part.

2.
1848
: See above, Chapter I,
note 5
, and Introduction,
pp. xxiv
–
xxv
.

1.
Lassalle's idea of co-operative societies
: See Part III, Chapter I,
notes 4
and
5
. Since the idea of co-operative societies was in fact Proudhon's, the ‘muddle' in Étienne's mind is evident.

2.
Bakunin, the exterminator
: See Introduction,
p. xviii
.

1.
Hainaut
: Formerly a ‘county' within the Hapsburg Empire, Hainaut was divided when Louis XIV acquired the southern part of the territory under the terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), confirmed by the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678). French Hainaut became the eastern part of the Département du Nord in 1790.

1.
bad air – ‘dead air'
: The upper layer is firedamp, or methane gas; the lower is chokedamp, or carbon dioxide, which, being heavier than air, extinguishes flame.

1.
We want bread!
: Zola uses this cry to recall two famous historical occasions on which it was used: (i) on 5 October 1789 when 6,000–7,000 women marched from the Parisian markets in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and Les Halles to Versailles, later followed by some 20,000 men, and invaded the Palace of Versailles on the following day. As a result the royal family was obliged to return to Paris, where they were held virtual hostages in the Tuileries Palace (see also Part II, Chapter II,
note 1
); and (ii) when the Parisian populace demonstrated against famine and the government's economic incompetence on ‘12–13 Germinal III' (1–2 April 1795).

1.
‘La Marseillaise'
: Composed by Claude Rouget de l'Isle (1760–1836) in 1792 and so called because it was very soon afterwards adopted and made widely known by a band of Marseillais revolutionary volunteers making their way to Paris. It quickly became the anthem of French republicans and accordingly was banned under the Second Empire. It became the national anthem of France in 1879.

1.
Cossacks
: See below, Chapter V,
note 1
.

1.
The writing was already on the wall for this mass movement
: Again Zola is using some historical licence since the rift in the International described here occurred over five years later. See Introduction,
p. xviii
.

2.
Only one man…destruction
: Namely, Mikhail Bakunin. See Introduction,
p. xviii
.

3.
the notorious nihilists
: See Introduction,
p. xviii
.

1.
served in the Crimea
: During the Crimean War (1854–5) Britain and France sided with Turkey against Russia in the struggle for this disputed territory. The Cossacks, originally a tribe of nomadic warriors, had settled in the Ukraine, and Cossack soldiers formed a distinguished corps in the Russian army, famously resisting British and French troops for a year during the Siege of Sebastopol (September 1854 – September 1855).

1.
Darwin
: See Introduction,
p. xxix
.

2.
Annouchka
: Zola has in mind the Russian anarchist, Sophie Perovskaya, who was executed in St Petersburg with four others on 15 April 1881 after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Previously she had acted with another anarchist, Leo Hartmann, in an attempt to blow up the Tsar's train near Moscow on 1 December 1879.

In preparing to write
Germinal
, Zola undertook extensive research into the world of mining. He wanted his novel to be an authentic record of this world, but at the same time he did not wish to burden his readers with unnecessary information nor to alienate them with the excessive use of technical vocabulary. Accordingly he introduces us to this world gradually and unobtrusively, concisely explaining each new term or unfamiliar working practice as he goes along and generally only when he knows that they will be essential to an understanding of the story to come. The fact that his hero is, like most of his readers, entirely new to this world means that these explanations seem to arise naturally. We are not being given a manual on mining, and Zola so wrote
Germinal
that it could be read without notes.