by Emile Zola
8. BONDONS … GOURNEYS: Bondon is a soft cheese made of cow's milk from Pays de Bray, Normandy. It is a fairly rich cheese, 45 percent fat, molded but not cooked or pressed, and shaped like a small roll. Gourney is also a very soft molded cheese, often mixed with herbs.
9. “TÉTES-DE-MORT”: Dead heads.
10. THE STATUE ON THE COLONNE DE JUILLET: This is the statue of the Spirit of Liberty, sometimes referred to as the Spirit of July, or Juillet, after July 14, 1789, when the Bastille prison was overtaken by a popular uprising. The Bastille, which was later torn down except for a few stones that remain as a monument, was located several blocks closer to the Seine. The place de la Bastille was actually built in 1803, and the column on which July is perched was built in 1830 to commemorate the 504 people killed in a three-day uprising that year that ousted Charles X for Louis-Philippe; 196 more who died in 1848 were later added to the memorial.
11. THE WHITE SHIRT AND VELVET CAP CROWD: This appears to be an anachronism referring to people dressed this way who went to working-class demonstrations against the empire and disrupted by damaging property. It was widely thought that they worked for the government and were providing the troops with an excuse for violent repression. The problem is that this was happening in 1869, more than ten years after the action of this novel. But Zola is clearly suggesting that this crowd was infiltrated by government stooges.
12. MORNY: See note 13 on page 318.
13. GOT INTO A CAB: A fiacre, a four-wheeled coach pulled by two horses.
CHAPTER SIX
1. an extremely unpopular tax: The unpopular tax was a special pension that the emperor had asked to be paid to General Charles-Guillaume Cousin-Montauban. The emperor had awarded him the title comte de Palikao after his victory at Palichaio, near Bejing, in 1860. The legislature opposed this giveaway, and this was the beginning of a popular movement that, coupled with the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, would lead to the overthrow of the empire. But Zola has stepped a little out of time. The novel takes place from 1858 to 1859. But the furor over the general's pension did not take place until 1862.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ZOLA
Bernard, Marc. Zola par lui-même. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962.
Brown, Frederick. Zola: A Life. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995.
Carter, Lawson A. Zola and the Theater. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963.
Émile-Zola, François, and Massin Émile-Zola. Zola: Photographer. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1988.
Josephson, Mathew Zola and His Time: The History of His Martial Career in Letters. Garden City, New York: Garden City Publishing, 1928.
Knapp, Bettina Liebowitz. Emile Zola. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1926.
Lanoux, Armand. Bonjour Monsieur Zola. Paris: Amiot-Dumount, 1954.
Zola, Émile. Carnets d'enquêtes: Une ethnographie inédit de la France. Paris: Librairie Plon, 1986.
——. Les Œuvres complétes: Correspondance (1858–1871). Paris: François Bernouard, 1928.
——. Les Œuvres complètes: Correspondance (1872-1902). Paris: François Bernouard, 1929.
——. Les Rougon-Macquart: Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire (3 vols.). Paris: Gallimard, 1961.
LES HALLES
Flanner, Janet. “The Departed Glory of Les Halles.” Life, May 12, 1967.
Héron de Ville Fosse, René. Les Halles: De Lutèce à Rungis. Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin, 1973.
Luce, Hoctin. “Les Halles.” The Paris Review, no. 40 (Winter-Spring 1967).
Moncan, Patrice de. Baltard, Les Halles de Paris. Paris: Les Editions de L'Observatoire, 1994.
Saint Girons, Simone. Les Halles: Guide historique et pratique. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1971.
Seyler, Monique. “Les Halles.” Esprit, April 1968.
Stolley, Richard B. “‘The Belly of Paris,’ Les Halles, Closes Forever.” Life, March 14, 1969.
GUIANA
Londres, Albert. Au Bagne. Paris: Albin Michel, 1923.
Michelot, Jean-Claude. La Guillotine sèche: Histoire du bagne de Cayenne. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1981.
Miles, Alexander. Devil's Island: Colony of the Damned. Berkeley, Ca.: Ten Speed Press, 1988.
Pierre, Michel. La Terre de la grande punition: Histoire des bagnes de Guyane. Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1982.
FOOD
Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Frentz, Jean-Claude. L'Encyclopédie de la charcuterie. Paris: Soussana, 1982.
Grigson, Jane. The Art of Charcuterie. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.
Kiple, Kenneth F, and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, eds. The Cambridge World History of Food (2 vols.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Montagné, Prosper. Larousse gastronomique. Paris: Larousse, 1938.
ABOUT the TRANSLATOR
Mark Kurlansky is the New York Times–bestselling author of Cod, Salt, and The Big Oyster, as well as a novel, Bugaloo on Second Avenue, and a short-story collection, The White Man in the Tree. He has won numerous awards, including the James A. Beard Award, and, as did Zola, frequently writes about food and politics. He lived in Paris for ten years.
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2009 Modern Library Edition
Introduction and translation copyright © 2009 by Mark Kurlansky
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zola, Emile, 1840–1902. [Ventre de Paris. English] The belly of Paris/Emile Zola; translated and with an introduction by Mark Kurlansky. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. eISBN: 978-1-58836-855-3 1. Paris (France)—Fiction. I. Kurlansky, Mark. II. Title. PQ2521.V3E5 2009 843′.8—dc22 2008037987
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