by Emile Zola
CHAPTER II
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
CHAPTER III
1. having their end away, as they put it: In French ‘se jetant à cul’, literally to upend each other roughly.
PART III
CHAPTER I
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.
CHAPTER II
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.
CHAPTER III
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).
PART IV
CHAPTER I
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.
CHAPTER II
1. contador: A desk or bureau particularly designed for work with account books.
CHAPTER III
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.
CHAPTER IV
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.
CHAPTER VII
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.
PART V
CHAPTER II
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.
CHAPTER IV
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).
CHAPTER V
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.
PART VI
CHAPTER I
1. Cossacks: See below, Chapter V, note 1.
CHAPTER III
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.
CHAPTER V
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).
PART VII
CHAPTER II
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 Ale
xander 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.
Glossary of Mining Terms
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.
In translating his novel I have had to find English-language equivalents for the terms he uses. Since mining technology in the second half of the nineteenth century was broadly speaking the same in France and Belgium as in England, Wales and Scotland (my research has not extended to mining practices in the United States or Australia and New Zealand), the search for equivalents was relatively unproblematic. On the other hand, English-language mining terms during this period varied from region to region far more than their French-language counterparts. The choice of an equivalent was therefore not straightforward. The Glossary that follows is intended to explain what the choices were and why a particular word has been used in this translation. If it incidentally offers an insight into the world of British mining, it should be remembered that that world was essentially the same as the one so accurately depicted in Germinal.
The following abbreviations are used for sources cited herein:
Bulman and Redmayne
H. F. Bulman and R. A. S. Redmayne, Colliery Working and Management (2nd edn, London, 1906 (1st edn, 1896))
Pamely
Caleb Pamely, The Colliery Manager’s Handbook (London, 1891)
Penman
David Penman, The Principles and Practice of Mine Ventilation (London, 1927)
banksman In French ‘moulineur’, a term derived from the terminology of silk-working. According to Bulman and Redmayne, the ‘bank’ is ‘the surface-land surrounding a pit’s mouth’; ‘the banksmen are stationed at the landing of the cage on the surface, and their work consists in ‘‘uncaging’’ the tubs – that is, taking the tubs out of the cage, and conveying them to the screens (where this is not done by mechanical power), putting the empty tubs into the cage, and giving the necessary signals to the engineman and to the onsetters. The latter, the onsetters, do similar work at the bottom of the shaft’ (p. 96).
chimney Pamely records that ‘as the colliers hew their coal it is filled into the nearest chimney, to be afterwards withdrawn from below by the putters, who bring tubs under the chimneys, and for a time remove the sluice, thus allowing sufficient coal to rush into the tubs to fill them’ (p. 236).
coke-oven Coke is a form of fuel obtained by heating coal to high temperatures, a process which ‘drive[s] off its volatile constituents, including all the smoke-forming elements, and leaving a fuel which is comparatively clean to handle, gives off no smoke when burnt, but generates great heat, and has a higher radiant efficiency than ordinary coal’ (The Mining Educator, ed. John Roberts, 2 vols, London, 1926, vol. II, p. 1212). Hence its use in blast-furnaces as well as in the fire-grates of steam engines. When this process of ‘carbonization’ occurs naturally, the result is anthracite.
Davy lamp Sir Humphrey Davy (1778–1829) invented this safety lamp in 1815. It is so designed that the naked flame is protected by a piece of fine wire gauze, thus preventing ignition of the methane gas (or firedamp) which is found in so-called ‘fiery’ mines. According to Penman: ‘If the workings are non-fiery, open lights may be used. These may take the form of spout lamps burning oil, animal fat or paraffin wax, and are carried on the cap of the worker, or candles’ (p. 49). In Germinal the majority of miners have Davy lamps, but the deputies carry open lamps on their caps, doubtless because they did not work in the confined spaces where firedamp was likely to ignite.
engineman See mechanic.
firedamp Methane gas; see Davy lamp.
hewer In French ‘haveur’. In British terms ‘hewer’ was by far the commonest term at the time. ‘Pikeman’, used in Havelock Ellis’s translation, is a Staffordshire term (see Bulman and Redmayne, p. 406).
hopper A metal funnel in the shape of an inverted pyramid down which the coal passed from the screens into the railway wagons beneath.
loading-bay See pit-bottom.
mechanic In French ‘machineur’, a word now no longer used except in its sense of someone engaged in ‘machinations’. The British equivalent would have been either ‘engineman’ or ‘mechanic’. Bulman and Redmayne refer to ‘joiners, fitters, smiths, masons, enginemen and other mechanics’ (p. 70). According to C. H. Steavenson the job of an ‘engineman’ was ‘attending winding-engine, hauling, pumping, fan, air compressors, electric generators, motors and locomotives’, while the term ‘mechanic’ covers ‘plumber, fitter, blacksmith’ (in his Colliery Workmen Sketched at Work, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1912, pp. 24 and 26). For Bulman and Redmayne, therefore, an ‘engineman’ – which in some contexts we might call a ‘machine-operator’ – is a subcategory of ‘mechanic’. Since it is not clear what Étienne’s expertise or qualifications are (from his work in the railway workshop at Lille), nor those of Souvarine later in the novel (he is also a ‘machineur’), the broader term ‘mechanic’ has been preferred.
overman The equivalent of an under-manager, the overman was in charge of the day-to-day running of the pit. He was assisted by deputies.
onsetter See banksman.
pit-bottom In French ‘à l’accrochage’, literally where things are hooked on or attached, and where the tubs full of coal are loaded into the extraction cages. Throughout the novel Zola refers variously to ‘l’accrochage’ or ‘la salle d’accrochage’: the former usually designates the pit-bottom in general and the latter more specifically the chamber or loading-bay hollowed out of the rock at the foot of the pit-shaft. Similar loading-bays were also situated adjacent to the shaft at intermediate levels in the mine.
pit-head In French ‘la recette’ (and later ‘la salle de la recette’), literally where the coal is received. In British terms the pit-head, or the area at the mouth of the pit-shaft where the coal is unloaded.
putter In French ‘herscheur’. Bulman and Redmayne refer to ‘trammers, putters or hauliers’ and describe them as ‘big lads who convey the coal-tubs to and from the working places’ (p. 47). Earlier in the century, as we learn from Germinal, most of these ‘big lads’ were in fact girls, or ‘herscheuses’ – that is, before the French passed a law in 1874 making the employment of women underground illegal. (This practice had been outlawed in Britain in 1842 when women – and children under ten – were thus protected. The age limit for children was raised to twelve in the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1887.) None of the British terms distinguishes the sex of the worker. Since ‘putter’ seems to be the commonest term in the books that I have consulted, I have preferred it to the others, and on one occasion invented the term ‘putter lad’ where the sex of the putter is relevant and not otherwise identifiable.
roadway In French ‘galerie’. Zola also uses the term ‘voie’. Although he used the two terms for the sake of variety, and without there being any important distinction between them, I have almost always maintained his distinction by translating the former with ‘roadway’ and the latter with ‘road’. These are both standard terms for a tunnel in a colliery pit: the word ‘tunnel’ itself is absent from standard late-nineteenth-century handbooks.
rope-works A factory which made not only ropes but also steel cables, which were known as ‘wire ropes’ at the time.
screening-shed The place where th
e coal was passed over screens to separate it from clay and small stones. The larger stones were removed by rake and hand.
shifter So called because they worked a shift, not because they shift rubble; ‘a class of men who do the necessary repairing and preparatory work at nights, when the pit is not drawing coals – such as ridding falls of stone and setting timber, to make the pit ready for the following day’ (Bulman and Redmayne, p. 95 (their emphasis)).
spoil-heap In French ‘terri’. In British terms ‘spoil’ is ‘earth or refuse material thrown or brought up in excavating, mining, dredging, etc.’ and accordingly a ‘spoil-heap’ is ‘the place on the surface where spoil is deposited’ (OED). A ‘slag-heap’, on the other hand, is found beside a blast-furnace or smelting-works since ‘slag’ is ‘a vitreous substance, composed of earthy or refuse matter, which is separated from metals in the process of smelting’ (OED).
stonemen In French ‘les ouvriers de la coupe à terre’. In British terms ‘stonemen’ belonged to the category of miners known as ‘off-hand’ workers (to distinguish them from those who actually dug out the coal, or ‘coal-getters’). According to Bulman and Redmayne: ‘their work, which may be termed the ‘‘dead’’ work of the mine – consisting as it does in a very great degree, if not entirely, of opening out and development – constitutes one of the most important branches of the underground department’ (p. 83). ‘Ripper’, used in some translations of Germinal, was an alternative name for a stoneman (see Bulman and Redmayne, p. 406).