Germinal - Emile Zola [290]
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.
PART II
CHAPTER I
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.
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