Germinal - Emile Zola [292]
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 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.
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.