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Dans la plaine rase, sous la nuit sans étoiles, d’une obscurité et d’une épaisseur d’encre, un homme suivait seul la grande route de Marchiennes à Montsou, dix kilomètres de pavé coupant tout droit, à travers les champs de betteraves.  [translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894] Over the open plain, beneath a starless sky as dark and thick as ink, a man walked alone along the highway from Marchiennes to Montsou, a straight paved road ten kilometers in length, intersecting the beetroot-fields. | |
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— Longtemps, ah ! oui !… Je n'avais pas huit ans, lorsque je suis descendu, tenez ! juste dans le Voreux, et j'en ai cinquante-huit, à cette heure. Calculez un peu… J'ai tout fait là-dedans, galibot d'abord, puis herscheur, quand j'ai eu la force de rouler, puis haveur pendant dix-huit ans. Ensuite, à cause de mes sacrées jambes, ils m'ont mis de la coupe à terre, remblayeur, raccommodeur, jusqu'au moment où il leur a fallu me sortir du fond, parce que le médecin disait que j'allais y rester. Alors, il y a cinq années de cela, ils m'ont fait charretier… Hein ? c'est joli, cinquante ans de mine, dont quarante-cinq au fond ! (I, i) [translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894] "Long? I should think so. I was not eight when I went down into the Voreux and I am now fifty-eight. Reckon that up! I have been everything down there; at first trammer, then putter, when I had the strength to wheel, then pikeman for eighteen years. Then, because of my cursed legs, they put me into the earth cutting, to bank up and patch, until they had to bring me up, because the doctor said I should stay there for good. Then, after five years of that, they made me carman. Eh? that's fine--fifty years at the mine, forty-five down below." D’une voix ardente, il parlait sans fin. C’était, brusquement, l’horizon fermé qui éclatait, une trouée de lumière s’ouvrait dans la vie sombre de ces pauvres gens. L’éternel recommencement de la misère, le travail de brute, ce destin de bétail qui donne sa laine et qu’on égorge, tout le malheur disparaissait, comme balayé par un grand coup de soleil ; et, sous un éblouissement de féerie, la justice descendait du ciel. Puisque le bon Dieu était mort, la justice allait assurer le bonheur des hommes, en faisant régner l’égalité et la fraternité. Une société nouvelle poussait en un jour, ainsi que dans les songes, une ville immense, d’une splendeur de mirage, où chaque citoyen vivait de sa tâche et prenait sa part des joies communes. Le vieux monde pourri était tombé en poudre, une humanité jeune, purgée de ses crimes, ne formait plus qu’un seul peuple de travailleurs, qui avait pour devise: à chacun suivant son mérite, et à chaque mérite suivant ses œuvres. Et, continuellement, ce rêve s’élargissait, s’embellissait, d’autant plus séducteur, qu’il montait plus haut dans l’impossible.
D’abord, la Maheude refusait d’entendre, prise d’une sourde épouvante. Non, non, c’était trop beau, on ne devait pas s’embarquer dans ces idées, car elles rendaient la vie abominable ensuite, et l’on aurait tout massacré alors, pour être heureux. Quand elle voyait luire les yeux de Maheu, troublé, conquis, elle s’inquiétait, elle criait, en interrompant Étienne : — N’écoute pas, mon homme ! Tu vois bien qu’il nous fait des contes… Est-ce que les bourgeois consentiront jamais à travailler comme nous ? (III, iii) [translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894] With his enthusiastic voice he spoke on and on. The closed horizon was bursting out; a gap of light was opening in the sombre lives of these poor people. The eternal wretchedness, beginning over and over again, the brutalizing labour, the fate of a beast who gives his wool and has his throat cut, all the misfortune disappeared, as though swept away by a great flood of sunlight; and beneath the dazzling gleam of fairyland justice descended from heaven. Since the good God was dead, justice would assure the happiness of men, and equality and brotherhood would reign. A new society would spring up in a day just as in dreams, an immense town with the splendour of a mirage, in which each citizen lived by his work, and took his share in the common joys. The old rotten world had fallen to dust; a young humanity purged from its crimes formed but a single nation of workers, having for their motto: "To each according to his deserts, and to each desert according to its performance." And this dream grew continually larger and more beautiful and more seductive as it mounted higher in the impossible.
At first Maheude refused to listen, possessed by a deep dread. No, no, it was too beautiful; it would not do to embark upon these ideas, for they made life seem abominable afterwards, and one would have destroyed everything in the effort to be happy. When she saw Maheu's eyes shine, and that he was troubled and won over, she became restless, and exclaimed, interrupting Étienne:
"Don't listen, my man! You can see he's only telling us fairy-tales. Do you think the bourgeois would ever consent to work as we do?" D'un élan, elle s'était pendue à lui, elle chercha sa bouche et y colla passionnément la sienne. Les ténèbres s'éclairèrent, elle revit le soleil, elle retrouva un rire calmé d'amoureuse. Lui, frémissant de la sentir ainsi contre sa chair, demie-nue sous la veste et la culotte en lambeaux, l'empoigna, dans un réveil de sa virilité. Et ce fut enfin leur nuit de noces, au fond de cette tombe, sur ce lit de boue, le besoin de ne pas mourir avant d'avoir eu leur bonheur, l'obstiné besoin de vivre, de faire de la vie une dernière fois. Ils s'aimèrent dans le désespoir de tout, dans la mort.
Ensuite, il n'y eut plus rien. Étienne était assis par terre, toujours dans le même coin, et il avait Catherine sur les genoux, couchée, immobile. Des heures, des heures s'écoulèrent. Il crut longtemps qu'elle dormait ; puis, il la toucha, elle était très froide, elle était morte. Pourtant, il ne remuait pas, de peur de la réveiller. L'idée qu'il l'avait eue femme le premier, et qu'elle pouvait être grosse, l'attendrissait. D'autres idées, l'envie de partir avec elle, la joie de ce qu'ils feraient tous les deux plus tard, revenaient par moments, mais si vagues, qu'elles semblaient effleurer à peine son front, comme le souffle même du sommeil. Il s'affaiblissait, il ne lui restait que la force d'un petit geste, un lent mouvement de la main, pour s'assurer qu'elle était bien là, ainsi qu'une enfant endormie, dans sa raideur glacée. Tout s'anéantissait, la nuit elle-même avait sombré, il n'était nulle part, hors de l'espace, hors du temps. Quelque chose tapait bien à côté de sa tête, des coups dont la violence se rapprochait ; mais il avait eu d'abord la paresse d'aller répondre, engourdi d'une fatigue immense ; et, à présent, il ne savait plus, il rêvait seulement qu'elle marchait devant lui et qu'il entendait le léger claquement de ses sabots. Deux jours se passèrent, elle n'avait pas remué, il la touchait de son geste machinal, rassuré de la sentir si tranquille.
Étienne ressentit une secousse. Des voix grondaient, des roches roulaient jusqu'à ses pieds. Quand il aperçut une lampe, il pleura. Ses yeux clignotants suivaient la lumière, il ne se lassait pas de la voir, en extase devant ce point rougeâtre qui tachait à peine les ténèbres. Mais des camarades l'emportaient, il les laissa introduire, entre ses dents serrés, des cuillerées de bouillon. Ce fut seulement dans la galerie de Réquillart qu'il reconnut quelqu'un, l'ingénieur Négrel, debout devant lui ; et ces deux hommes qui se méprisaient, l'ouvrier révolté, le chef sceptique, se jetèrent au cou l'un de l'autre, sanglotèrent à grands sanglots, dans le bouleversement profond de toute l'humanité qui était en eux. C'était une tristesse immense, la misère des générations, l'excès de douleur où peut tomber la vie.
Au jour, la Maheude, abattue près de Catherine morte, jeta un cri, puis un autre, puis un autre, de grandes plaintes très longues, incessantes. Plusieurs cadavres étaient déjà remontés et alignés par terre : Chaval que l'on crut assommé sous un éboulement, un galibot et deux haveurs également fracassés, le crâne vide de cervelle, le ventre gonflé d'eau. Des femmes, dans la foule, perdaient la raison, déchiraient leurs jupes, s'égratignaient la face. Lorsqu'on le sortit enfin, après l'avoir habitué aux lampes et nourri un peu, Étienne apparut décharné, les cheveux tout blancs ; et on s'écartait, on frémissait devant ce vieillard. La Maheude s'arrêta de crier, pour le regarder stupidement, de ses grands yeux fixes. (VII, v) [translation by Havelock Ellis, 1894] With a sudden impulse she hung on to him, seeking his mouth and pressing her own passionately to it. The darkness lighted up, she saw the sun again, and she laughed a quiet laugh of love. He shuddered to feel her thus against his flesh, half naked beneath the tattered jacket and trousers, and he seized her with a reawakening of his virility. It was at length their wedding night, at the bottom of this tomb, on this bed of mud, the longing not to die before they had had their happiness, the obstinate longing to live and make life one last time. They loved each other in despair of everything, in death.
After that there was nothing more. Étienne was seated on the ground, always in the same corner, and Catherine was lying motionless on his knees. Hours and hours passed by. For a long time he thought she was sleeping; then he touched her; she was very cold, she was dead. He did not move, however, for fear of arousing her. The idea that he was the first who had possessed her as a woman, and that she might be pregnant, filled him with tenderness. Other ideas, the desire to go away with her, joy at what they would both do later on, came to him at moments, but so vaguely that it seemed only as though his forehead had been touched by a breath of sleep. He grew weaker, he only had strength to make a little gesture, a slow movement of the hand, to assure himself that she was certainly there, like a sleeping child in her frozen stiffness. Everything was being annihilated; the night itself had disappeared, and he was nowhere, out of space, out of time. Something was certainly striking beside his head, violent blows were approaching him; but he had been too lazy to reply, benumbed by immense fatigue; and now he knew nothing, he only dreamed that she was walking before him, and that he heard the slight clank of her sabots. Two days passed; she had not stirred; he touched her with his mechanical gesture, reassured to find her so quiet.
Étienne felt a shock. Voices were sounding, rocks were rolling to his feet. When he perceived a lamp he wept. His blinking eyes followed the light, he was never tired of looking at it, enraptured by this reddish point which scarcely stained the darkness. But some mates carried him away, and he allowed them to introduce some spoonfuls of soup between his clenched teeth. It was only in the Réquillart gallery that he recognized someone standing before him, the engineer, Négrel; and these two men, with their contempt for each other--the rebellious workman and the sceptical master--threw themselves on each other's necks, sobbing loudly in the deep upheaval of all the humanity within them. It was an immense sadness, the misery of generations, the extremity of grief into which life can fall.
At the surface, Maheude, stricken down near dead Catherine, uttered a cry, then another, then another--very long, deep, incessant moans. Several corpses had already been brought up, and placed in a row on the ground: Chaval, who was thought to have been crushed beneath a landslip. a trammer, and two hewers, also crushed, with brainless skulls and bellies swollen with water. Women in the crowd went out of their minds, tearing their skirts and scratching their faces. When Étienne was at last taken out, after having been accustomed to the lamps and fed a little, he appeared fleshless, and his hair was quite white. People turned away and shuddered at this old man. Maheude left off crying to stare at him stupidly with her large fixed eyes.
«Ger-mi-nal, Ger-mi-nal, Ger-mi-nal...», este era el grito que el 5 de octubre de 1902 una delegación de mineros franceses coreaba al arrojar sus ramos de rosas rojas sobre la tumba de Émile Zola: cinco mil parisienses habían recorrido las calles de París con el féretro del escritor que había abanderado el enfrentamiento con el sector más conservador de la sociedad francesa a raíz del conocido como «affaire Dreyfus». Émile Zola, el padre del naturalismo, describe en Germinal, de una forma descarnada, el mundo sombrío y mísero de la mina, retratando a un grupo de personas que vive ahogado en condiciones infrahumanas y por cuyas venas Zola hace correr el odio y el rencor, seres humanos que se extenúan trabajando en medio de una terrible frustración. Los sueños de juventud, la búsqueda del amor, todo choca contra la realidad siniestra de la mina, que se cobra vidas y apenas permite vivir a los que logran salir de su oscuro pozo. Pero cuando falta el pan, cuandpo el sueño se convierte en pesadilla, los mineros se alzan contra las fuerzas de la destrucción: la huelga hace brotar de todos y cada uno lo mejor y lo peor del ser humano. Con Germinal, Zola escribe una epopeya radicalmente moderna: la denuncia de una realidad se convierte en mito.
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| Last words |
Des hommes poussaient, une armée noire, vengeresse, qui germait lentement dans les sillons, grandissant pour les récoltes du siècle futur, et dont la germination allait bientôt faire éclater la terre. (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.) | |
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| Disambiguation notice |
Serialized 1884-1885, first published as a book 1885 | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English
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| Book description |
Ger-mi-nal, Ger-mi-nal, Ger-mi-nal..., este era el grito que el 5 de octubre de 1902 una delegación de mineros franceses coreaba al arrojar sus ramos de rosas rojas sobre la tumba de Zola: cinco mil parisienses habían recorrido las calles de París con el féretro del escritor que había abanderado el enfrentamiento con el sector más conservador de la sociedad francesa a raíz del conocido como «affaire Dreyfus». Émile Zola , el padre del naturalismo, describe en Germinal , de una forma descarnada, el mundo sombrío y mísero de la mina, retratando a un grupo de personas que vive ahogado en condiciones infrahumanas y por cuyas venas Zola hace correr el odio y el rencor, seres humanos que se extenúan trabajando en medio de una terrible frustración. Los sueños de juventud, la búsqueda del amor, todo choca contra la realidad siniestra de la mina, que se cobra vidas y apenas permite vivir a los que logran salir de su oscuro pozo. Pero cuando falta el pan, cuando el sueño se convierte en pesadilla, los mineros se alzan contra las fuerzas de la destrucción: la huelga hace brotar de todos y cada uno lo mejor y lo peor del ser humano. Con Germinal, Zola escribe una epopeya radicalmente moderna: la denuncia de una realidad se convierte en mito. | |
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▾Book descriptions Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0140447423, Paperback)
The thirteenth novel in Émile Zola’s great Rougon-Macquart sequence, Germinal expresses outrage at the exploitation of the many by the few, but also shows humanity’s capacity for compassion and hope. Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, and in debt, unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:53 -0400) (see all 3 descriptions) ▾Open Shelves Classification The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Etienne Lantier is an outsider who came into the gray mining towns looking for a job, and found one down in the pits. He is shocked by the conditions of the workers, men, women and children alike, clinging to the bare faced damp walls more than 500 meters below the ground, with very little air, exposed to dangerous gases, mud and rock slides, sudden floods, and all other unimaginable horrors every second of their time below, working like beasts for wages not even enough to feed their families. Life is brutish, and with no exception, everybody is old before their time, many are sick with all sorts of respiratory diseases, or maimed from a fall or accident. But to work is not an option. Children do not go to school, they are sent down into the mines very early.
A new and devious wage structure imposed by the company is the last straw, Etienne leads a strike. The effect is contagious, from one mine, it spreads to the rest of the region. The miners hold out, bearing their hunger, sitting out their time quietly, hoping that dialogues with the administrators would result in something positive. Nothing happens, the strike continues -- small children start dying of starvation. Yet they hold out. Then the companies start sending in the police, the guards. The strike turns violent --- there is sabotage, there is killing. The strike lasted six weeks. They couldn't hold out more, or they would be dying like flies. They return to the dark and noxious depths, having paid very dearly and not achieving anything. Yet the tragedies don't end here.
I couldn't put down this book --- there was so much realism in his depiction of the mines, the poverty of the families, the diseases of the miners, the hopelessness of their lives. With remarkable description, we feel we are down there too, in the depths. We are drawn to Etienne's strong, if somewhat naive convictions, to the rising fervor among the miners when they realise it's possible to have dreams of a better life, we are introduced to characters who represent the range of ideologies, from the stoic Sauverine who believes anarchy is the solution to social change, to the bar owner who from radicalism has mellowed, now believing no change is possible in a lifetime and that it is a long process, and to the social idealism of Etienne. We are introduced to individual families, to gossipy neighbors, to the petty alliances and loyalties of these families. We meet, as well, the bourgeoisie, the company lackeys, the representatives of the faceless investors in far-off Paris.
The themes are bleak, depressing even, but like the title, Germinal, which refers to the 7th month of the French Republican calendar (Mar/April) which heralds spring, the coming of new life, the germination of hope, we feel like Etienne, who continued on his way, keeping the small seed of hope that the fight is not yet over, and that a glorious day will yet arrive for those who believe.
As an aside, the description of hunger here and the harshness of life, is even more appalling and more gut-wrenching than in Knut's Hunger and in Solzhenitsyn's One Day....
Truly a masterpiece, a grand novel in every sense of the word. I cannot praise it enough. (