GERMINAL
BY
ÉMILE ZOLA
Translated and Introduced
By
Havelock Ellis
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
Aldine House—Bedford St.—London
1885
INTRODUCTION BY HAVELOCK ELLIS
'GERMINAL' was published in 1885, after occupying Zola during theprevious year. In accordance with his usual custom—but to a greaterextent than with any other of his books except La Débâcle—heaccumulated material beforehand. For six months he travelled aboutthe coal-mining district in northern France and Belgium, especiallythe Borinage around Mons, note-book in hand. 'He was inquisitive, wasthat gentleman', miner told Sherard who visited the neighbourhood at alater period and found that the miners in every village knew Germinal.That was a tribute of admiration the book deserved, but it was neverone of Zola's most popular novels; it was neither amusing enough noroutrageous enough to attract the multitude.
Yet Germinal occupies a place among Zola's works which is constantlybecoming more assured, so that to some critics it even begins to seemthe only book of his that in the end may survive. In his own time, aswe know, the accredited critics of the day could find no condemnationsevere enough for Zola. Brunetière attacked him perpetually with a furythat seemed inexhaustible; Schérer could not even bear to hear his namementioned; Anatole France, though he lived to relent, thought it wouldhave been better if he had never been born. Even at that time, however,there were critics who inclined to view Germinal more favourably. ThusFaguet, who was the recognized academic critic of the end of the lastcentury, while he held that posterity would be unable to understand howZola could ever have been popular, yet recognized him as in Germinalthe heroic representative of democracy, incomparable in his power ofdescribing crowds, and he realized how marvellous is the conclusion ofthis book.
To-day, when critics view Zola In the main with indifference ratherthan with horror, although he still retains his popular favour, thedistinction of Germinal is yet more clearly recognized. Seillière,while regarding the capitalistic conditions presented as now of anancient and almost extinct type, yet sees Germinal standing out as'the poem of social mysticism', while André Gide, a completely moderncritic who has left a deep mark on the present generation, observessomewhere that it may nowadays cause surprise that he should refer withadmiration to Germinal, but it is a masterly book that fills him withastonishment; he can hardly believe that it was written in French andstill less that it should have been written in any other language; itseems that it should have been created in some international tongue.
The high place thus claimed for Germinal will hardly seem exaggerated.The book was produced when Zola had at length achieved the full masteryof his art and before his hand had, as in his latest novels, begun tolose its firm grasp. The subject lent itself, moreover, to his specialaptitude for presenting in vivid outline great human groups, and to hisspecial sympathy with the collective emotions and social aspirations ofsuch groups. We do not, as so often in Zola's work, become painfullyconscious that he is seeking to reproduce aspects of life with whichhe is imperfectly acquainted, or fitting them into scientific formulaswhich he has imperfectly understood. He shows