Human Beast: The Emile Zola Society Edition

by Emile Zola

  9 reversing wheel: A hand-operated wheel used by the driver not only to reverse a locomotive but, as here, to control the admission of steam to the cylinders when the locomotive was moving forward. Once sufficient forward momentum was achieved, less tractive effort was needed, and the input of steam could be progressively reduced, a procedure referred to as ‘cut-off’. This helped to economize on fuel consumption and to reduce wear and tear to the cylinders and valve gear.

  10 injector: A mechanism invented in 1859 by the French engineer Henry Giffard, which enabled the water in the boiler to be replenished with the aid of steam pressure from the boiler itself. There was a critical point at which the mechanism functioned successfully; hence Jacques’s attention to the pressure gauge.

  CHAPTER VI

  1 She had put five or six pots of wallflowers and verbena in the valley of the station roof: Séverine’s roof garden is a striking example of the vein of horticultural imagery that runs through the novel. Zola’s wife had an extensive knowledge of horticulture; her mother and sister-in-law were both florists.

  2 some strange city, lined with big, square palaces built of black marble: In a novel which lays emphasis on realistic description, this is a striking example of an ‘unreal’, almost futuristic representation of place.

  3 In spite of everything, she had remained virgin: This is the third time in this chapter that Zola has referred to Séverine in these terms, insistently drawing the reader’s attention to Séverine’s purity and innocence of mind.

  4 sous: The official unit of currency during the Second Empire was the franc, which was divided into one hundred centimes. In daily usage people referred (and still do) to an obsolete unit of currency, the sou, which was then worth five centimes. The extent of Roubaud’s gambling debts becomes apparent later in the novel (see chapter IX, note 1).

  5 écarté: A game of cards for two players, similar to piquet (see chapter III, note 3). The players may discard (écarter in French; hence the name) any or all of the cards dealt and replace them from the pack.

  CHAPTER VII

  1 the snowplough could easily clear a depth of one metre: Snow-ploughs were not standard fittings on early French locomotives. Evidently a snowplough had been attached to La Lison before leaving the shed.

  2 detonators: These were small explosive devices clipped to the track and activated by the wheels of the locomotive as they ran over them. They were used to warn engine drivers of any danger ahead.

  3 the damper: A flap or door in the ash-pan underneath the fire grate, operated by means of a ratchet in the driver’s cab and allowing the driver or fireman to control the amount of air entering the bottom of the firebox.

  4 ten atmospheres: The ‘atmosphere’ is a measurement of pressure. I atmosphere is a notional measurement of air pressure at the earth’s surface (14.7 lb on the square inch).

  5 Yes, monsieur, from New York: In 1869, transatlantic crossings took over a week. Either the two men are talking at cross purposes or the American is exaggerating.

  6 and placed it at the side of the cutting: Zola based this extraordinary exploit on an account of a similar occurrence described by Pol Lefèvre, which Lefèvre had witnessed, involving a train caught in the snow near Rouen in the winter of 1879 — 80.

  CHAPTER VIII

  1 she reached the fourth floor: A minor discrepancy. At the beginning of the novel (chapter I), Zola situates the room on the fifth floor.

  2 She recognized the sound of the chimes, deep and resonant: The cuckoo clock is evidently one which both chimes and cuckoos. Wordsworth owned such a clock. The clock is one of several details used here which serve to reinforce the parallel between this scene and the opening scene of the novel.

  3 Malaga: A white wine from the south of Spain.

  4 he had been able to slip upstairs without anyone noticing: The concierge was often one of the first people to be questioned by the police in the event of any suspicious circumstance or criminal investigation. Séverine and Jacques’s clandestine relationship and their concern to be unobserved reflect Zola’s own experience at the time he was writing this novel. In 1888 he had begun a relationship with Jeanne Rozerot and had installed her in an apartment in the Rue Saint-Lazare, where he visited her secretly. Zola’s wife, Alexandrine, knew nothing of the affair until 1891, by which time Jeanne had provided Zola with two children.

  5 her shudder of desire became a shudder of death: This is a macabre variation on a very old literary conceit — sexual ecstasy as a form of death. Killing is given sexual connotations throughout the novel.

  6 communication cord: Although it had become clear since the Poinsot murder in 1860 (see Introduction) that the incidence of crime committed on trains was increasing, the Compagnie de l’Ouest did not in fact introduce any form of alarm system until 1882. The earliest communication system was a cord and bell arrangement, which enabled passengers to alert the guard if there was an emergency. When trains were fitted with continuous vacuum brakes (from 1890 onwards), the communication cord enabled passengers to apply the brakes themselves.

  7 I found myself outside on the footboard, clinging with both hands to the brass handrail:Although Séverine and Roubaud perform this hazardous operation in only one direction, moving away from the coupé back to their own compartment, this is precisely the sort of scenario which Denizet had earlier dismissed as impossible (see chapter IV, note 9).

  8 life seems one long holiday: It was the spread of railways that made areas such as Brittany and the Mediterranean more easily accessible to holiday makers and accelerated the development of seaside resorts such as Cannes.

  CHAPTER IX

  1 he could pay off his debt and he had all this money to wager: Zola tells us above that Roubaud’s gambling had begun ‘shortly after the murder’. The murder took place in mid-February 1869, which at this point in the novel is still less than a year ago. If it is assumed that the money taken from under the floorboard is used to pay off Roubaud’s gambling debts and that he had already paid money out of his own pocket, he appears to have so far lost something in the region of 1,000 francs and to be acquiring new debts as fast as he settles them. Zola had indicated earlier in the novel that Roubaud’s annual salary was about 2,000 francs (see chapter I, note 15).

  2 She had asked him to give her a photograph of himself:Zola himself was a keen photographer.

  3 bristling factory chimneys: Today Paris is not thought of as an industrial city, but during the Second Empire there was a considerable amount of industrial activity both in the suburbs and close to the city centre. Haussmann opposed the further development of heavy industry (including a proposal for a large railway works at Batignolles) in favour of the manufacture of luxury goods (see Jeanne Gaillard, Paris la Ville, Librairie Honoré Champion, 1976, pp. 55 ff.).

  4 the right of the strong to destroy the weak who get in their way: It is here that Zola most clearly confronts the arguments of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (see Introduction). Zola had toyed with the idea of giving his novel the title The Right to Murder (Le Droit au meurtre). Raskolnikov had justified murder by reference to the concept of a ‘superior being’. Jacques here attempts to justify murder by reference to the less rarified concept of animal instinct. 5. whatever moral scruples had since been invented to keep men living together: In his ‘discussion’ of the rights and wrongs of murder, both here and elsewhere in the novel, Zola avoids specific mention of any religious imperative.

  6 The government had been badly shaken by the general elections: ‘In a poll of around eight million electors, government candidates won only 4.5 million votes, while opposition candidates polled 3.5 million’ (McMillan, Napoleon III, p. 126). This represented the most serious challenge to its authority that the Second Empire had ever faced.

  CHAPTER X

  1 Misard had been putting the rat poison into her enemas rather than mixing it with the salt: This is the first confirmation that Misard had indeed been poisoning his wife. In June 1889, Zola had written for advice about p
oison to a doctor friend of his, Docteur Gouverné. Gouverné provided him with a detailed explanation of how various poisons worked, recommending white arsenic as the most appropriate to Zola’s purposes in the novel, being a tasteless white powder used as an ingredient in rat poison and ideally suited to slow poisoning. Gouverné further explained that it was also used to treat farm animals and would therefore be easily available in a country district such as the one Zola had in mind.

  2 she walked out of the Malaunay end of the tunnel, safe and sound: Zola based this episode on an official report on the dangers incurred by railway men working inside tunnels. The report emphasized the disorientating effect of the noise and the dark and recommended that all tunnels should be equipped with electric lighting. Zola himself had a mortal fear of tunnels and confined spaces. In the short story ‘La Mort d’Olivier Bécaille’ a train is immured inside a tunnel. In Germinal the miners are trapped below ground.

  3 ballast train: Ballast was broken stone, used as a bed for the tracks.

  4 it automatically set the signal at red: The system of ‘interlocking signalling’ had been described to Zola by Pol Lefèvre. It was a system which linked signals and points and was operated by the signalman. Zola appears to be confusing it with a system of ‘automatic signalling’, in which signal movements were controlled by the passage of trains. Automatic signalling did not come into general use until after the period referred to in the novel.

  5 applied the brakes: Braking systems on early steam locomotives were notoriously inefficient.

  6 crashed into the wagon with the full weight of the thirteen carriages she drew behind her: Zola based the account of this disaster on newspaper reports (in Le Temps and Le Figaro) of three actual train crashes — at Charenton in September 1881, at Cabbé-Roquebrune (near Monte Carlo) in March 1886, and at Groenendael (Belgium) in February 1889. Although each of these accidents was dissimilar (and unlike the situation depicted in the novel), they provided Zola with details such as the fireman and guard jumping off the train, passengers running into the fields, the telescoping of the train on impact, the fire from the locomotive spreading to the rest of the train, examples of horrific injuries and the difficulty of obtaining assistance and medical help.

  7 pilot engine: An engine used to assist another locomotive when, for example, a train had to climb a steep gradient.

  8 to greet a friend as she came towards her: Zola is careful to make this ‘friend’ feminine (‘une amie’ in French). Flore remains fiercely independent of men to the end.

  CHAPTER XI

  1 I’ll be able to say I never left this room: Séverine’s reasoning here is difficult to follow.

  2 Séverine lay in bed on her back ... watching him walk up and down: There is an echo here of the scene near the beginning of the novel in which Séverine lies on the bed while Roubaud paces the room, planning the murder of Grandmorin (chapter I).

  3 his jaw was pushed forward in a savage grimace that made him appear almost deformed: The pronounced jaw was, according to Lombroso, one of the bestial features that distinguished the criminal. Zola incorporates the detail into his initial description of Jacques (chapter II). Here he imagines the feature becoming more pronounced as Jacques’s murderous instinct takes hold of him.

  CHAPTER XII

  1 just because some prince of theirs wants to be King of Spain: In July, 1870, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen (1835 — 1905) had been offered and had accepted the vacant throne of Spain. The deal had been arranged by Bismarck; Prince Leopold himself had little enthusiasm for the idea. In France, the prospect of a Prussian prince becoming King of Spain led to fears of encirclement by Prussia.

  2 elections and plebiscites and riots in Paris: The elections of May 1869 had been fiercely contested and had led to civil disturbance. They resulted in a moral victory for the opposition (see chapter IX, note 6). The Emperor was forced to agree to opposition demands for a more liberal form of government. On 8 May 1870, a new constitution was voted on by plebiscite and overwhelmingly approved (see Introduction).

  3 which should have corroborated his present account: It is not immediately obvious how Roubaud’s evidence at the first inquiry should ‘corroborate’ the confession he has just made, since his earlier evidence had pointed in the direction of a murderer other than himself. It is clear, however, that Denizet is so confident he has solved the case that whatever evidence is put before him will simply confirm the conclusions he has already arrived at.

  4 assessor: An assessor sits as adviser to a judge or magistrate and is often skilled in technical points of law.

  5 . fashionable ladies of the town: Roger Williams draws attention to the fact that audiences at trials during the Second Empire tended to be dominated by women, especially if the case involved details of a sordid or unseemly kind (Roger L. Williams, Manners and Murders in the World of Louis-Napoleon, University of Washington Press, 1975, p. 10).

  6 Napoleonic bees: Bees were introduced as a heraldic device by Napoleon Bonaparte as a replacement for the royal fleur-de-lis.

  7 war had been declared: France officially declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. Mobilization, however, had begun before this.

  8 a skirmish at one of the frontier towns: The French army achieved an initial minor success at Saarbrücken (Lorraine) on 2 August 1870. This provides a terminal date for the events of the novel. The Franco-Prussian war is the subject of the penultimate novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, La Débâcle.

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  GERMINAL

  ÉMILE ZOLA

  ‘Buried like moles beneath the crushing weight of the earth, and without a breath

  of fresh air in their burning lungs, they simply went on tapping’

  Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Compelled to take a back-breaking job at the 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. The thirteenth novel in 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.

  Roger Pearson’s lively and modern new translation is accompanied by an introduction that examines the social and political background to Zola’s masterpiece, in particular the changing relationship between labour and capital. This edition also contains a filmography, chronology and notes.

  Translated and edited by Roger Pearson

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  NANA

  ÉMILE ZOLA

  ‘Her slightest movements fanned the flame of desire,

  and with a twitch of her little finger she could stir men’s flesh’

  Born to drunken parents in the slums of Paris, Nana lives in squalor until she is discovered at the Theatre des Variétés. She soon rises from the streets to set the city alight as the most famous high-class prostitute of her day. Rich men, Comtes and Marquises fall at her feet, great ladies try to emulate her appearance, lovers even kill themselves for her. Nana’s hedonistic appetite for luxury and decadent pleasures knows no bounds — until, eventually, it consumes her. Nana provoked outrage on its publication in 1880, with its heroine damned as ‘the most crude and bestial sort of whore’. Yet the rich atmosphere and luminous language of this ‘poem of male desire’ transform Nana into an almost mythical figure: a destructive force preying on a corrupt, decaying society.

  George Holden’s lively translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing Nana as a key work in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle, representing a powerful critique of France’s Second Empire.

  Translated with an introduction by George Holden

  THE STORY OF PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Before 1946 ... ‘Classics’ are mainly the domain of academics and students; readable edit
ions for everyone else are almost unheard of. This all changes when a little-known classicist, E. V. Rieu, presents Penguin founder Allen Lane with the translation of Homer’s Odyssey that he has been working on in his spare time.

  1946 Penguin Classics debuts with The Odyssey, which promptly sells three million copies. Suddenly, classics are no longer for the privileged few.

  1950sRieu, now series editor, turns to professional writers for the best modern, readable translations, including Dorothy L. Sayers’s Inferno and Robert Graves’s unexpurgated Twelve Caesars.

  1960s The Classics are given the distinctive black covers that have remained a constant throughout the life of the series. Rieu retires in 1964, hailing the Penguin Classics list as ‘the greatest educative force of the twentieth century.’

  1970s A new generation of translators swells the Penguin Classics ranks, introducing readers of English to classics of world literature from more than twenty languages. The list grows to encompass more history, philosophy, science, religion and politics.

  1980s The Penguin American Library launches with titles such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and joins forces with Penguin Classics to provide the most comprehensive library of world literature available from any paperback publisher.

  1990s The launch of Penguin Audiobooks brings the classics to a listening audience for the first time, and in 1999 the worldwide launch of the Penguin Classics website extends their reach to the global online community.