book-review

Germinal by Zola: a marathon read worth running

When Zola died in 1902, crowds of workers hailed his funeral cortège with cries of « Germinal », the best-selling novel which is probably his most famous work. This was based on the meticulous research conducted in 1884 when, formally dressed in frock coat, high collar and top hat, pen and notebook in hand, he descended into a coalmine belonging to the Anzin company in the Pas-de-Calais region of France, in order to assess the working conditions which led to a prolonged and unsuccessful strike.

A journalist before achieving sufficient success to support himself as an author, Zola had known great poverty as a child, after his father’s premature death, and as an unemployed young man who had twice failed his baccalauréat. Perhaps the experience of inequality triggered his strong social conscience. This was combined with a firm conviction that people’s lives are determined by a mixture of heredity and their environment. We see this in the principal character in Germinal, Étienne, the idealistic but naive newcomer who is carried away by his inherited impulsive, addictive personality to become the leader of a doomed strike. While conveying vividly the hardship and injustice suffered by the mining families, Zola continually shows how they have been brutalised by this: casually promiscuous, quick to take advantage of each other and capable of cruel acts of vengeance.

The novel opens with a dramatic description of the mine at night as first seen by Étienne. Zola portrays it as a kind of monster, literally swallowing up the miners as they descend for their shift. The descriptions of the working conditions are truly appalling : long, dangerous trudges and climbs deep underground to the coal seams, drenched with water as they hew the coal, risk of fire damp explosions, unfair pay cuts when they fail to meet impossible targets to both install the pit props to protect themselves and bring enough truckloads of coal to the pithead. The food is so scanty and poor, the exhaustion so intense, the patronising support available so inadequate and unreliable, hardships and misfortunes for some pile up to such a weight that one wonders how the mining community can survive at all. The comparisons with the pampered lives of the families of the mines shareholders and senior staff are shocking.

There is a powerful metaphor in the huge percheron, the draught horse brought down as a foal to drag containers filled with coal along tunnels to the pithead, which becomes blind through lack of light, can only dream of the sunlight, and eventually dies underground, to be buried there.

Events often seem exaggerated or far-fetched, and many characters, particularly the wealthy, highly stereotyped. The frequent detailed descriptions filled with technical terms for the mining operations are hard to follow, especially in the original French if not one’s first language. So reading all five hundred and forty odd pages of it (or even more in some editions) requires a marathon effort. One can grow inured to so much intense suffering, and the touches of ironic humour cannot compensate for this.

Produced originally in instalments for a magazine over a period of about four months, now the novel seems too long, at times repetitive, and in need of a firm edit, reflecting the lack of alternative media at the time to distract people from reading it. Yet, it is the kind of classic novel which lingers in the mind, provoking thought. If possible, it is best to read the novel in its original langage to experience the full impact.

The novel ends on the optimistic note, that the miners, forced back to work but their spirits unbroken, will, like seeds, produce future generations who are able to rise up and claim their rights – a belief , yet to be realised, which has inspired the causes of socialism and reform. Hence the title, for Germinal was the seventh month of the French Revolution’s revised calendar, intended to evoke the idea of seeds of equality growing in fertile ground.

Étoile Errante – Wandering Star by J.M.G. Le Clézio – “Le soleil ne brille-t-il pas pour tous?”  (“Doesn’t the sun shine for everyone?”)  

It is 1943, and despite occupation by the Italian army, allied to Nazi Germany, the remote French commune of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, close to the border, seems to be a haven for Jews. Although she has been obliged to adopt the French name Hélène, Esther’s family is not typically Jewish because her father, a former teacher, is a self-styled communist and “pagan” who risks his life guiding refugees along the “Old Salt Road” passes across the Alps into northern Italy. When in due course Esther is obliged to flee in turn with her mother, she falls under the influence of a rabbi, so that, once the war is over , it makes sense for the pair to follow a relative’s advice to emigrate to Jerusalem “to forget” the troubled past. This proves impossible, since the establishment of Israel means displacement of the Palestinians and more strife.

Esther’s brief, chance meeting in Palestine with Nejma, an Arab girl of a similar age, is the device used to link the two characters, even if only tenuously.  Le Clézio portrays them as “wandering  stars”, innocent victims of circumstance uprooted from their homes who happen to be on opposite sides of the conflict. Yet their positions are not equal, for Esther has the means and choice to travel further and create a new life in Canada, although she will always be haunted by memories. Nejma’s story occupies less than a quarter of the novel, making it seem like a digression in the account of  Esther’s life, but it is more moving, since she suffers more in her attempts to survive at the most basic level in or outside the grim camps set up by the United Nations. Her future, which is left unclear, appears bleak.

Despite being very observant, even as a highly educated woman in later life, Esther does not seem to reflect much on how the injustice borne by her people has led to a chain reaction of suffering for others.  It is Nejma who has the insight to see the significance of a dying Arab’s question, “Le soleil ne brille-t-il pas pour tous?”  (“Doesn’t the sun shine for everyone?”)  This is the closest the author comes to “taking sides”.

Perhaps because I read this in December 2023, during the unrelenting bombardment of Gaza triggered by the brutal incursions by Hamas into Israel on October 7th, I was expecting Le Clézio, as a Nobel Prize winner, to give more consideration to the moral issues raised by the conflicts which form the background to this novel.  It appears that he prefers to leave it to us to reflect on these, via his focus on individual lives, which tend to follow a random course, subject to fragmented, disjointed perceptions, as in reality.

From the outset, the lyrical, often repetitive prose creates a hypnotic effect as he describes in great detail the landscapes, sea voyages, small daily events in a village or refugee camp. The reader has to pay close attention, to glean scraps of information to build up a picture of what is going on. One needs a certain amount of general knowledge about, for instance, the Shoah or Holocaust, the belief in “Eretz Israel” leading to the foundation of the modern state in 1948, the Nakba (forced movement and dispossession of the Palestinians) and subsequent conflicts there to appreciate the novel more fully.

However, one can simply read this as a lyrical, impressionistic account of how war makes people rootless and vulnerable but hopefully coming to terms with their situation and gaining greater self-knowledge and control over their lives.